Editorial Commentary with Ken Ciboski

Retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens discusses some changes he would make to the U.S. Constitution in his recent book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution . There are chapters on political gerrymandering, campaign finance, the death penalty, and gun control, among others. On guns, Justice Stevens notes the Second Amendment was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated.” As a result of more recent rulings, federal judges have the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. Stevens says this anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent. With those words, it would now read, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the

Recent reports indicate some Kansas legislators are considering a measure that would require all high school students to pass a civics examination to graduate. This exam is said to be comparable to what is required of those who want to become naturalized United States citizens.

After Mitt Romney was defeated with a stinging 332-206 loss in the electoral college in 2012, the Republican National Committee commissioned a report suggesting what the party needed to do to be a majority party. The release of the report four months after the election was clear in its conclusion that the Republican Party was out of touch with the broader electorate. The report noted the party’s problems with minorities, women, and young people. It said Republicans should be trying to bring more people under the party’s tent, but instead they seemed to be ostracizing large numbers of potential voters. The report urged the party to broaden its base by being more inclusive of Hispanic, Black, Asian, and gay Americans, as well as female voters, whom Republicans were failing to recruit in large numbers. President Donald Trump appears not to have followed any of this advice in building the party. Come November, voters will have had four years to decide whether Trump deserves another four

After reading the book, “A Warning,” by a senior Trump administration official who discusses many facets of Donald Trump’s behavior as president, I agree with the author’s conclusion that Trump deserves to be fired.

National security is the most important responsibility of the president as commander-in-chief. The president’s role is to protect the American people against external threats and to provide for the safety and security of the country. This requires attention to foreign policy and working with allies to keep dangerous foes at bay. Sadly, President Donald Trump does not appear to see the world this way. According to the anonymous Trump administration official who authored the book A Warning , Trump seems not to see a security threat from such places as Russia or China, which is likely to be a key player in a new Cold War. Trump seems to have abandoned the century-long consensus about America’s role as a leader of the free world, and he pays little attention to advisers. The president appears to think he can accomplish what he seeks in foreign policy by the sheer force of his personality and the establishment of personal relations with foreign leaders. One chapter in A Warning that should

An anonymous senior official of the Trump administration writes in a recent book titled A Warning that a psychological phenomenon is affecting a large portion of the country that some call “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” As the author says, if this were a clinical diagnosis, it would best be described as the disturbance in normal cognitive function resulting in irrational animus toward the president of the United States. The term is not exactly new, with Republicans previously accusing others of “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” and Democrats doing the same with “Obama Derangement Syndrome.” But what is the remedy for this? The author asserts that feverish consternation about a president should not lead to non-electoral ways to fire a president, which should only be done as a last resort. If Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of the Cabinet felt Trump could no longer discharge his duties, they could remove him from office by invoking the procedures of the 25 th Amendment. Of course, the

On September 5, 2018, the New York Times took an unusual step in publishing an essay anonymously by a senior Trump administration official. The writer provided insights into White House chaos and President Donald Trump’s impulsive behavior. This official has now published a book, also anonymously, with the title, A Warning .

As the 2020 presidential election approaches, we should be mindful of the possibility of Supreme Court vacancies during the next several years. We should remember that presidents work to appoint individuals who represent their political philosophy. Also, we need to remember that the Constitution is what the United States Supreme Court says it is. Therefore, it is important to know how a newly appointed court justice views how the Constitution should be interpreted. One widely popular view is that the meaning of the Constitution should be determined by referring to the intention or the “original” meaning expressed by those who created it. But there are more difficulties than most people realize in determining the intent of the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Fifty-five delegates were present at one or more sessions of the convention, but some of them did not actually take part in the proceedings. Votes taken on some issues passed with narrow margins. What was said and

In a discussion this past week about Wichita’s recent mayoral election , a state legislator commented that Wichita’s municipal elections are supposed to be non-partisan. Indeed, they are. Candidates for municipal offices in Wichita, and in many other cities across the country, do not run under a party label. Despite this, there is the question of whether or not non-partisan elections really are non-partisan.

We are now in an election cycle with elections next week for municipal officeholders and school board members, and next year for president and Congress. How well are citizens prepared to play the role democracy assigns to them in making considered judgments when casting a vote? Walter Lippman, a long-time columnist and author of books on public opinion and governing, worried most citizens are unprepared. His view was that people live in the real world, but think in an imagined one. People are willing to admit there are two sides to a question, but they do not believe there are two sides to what they regard as “fact.” As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, you are entitled to your opinions but not to your own facts. In a political system such as ours, people can be expected to act on behalf of themselves and others, but how can that be if they are out of touch with reality? We know from decades of public opinion research that the general public’s ignorance of political

Huge numbers of Americans think the United States is the greatest country in the world, or even that it is the best that has ever existed. That may or may not be the case, but we ought to ask: in comparison to what? It is important for us to look at political and economic systems outside of our own. If we become too parochial, we tend to engage in ethnocentrism, the attitude that one’s own group, nation, or culture is superior to all others. At that point, there really is no need to consider any other system. Compare our own way of life to the feudal system. Feudalism concerned social relations between lords and subordinate landholders called vassals. Much of what we see in European cities today developed in the Middle Ages and the feudal era. Lords protected their subjects from neighboring attacks. In return, vassals gave up part of the fruits of their labor. This led to a rigid class system that continued through the Industrial Revolution. Peasants became industrial workers and the

Some commenators characterized political happenings of the past week as "block buster" news as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution assigns to the House the power of impeachment. This was spurred by a whistleblower report about President Trump and the conversation he had this past August with the President of Ukraine. The report is that president Trump talked about U.S. aid to Ukraine and then discussed and encouraged bringing charges against Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, for their activities related to Ukraine. Congress operatesin a quasi-judicial capacity in the process of impeachment, which is governed by Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states that the President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Remember though, that impeachment can occur

As the sociologist Max Weber observed, the fates of human beings are not equal. People differ in their states of health, wealth, and social status. Those who are advantaged tend to view their position as legitimate and deserving, while those who are disadvantaged are often seen as being at fault for their condition, regardless of the reason. As Weber says, “That the purely accidental causes may be ever so obvious makes no difference.” As Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley writes in his book How Fascism Works , the history of liberal citizenship—of equality under the law—has generally been one of expansion, gradually encompassing people of all races, religions, and genders. This is true, too, of political philosophy. Influenced, for example, by theorists of disability, philosophers have expanded the notion of human dignity to include those who cannot, under most circumstances, employ their capacity for political judgment. In the 21 st century, most liberal thinkers have included a

There has been some confusion over, or perhaps an intentional perversion of, the meaning of the “Black Lives Matter” movement in America.

Americans learned early on that Donald Trump would have a much different relationship with the free press and the facts than any previous president. Of course, all presidents have had issues with the press, but Trump deviated from past presidential behavior by labeling the media as “the enemy of the American people.” Early on, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said in an interview with the New York Times, “I want you to quote this: The media here is the opposition party.” Political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, and journalist and commentator E.J. Dionne, in their book, One Nation After Trump , suggest that the fight for truth may be the most important struggle of all with Trump, who constantly rails against what he calls “fake news.” Historian Timothy Snyder says that to abandon facts is to abandon freedom. He says that if nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis for doing so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.

When Donald Trump launched his 2016 campaign for president, he announced that he was doing so because he wanted to “Make America Great Again.” When, according to Donald Trump, was America great? Was it during the 19 th century, when the black population was enslaved? Was it during the Jim Crow era, when black Americans in the South were not allowed to vote? In a November 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview, Steve Bannon, then the strategic manager of Trump’s campaign, said that what was to come would be comparable to the 1930s. This would not be my idea of “greatness,” as it was, of course, a time when the United States had many fascist sympathizers. Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley is the author of How Fascism Works . Stanley notes fascist politics usually invoke a pure mythic past that has been tragically destroyed. He says that in the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, past glory has been lost by the humiliation brought about by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect

Have individuals who wear the red cap with the letters MAGA stamped on it and representing Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” asked themselves what that means?

A political science professor at Yale named Milan Svolik is an expert on authoritarian rule. In a recent publication on polarization and democracy, he asks, “When can we realistically expect ordinary people to check the authoritarian ambitions of elected politicians?” He then adds that the answer to this question is key to understanding the most prominent development in the dynamic of democratic survival since the end of the Cold War. Svolik examines what he calls “executive takeovers,” or the subversion of democracy by democratically elected officials, which he says has been the modal form of democratic subversion for the past 45 years. He finds that democratic breakdowns almost always come in one of two forms—either executive takeovers or military coups—and that executive takeovers occurred in a plurality of cases. The rise of executive takeovers challenges our understanding of democratic stability. Politicians must first gain enough popular support to capture the executive by

President Trump does not appear strong politically as we move toward the 2020 presidential campaign. One indication of his weakness is that he has never achieved great heights in approval ratings. Gallup shows his average approval is 40 percent for his time in office. Earlier this month it was 43 percent, with disapproval at 55 percent. Authors E.J. Dionne, Thomas Mann, and Norman Ornstein, in their book One Nation After Trump , recall what happened in 2016. They note that Trump’s victory was a matter of about 78,000 votes in three crucial states, helped by FBI director James Comey reopening the case of Hillary Clinton’s controversial email use in the final 10 days before voting. They argue Trump was also helped by Russian interference and from the disclosure of hacked Democratic emails. Exit polling found 60 percent of the electorate had an unfavorable view of Trump, with only 38 percent favorable. Trump began his presidency with the lowest approval rating of any new president in

We know from history that extremist demagogues emerge at times in all societies, even in healthy democracies. We have had our share of them in the United States. Among them are Henry Ford, Senators Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama who was a leading contender for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president before he was severely wounded in an assassination attempt. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die , have identified key indicators of authoritarian behavior. Do candidates reject the Constitution and show a possible willingness to violate it? Are they willing to undermine the legitimacy of elections? Donald Trump refused to say during the 2016 campaign that he would accept the result if he lost. Does a candidate describe their partisan rivals as criminals? Trump posted the slogan, “Help me defeat crooked Hillary,” and encouraged his audiences to chant, “Lock her up!” He said he planned to