Once in a blue moon, President Donald Trump has a fleetingly good intuition or does something seemingly good (“good” from the point of view of preserving the hope of a free society). This is part of the problem.
Consider the announced closing of the “Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights Office” in the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA Begins to Put Environmental-Justice Workers On Leave,” Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2025). The very name of the bureau indicates that it should not exist. Let’s forget the mystery of the “external civil rights” (perhaps related to the future civil rights on Mars?) and focus on “environmental justice.” It degrades the central ideal of justice in law and political philosophy into a faddish political pursuit.
But this does not justify fighting this unicorn or other woke ideas with similarly absurd or authoritarian approaches. Interestingly, since the electoral campaign of 2016, Mr. Trump has been undermining real justice, of which the rule of law is inseparable, whenever it appeared to conflict with his self-interest.
Different clowneries do not make a better political philosophy than wokeness. As a sample, consider the threat of tariffs against Americans (a tariff is a tax on importers), which will also harm Canadian and Mexican producers; saving TikTok after trying to ban it in 2020, and even proposing to transform it into a state or mixed corporation (see my forthcoming “TikTok, Public Choice, and the Theater of the Absurd” in the Spring issue of Regulation); annexing Greenland by force if necessary or transforming Gaza in “the Riviera of the Middle East,” despite Mr. Trump’s promise to end “forever wars.” And counting. Trump does a few good things in bad ways and lots of bad things in between. If he has any (intuitive) ideology, it is the primacy of collective choices, especially when he is the one to make them in his own personal interest.
Federal government practice has tried to make wokeness compulsory. Now, Trump is trying to ban it, as if there were only two modes for any individual choice: compulsory or banned. (However, I have defended the case that sexual mutilation of children should be off-limits.) This approach leads to funny government rhetoric, such as his February 5 Executive Order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”: the Secretary of Education, it is said, shall promptly
prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.
The United States is a large, diverse country. Suppose that somewhere a private college, which nobody is forced to attend, offers mixed athletic competition. Why would the federal Big Brother object? But if both A and non-A are true, nothing can be surprising. In the department of funny things, recall what Trump said before the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2019:
We stand in solidarity with LGBTQ people who live in countries that punish, jail, or execute individuals based upon sexual orientation.
Of course, there is nothing funny in tyrants punishing unusual private sexual tastes. Such tastes should be neither forbidden nor encouraged.
The danger is that bad or incoherent intuitions and their ultimate failure will lead both bad-faith individuals and well-meaning people to reject individual liberty because they have also been led to believe, incredibly, that this is what Trump and his sycophants defend. (See my New Year post “A Dangerous Pass in 2025 and Beyond.”)
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READER COMMENTS
Richard W Fulmer
Feb 10 2025 at 12:16pm
I get a perverse kick out of watching populist intellectuals tie themselves into knots trying to provide theoretical scaffolding for Trump’s latest rhetorical belch only to see him blow it all to matchsticks with a subsequent pronouncement. The nice thing about circuses is that they come with popcorn.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 10 2025 at 3:15pm
Richard: Right! And some of them have been involved in this process since the electoral campaign of 2016. What is a bit worrisome is that some are actually brilliant individuals. Until proof of the contrary, I take this as a methodological lesson: if my theory is repeatedly contradicted by experience, I should abandon or revise it, even if the cost is high–and the cost gets higher as the process goes on.
Jose Pablo
Feb 10 2025 at 6:55pm
I can’t stomach the popcorn at this circus anymore, Richard.
If someone like Trump—who has the same disregard for the rule of law, the same disdain for limits on presidential power, and the same willingness to feed carnage to his base—were to rise within the Democratic Party and win an election (both far from impossible), many classic liberals would end up choking on their popcorn.
Some people in my area are now too afraid to leave their homes or send their kids to school. This whole popcorn moment reminds me of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s words:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist…”
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 11 2025 at 11:49am
Jose: Your “popcorn moment” may stick with future historians! Let’s just hope that it won’t morph into the “popcorn century” or, worse, that mankind won’t return to its millenia-long tribal or tyrannical condition.
David Henderson
Feb 10 2025 at 1:51pm
I think you left out this key part of the Executive Order:
So Hillsdale College is exempt, and maybe one or two others, such as Grove City College, are exempt.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Trump to enforce Title IX. So many people have objected, quite rightly, to his illegal acts. It’s actually nice to see him basing this executive order on the law.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 10 2025 at 3:02pm
David: That’s a valid criticism. We may wonder, however, if, as we claimed for past administrations, it is acceptable to use the federal government’s vast subsidization to enforce its propaganda and lifestyle diktats. Note also the problem with the selective enforcement of laws (e.g. TikTok).
David Henderson
Feb 10 2025 at 7:13pm
You write:
Thank you.
You write:
And we should wonder. There’s no right answer here. That’s the problem with government subsidies. I would say, though, that preventing biological males from entering women’s bathrooms and being on women’s teams is more sensible than the opposite.
You write:
I agree. I wasn’t challenging that part of your post. I was challenging only the part I highlighted in my original comment.
Craig
Feb 11 2025 at 11:04am
“receiving Federal funds”
Therein lies the road to serfdom and how what should be a limited government of enumerated powers becomes entangled into the minutiae of daily life. The result is a mush of cooperative federalism. I’m willing to wager a dollar that if you go back in time when the Department of Education started that somebody made the argument that they would be able to place conditions. Probably rejected then as a ‘ridiculous’ slippery slope.
Jose Pablo
Feb 10 2025 at 3:41pm
Different clowneries do not make a better political philosophy than wokeness
That’s an important point. People often forget (as we see now in the U.S.) that democracy isn’t about “us” winning elections to impose our vision of society, expanding government as needed to do so. Because then, when “the others” return to power (as they always do), we’ll greatly regret the government scope and powers we helped grow.
The only sensible approach while in office is to shrink government as much as possible. That way, when the others return, they’ll have less power to harm us back.
As Hosea 8:7 says, “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” The left sowed and unbereable wokeness (you provide great examples) and it is now reaping the whirlwind of Trumpism. One can only imagine the hurricane that will follow the whirlwinds Trumpism is sowing.
At some point, the only way wind sowers see to avoid the whirlwind is to prevent the others from ever returning to power—just as Trump and his followers tried in January 2021
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 11 2025 at 10:42am
Jose: Much wisdom in your comments.
Roger McKinney
Feb 11 2025 at 12:35pm
Also, “And I will make mere lads their princes, And capricious children will rule over them…” Isaiah 3:4. That describes left and right for most of our history.
Joseph
Feb 10 2025 at 5:14pm
Pierre, do you actually expect women to want to compete against biological males if their college provides this generous opportunity? I am sorry but I see no chance of this happening. And I don’t need to guess what woke administration would do given a chance – we have enough examples in the last few years. Women will be told by their education institutions to shut up and submit. Is this the risk you are willing to take in the name of freedom? And to be clear: I do value freedom extremely highly, I just believe that the majority supports the reasonable approach: no males in women’s sport, no exceptions. Shut this door now.
As for people whose opinion is “not what Trump says”, they need to grow up.
MarkW
Feb 11 2025 at 9:58am
Pierre, do you actually expect women to want to compete against biological males if their college provides this generous opportunity?
Should the federal government be preventing college men and women from competing together even in those sports (equestrian and sailing, off the top of my head) where there is no inherent male advantage? Should government be the one deciding whether or not a sport should be segretaged or integrated?
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 11 2025 at 10:53am
Joseph: With due respect, I don’t think you are right. Individual liberty is not a matter of what the majority wants. Banning what is non-coercive but somebody thinks (or claims) nobody in his right mind wants is not far from the essence of tyranny. If no woman wants to compete with men in sports, why ban it? It will simply not be offered. (Except by non-profits as long as they find voluntary donors. But note that no non-profit offers competition in which athletes have to compete with wrist and ankle cuffs.) Women are not children: they can make their choices by themselves. (You could always resort to David’s implied solution, which, as I mentioned, raises other problems.)
David Seltzer
Feb 11 2025 at 1:43pm
Pierre wrote, “Banning what is non-coercive but somebody thinks (or claims) nobody in his right mind wants is not far from the essence of tyranny. If no woman wants to compete with men in sports, why ban it?” Senator John McCain called mixed martial arts “human cockfighting.” He was so put off by MMA fighters voluntarily engaging in in the sport, McCain sent letters to several state governors asking them to ban the “barbaric” enterprise (which he said was “not a sport”). Often, sports will regulate themselves when costs exceed benefits. In the early 90’s, I trained and fought Shidokan Karate fighters. The sport was so brutal, it was likened to legalized street fighting. It drew few audiences. The rules were changed and the UFC emerged as a profitable enterprise. Later, Dana White made MMA a global phenomenon. The UFC is currently valued at around $7 billion.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 11 2025 at 2:34pm
David: Interesting comparison.
Joseph
Feb 11 2025 at 3:45pm
I’d want to understand your statement better – in the light of the known facts.
We know for a fact that – as suggested by TMC – women are already allowed to join men’s sports, although with the rarest exceptions in non-contact sports (Judith Polgar?) this simply doesn’t happen. Tells me enough about the reality of such freedom limitations.
We also know for a fact that college and school administration forces girls and women to accept males in their teams as well as their changing rooms and do their best to suppress any dissent. Note, that some teams do have an incentive to accept such teammates – because it’s the opposite teams who suffer. But we know for a fact that other teams do complain and that their complaints are (often? always?) equally ignored.
I don’t expect you to state that such actions of administrators may be counted as non-coercive. So, are you saying that with no government enforcement/threat administrators will change their behaviour? Or are you saying that nobody forces women to participate (alongside biological males) if they don’t want to? Or do you disagree with any of my statements of facts? I honestly don’t know.
steve
Feb 11 2025 at 12:35pm
The world is a big place. Some women’s teams do support trans players.
https://www.out.com/gay-athletes/vancouver-womens-basketball-transgender#rebelltitem2
Steve
Mactoul
Feb 11 2025 at 4:28am
To be a politician is to believe in the supremacy of collective choices. Not even the most liberal of anti-authoritarian politicians would you find otherwise. See Covid lockdowns, far more extreme and grotesque than anything Trump is capable of.
On what basis would you make such an assertion? Unless your dogma is of not forbidding anything, but if you agree that somethings can be forbidden, then you need to make a case for not forbidding these things.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 11 2025 at 10:41am
Mactoul: Reduced to its bare essentials, the case is simple: Should be forbidden whatever compromises the maintenance of a free society where all individuals have the same equal liberty.
Jose Pablo
Feb 12 2025 at 12:36pm
believe in the supremacy of collective choices
As Pierre frequently reminds us, “collective choice” can have two distinct meanings:
The mere aggregation of individual choices made by each individual member of the collective.
A decision made by a subset of individuals (in the most advanced systems, vaguely backed by an indeterminate number of individuals) and forcefully imposed on every member of the collective.
It is hard to deny that the first meaning allows for greater freedom and should be preferred over the second.
Markets are the most effective and practical way to realize the first meaning—no politicians required.
Politics (and politicians), on the other hand, are necessary to implement the second meaning.
This explains why politicians and markets are often at odds. And, of course, it also explains why politicians firmly believe in the second meaning of “collective choices”—a classic case of “don’t ask your barber …”
Which is precisely why fewer politicians (and less politics) and more markets make for a better system.
TMC
Feb 11 2025 at 11:01am
There so much just wrong in this post, but I’ll restrict my comment to the core premise of your post. All sports are co-ed unless specifically female only. Women have always been able to join the football team if they can qualify. The carve out for female only teams is there so women can play sports.
BTW, most of these actions against ‘woke’ don’t specifically outlaw anything. They just make sure the taxpayer isn’t forced to pay for them. The opposite of authoritarianism.
Roger McKinney
Feb 11 2025 at 12:42pm
We have no choices except between one clownery or another. That’s just politics.
Isaiah 3:4, “And I will make mere lads their princes, And capricious children will rule over them…”
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