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On the Indictment of Donald Trump

The constitutional republic of the United States of America has just formally entered an existential crisis as serious as the breakdown of civil society which brought about its civil war of 1861-1865.

With the criminal indictment of Donald J. Trump by a politician affiliated with the Democrat Party, one faction of the American elite has abandoned government of the people, by the people and for the people.  Such authentic democracy, as once honored by Abraham Lincoln during a brutal civil war, has been replaced with factional criminalizing political rivals to prevent them from winning office.

This process of faction warring against faction, where no prisoners are taken and no mercy shown, is the very evil Madison described in his Federalist Paper No. 10 as the greatest danger which could ever threaten democratic systems.

As Sir John Glubb observed, the normal lifespan of a ruling dynasty or a powerful country, over the course of human history, has been about 250 years (The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival, 1978).

This year, 2023, is the 247th year of the United States as an independent, constitutional republic.  Has the time come for the evil of factionalism to bring an end to our republic?

In September 1796, the first American president, George Washington, wrote an open letter to the American people as he left the presidency having served two terms in office.  In his letter, he foresaw the very systemic factional dysfunctions now polarizing Americans and warned of the serious danger to the republic to be brought about by any degradation of the civic order into such mean-spirited and self-seeking contestations of interest and power.

Washington wrote that avoiding such factionalism would be “all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.”

He continued:

Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.  This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.  It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.  The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.  But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later, the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.  Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.  It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.  It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

Washington named the deadly disease which might destroy the republic:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character with the real design to direct, control, counteract or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency.  They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small, but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests.  However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

In harmony with Washington’s warning, the Caux Round Table Principles for Government require, as a norm of social justice, that:

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends.  It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Public office is not to be used for personal advantage, financial gain or as a prerogative manipulated by arbitrary personal desire.  Corruption – financial, political and moral – is inconsistent with stewardship of public interests.  Only the rule of law is consistent with a principled approach to use of public power.

The rule of law shall be honored and sustained, supported by honest and impartial tribunals and legislative checks and balances.

When the criminal law is invoked (abused?) to single out a political rival for mean reasons of personal fear or ambition, justice collapses and civil strife begins, where “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in an opinion that “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”

What history can teach us of the dangers now facing the American people?

The collapse of the Roman Republic.

How fitting, I suppose, that the indictment of Donald Trump came in the month of March, when the final years of the Roman Republic began on the Ides of March 44 BC with the assassination of Julius Caesar, like Trump a man of outsized ego and ambition.

In his play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare well put the consequences of that death for the Roman people.  He has Antony say:

Over thy wounds now do I prophesy …
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

What has gone wrong with the American people?  In a word, the loss of moral rectitude.

In his farewell letter to the American people, Washington would say: “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

There is a precedent for Washington’s admonition in the collapse of the Roman Republic.

Some years ago now, I was reading Cicero’s letters to his friend Atticus, who was then on a business trip to Greece.  In a letter of June, 59 BC, Cicero described the politics of Rome, then dominated by the first triumvirate – a junta of Crassus (money), Pompey (soldiers) and Caesar (brains).  Cicero wrote that the Roman elite was petulant.  When Caesar entered the theater, no one clapped.  When a playwright inserted a pun on Pompey’s name into a performance, there were 12 standing ovations from the audience.  Young Claudio was running around spreading inside stories of juries being bribed and other abuses of power.

Then Cicero concluded: “These things, while they make us glad that our judgments are still free, make us the more sad because we see that our virtue is in chains – nos virtutem adligata est.

From that loss of virtue, there was no recovery.  History was a straight line of factionalism and bloodshed down to 27 BC, when the Roman Empire was put in place by Octavian, Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son.  The strong had done what they could and the weak would henceforth suffer as they must.

The indictment brought on Tuesday April 4, 2023 against Donald Trump by the New York County district attorney states that his alleged crime was to, 34 times, make a false entry in the business records of an enterprise with respect to an invoice from an attorney.

The indictment further alleges that Donald Trump himself personally “made and caused” such entry with the intent to “commit another crime.”  No other crime or criminal statue is mentioned in the indictment.

Nor does the indictment state why the entry for payment of an invoice from an attorney was false.  There is no recitation of why the services being paid for by Trump were not legal in form or substance.

Such an indictment, on its face, seems arbitrary and capricious.  Under the rule of law, any government action or decision which is arbitrary or capricious is usually thought to be, per se, irrational and so illegal.  The Administrative Procedure Act instructs courts to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings and conclusions found to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

A U.S. district court in Arizona has ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice’s narrow interpretation of the requirements for a criminal misdemeanor under the Endangered Species Act went beyond unreviewable prosecutorial discretion and its policy was arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. District Court Arizona, June 27, 2017).

In this regard of selective prosecution based on arbitrary and capricious prejudice, consider similar conduct by Hillary Clinton.  Several months before Donald Trump made payment of such invoices from an attorney in 2017, Hillary Clinton, then a candidate running against Donald Trump for the office of president of the United States, did seemingly authorize her campaign to pay invoices received from the campaign’s attorneys for their work in procuring a false and defamatory statement (the Steele dossier), which was leaked to the public, accusing Donald Trump of serving as an agent of or as an accomplice conspiring with the Russian government.  This false statement was procured by the Clinton campaign in order to work a fraud on the American people that would influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

There has been no indictment of Hillary Clinton or anyone associated with her campaign for making a false bookkeeping entry to hide the origin of the creation and dissemination of that false and defamatory disinformation designed to manipulate an election outcome.

Meeting Pope Francis after Our Visit to Najaf

I want to report to you on a very remarkable trip I made with several Caux Round Table colleagues to Najaf, Iraq, two weeks ago.  After our seminar and other meetings in Najaf, we flew to Rome to share our observations with Pope Francis.

Najaf is the historic origin of Shi’a Islam, those Muslims who follow the personal example and the spiritual insights of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.  A book containing his sermons and other documents on his life and ministry is the Nahjul Balagha, which you can find here.

For four years now, the Caux Round Table has facilitated the study of covenants made by the Prophet Muhammad to respect and protect Christians.  Our report was released in February 2021.  You may find a copy here.

Our work was much appreciated by Pope Francis, who wrote me that he “trusts that such covenants will serve as a model for the further enhancement of mutual respect, understanding and fraternal coexistence between Christians and Muslims at the present time.”

At the invitation of Kufa University in Najaf, Lord Daniel Brennan, our chairman emeritus, our fellow, John Dalla Costa, Raed Charafeddine, Antoine Frem, Ahmed El Wakil and myself, flew to Najaf to participate in a seminar at the university on the covenants of the Prophet and the covenantal arrangements he made with different communities to provide for the governance of all citizens of the city of Medina.

I include here some of my notes from the seminar and our other meetings recording contributions from our Muslim colleagues:

-Religious faith does not prevent one from becoming a citizen in the Islamic civil state – see the constitutional arrangement of Medina.

-Civil organizations are separate from obligations arising under Islamic law.

-Need today to plant seeds of civic state and society as a commons – create a humanistic social state for modern times.

-Balance unity and divergence – everything in its right place.

-Divergence – tribal and religious – under justice; protect divergence at every level.

-Citizenship protects divergence – citizenship is the outcome of unity.

-Seek peaceful social coexistence – stop dogmatic, ideological conflicts.

-The duty of the state is to foster the principle of social coexistence; the state should be safe for all people of goodwill and good behavior.

-In military conquest, there is a different dynamic – there is no commitment to community, only to conformity and obedience.

-Reproduce in new forms for today the original principles; return to pure sources of spiritual aspirations.

-In piety, there is no distinction between Arab and non-Arab – as with a comb when all teeth are the same length.

-Look for the values and virtues common to humanity; the cornerstones shared by all human societies.

-The hearts of the scholars are full of light.

-Imam Ali – the ideas of social peace and coexistence – model of living together based on principles, not for Muslims only.

-Qur’an has principles for social peace within a state.

-Christians have the Bible, Jews the Torah, Muslims the Qur’an – all make use of rules and religious faith.

-We are brothers in religion and brothers in humanity.

-Islamic rulers should apply the law without distinction – this follows the principle of social justice.

-Justice and equality encouraged by Islam in political, social and economic realms.

-Equally value human persons.

-With rights, differences in ideas do not create differences in rights enjoyed.

-To be a citizen is to have agency – a share of wealth; the poor have rights, determined by needs and abilities of individuals, not by social or political status.

-3 Qur’anic principles:

-Neither be unfair, nor be unfairly treated.

-Forgiveness, justice, charity.

-Goodness, purity of heart.

-These principles were common for all the prophets.

-Christians are respected in Qur’an, which recognizes Jesus and values his ministry highly.  This is a solid foundation for mutual cooperation.

I think these summary quotations provide you with a correct impression of the quality and nature of our conversations.

John Dalla Costa and myself each presented a paper comparing the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, of Pope Francis.  Each of us found substantial and meaningful similarities between the two texts on respect for others.

Meeting with an ayatollah

 

The seminar was convened by the university to reciprocate Pope Francis’s visit to Najaf and his meeting with the Grand Ayatollah Sistani in March 2021.

We were also invited to share our thoughts with three schools affiliated with the hawzah or seminary in Najaf.  We listened and learned as our hosts spoke of the Shi’a social teachings, which we found consistent with many Catholic Social Teachings and the Caux Round Table ethical principles for moral capitalism and moral government.

Meeting at the Imam Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation

 

Both clerical and lay intellectuals spoke of their interest in continued exchanges of scholars and joint undertakings in scholarship, both of Muslim and Christian texts.

I came to appreciate the historic importance of Najaf in our visit to Babylon.  Standing where Hammurabi proclaimed his code of laws and walking where Nebuchadnezzar might have walked through the Ishtar Gate and hearing our guide speak of Adam and Noah being buried nearby gave me an awareness of centuries and wonder at the emergence of what has shaped my civilization in so many ways.  We are but fleeting moments in the course of human history.  We are not masters whose writs count for much, but each of us, in our own time and in our own way, can make a difference, whether for better or for worse.  Depending on what?  Our individual moral sense?  God’s will?  Fate and circumstances beyond our control?

The Ishtar Gate (a reproduction, as the original bricks are now in the Berlin Museum)

 

We visited the tomb of Ali, assassinated by one unable to appreciate his efforts to preserve and pass on the special spirituality of the Prophet Muhammad.  We stood in the Kufa Mosque at the spot of his assassination.  We stood by respectfully, as worshippers gave of themselves intensely in prayer and devotion.

Kufa Mosque

 

In our meeting with Pope Francis, after flying from Najaf to Rome via Doha, we presented the Pontiff with a copy of the new book on the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad, written by our colleagues, Professors Ibrahim Zein and Ahmed El-Wakil of Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar.

You can find their book here.

Pope Francis, at his desk

 

Our meeting with the Pope had been arranged by Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, an advisor on our initiative to learn more about the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad and one of our new fellows.

Lord Brennan conveyed in Spanish our observation that the Pope’s visit to Najaf of two years ago had been historic in opening the doors to mutual respect and common spiritual aspirations for social-coexistence, consistent with the thinking of Imam Ali himself so long ago.  Lord Brennan related that everyone we met, from senior ayatollahs to our van drivers, called the Pope “Baba Francis” – Papa Francis – with obvious respect, warmth and enthusiasm.

Pope Francis responded quickly and firmly that he had known as a certainty that he had to make that trip and not be deterred by worries or uncertainties of result; that it had been important to our common destiny for him to act with resolute friendship in reaching out to the Shi’a leadership.

We pointed out the similarities between the social teachings of Imam Ali then and Shi’a ayatollahs today and the Pope’s encyclicals.  And we submitted to the Pope suggestions for further engagements and exchanges with Kufa University and colleges associated with the seminary.

The Pope seemed pleased with our report, which to all intents and purposes, had validated his decision to make that historic visit to meet the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.

We left the meeting grateful for the opportunity to have contributed to the evolution of an historic rapprochement between two of the Abrahamic faiths.

Could the CEO of Best Buy Start That Company Today?

Our chairman, Brad Anderson, formerly CEO of Best Buy, recently sat down with Marissa Streit, CEO of Prager University, to discuss whether he could start Best Buy today and if so, how he would approach it.

He also discusses his meeting with Steve Jobs and what he learned.

You can watch it above or  here.

It’s a little over 40 minutes in length.

March Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the March issue of Pegasus.

In this edition, we include 2 articles presenting Adam Smith and Karl Marx as storytellers.  What are their storylines?  What do they seek to teach us through story?

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Also, we’re having a round table discussion over Zoom on this very topic at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, March 28th, and you would be welcome to join us.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

To register, please emailjed@cauxroundtable.net

More Short Videos on Relevant and Timely Topics

We recently posted more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

Technology In, Technology Out

There’s No Capitalism Without Customers

Understanding Balance

Getting Out of The Way of Technology

A Message from 1929

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

If you aren’t following us on Twitter or haven’t liked us on Facebook, please do so.  We update both platforms frequently.

Three New Fellows Appointed

It is my honor to announce the appointments of Cardinal Silvano M. Tomasi, Kasit Piromya and Professor Jake Hoskins as new fellows of the Caux Round Table.

Cardinal Tomasi has kindly provided leadership and guidance to our group seeking to learn more about the covenants given by the Prophet Muhammad to respect and protect Christians.

Cardinal Tomasi has served as the Pope’s special delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta since November 2020.  He was the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva from 2003 to 2016.  He previously worked in the Roman Curia, became an archbishop in 1996 and represented the Holy See as an apostolic nuncio in Africa from 1996 to 2003.

Pope Francis raised him to the rank of cardinal on November 28, 2020.

Cardinal Tomasi was ordained as priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles (Scalabrini).  He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Fordham University.  From 1970 to 1974, he was assistant professor of sociology at the City University of New York and the New School for Social Research.  He co-founded the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank based in New York and he founded and edited the journal, International Migration Review.  From 1983 to 1987, he was director of the newly created Office for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In particular, Cardinal Tomasi will advise me on morality and economics.

Kasit Piromya was educated at St. Joseph’s College, Darjeeling India.  He then received a BS in international affairs from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, a Masters of Social Science from the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, The Netherlands and a diploma from the National Defense College of Thailand.  A career diplomat of 37 years, he held several senior posts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Thailand, including Thai ambassador to Moscow, Jakarta, Bonn/Berlin, Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

After retirement from the civil service in 2005, he joined politics.  He became a member of the Democrat Party of Thailand and became foreign minister (December 2008 – August 2011), a member of the House of Representatives and a member of the National Reform Steering Assembly.  He is a member of several regional non-governmental organizations, such as APHR (democracies and human rights), APLN (non-proliferation and disarmament), SEAC Group (alternative democratic ASEAN) and TBC (border refugees).  He holds honorary positions at Chulalongkorn University and Thammasat University.

In particular, Kasit will advise me on Asian approaches to responsible business and government, especially from a Theravada point of view.

Jake Hoskins is the Guy F. Atkinson Assistant Professor of Data Science & Marketing at the Atkinson School of Business, Willamette University in Oregon.  He teaches marketing principles, data engineering, data analysis and marketing analysis.

He previously taught at Westminster College and Millsaps College.

His recent publications include:

“Market selection and product positioning decisions – implications for short- and long-term performance: Evidence from the U.S. music industry,” Journal of Product & Brand Management; “The electronic word of mouth (eWOM): implications of mainstream channel distribution and sales by niche brands,” Journal of Interactive Marketing; “Growing the community bank in the shadow of national banks: An empirical analysis of the U.S. banking industry, 1994-2018,” Journal of Product & Brand Management; and “Industry conditions, market share and the firm’s ability to derive business-line profitability from diverse technological portfolios,” Journal of Business Research.

In particular, Jake will coordinate the new collaboration between the Caux Round Table and the Atkinson School of Business.

I’m delighted to welcome them to our community of fellows and look forward to their contributions to our development of cutting edge thinking about both the theory and the implementation of moral capitalism and moral government at this time of irresolution in so many institutions, both national and global.

Is Karl Marx Still Relevant in These Days of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Seeking to Repeal “Racial” Capitalism? – Tuesday, March 28

For nearly 170 years, the thought of Karl Marx has justified fierce opposition to capitalism.  But, in retrospect, was his critique at all in alignment with reality?  Should it matter to us anymore?

The March issue of Pegasus, coming your way, suggests a new take on Karl Marx and Adam Smith.  Consider them as storytellers, not as scientists.  What are their storylines?  What do they seek to teach us through story?

Please join us for a round table discussion over Zoom on Karl Marx and how to critique capitalism at 9:00 am (CST) on Tuesday, March 28.

Now, last year, we sent out a special issue of Pegasus wherein I contended that Marx did not at all understand capitalism and the universal human process of wealth creation.  Rather, I suggested, he only saw rent extraction as the basic human approach to the acquisition of economic assets.  Thus, he came up with a theory of capitalism as nothing more than rent- seeking.  You can find my essay here.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

Ukraine One Year Later

It has been one year since Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine.

What should we have learned from this illegal aggression?

From the Caux Round Table perspectives of moral capitalism and moral government, let me suggest 4 major lessons:

1. Napoleon and Clausewitz were correct: the moral is to the physical, as 3 is to 1.  Ukrainian moral strength defeated Russian military capability.  Clausewitz wrote that the moral forces “form the spirit, which permeates the whole being of war.  These forces fasten themselves soonest and with the greatest affinity on to the will, which puts in motion and guides the whole mass of powers, uniting with it as were in one stream because this is a moral force itself.”

2. Max Weber was correct and Karl Marx was wrong.  Values drive human actions, not dialectical materialism.  Weber grounded capitalism as a new form of human thriving in the beliefs making up the Protestant ethic.  Putin’s war is about values, not economic interest.  In his article of 2021 on the history of Ukraine, he, in your face, asserts the moral rights of the Rus people to that territory.  His speeches since the start of the war have reiterated that point.  The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has blessed the war and so turned it for believing Russians into a religious one.

3. The European Enlightenment is comatose and at death’s door.  Enlightenment values were powerful enough in 1939 to mobilize nations against the volksgemeinschaft national socialist regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan.  Now, they are being tested again by Putin, with help from China and other states inclined to forms of national socialism.  The case against Enlightenment values was made in public by Putin and Xi Jinping in their bilateral agreement of February 4, 2022.

States now are looking inwardly for values, not to universals and globalized visions of the common good.  In the U.S., the emerging un-enlightened values are from the left and privilege 1) group identities (including racist ones) over individualism and 2) the right of an elite to indoctrinate the un-woke hoi polloi, who do most of society’s work and raise most of society’s children.

4. Terms for an acceptable peace can be deduced from the Caux Round Table Principles for Government.  If all government is a public trust, then both Russia and Ukraine have trust responsibilities to avoid destruction and killing.  Any dispute over the sovereignty of a territory – in this case, the Donbas and Crimea – can be resolved by giving sovereignty to a neutral party.  The best example in recent history was the creation of a United Nations interim trusteeship administration over Cambodia.  This arrangement allowed both China and Vietnam to back down from their claims to control Cambodia through their client Cambodian factions.  The United Nations still has a trusteeship council, which could be activated to assume interim administration of the territories in dispute so that Ukraine could accept a cease fire and not lose its claim to sovereignty and Russian could similarly accept a cease fire without surrendering its claim to sovereignty over the same territory.  Resolution of the competing claims to sovereignty could be sought without resort to war.

Brandl Program Video Recording and Proceedings

Each year, an eclectic group of local think tanks and individuals come together to honor the life and career of John Brandl, former dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and former state legislator, for his uncommon quest for common ground.

This year’s program was held on February 2 at the Humphrey School on the topic of what should be done with Minnesota’s historic budget surplus.

A video recording of the event can be found here and the proceedings here.