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Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a campaign event for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in March, 2022. Photo by Getty Images

By Robert ZaretskyJune 19, 2022

Seventy-five years ago, Albert Camus novelLa Pestewas published in France. Readers of the English translation,The Plague, have thrilled to its tale of a motley crew of characters who, when the bubonic plague bursts into their world, join forces to resist it. The thrill thickens upon the realization that Camus based the novel on a different kind of plague the occupation of France by the so-called peste brune, or brown plague of Nazism, and the men and women who risked their lives to oppose it.

Why did they do so? By way of reply, the narrator warns the reader that he does not want to exaggerate the actions of such volunteers by citing their courage or heroism. Doing what they had to do, they are to be congratulated no more than a teacher on teaching that two and two make four. Of course, there will always be times when affirming that two and two equals four can be dangerous, even deadly. Yet this does not change knowing whether two and two do make four.

One of the novels characters, Joseph Grand, does the math more quickly than his fellow resisters. Invited to join the sanitation team battling the plague an invitation that means almost certain death Grand agrees without a moments hesitation. The absence of hesitation is crucial. Though Grand lacks the words to express himself he famously spends his life trying to get past the first line of a novel he wishes to write the clarity of his vision leads to the clarity of his action. It is as if the two actions, seeing and acting, occur simultaneously. Acting does not so much follow seeing as it instead accompanies it.

The story Camus tells about courage and heroism throws a sobering light on the story the select congressional committee is now telling about the Jan. 6insurrection.

In the committees third session, held last Thursday, the narrative focused on the actions of then-vice president Mike Pence. With photos never before seen and testimony never before heard, we learned that then-President Donald Trump called Pence on the morning of Jan. 6. He pressured him to use his ceremonial role in counting the electoral votes to, in effect, overturn the presidential election results of November 2020.

When Pence refused to agree, Trump lashed out, calling him a wimp. Hours later, in the speech he gave to thousands of angry supporters gathered near the White House, Trump declared his hope that Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. Shortly after, many of those same supporters had, at Trumps urging, marched on the Capitol Building, where the vote count was taking place.

Though Trump did not, as he vowed in his speech, accompany the protestors, he was with them in spirit. At precisely 2:24, he tweeted that Pence didnt have the courage to do what was necessary. As videos reveal, the tweet, read aloud by protestors who were already surging toward the Capitol, further inflamed them.

While hundreds breached the police barriers and surged into the building, others chanted Hang Mike Pence and displayed a noose. Pence, along with his family and staff, was bundled off by Secret Service agents to an underground loading dock. Refusing to leave with his motorcade, he waited several hours, surrounded by bodyguards and staff members. When the rioters were finally dispersed, Pence picked up where he had left off and, by what was then the preceding day, completed the electoral tally and declared the victory of Joseph Biden.

The rest is history. But what are we to do with this history? Now that the committee is fleshing out the narrative of events of Jan. 6, what are the meanings, and perhaps even the morals, we can draw from it?

For many observers, one meaning is that our republic was saved by a single mans courage and heroism. InThe Atlanticmagazine, the conservative journalist Jonathan V. Last urged Congress to name a building in Pences honor and for Pence to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. While he was not the hero you or I might have wanted, Last told his liberal readers, Pence was the hero America needed.

Pence was not just any hero, but a Harrison Ford-like hero, according to CNNs legal and political affairs commentator Jeffrey Toobin. After the Thursday hearing, Toobin praised Pence for his act of real courage, blurting that the committees account of his refusal to leave with the motorcade was more like a Harrison Ford movie than a congressional hearing.

Not surprisingly, the members of the Jan. 6select committee echoed this interpretation. The chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, praised Pence for his refusal to swallow the bizarre scheme cooked up by John Eastman and embraced by Donald Trump to undermine the electoral vote count. Were fortunate for Mr. Pences courage on Jan. 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.

It is clear our republic was (and remains) in danger, just as it is clear our republic was fortunate that Pence refused to play along with Trump. If he had, the consequences would surely have been catastrophic. Less clear, though, is whether we can call Pences act courageous.

While moral philosophers have long differed on the details, most agree that courage occurs when one confronts, contains or conquers fear. Curiously, this means a Stoic, if she truly believes it is unreasonable to fear things outside her control, is not, strictly speaking, courageous. No less curious, this also means that a bad guy, in pursuit of an evil end, can be as courageous as a good guy seeking the very opposite. This explains why Voltaire, who knew a thing or two about courage, insisted it is not even a virtue, but instead a quality shared by the base and great.

This helps explain why, in the batting order of Team Virtue, courage holds an unusual place. It bats both lead-off, cleanup and every other slot. In fact, if courage is not in the line-up, no other virtue can make it to home plate, much less first base. This is because, without courage, we can neither enact nor act upon any other virtue. A coward can no more be virtuous than a corpse can swing a bat.

The French-Jewish philosopher Vladimir Janklvitch, who spent the Occupation fighting in the Resistance, captured this elusive quality to courage. It is not just one virtue among others, he wrote in hisTrait des vertus(A Treatise on the Virtues), but instead it is the condition that realizes the other virtues. Sincerity, justice, and modesty all begin in this inaugural act. The duty to be just, the imperative to be honest, the necessity to be loyal all need to be ignited by courage.

This explains, as well, Camus reluctance to praise as heroes those who resisted. They did what they had to do, just as we must have to conclude two and two equals four. Upon acknowledging better yet,seeing this objective truth, every else follows. Or, more accurately, unfolds at the same time. It is not so much Seeing is believing as Seeing is doing.

On Jan. 6, Caroline Edwards embodied this ethic. A Capitol policewoman, she joined the handful of fellow officers who, behind a bicycle rack, were trying to block a great wave of violent protestors. Pushed over by the mob, Edwards was knocked unconscious. When she recovered, she immediately rejoined her overwhelmed comrades, all of whom were then tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed by the insurrectionists. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, she told the committee, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.

But in this nightmare that became reality, Officer Edwardsdidfind herself in the middle of a battle and, without reflecting or reasoning, saw and acted at one and the same time. Like Joseph Grand, Edwards could not find the words to express herself. It was chaos, she told the committee. I I cant even describe what I saw. But both Chairman Thompson and Vice-Chairwoman Liz Cheney could and did describe what they saw in Edwards response to the chaos: an instance of heroic courage.

This is what Janklvitch meant, I think, when he states that courage is a decision, not a conviction; that it is an act, not an assessment of facts. Along with her fellow officers, Edwards acted to defend the republic. In the end, Pence did the same. But how different was his doing from the doing of Edwards?

Pence had spent the previous days and weeks trying to convince himself to, once again, swallow another Trump outrage. Why else would he ask his legal staff, scholars and even former vice president Dan Quayle, for their assessment of the facts? Their assessment in this case was no more necessary than in, say, the case of Trumps claim that there were fine people on both sides in the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville. Or Trumps claim that one needed to grab women by the pussy. Or Trumps claim that the tearing away of children from their parents on our southern border was the fault of the Democrats.

In those earlier instances, Pence did not act, no doubt because he refused to see. As for his act on Jan. 6, it might well have resembled a Hollywood clich. But it was an act that had nothing in common with the uncommon heroism of a Joseph Grand or a Caroline Edwards.

A professor at the University of Houston, Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward. His new book, Victories Never Last: Caregiving and Reading in a Time of Plague, was published in May 2022 by the University of Chicago Press.

More here:
Should we really call Mike Pence courageous and what do we mean by courage anyway? - Forward

In what could be an SNL parody sketch if it had been played by anybody else, Donald Trump performed a standup routine, dubbed a "keynote address," at the Faith and Freedom Coalitionin Nashville today. And not a thing has changed with the boastful one-term president whose theme of the talk was, you guessed it, a rehashing of the Big Lie.

And as perfect timing would have it, he thumbed his nose at Mike Pence a day after the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol riot praised the former VP for not succumbing to Trump's plot to overturn the election.

"Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance, frankly, to be historic," Trump said in his cultivated preacher voice. "But just like Bill Barr and these weak peopleMike did not have the courage to act."

"Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt. Even if the votes were fraudulent, he said he had to send the votes couldn't do anything!"

"I said, 'What happens when you have more votes than you have voters?' DOESN'T MATTER!" he shouted. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't nothing matters!"

Unfortunately, he's right. It doesn't matter what kind of drivel comes out of the huckster's gob, his devoted fans will eat it up.

Read the original:
Donald Trump harped on Mike Pence today for not overthrowing the election (video) - Boing Boing

The most damning piece of evidence presented at todays Select Committee hearing on the January 6 insurrection wasnt a sound bite from a star witness, nor was it another never-before-seen video of the assault on the Capitol. The revelation amounted to a single highlighted sentence in an email sent days after the attack by one of Donald Trumps lawyers, John Eastman, to another, Rudy Giuliani: Ive decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.

Eastman, a conservative law professor, has long been a central figure in the January 6 saga: In memos and White House meetings, he first advanced and then sold Trump on the absurd legal theory that thenVice President Mike Pence had the power to unilaterally reject electors from contested states. Based on Eastmans arguments, Trump ceaselessly pressured Pence, in public and in private, to effectively overturn the will of voters and declare him the winnera campaign that put the vice presidents life in danger on January 6 as a mob chanting Hang Mike Pence! descended on the Capitol.

What the committee established conclusively in its third public hearing, so neatly encapsulated by Eastmans request for a pardon, was that Eastman knew that under the plan hed devised, Trump was urging Pence to violate the law. And not just Eastmaneveryone knew. The lawyers, aides, and assorted hangers-on who surrounded Trump in the crucial, ultimately tragic weeks between November 3 and January 6 all understood that what the defeated president was attempting was not merely contesting an election, but plotting to overturn its result.

Pences lawyer, Greg Jacob, testified that even as Eastman lobbied the vice president on Trumps behalf, he repeatedly acknowledged during private conversations that his scheme for Pence to declare Trump the winner would violate the Electoral Count Act of 1887. In videotaped depositions, Pence aides said the same was true of Giuliani and Mark Meadows, Trumps final chief of staff. Another White House attorney, Eric Herschmann, told the committee that when he pointed out to Eastman that such a move by Pence would spark widespread rioting in the streets, Eastman replied with words to the effect of Theres been violence in the history of our country in order to protect the democracy, or to protect the republic.

Quinta Jurecic: The January 6 committee is not messing around

The beginning of todays hearing was notable for how unreservedly a committee created by and loaded with Democrats held up as a hero the former Republican vice president whose devotion to Trump the party once mocked and whose hostility to LGBTQ rights its leaders continue to revile. We are fortunate for Mr. Pences courage on January 6, the committee chair, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said. Thanks in part to Mike Pence, our democracy withstood Donald Trumps scheme and the violence of January 6. The praise seemed designed to create the illusion of bipartisanship, and to serve as an invitation for Pence himself to testify before the panel, an event that would capture public attention even more than the highly rated hearings already have. (Committee aides did not respond when I asked if they had asked him to appear.)

Yet the central significance remains the case against Trump and those who enabled his bid to remain in power. For all of Eastmans apparent responsibility for January 6, he came across more sympathetically than the former president did today. Jacob testified that at one point in early January, Eastman recommended against having Pence reject the electors only to reverse himself, on Trumps order, the very next day. Then, even after the horror of the Capitol siege, Herschmann said Eastman continued to press the Trump campaign to pursue its effort to overturn the results in key states, including Georgia. Herschmann said he erupted at Eastman and advised him to get a great effing criminal-defense lawyer. Youre going to need it. Eastman seemed to finally get the message. A few days later, Eastman emailed Giuliani with his requestwhich Trump never grantedfor a presidential pardon.

Read more from the original source:
The January 6 Committee Proves That Everyone Knew - The Atlantic

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Photo via DeSantis/Twitter

The DeSantis Education Agenda, subtitled Putting Parents First, Protecting Parents Rights, presents a policy agenda that focuses on student success, parental rights and curriculum transparency.

The DeSantis Education Agenda is a student-first, parent-centered initiative focused on setting Floridas children up for success, ensuring parental rights in education, and combatting the woke agenda from infiltrating public schools, the website contends, setting up a survey for candidates who may want the Governors backing. This statewide agenda is for school board candidates and school board members who are committed to advancing these priorities at the local school board level.

Completing the survey in itself is not tantamount to a coveted endorsement, the websitesays.

Among the questions for survey respondents: Whether they support workforce education, the Governors increases in teacher compensation, or the concept of students being locked out of school or subject to forced masking.

What should your school district do to better prepare students as citizens? another prompt asks.

Another question regards protecting dissent: How will you protect a parents right to publicly disagree with their school board?

Respondents are also probed on critical race theory and the horrors of communism.

DeSantis has put limitations on School Boards with regularity thus far, battling with numerous local bodies about COVID-19 precautions for much of the pandemic.

He signed legislation that puts term limits on School Board members, but lamented the three terms required were one too many, and criticized School Boards and the White House for not listening to parents.

DeSantis said parents asked tough questions of School Boards during the pandemic, and were discouraged from doing so by a Joe Biden administration that likened parents to domestic terrorists.

The Governor said he would politicize School Board races last summer. During a cable television interview, DeSantis vowed to turn his political apparatus against Republican School Board candidates who oppose his educational reforms.

Were not going to support any Republican candidate for School Board who supports critical race theory in all 67 counties or supports mandatory masking of school children, DeSantis told Fox News Dan Bongino.

School Board races in Florida are nonpartisan.

Local elections matter. We are going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure theres not a single School Board member who supports critical race theory, DeSantis added.

This post first appeared at Florida Politics.

Originally posted here:
CRT and 'the horrors of communism' among topics in DeSantis' new school board survey - Creative Loafing Tampa

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

A senior Chinese Communist Party official this week repeated Beijings demand that the United States not seek to overthrow the communist system.

Yang Jiechi, dubbed Tiger Yang for his virulent anti-U.S. positions, made the comment during a lengthy meeting with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg on Monday.

The White House provided few public details on the conversation other than to say in a statement the exchange between the two officials was candid, substantive and productive. Candid is often diplomatic code for a harsh verbal exchange.

U.S. secrecy surrounding the discussion reflects what analysts see as increasingly conciliatory policies by the Biden administration toward China. Critics say that the administration has sought to pursue a sporting-like competition with Beijing rather than confronting the Chinese over such contentious issues as Chinas aggressive nuclear buildup, its increasingly threatening military activities toward Taiwan and its continued theft of U.S. data and technology.

The White House statement said the meeting was a follow-up to a telephone call between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Yang in May. The Luxembourg meeting also touched on regional and global security and U.S.-China relations.

Mr. Sullivan underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries, the statement said.

By contrast, Chinese state media provided much greater detail on Mr. Yangs presentation to the United States, including his admonition that the U.S. change its policies to support Chinese goals, including preservation of the communist system.

Maos Communists came to power in China in 1949 and have used deception and quasi-capitalist means to develop the country. Under President Xi Jinping, communism ideology has been revived and is now being exported as an alternative to the U.S.-led democratic system.

Mr. Yang is a member of the political bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and director of the panels foreign affairs commission.

Both are party positions, reflecting the fact that under Mr. Xi, the formal government has taken a back seat to the party in dealings with the United States, even as bilateral relations have grown increasingly tense in recent years.

The official party outlet Xinhua stated in its report on the meeting that Mr. Yang pressed Mr. Sullivan on a reported promise made by President Biden to Mr. Xi that the United States does not seek a new Cold War or aim to change Chinas system.

Communist Party leaders in recent years have adopted an almost paranoid fear of being overthrown and have accused the CIA and other U.S. institutions of seeking to subvert and ultimately defeat the communist system.

Xinhua said Mr. Yang also pressed Mr. Sullivan on other reported pledges from Mr. Biden, such as that the United States will not oppose China through strengthened regional alliances or by backing Taiwan independence, and will not seek a direct conflict with China.

The Chinese side attaches high importance to these statements, Mr. Yang was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

As for the candid part of the exchange, Xinhua revealed that Mr. Yang criticized the United States for allegedly containing and suppressing China in an all-around way.

Such acts, instead of helping the United States solve its own problems, have plunged China-U.S. relations into a very difficult situation and severely damaged the exchanges and cooperation in bilateral areas, Yang said, the news agency reported.

A senior Biden administration official said Mr. Sullivan did not press China on its military buildup or military provocations near Taiwan, but instead called for China to release Americans detained illegally in China.

The national security advisor pressed for progress on key issues of concern to the United States, in particular, underscoring the need for the release of American citizens wrongfully detained and subjected to exit bans in China, the official said. On this issue, in particular, he stressed this as a personal priority for both himself and for the president.

Asked if Mr. Biden will meet with Mr. Xi in the future, the senior official said, Id expect to see additional potential meetings in the months ahead, but nothing specific [is] planned at this time.

Mr. Sullivan asked Mr. Yang to help address increasingly belligerent behavior by North Korea, including missile launches and a potential nuclear test, the official said.

The official would not say if Mr. Sullivan questioned Mr. Yang on Chinas large-scale buildup of nuclear forces.

According to Xinhua, Mr. Yang told Mr. Sullivan that bilateral relations are at a critical juncture and demanded the United States observe Mr. Xis three demands for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and what Beijing calls win-win cooperation. Mr. Yang also said China is prepared to work with the United States if it agrees to Mr. Xis demands, but that China firmly opposes using competition to define bilateral ties.

The CCP official told Mr. Sullivan that the United States must correct its strategic perception of China and translate Mr. Bidens commitments about not overthrowing the communist system into concrete actions.

Mr. Yang in particular denounced U.S. support for Taiwan, noting China considers the Taiwan issue an internal affair and that any attempt to undermine national unity would fail. Taiwan is an issue that is the political foundation of U.S.-China ties and, unless handled properly, will have a subversive impact, Mr. Yang said.

Mr. Yang also reportedly hammered Mr. Sullivan on U.S. criticism of China for its crackdown in Xinjiang, repression in Tibet, repression of democracy in Hong Kong and military activities in the South China Sea.

The CCP-controlled outlet Global Times said Mr. Yang demanded the United States follow the advice of pro-China experts like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ease bilateral tensions. The outlet said that U.S. arrogance and disregardingChinese demands were to blame for tense relations.

Crazily suppressing China on one hand, and expecting China to cooperate on the other, [is] an extremely selfish idea that has not been realized by the U.S. in the past and will never be realized in the future, the Global Times said.

Russian nuclear threats limit Wests support for Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putins threat to use nuclear weapons against the West in response to the Ukraine war has limited some U.S. and NATO actions toward the conflict, according to a report by a national security think tank.

Russian nuclear threats preceded the Ukraine war but have not abated, said Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and author of the study. These threats influence Western responses to the war since they build upon earlier threats and exercises showing that Russia will use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict to force acceptance of its terms.

The report by the National Institute for Public Policy argues that the nuclear danger has produced pervasive anxiety that inhibited Western relief efforts in Ukraine, such as derailing calls for a NATO-enforced air exclusion zone over Ukraine or sending advanced warplanes to Kyiv.

Western restraint has encouraged repeated and unrestrained Russian threats of nuclear use that are taken as inherently credible ones, even as Western deterrence is not seen as credible, the report said. This trend destabilizes the balance of deterrence.

Russias nuclear weapons strategy in the Ukraine war seeks to intimidate and deter NATO from reacting, providing Moscow with escalation dominance and thus the strategic initiative and freedom of action throughout all stages of a crisis, the report says.

The overall goal is the creation of a seamless web of threats to Russian enemies from both conventional and nuclear weapons to retain that escalation control.

Nuclear forces exercises and saber-rattling regarding the use of nuclear arms have provided a window on Moscows concept of strategic deterrence in action.

Meanwhile Russia will continue to use its remaining nuclear trump card and other kinetic and non-kinetic instruments to undermine Ukraine, the report states.

The report urges NATO leaders to move faster and more broadly at the conventional force level to undermine the force of Moscows nuclear threats: Otherwise Russia may continue to delude itself into believing that it has actually salvaged something from the debacle it has unleashed upon Ukraine and Russia itself.

Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter at @BillGertz.

See the rest here:
Inside the Ring: China to U.S.: Leave communist system alone - Washington Times