Critical Race Theory as Ideology

The word theory signifies proposed knowledge that is not merely subjective sentiment or belief that is being prescribed or advocated as an ideology; the purpose of a theory is rather to explain. Only in terms of better understanding is the implication that a better world could result (i.e., from the enhanced understanding). Even though a theory does not constitute established knowledge, that ideologues have seized on the label as a way of legitimating their respective cherished ideologies should come as no surprise because ideology sells better in the guise of knowledge even though a theory has yet to gain sufficient support epistemologically to be recognized as established knowledge. The epistemological subterfuge—a Trojan horse of sorts—also hides the fact that the ideologue seeks to persuade or advocate rather than primarily explain. Under the patina of a knowledge-claim lies quite another instinctual urge. Nietzsche’s claim that the content of a thought is none other than an instinctual urge of sufficient power to burst into consciousness—a manifestation of the will to power—provides an explanation for why the slight of hand is so easy for ideologues to make in sliding over to present the veneer of knowledge-claims even though such claims do in fact differ qualitatively from ideological claims. I contend that critical race “theory,” as well as the related interactionist “theory,” is in its very substance ideological in nature, rather than knowledge or even a theory.

The full essay is at "Critical Race Theory as Ideology."

Turkey on Gay Obscenity

On 8 April, 2026, eleven leaders of a Turkish gay-rights group faced a judicial trial on charges of “obscenity” and “violating the protection of the family.”[1] These charges are of course heavily subjective and even controversial, especially well into the twenty-first century by which time gay and lesbian couples were raising children in family units so the issue in Turkey could be said to be which type of family warrants protection. The obscenity charge had to do with the fact that two men or two women kissing romantically in public still made a significant proportion of people uncomfortable in Turkey. Turkish authorities had deemed photos showing gay couples kissing and put on social media to be obscene. That homosexuality was not illegal there at the time rendered the trial perplexing to many in the gay community in Turkey and elsewhere in the world. Perhaps even more perplexing is the fact that the constitution of Turkey contained an article on protecting family values and that gay couples raising children were exempted from even being deemed families.

The full essay is at "Turkey on Gay Obscenity."

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Turkey Puts 11 Leaders of LGBTQ+ Rights Association on Trial for ‘Obscenity,’” Euronews.com, 8 April, 2026.

Immobilizing E.U. Holdings of Russian Assets

By invoking Article 122 of the E.U.’s basic law, a clause that had been used most significantly during the Coronavirus pandemic and in the 2022 energy crisis, the E.U. in December, 2025 finally circumvented the twice-threatened veto by the state of Hungary and indefinitely froze €210 billion of assets of the Russian Central Bank that had been within the E.U.’s territory since Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine nearly four years earlier. I contend that the European Court of Justice, the E.U.’s supreme court, could apply a rational basis in a judicial review of the triggering of the emergency-conditioned article, especially because the Commission invoked the article in order to obviate Hungary’s threatened veto. Because every E.U. state except for Belgium and Hungary were for freezing the assets until Russia such time as Russia ends its militaristic aggression and compensates Ukraine financially for damages the Belgian and Hungarian state governments were violating the informal norm of consensus in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Like the U.S. Senate, the European Council, which also represents the states, is like a club of sorts. The problem facing the Commission is that violating a norm is not a legal basis for obviating a threatened state-veto by invoking an emergency clause of the E.U.’s basic law, especially if no emergency actually exists after nearly four years of the invasion. Even though I am personally in favor of the E.U. obviating Hungary’s serial obstructionism that may be, at least in part, retaliation against President Von der Leyen’s Commission for having penalized the Hungarian government financially for having violated E.U. law, legal reasoning should not succumb to the gravity of the “black hole” of personal opinion.  There may be nothing so much like a god as a general on a battlefield, with power over life and death, but neither the European Commission nor myself is a general. In short, the Commission’s legal justification in invoking Article 122 is tenuous at best, even though countering Hungary’s Viktor Orbán’s abuse of his state’s veto-power in the European Council and the Council of Ministers was needed for the E.U. to be able to function within its enumerated competencies (i.e., powers).

The full essay is at "Immobilizing E.U. Holdings of Russian Assets."

Statehood for Canada: Hardly a Merger

The U.S. Constitution includes an open invitation for the accession of Canada into the U.S. as a state. The invitation was made before Canada spread across from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. So, were Canadians to seek statehood in the American union of states (i.e., the U.S.A.), they would have a good argument for Canada being split in to a few states rather than just one. This is qualitatively different than a “merger” between the two countries; the latter ideological conjecture is predicated on a category mistake. Such a mistake would say, for example, that Singapore and China are of the same genus politically even though the former is a city-state and the latter is on the (early modern) empire-scale. Just because both Singapore and China have foreign policies and are member-countries of the UN does not mean that a city-state is to be treated more generally as if it were the same as an empire. By “empire,” I am referring to China itself, rather than any territories it might have beyond mainland China. The Qing emperor Kangzi expanded mainland China to include some central Asian kingdoms, thus making China an empire (of kingdom-level/scale subunits). Similarly, the U.S., as well as the E.U., are empire-scale/level polities of (kingdom-level) polities, whereas Canada does not have enough such polities to qualify as being on the empire-scale, for an empire contains many kingdom-level polities.

The full essay is at "Statehood for Canada."

The Israeli Military Kills Starving Gazans Seeking Food as Police in Massachusetts Intimidate Human-Rights Protesters

Even as the Israeli military was shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge, where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?) did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending weapons to Israel.  

The full essay is at "The Israeli Army Kills Starving Gazans."

An American Constitutional Scholar: Gilding the Lily

No one in one’s right mind would claim to be a scholar of chemistry after just three years of courses even if all of them were in natural science or even just chemistry. Nor would a business student, after just three years in a business school, claim to be a scholar of business, even if those three years were filled with only courses in business. My first degree comes very close to that (which is why I later studied humanities at Yale), and yet it took two more years in a MBA program and six more in a doctoral program (business and religious studied) before I was declared to be a scholar. So it is with a cringe of incredulousness that I read an opinion piece on MSNBC.com in which the author, Jamal Greene, put in his essay’s title, “I’m a legal scholar.”[1] That he avers that the U.S. was then in a constitutional crisis is hardly a trivial claim in American politics, so his claim of being a legal scholar, rather than only a practitioner and instructor, is important and thus should be subjected to a critique. 

The full essay is at "An American Constitutional Scholar."

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1. Jamal Greene, “I’m a Legal Scholar. We’re in a Constitutional Crisis—and This Is theMoment It Began,” MSNBC.com, April 26, 2025.

Undermining the U.S. Supreme Court: Non-Jurisprudential Ideology and the U.S. Constitution

As in the case of the Roman Empire, which internal corruption likely weakened and even destroyed centuries after that empire had been a republic, modern republics are also not immune from internal decay. Even though political corruption can go under the radar, especially if systemic rather than merely episodic or around particular office holders, the subtle, gradual impact can be just as destructive than had Carthage defeated Rome’s general, Skippio Africanus, in north Africa. Making subtle decadence all the more embarrassing is the fact that it can be right under the noses of upstanding office-holders. I contend that this is the case with Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The full essay is at "Undermining the U.S. Supreme Court."

Hungary and Texas: Busing Immigrants

Two years after the government of Texas in the U.S. began transferring migrants to other states and to Washington D.C., the government of Hungary announced that it too would bus migrants, but rather than transporting them to other states, the destination would be Brussels exclusively. Although the respective political strategies differ, the two policies both represent the same pressure point in federal systems. The cost of united action at the federal level on public policy is that the states are not as free as otherwise to manifest their respective ideological and cultural views in public policy at the state level. That federal policy or law is often a compromise between the preferences of the states means that political pressure exists not only between states, but between a given state and federal law. This is inherent to federalism because it provides benefits from united action and some ability of states to enact legislation reflecting their respective distinct dominant ideology. Enabling both is one of federalism’s best features, yet it comes with a cost in terms of political tension that is endemic rather than merely episodic. Simply put, no system of government is without drawbacks or downsides. The trick is perhaps in how to manage them so they don’t get so out of control that the federal system itself collapses. In 2024, Viktor Orbán, governor of the E.U. state of Hungary, was testing the limits much more than was Greg Abbott, governor of the U.S. state of Texas, even as Orbán was using Abbott’s playbook.

The full essay is at "Hungary and Texas."

Differentiating the European Council and Parliament: Meloni of Italy

At the federal level of the E.U., the European Council, like the Senate in the U.S., represents the states, whereas the European Parliament, like the U.S. House of Representatives, represents citizens—that’s right, E.U. citizens. The theory behind this difference is a modification of traditional federalism theory, wherein only the polities in a federation are represented at the federal level. In this traditional way of doing federalism, individuals, or citizens, belong only to the first level of political organization. Althusius’s Political Digest (1603) describes that theory, borrowing a lot from the example of the Holy Roman Empire. The advent of both polities and federal citizens being directly represented at a federal level was born out of compromise during the American Constitutional Convention in 1787. The E.U. replicated the structure, wherein the state governments and E.U. citizens (or legal residents) each have their own channel of access to affect federal law and policy on the federal level. For one of the two to cross over and eclipse the other in its own channel is suboptimal because both vantage points contribute to sound federal law in a way that enables them to protect their respective interests, which are not identical. It is thus not appropriate for a state government, including its governor or head of state, to direct members of Parliament how to vote on a given bill, whether their districts are within or outside of the state.

The full essay is at "Meloni: Differentiate the European Council and Parliament."

Democracy Waning in Former French Colonies in Africa

The subversion of democracy in former French colonies in Africa stymies the African Union from developing from a mere confederation, wherein all of the governmental sovereignty resides with the states, to modern federalism, whose chief characteristic is dual sovereignty. There is good reason for the requirement in the U.S. that the states be republics rather than dictatorships, for the latter would be more likely to ignore the federal jurisdiction within their respective states.

The full essay is at "Democracy Waning in Africa."

Exfoliating a Hero: On Lincoln's Unconstitutional Overreaching

Lest we get carried away and inadvertantly enshrine our leaders with mythic laurals, it is worthwhile to peel back our societal "remembering" of past figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, who have become larger than life.

The full essay is at "Exfoliating a Hero."

The Israeli Supreme Court’s Conflict of Interest as Unreasonable

Ironically, in making the ruling on New Year’s Day of 2024 striking down Prime Minister Netanyahu’s amendment to the country’s basic law that would have removed the judiciary’s authority of judicial review of laws based on their reasonableness, Israel’s Supreme Court too unreasonably exploited a conflict of interest. Basic Law, which is essentially constitutional law, includes the basic architecture of a government, such as how the executive, legislative, and judicial functions are related. Self-interest being a salient feature of human nature, we can assume that the governmental functionaries in each of those functions naturally seek to expand their respective jurisdictions relative to those of the other two. I contend that to give one or two of those areas the last word in altering the division of authority involves a conflict of interest. This applies to a constitutional court. Therefore, even though democracy is served by a judicial decision striking down an attempt by the executive and/or legislature to eviscerate the authority of the judiciary to act as a check, giving the latter the last word is fraught with entanglements. 

The full essay is at "Israel's Supreme Court: A Conflict of Interest."

The Colorado Supreme Court Bars Insurrectionist Trump: Who Should Ultimately Decide?

On December 19, 2023, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that Don Trump, a former U.S. president, had engaged in insurrectionist activity as a matter of fact, and furthermore, as a matter of law, the U.S. Constitution bars him from holding any office, including the presidency. With an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a certainty, realized even by the Colorado justices, and some notable (and very visible) Republicans arguing that the American people should have the final say on whether Trump will be president again beginning in 2025, the question of who should have the final say—the judiciary or the people—was pressing, and indeed, very important. I contend that the determination of fact should have been made by a jury in a criminal proceeding, and that even absent that, the ultimate decision should still be made prior to, and thus not during, the election, for the question is whether Trump can be listed as a candidate for the office. Ultimately, the tension lies between the value of a politics-free judiciary and democratic (majority) rule.

The full essay is at "The Colorado Supreme Court Bars Insurrectionist Trump."

On the Role of the U.S. Supreme Court in Safeguarding the Peaceful Transfer of Power

In the E.U., the state governments and federal institutions can ask the European Court of Justice (the ECJ) for an opinion on a legal matter. This is rare in the U.S., though waiting for a dispute to winds its way formally through district and appellate courts may be unduly bureaucratic, not to mention lengthy. On December 11, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court the ECJ’s counterpart, to decide whether the former U.S. president Donald Trump had any immunity from criminal prosecution of his involvement in the riot at the U.S. Capitol that interrupted the formal counting by a joint session of Congress of the Electoral College presidential ballots. The trial was set to begin the following March, and the question of the former president’s immunity had to be decided before the trial could begin. Hence the “extraordinary request,” which I contend should not be extraordinary given the time frame and the important role of the highest court in safeguarding American democracy from domestic threats.

The full essay is at "On the U.S. Supreme Court."

The U.S. Supreme Court: Free Speech Trumps Public Accommodations Law

I contend as a matter of reasoned opinion rather than infallible fact that the Free Speech protection in the U.S. Constitution applies to not only human beings, rather than to non-human legal “persons” (e.g., corporations), but also to speech where the purpose is speech rather than something else. I have written elsewhere on the mistake in treating corporations as if they were human beings, so I treat only the second claim here. I reference the first claim only as context for my broader claim that the U.S. Supreme Court has tended to over-extend applications of the free-speech clause not only beyond its original intent, but also common sense. The latter violation is particularly astonishing. 

The full essay is at "Free Speech and Public-Accommodations Law"

The Electoral College: Beyond the Conventional Wisdom

The matter of how the U.S. President is to be selected was a tough nut for the delegates in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to crack. Mason observed the following in convention, “In every Stage of the Question relative to the Executive, the difficulty of the subject and the diversity of the opinions concerning it have appeared.”[1] The alternative proposals centered around the Congress, State legislatures, the governors, the people, and electors designated for the specific purpose as the possible determiners. Although the delegates were men of considerable experience, their best judgments about how the alternatives would play out were subject to error as well as the confines of their times. In re-assessing the Electoral College, we could do worse than adjust those judgments and rid them of circumstances pertaining to them that no longer apply. For example, the Southern States no longer have slaves, so the question of whether those States would be disadvantaged by going with a popular vote no longer applies; the alternative of going with the popular vote nationwide no longer suffers from that once-intractable pickle. Yet lest we rush headlong into a popular vote without respect to the States, we are well advised not to dismiss the points made by the convention delegates, for we too are constrained by our times, and we may thus not be fully able to take into account points that have been forgotten.

The full essay is at "The Electoral College."

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1. James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966): 370.

On the Weakening of the Rule of Law in the U.S.

When law enforcement (i.e., police) conveniently exclude themselves from obeying law, the contradiction should, I submit, be sufficient for the perpetrators to be fired. It is not enough for their boss to chastise or even suspend the hypocrites, for they are inherently unfit for law enforcement, and should instead be treated as actual or potential criminals. What about when such a sordid mentality comes to proliferate through a police department, especially if it lies beyond the competence of a city government to hold even such a department accountable? What if a local political “law and order” culture tacitly exempts police and goes on to look the other way as the latter render the locality into a police state? I contend that the Phoenix metropolitan area, including the suburbs surrounding Phoenix itself, furnishes us with a case in point.

 

The full essay is at "Weakening of the Rule of Law."

American Federalism: The Case of Coronavirus

On March 22, 2020, during a press conference on the coronavirus, U.S. Vice President Pence claimed that the United States is unique in that it has a federal system of public governance. He overlooked the equivalent case of the European Union even as he stressed an idea that is the European federal principle of subsidiarity, which means that decisions and actions that can be taken locally are to be done locally. The state level is next, followed by the federal level. The theory behind this principle is that cultural, political, economic, and social diversity that exists from state to state, especially in an empire-scale federal system such as the E.U. and U.S., means that one-size-fits-all federal-level decisions may not be effective everywhere. Pence’s point was that the federal government would be playing a supportive role so the States get what they need, rather than playing a pivotal role with the States and localities as instruments of implementation. I contend that relative to the European Union, the United States was at the time much less equipped to apply the principle of subsidiarity to the coronavirus pandemic.

The full essay is at "Federalism and the Coronavirus."

Bolivia's President Morales: A De-Facto Dictator Undemocratically Removed from Office

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, resigned on November 10, 2019 after an audit by the Organization of American States found that the results of the election held the previous month could not be validated because of “serious irregularities,” including “failures in the chain of custody for ballots, alteration and forgery of electoral material, redirection of data to unauthorized servers and data manipulation.”[1] Election officials had stopped the count for about 24 hours without explanation; when the count resumed, Morales’ lead was much greater. Accordingly, along with Morales, the vice president, and the president of the state senate, the president and vice president of the electoral council resigned. Before the end of the day, the two officials of the council had been arrested for “electoral crimes.”[2] Although the state police were justified in arresting the officials, I submit that the police acted beyond their proper sphere when they joined with the military, which also acted beyond its sphere, to force Morales to resign.

The full essay is at "Bolivia's President Morales: A De-Facto Dictator Undemocratically Removed from Office."

[1] Kay Guerrero and Dakin Andone, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Steps Down Following Accusations of Election Fraud,” CNN.com, November 10, 2019 (accessed on November 12, 2019).

[2] Ibid.

E.U. and U.S. Counterparts Met: A Basis for Comparison

President Barak Obama of the U.S., and Herman Van Rompuy and José Barroso of the E.U. held a news conference following the EU-US Summit at Lisbon in 2010. Even though the E.U. and U.S. are both empire-scale federal unions of states, and thus are equivalent in terms of political type or genre, they differ in terms of how their respective federal offices are arranged and constituted. This does not, however, nullify the basis of comparison.

The full essay is "The EU and US."