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Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.— William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” Given that things are not quite as dire as some claim, it may be a bit premature to be dropping Yeats quotes in columns about the Trump administration. Donald Trump is not the “rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem” — or toward Washington, D.C. But just because people make fools of themselves comparing the 2016 election to Pearl Harbor and other calamities doesn’t mean things are not amiss. There’s been a lot of talk about how Trump is a “disruptor,” overturning conventional wisdom, throwing out the playbook, tearing down the establishment, transgressing “democratic norms,” and a dozen other similar clichés. There’s little debate about whether or not Trump has done these things, but there’s a massive divide out there about whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. That debate itself is part of the problem. It’s not either/or but both/and. Some of the things Trump has done to turn the page on politics-as-usual are probably good, and some are obviously bad. The problem with a bull in a china shop is that he doesn’t discriminate between the lousy dishware and the good stuff. More importantly, what distinguishes the lousy from the luxury is in the eye of the beholder. Consider the current “war” between the intelligence community and the Trump White House. High-ranking officials somewhere inside the “deep state” have broken the rules to embarrass the Trump administration. Their campaign of extraordinary leaks paid off. They collected the scalp of retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who lasted as Trump’s national-security adviser for about three weeks. It remains unclear whether Flynn is a victim of an unfair smear, a bureaucratic bumbler who invited trouble, or some kind of nefarious collaborator with the Russians. Flynn’s defenders, starting with the president himself, insist the leaks are the real scandal — and that Flynn was unfairly done in by “fake news.” This raises the question of why the president fired a trusted aide for a bogus accusation. But the dynamic that concerns me is how a climate of “mere anarchy” has been loosed upon Washington. Trump spent much of the campaign touting, celebrating, and promoting WikiLeaks as a “treasure trove.” “I love WikiLeaks!” Trump told a crowd that was chanting “Lock her up!” He’s changed his tune of late, railing on Twitter against “the low-life leakers!” and insisting that stories based on leaks are outrageous and fraudulent: “FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and ‘sources,’ is far more effective than the discredited Democrats — but they are fading fast!” Democracies — never mind civilizations — depend on a minimal amount of buy-in to rules of conduct and behavior. Now, there’s certainly an important difference between government officials releasing top-secret information to settle political scores and a foreign government aiding in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. But in the environment we’re in now, such distinctions seem more like niceties or talking points for professional spinners. And that’s because in a world where one side sees inconvenient rules as illegitimate, it’s only natural that the other side will see rules that inconvenience them as illegitimate too. This applies not just to laws or democratic norms, but to simple good manners. Trump and his biggest supporters saw nothing wrong with insinuating that Ted Cruz’s father was an accomplice to JFK’s murder. They shrugged at his insults of his political opponents and even their wives. He and they reject any suggestion that he should apologize for such statements. But the merest slight against Trump or his family is an outrage. This is how the center does not hold. Democracies — never mind civilizations — depend on a minimal amount of buy-in to rules of conduct and behavior. It’s no different than good sportsmanship. If you claim that every bad call by the ref is illegitimate because “the fix is in,” and this behavior pays off, the incentive for the other side to play by the rules evaporates. Trump didn’t create the crisis of confidence in the rules, but his passionate intensity has accelerated the collapse. — Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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It’s a Watergate-era cliché that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. In the Mike Flynn affair, we have the first recorded instance of a cover-up in the absence of a crime. Being covered up were the December 29 phone calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to Washington. The presumed violation was Flynn negotiating with a foreign adversary while the Obama administration was still in office and, even worse, discussing with Sergey Kislyak the sanctions then being imposed upon Russia (for meddling in the 2016 elections). What’s wrong with that? It is risible to invoke the Logan Act, passed during the John Adams administration, under which not a single American has been prosecuted in the intervening 218 years. It prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers. Flynn was hardly a private citizen. As Donald Trump’s publicly designated incoming national-security adviser, it was perfectly reasonable for him to be talking to foreign actors in preparation for assuming office within the month. Worst case: He was telling Kislyak that the Trump administration might lift sanctions and therefore, comrade, no need for a spiral of retaliations. How different is this from what Barack Obama told Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, on an inadvertently open mic, during his 2012 reelection campaign? “This is my last election,” he said. “After my election, I have more flexibility.” Flynn would have been giving the Russians useful information that might well have contributed to Russia’s decision not to retaliate. I’m no Russophile. But again: What’s wrong with that? Turns out, the Trump administration has not lifted those sanctions. It’s all a tempest in an empty teapot. The accusations of misbehavior by Flynn carry a subliminal echo of a longstanding charge against Richard Nixon that he interfered in the Paris peace talks in October 1968 to prevent his Democratic opponent from claiming a major foreign-policy success on the eve of the presidential election. But that kind of alleged diplomatic freelancing would have prolonged a war in which Americans were dying daily. The Flynn conversation was nothing remotely of the sort. Where’s the harm? The harm was not the calls but Flynn’s lying about them. And most especially lying to the vice president, who then went out and told the world Flynn had never discussed sanctions. You can’t leave your vice president undercut and exposed. Flynn had to go. Up to this point, the story makes sense. Except for one thing: Why the cover-up if there is no crime? Why lie about talking about sanctions? It’s inexplicable. Did Flynn want to head off lines of inquiry about other contacts with Russians that might not have been so innocent? Massive new leaks suggest numerous contacts during the campaign between Trump associates and Russian officials, some of whom were intelligence agents. Up till now, however, reports the New York Times, there is “no evidence” of any Trump-campaign collusion or cooperation with Russian hacking and other interference in the U.S. election. Thus far. Which is why there will be investigations. Speculation ranges from the wildly malevolent to the rather loopily innocent. It is risible to invoke the Logan Act, passed during the John Adams administration, under which not a single American has been prosecuted in the intervening 218 years. At one end of the spectrum is the scenario wherein these campaign officials — including perhaps Flynn, perhaps even Trump — are compromised because of tainted business or political activities known to the Russians, to whom they are now captive. A fevered conspiracy in my view, but there are non-certifiable people who consider it possible. At the benign end of the spectrum is that the easily flattered Trump imagines himself the great deal-maker who overnight becomes a great statesman by charming Vladimir Putin into a Nixon-to-China grand bargain — we jointly call off the new Cold War, join forces to destroy the Islamic State, and reach a new accommodation for Europe that relieves us of some of the burden of parasitic allies. To me, the idea is nuts, a narcissistic fantasy grounded in neither strategy nor history. But that doesn’t mean Trump might not imagine it — after all, he maintains that if we had only stayed in Iraq to steal its oil, we wouldn’t have the Islamic State. And if this has indeed been his thinking about Russia, it would make sense to surround himself with advisers who had extensive dealings there. I believe neither of these scenarios, but I’m hard put to come up with alternatives. The puzzle remains. Why did Flynn lie? Until we answer that, the case of the cover-up in search of a crime remains unsolved. — Charles Krauthammer’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Copyright © 2017 The Washington Post Writers Group

If you care about the Bill of Rights, the rights of conscience, or even the English language, there’s a chance that this morning you felt a disturbance in the Force — as if the Founders cried out in rage and were suddenly silenced. That disturbance was the Washington Supreme Court’s oppressive ruling in State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers, a case holding that a florist was bound by state law to use her artistic talents to design floral arrangements to celebrate what she viewed as an immoral event: a gay wedding. The pretext for overriding the florist’s rights to free speech and religious liberty was Washington’s so-called “public accommodations law,” which required the owner, Barronelle Stutzman, to provide goods and services to customers “regardless” of their sexual orientation. Let’s be clear, according to the plain language of the law and the undisputed facts of the case, Stutzman did nothing illegal. She had always consistently and joyfully served gay clients, including the man who ultimately decided to bring potentially ruinous legal claims against her. On each of those prior occasions, however, she was not using her artistic talents to help her clients celebrate an occasion she considered immoral. In other words, she was not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. She was making a decision not to help celebrate an action, a form of expression. She would no more celebrate a gay wedding than she would any form of immorality, gay or straight. To dispense with her argument, the court did what numerous progressive courts have done: It rewrote the law. It rejected what it called the “status/conduct” distinction, and essentially interpreted the word “orientation” to also mean “action.” To understand how nonsensical and dangerous this is, one need merely apply it to other categories of expression. Is it now racial discrimination to refuse to bake a cake with Confederate flag icing, since the person asking for such a cake will almost always be white? Is it gender discrimination for fashion designers to refuse to “dress” Ivanka or Melania Trump? They’re women, after all. But this is the sexual revolution we’re talking about, so it’s necessary for the court to make a statement declaring the government’s allegiances. Indeed, late in the opinion its author gave the game away. Picking up on the absurd and historically ignorant comparison of the modern gay-rights movement with the civil-rights movement in the segregationist South, the judge wrote, “This case is no more about access to flowers than civil rights cases in the 1960s were about access to sandwiches.” This is the sexual revolution we’re talking about, so it’s necessary for the court to make a statement declaring the government’s allegiances. What are they talking about? The federal government took the extraordinary step of passing the civil-rights acts to give black Americans access not just to sandwiches but to hotel rooms, jobs, voting rights, and all the other things they were systematically denied as southern states and communities continually and oppressively imposed the “badges and incidents of slavery” on them. In the pre-civil-rights South, black citizens often had trouble finding places to eat or sleep. They couldn’t vote. They couldn’t get justice in state courts. Civil rights was about access, at its most elementary and necessary level. But that’s not the case any longer. The gay couple in this case had no trouble finding flowers. Stutzman even recommended other florists who would have been happy to help them celebrate their wedding. So, given the absence of any real harm, the court said that the state had a compelling state interest in punishing the “independent social evil” of discrimination toward a “broader societal purpose: eradicating barriers to equal treatment of all citizens in the commercial marketplace.” That’s it right there: the state religion. It reserves for itself the exclusive ability to name, define, and eradicate “social evils,” and heaven help the individual citizen who disagrees. There is no need to show a traditional, legally recognized harm. There is no need to prove lack of access to alternative artistic expressions. There is only the need to show that the business owner won’t use her unique talents to help celebrate the sexual revolution. Finally, if you doubt the court’s malice, look only to its last ruling — that Stutzman can be held personally liable for her allegedly discriminatory act. In other words, the court is willing to pierce the corporate veil to impose individual liability even in the absence of the traditional justifications for that drastic step. Stutzman didn’t commit fraud. She didn’t commingle her personal and corporate funds. She kept her private and professional affairs separate. But she still faces personal financial ruin. Social-justice warriors will no doubt celebrate the breaking of another egg for their cultural omelet. Meanwhile, Stutzman’s lawyers — my friends and former colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom — are appealing her case to the Supreme Court. Once again, eyes will be fixed on Justice Kennedy. Will he continue to impose his own version of the state religion, the one he so enthusiastically articulated in Obergefell? Or will he remember that words have meaning, orientation doesn’t mean action, and the state can’t compel citizens to condone what they consider immoral. It’s time for the Supreme Court to take a deep breath, abandon its revolutionary crusade, and remember the great wisdom of its predecessors: If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us. What say you, Justice Kennedy? Do those who oppose the sexual revolution forfeit that fundamental protection? I suppose we’ll soon find out. — David French is a staff writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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