Only Power Can Check Power
 

What made America unique, Hannah Arendt thought, was its particular aversion to centralized power. She found in the American experience of local power epitomized by New England Town Hall meetings and mirrored in local government and citizen engagement a deep well of belief that individual citizens were responsible for governing themselves. This tendency of Americans to write letters to their representatives, to join together to form civic associations, to attend town hall meetings, and to act in concert with others meant, Arendt wrote, that any effort to centralize power would come up against resistance from real power. Power is not found in laws or regulations, all of which can be swept away by violence and power. Power emerges wherever people act together. In joining together, individuals act collectively with power. In the United States, not only the separation of powers amongst the Congress, Presidency, and the Courts, but also the dispersion of powers across the States, Counties, Cities, and Towns, and even the historical experience of power in civic bodies and volunteer associations, all contributed to what Arendt called the “constitution of freedom.” It meant, she argued, that the United States was one of the few countries in history in which there is no sovereign power, where power comes from the combination of many powers, not the rule of one. Since all power is susceptible to corruption, the best way to prevent tyranny is to guarantee, as much as possible, the multiplication and dispersion of powers. 

Donald Trump never wanted to be President, at least not as Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama or even Ronald Reagan understood the presidency. President Trump wants to be the CEO or the King. He wants power and he wants to cow, sedate, or eliminate any and all opposing powers. In his claim for a unitary executive, President Trump is seeking to overturn the very core of the American constitution of Freedom as Arendt understood it. His presidency may go down as one of the most consequential in American history. Maybe in world history. 

In truth, the rise in Executive power has been steadily progressing for decades. Its root is actually in the corruption of the people themselves, our willingness even eagerness to abandon our power to the government. The country has gotten too big and too bureaucratic for the people to have a meaningful role in their self-government. The result is that the government became corrupt, not because of a conspiracy against the people, but rather because the people themselves cared more for their private interests than for their public responsibilities. Arendt saw this corruption of the people as “more likely to arise from private interests than from public power.” And she speculated that the only way to re-enliven our republican spirit would be once-again give citizens the opportunity to govern themselves in “assemblies where every one could and be counted upon.” 

The reason the Arendt Center founded the Democracy Innovation Hub is precisely to help re-energize the people and rekindle the power that comes from acting together. Our goal over the next two years is to sponsor three citizen’s assemblies in New York and inspire more around the country. You can hear me speaking with Nick Romeo about a current citizens assembly taking place in Oregon on the Arendt Center’s podcast here. 

The best way to oppose centralized power is not with laws, but with power. Power comes from joining together. From organizing. If you want to oppose the power grab going on in the White House, your best bet is to organize. Join together with others and seek out power. Run for office. Support those who do. Take over school boards or zoning boards. Build businesses and thriving organizations. Acquire power. 

For decades now power has taken a backseat to questions of social justice in many people’s imaginations. We have assumed that the arc of the universe bent towards justice. There has been a sense that the good should prevail and that we should always help the good. This was always naive, and yet in the wake of WWII, there was a deep distrust of power for power’s sake. That taboo against power has dissipated. The pendulum is swinging back to supporting the strong. Russia is condemned by the West for its invasion of Ukraine, but most of the world yawns. China talks about invading Taiwan and has no moral compunction about not doing so. And Trump now speaks about invading Greenland or Panama; he has just imposed stiff tariffs on two of our closest allies and neighbors. 

Power needs the support of the people. While there is today popular support for a repudiation of liberal overreach in immigration, social justice bureaucracies, and the policing of language and thought, it is not at all clear how much support President Trump has for his more radical policies, ranging from mass deportations to the replacement of taxes with tariffs. Whether the craven Republicans in Congress will continue abdicating their power and allowing the White House to run roughshod over laws and institutions depends on how people react. 

A case in point. Wilson Velásquez was in Church this week near Atlanta when his ankle bracelet started buzzing. Federal agents from ICE were outside the Church. While Velásquez had entered the country illegally, he had applied for asylum in 2022 and was presently in the country legally awaiting a court date. Velásquez and his family claimed they were fleeing gangs in their native Honduras. Velásquez has a social security number, was legally employed at a tire shop, and was caring for his family of four while going regularly to church, where he and his wife were active congregants. It was outside their church that he was handcuffed, arrested, and taken away this week. Aside from crossing the border illegally in order to apply for asylum, Velásquez has committed no crimes. Read Andy Olsen’s account of this case here. 

We have decisions facing us as a country. It is one thing to think too many immigrants are coming into the country. No doubt, we need to make rational policy choices about how many immigrants to let in. It is also rational to ask that people who do come here do so according to the law. And there is an argument for deporting people who sneak over the border and commit crimes. 

These are not easy questions. As Arendt understood, the right of asylum is an ancient right, but it is sadly largely an anachronism today. She describes the breakdown of the ancient right of asylum in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In the 1930s, the arrival of hundreds of  thousands of stateless people claiming the right of asylum left nation-states with only two options. They could aim to repatriate the refugees or naturalize them. Repatriation failed because no country agreed to take them. Naturalization failed because it was for most nation-states always a rule of exception. It existed for individuals who needed asylum because of unique circumstances. But the naturalization process was overwhelmed by the “mass applications for naturalization.” Unable to deal with the masses of applicants, European countries panicked and even began cancelling previous nationalizations. “All discussions about the refugee problems revolved around this one question: How can the refugee be made deportable again?” What Arendt saw is that in the system of nation-states, the state has the right to control who enters and to deport people it does not want. That is why the right of asylum did not exist in international law until after WWII, when the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted by most countries. But what Arendt wrote in 1950 still holds, that “though the the right of asylum continued to function in a world organized into nation-states and, in individual instances, even survived both World Wars, it was felt to be an anachronism and in conflict with the international rights of the state.” That tension between the ancient right of asylum and the international rights of states is breaking apart the liberal order today. 

World politics aside, it is another thing to target people for deportation who have permission to be in the country and take them out of church, pull them out of classes at school, or handcuff them while they are at work. I have never been in favor of illegal immigration. But our system is built on it. Much of our economy depends on workers who do jobs most citizens will not do. Business and government have encouraged undocumented workers for decades, and it works for business because it keeps wages low and for the rest of us because it keeps prices down. The result is that people without citizenship work on our farms, pray in our churches, and study in our schools. They pay taxes. They follow the laws (even if they did come here often with our tacit consent but formally against the law). They are our neighbors and our friends. 

The system sucks. It is corrupt and unfair. I am all for reforming the system and finding better ways to decide how many immigrants to admit and how to do so. But that is another matter. 

My son in highschool is on a group chat and they are discussing how they should react if they see ICE agents around their high school. Should they shout and protect their friends? He asked me if that would be obstruction of justice. I don’t know, but I told him it is the human thing to do for your friends. 

It is amazing to read social media responses to the arrest of Mr. Velásquez at his church. When Mike Cosper, author of  The Church in Dark Times,  posted an article about the arrest and commented: “I just don’t believe the majority of voters wanted this, or wanted to abandon refugees who had gone through a lengthy vetting process to come legally.  Why is the admin arresting folks here legally?”, his post was met with a volley of vitriol. Here are a few examples: