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About my vocal opposition to Donald Trump

About my vocal opposition to Donald Trump

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 1:15 pm by Dan Peterson

About my vocal opposition to Donald Trump 2016-03-30T13:15:07-06:00 Dan Peterson

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“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.” (attributed to Martin Luther)
In this painting by Hermann Wislicenus (d. 1899), Martin Luther is shown before the imperial assembly of Charles V in 1521, where he may or may not have uttered the precise words quoted above. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

One particular Facebook commenter will serve to represent a larger group:

He has, he says, lost a great deal of respect for Mitt Romney. But he has lost even more respect for me, because of what he twice terms our “hate” for Donald Trump.

I feel no “hatred” toward Donald Trump. I strongly disagree with many of his political views, to the very limited extent that it’s possible to discern what they are, and I deeply disapprove of him as a person, but I don’t “hate” him, and I doubt that Governor Romney does, either.

It strikes me as a pretty good illustration of the deep dysfunctionality of American political culture these days that some people seem unable to understand disagreement as anything other than “hate.” We saw that a few years ago, of course, among advocates of the redefinition of marriage in California, who, even as they destroyed the careers of people who supported Proposition 8 (aka “Proposition H8”), picketed and sometimes defaced churches, “outed” people for the entirely legal act of donating to a democratic referendum, and wrote vicious letters to the editor impugning the characters and motives of those who failed to agree with them, denounced opponents of same-sex marriage as “haters.” And now we’re seeing the same thing from certain supporters of Donald Trump.

Let me turn briefly autobiographical:

I’ve been a very serious conservative (with libertarian leanings on economic issues), since even before I became a teenager. My beloved half-brother, ten years my senior and my only sibling, was a political science major, and I began to read Eric Hoffer and Frédéric Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt and Russell Kirk and Wilhelm Röpke and other such writers from his personal library at a very young age.

My parents, scared off by the mainstream media’s portrayal of Barry Goldwater as a dangerous extremist, supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But I didn’t. And, in a sense, I was actually able to vote for Senator Goldwater, because my brother allowed me to go into the polling booth with him and pull the lever.

I enthusiastically supported Ronald Reagan for the governorship of California and, later, in his challenge to President Gerald Ford, and, yet again, in his two successful presidential runs. I supported both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as soon as they declared their candidacies for the United States Senate.

With only a few gaps when I’ve been living overseas, I’ve subscribed to National Review since I was thirteen or fourteen. I was a charter subscriber to The Weekly Standard and The American Spectator.

Although I never considered myself an “Objectivist” and although I find much to criticize in her and in her thinking, I went through a really important Ayn Rand phase during my high school years that has certainly left its mark on my economic views.

I helped to host William F. Buckley, Jr., when he visited BYU during my undergraduate studies here — including a visit with the First Presidency at the time. I corresponded briefly with him during my mission in Switzerland, where he owned a chalet (in Rougemont).

I’ve enjoyed fascinating conversations over lunch or dinner with such people Mike Lee (before he was elected to the Senate) and Rand Paul (after he was elected) and John Mackey (the libertarian co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Markets).

I won an essay contest in 1976 that allowed me to spend two weeks (altogether) at the Mont Pelerin Society’s conference in St. Andrews, Scotland, that year, where I had the astonishing privilege — those who know much about conservative/libertarian economics, or, for that matter, of the history of the Nobel Prize in economics, will understand why I found it astonishing — of mingling with such people as Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Ronald Coase, John Chamberlain, Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich von Hayek. Among other things, several of us made a pilgrimage to place a wreath on the grave of Adam Smith, the great “Scottish Rennaissance” moral philosopher and founder of modern economics

I participated several times in summer schools of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where I was able to interact with people like Eric Voegelin, Stephen Tonsor, Gerhart Niemeyer, Tibor Machan, and Edward Teller. Again, people who are acquainted with the history of conservative thought in America will recognize those names.

I’ve spoken multiple times at the largest libertarian gathering in the United States, the annual Freedom Fest.

And so on and so forth.

I mention such things only because I’m tired of accusations that I’m a phony conservative and a “RINO” (a “Republican in Name Only”). My libertarian/conservative credentials go far back beyond the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and likely beyond the first birthday of many of those who’re currently writing me angry notes, and my conservative/libertarian roots run far deeper, I suspect, than those of quite a few who presume to read me out of the political Right.

So why do I oppose Donald Trump and Trumpism? Not merely because I find him a personally repulsive human being, which I do, but because his political views and his manifest authoritarianism run directly counter to the political and economic principles that I’ve believed in and advocated since I was a young boy.

Opposition to the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump is, to me, a duty and an honor.

I cannot support him. I regard it as my obligation to publicly oppose him.

I genuinely regret the fact that, as some say, they’ve lost respect for me over this issue. Especially when those saying this are apparently members of my church. It hurts a bit when they accuse me of harboring “hate,” and when they write hateful things to and about me.

But I regard such division, now occurring even within the ranks of the Latter-day Saints, as yet another of the divisive fruits of Trumpism.

And, much as I regret the disdain and hostility that my public position has engendered in some, I could not possibly respect myself if I didn’t publicly, repeatedly, and forthrightly resist the advance of Trumpism.

I regard Trumpism as a threat to the principles of conservatism, limited constitutional government, civility, and public morality, and to the security, credibility, and standing of the United States of America. I also see Mr. Trump as, in very large measure, a fraud.

Incidentally, the same Facebook commentator whom I cite above contrasts Mr. Trump, who is “not a wimp,” with Ted Cruz, who is “a pansy cry baby.”

I suppose that he’s referring to Senator Cruz’s defense of his wife, Heidi, against Mr. Trump’s mockery of her physical appearance.

I would regard any husband who didn’t rise to his wife’s defense against such an assault as unmanly. And, likewise, I regard Mr. Trump’s attacks against Heidi Cruz, and against Carly Fiorina, and against others like them, as unworthy of any man interested in staking out the slightest pretense of decency.

If that’s what the commenter means when he praises Mr. Trump as “not a wimp,” I hope never to be so praised. I would rather be a “pansy.”

But if, instead, the commenter intends to praise Mr. Trump’s endorsement of war crimes against women and children in the Middle East, Mr. Trump’s encouragement of violence at his rallies, Mr. Trump’s unabashed racial and religious bigotry, Mr. Trump’s suggestion of unconstitutional actions against disapproved religious minorities, Mr. Trump’s attempts to use government power against “little people” who stand in the way of his real estate developments or who criticize him or who ask him to repay the debts that he owes to them, I must, as a matter of urgent principle, do everything that I can to dispraise such things.

Dislike me and disrespect me for it if you will, “unfriend” me if you must, compare me to a Nazi stormtrooper if the whim so moves you, but I won’t back down.

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