Democracy at a Crossroads

Sometimes, it’s not what someone says that matters, but who says it.

If I were to tell you that I believe the chief justice of the United States is presiding over the end of the rule of law in this country, you might care, you might not care, you might think, There Anand goes again.

But what if the person saying that is one of the most revered jurists in the conservative legal movement? What if he was considered by Republican presidents as a Supreme Court justice? What if he counted Antonin Scalia as his mentor, and helped ensure that Clarence Thomas ended up on the high court bench?

What if the person, additionally, counted Chief Justice John Roberts as a personal friend? What if they were still friends?

In that case, would it arrest you, would it make you take notice, if that person, with those credentials and relationships and history, were to say he believed his good friend was presiding over the end of the rule of the law in the United States?

I hope it would.

Because that is what just happened in a stark and fascinating interview I just had with former federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig.

I asked him what he would say to his friend the chief justice.

We got into it all. I pressed Judge Luttig on whether he believes Trump is a wild aberration, or rather a logical outgrowth of the conservative legal revolution of which Luttig was a card-carrying member.

I asked him whether he believes corporate and oligarchic power have grown unjustifiably in American life, and, if so, whether that, in his view, was a bug or a feature of the right-wing legal revolution.

And, on this July 4 eve, I asked him what he believes Thomas Jefferson would have made of Donald Trump. The judge has been sitting with the text of the Declaration of Independence in recent days, attempting to rewrite it for the usurpations and aspirations to freedom of 2025. I encourage everyone to read that at Telos.

But first: Watch this entire conversation. It is one I won’t forget for a long time.

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