Osama Bin Laden and the Religious Rhetoric of Evil

Yesterday, September 11, 2026, was the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks against the United States of America.

In his dispatch to that day's killers, terror leader Osama bin Laden wrote:

“Remind your brothers that this act is for Almighty God.”

Yes, he said that. While Osama bin Laden himself cravenly hid out in what he foolishly thought were secure locations, he told the young men who boarded the planes and murdered thousands of civilians that they were striking, not for themselves, but for God himself. 

A universal truth is that the wickedest among us ascribe their iniquity to God. Osama bin Laden did not merely justify his vicious plan: he made viciousness into a moral imperative. Only the best, the bravest, and the most sacred people would, in his twisted, but so familiar, judgement, engage in evil at the level that his scheme required. Osama bin Laden persuaded the terrorists to submerge their own moral attitudes under his twisted version of God’s laws. Unlike psychopathic serial killers or narcissistic politicians, the murderous terrorists were not born to be evil. Instead, they had been trained to become evil. They had been persuaded to substitute God’s laws for their own, without, to any degree, understanding anything about God’s laws.

As the Hebrew prophet said, there is nothing new under the sun.

George W. Bush Used His Prestige to Call Out the January 6 Terrorists

 
George W. Bush on 9/11: A Message of Unity but Have We Forgotten?

We should draw two lessons from bin Laden’s dispatch. The first is that bin Laden twisted the religion of peace and benevolence to support the massacre of civilians. The second lesson, which we must never forget, is that vile murderers, criminals, self-righteous cowards, and evildoers have no right to speak for God. That is a lesson we – and when I say we, I mean all of humanity – must learn and remember.

"Worship Allah and associate nothing with Him, and to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess. Indeed, Allah does not like those who are self-deluding and boastful."

-Sura 4:36, the Holy Quran

The world’s greatest evils are done by people who think they are doing good. In his message to the hijackers, Osama bin Laden submerged moral compunctions by pretending to speak for God. Who would argue with God?

“Do not seek revenge for yourself. Strike for God's sake,” said Osama bin Laden in this dispatch. No. A thousand times no. A thousand times wrong.

______________   

Theoretical Note:

We feel self-righteous, but explain nothing, if we simply announce that evildoers are evil. Yes, of course, evildoers are evil. When we say that, however, we miss the point. What turns ordinary people into monsters? What psychological and sociological tricks cause otherwise decent people to disconnect their own precious, guiding conscience? That is the deep, and unpleasant, question that we must always ask. I refer all my readers to psychologist Albert Bandura’s essential book, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves. 

Huey Long and the Populist Moment

Huey Long

“You cannot let any man own $300,000,000,000 or $400,000,000,000. If you do, one man can own all of the wealth that the United States has in it.”

Thus, Huey Long, United States Senator from Louisiana, giving his national radio speech of February 23, 1934, stated populism’s basic principle. Although the populist movement has since morphed onto oddly contradictory paths, including Donald Trump’s trickle-down populism for the rich, Long himself proposed populism (literally, “of the people”) to promote ordinary people. Long defined his movement as “every man a king” or “share our wealth.” Blaming the elites for their greed and the economic system for brazen unfairness, Long asked for the nation to redistribute its wealth.

In 1934, the United States and, indeed, the world, roiled in turmoil. The world’s economy was collapsing. Unemployment ranged to an astonishing 23%. Many people even felt that the four-year-old Great Depression represented the collapse of the free enterprise system. Horrified Americans watched desperate nations respond to the crisis by turning to cruel dictatorships, left and right wing alike, in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Russia, and Japan. Instead of pursuing such extreme responses, Long envisioned an audience that wanted to preserve constitutional government even though that government had failed them. Feeling that President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program was falling short, Long offered a more dramatic economic reform.

Long had risen to fame in Louisiana, a state that was, then as now, dominated by extreme conservatives. Yet, Long broadcast his radio speech to the entire nation, not just to his own state. He took a broad approach that offered radical solutions tucked into a conservative frame. This helped him speak, not just to one faction, but to all working Americans. Furthermore, Long appealed to conservatives’ propensity for grievance. Unlike, say, Robert LaFollette or Clarence Darrow, Long did not present himself as a progressive (although his economic ideas were progressive in the extreme). Instead, he asked the nation to return to tradition. Back to the old ways! Back to a (perhaps imaginary) past when the nation served its workers, not its elites! Long’s populism proposed a vision: to rebuild economic justice that had been lost.

Would the same tactic work today for the aggrieved conservative voters who supported Donald Trump, curiously framing him as a populist? I will let my readers reflect and decide.


The Appeal to Tradition and Long’s Economic Arguments

Great Depression Breadline, New York City

Long’s point about wealth inequality resonates exactly with today’s democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet, unlike many progressives, Long grounded his argument, not in the idea of progress, but in the restoration of lost traditions. That grounding underlay Long’s populist outlook.

To make his case, Long blamed, not the immigrants, not even the politicians, but the wealthy elites who wielded unchecked power to guard their own wealth:

“It is not the difficulty of the problem which we have; it is the fact that the rich people of this country – and by rich people I mean the super-rich – will not allow us to solve the problems, or rather the one little problem that is afflicting this country, because in order to cure all of our woes it is necessary to scale down the big fortunes, that we may scatter the wealth to be shared by all of the people.”

Long understood that the haves say that they deserve everything while the have-nots deserve their dire fate. Long took a brilliant hack at that complaint: he quoted the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – and asked a straightforward question:

“Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than [they] and all of [their] children and children's children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?”

With that searing question, Long reversed the conservatives’ pro-wealth moral argument. We should admit that, although some of the superrich do build massive businesses by hard work and insight, a great many simply inherit or embezzle their wealth and then use it to corrupt government policy to their own benefit. Simultaneously, however, Long pointed out that other people, no less worthy than a billionaire’s heirs, might be born into relentless, hopeless, grinding poverty. Did his audience think that was fair? After all, far more people are workers than are oligarchs, and, so, should populism not be their philosophy?

Continuing to pound on that insight, Long asked:

“Is that, my friends, giving them a fair shake of the dice … when we have today in America thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of children on the verge of starvation in a land that is overflowing with too much to eat and too much to wear?”

Long thus underscored that American inheritance practices produced inherently unfair results. He drove that home with a brilliant, and not entirely inaccurate, analogy:

“… That no one man would get half of it and hand it down to a son, who takes half of what was left, and that son hand it down to another one, who would take half of what was left, until, like a snowball going downhill, all of the snow was off of the ground except what the snowball had.”

Appealing to his core group’s commitment to conservative Christianity, Long then turned to biblical law.

An earlier post traces Huey Long’s appeals to tradition:

Long’s Arguments from Religious Tradition

Long argued that biblical law not only allowed but required sharing the nation’s wealth. He reminded his listeners of the biblical Year of Jubilee which required that, every 50 years, property should revert to its original owners.

Indeed, Long insisted that redistribution was “the law of the Lord.” Furthermore, Long said that biblical law reflected an underlying value:

“We would have to distribute wealth every so often, in order that there could not be people starving to death in a land of plenty, as there is in America today.”

Long also reminded the radio audience that, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, all debts should be forgiven every seven years. He further discussed the growing problem of personal indebtedness, which was crushing Americans’ ability to function economically. This led Long to propose a religious solution for Americans’ debt:

“We have in American today, ladies and gentlemen, $272,000,000,000 of debt. Why, my friends, that cannot be paid. It is not possible for that kind of debt to be paid.”

Although those economic problems may have seemed hopeless, Long next gave an idea.


Long Proposed a Populist Solution

Understanding the importance of raising popular political support to rise against the oligarchs, Long set up a series of organizations to combat the oligarchical wealth:

“Now, we have organized a society, and we call it ‘Share Our Wealth Society,’ a society with the motto ‘every man a king.’”

Continuing, Long proposed that “we have to limit fortunes” by passing appropriate laws. Also, with Social Security still in the future, Long also supported an old age pension that would help ordinary people but, in his version, not pay the wealthy. He proposed limiting the workday and limiting production. He argued that such policies would limit the wealthy elites.

 

It Was All About Tradition

Nearing his conclusion, Long reemphasized his populist traditionalism. A progressive might shout, “Power to the People!” Long had the same idea, but phrased in conservative ideology:

“God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America, that have got more control over things than all the 120,000,000 people together, you know what the trouble is.” 

Did Long really think that his ideas could become political reality? I believe he did, and he established a program to turn them into reality. Now, public speaking teachers often explain that people will support a policy if they organize in groups to work for it. Understanding this instinctively, Long urged his listeners to “organize your own Share Our Wealth Society” and to express their views to Congress.

Brazilian President Lula’s Populist Speech

Herbert Hoover's Ode to Freedom during the Great Depression

Lessons for Today?

Were Long’s ideas realistic? That could be debated. In 1934, the modern science of macroeconomics was still in its infancy, and it is questionable whether even the greatest experts in 1934 fully understood how to deal with the Great Depression. The financial system had collapsed and crushed the world’s economy as it fell. Even today, people who should know better (but who fear change) continue to resist the most basic macroeconomic policies. Still, Long recognized an economic problem, sympathized with working people, gave them someone to blame, and proposed a solution. Nevertheless, he offered no sympathy to the socialists. Instead, he supported his ideas by citing philosophy, American political heritage, and Judeo-Christian tradition. That brilliant approach helped short-circuit opponents who thought he sounded like a liberal. Long even took a moment to lash out at Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, which, perhaps, many conservatives opposed in principle. 

So, Long did not present brilliant economics, nor incisive Bible study. Instead, he offered compelling rhetoric. Maybe Huey Long was, as his critics claimed, merely a con artist, but, if so, he was a con artist for the people. Like all good debaters, Long reset the agenda.

It is no wonder Huey Long was soon assassinated. It is also no wonder that more than 200,000 people thronged to his funeral. For, after all, populism means standing for the people. The established order had failed in 1934, and people yearned for solutions.

Somehow, I cannot reconcile Long’s version of populism (if populism still means government for the people) with President Donald Trump’s faux populism, which offers massive breaks to the wealthy. While Huey Long favored direct wealth redistribution, Trump relies more on the conservative’s usual trickle-down theme, holding that business growth will eventually improve workers’ lives. So, Trump’s speeches feature populist themes with a big-business twist: “I’ll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses. That’s going to be a job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan. It’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch.”

At the same time, however, although Long’s Share Our Wealth theme was far more radical than anything that today’s progressives suggest, he sold himself as a moral traditionalist. Long’s populism spoke for the people, for religion, and for old-time American goals. In a larger sense, faced with the Great Depression, Long sought, not to destroy capitalism, but to save it—to rescue it—and the nation—from its excesses. So, in Huey Long’s dramatic radio address, the United States heard a literal populism of the people.

I write this post on the United States’ Labor Day holiday 2026. On this day, we still face Huey Long’s ancient question: are we fair to the laboring people?

by William D. Harpine    

__________

P.S. Women had the vote in 1934, so what was Long’s purpose in making “every man a king?” That was no surprise. Louisiana did not ratify the 19th Amendment, which recognized women’s right to vote, until 1970.

By the way, both of my parents grew up during the Great Depression. My father was fortunate, in that my grandfather was a successful small-city businessman. The family lived in a large, beautifully furnished house just outside Harrisonburg, Virginia, drove a good car, and never knew hunger. Desperate hobos who rode the rails looking for temporary work knew that my grandmother was always good for a sandwich. In contrast, my mother’s parents were poor immigrants. Her father worked as a carpenter in a Pennsylvania steel mill, while her mother sold eggs. The mills were not yet unionized in 1934, and life could be hard. Still, luckily, none of my grandparents ever faced unemployment. 


Research Note

There are several excellent studies of Huey Long’s speeches. Professor Michael J. Lee’s 2006 fascinating essay in The Quarterly Journal of Speech, “The Populist Chameleon: The People's Party, Huey Long, George Wallace, and the Populist Argumentative Frame,” points out that different political philosophies have called themselves populist, with such common themes as identifying an enemy (wealthy people, big business, big government, or whatever) and promising restoration to the old ways.

The article lurks behind a paywall, but many large libraries can find an online copy for you. Also, your local library might have any number of biographical books about Huey Long. One can also watch Hollywood-style movies of varying accuracy about Huey Long.

Copyright @2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Huey Long, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Breadline, United States National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump's Soda Bottle Speech Should Have Destroyed His Credibility, but It Did Not. Why Not?

Donald Trump Signs Vaccine Executive Order

A soda bottle? Did Donald Trump really say that babies receive vaccine injections the size of a soda bottle? Yes, he did.

On August 10, 2026, United States President Donald Trump, accompanied by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a noted conspiracy theorist, and various other more or less random people, announced a new vaccine policy by executive order. This is the Trump administration's latest salvo in its attempts to change vaccine recommendations, the courts and states have already resisted Trump's earlier anti-vaccine orders. 

Sitting at a desk, while the other speakers stood, droning hesitantly in a barely audible voice, Trump rambled about the alleged harm of vaccines. After complaining that American children get too many vaccines, even hesitantly saying that combined vaccines could be “quite lethal,” Trump offered a statement that should have, but apparently did not, destroy his credibility forever. Perking up and waving his arms, Trump said:

“You should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day and I saw this early on and I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination, it looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body.”

The size of a soda bottle? Any parent who has watched their child’s vaccination knows that vaccines are administered from tiny little syringes. The MMR vaccine in the United States is available only in single dose, 0.5 ml disposable syringes. Coronavirus and influenza vaccines are often marketed in multi-use vials of 20 ml., which amounts to less than 1 fluid ounce per vial. Of course, nobody administers the entire multi-use vial to one baby!

So, Trump just made this up. The most frightening part is that he was reading from a prepared manuscript, which suggests that one or more speechwriters prepared and vetted this incoherent material before he presented it. The fact that Trump didn’t even flinch when he read this laughable passage (indeed, he perked up and spread his arms, illustrating the soda bottle’s immense size) makes me wonder whether he needs another cognitive processing test.

Sometimes, when we evaluate a speech, we should heed the one key sentence that tells us everything we need to know. Why should we care about the big picture when the detail in the corner carries the central message? Furthermore, why would the public ignore that entire message? It all comes down to how people evaluate or fail to evaluate a speaker's credibility.

Now, for the most part, the press sanewashed this entire episode. For example, CNBC took time to notice that Trump spoke “without evidence.” CNBC also cited experts who denied that the vaccine was lethal. Their calm journalistic approach gave the idea that there is a debate on some level, even as they acknowledged that Trump’s view raised controversy. Did they say anything about the soda bottle? No! Why not? We will get to that in a moment.

As far as I can see, only PolitiFact bothered to comment on Trump’s soda bottle claim, awarding it their sadly popular “Pants on Fire” rating.

Now, what was truly wrong with Trump’s claim? Is the press right, is the main problem the fact that many experts disagree? I think not. We learned years ago, did we not, that the people that support Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hold experts in contempt. Why would they suddenly care?

These responses underestimated Trump's attack on reality. A man who thinks that children received injections the size of soda bottles is unworthy of belief on any medical subject. The real point is not that Trump and the experts clashed once again. His supporters consider that to be a plus. No, the real point is that he said something so bafflingly idiotic, so disconnected from reality, so bizarre, that even the silliest conspiracy theorist would struggle to defend it. The point is that someone who says, and apparently believes, something so foolish should have no credibility whatsoever. To wallow in point-by-point refutation of the other conspiracy theories that Trump’s speech covered merely wastes our time.

Why did the press ignore the soda bottle issue? For the question on my mind is not whether Trump does or does not agree with experts. We have known for years that he rarely does. Nor is it the point that he drifted off to sleep during his own panel session. He has done that before; no one cares. Nor is it the point that Kennedy, a recovering drug addict, trembled like an autumn leaf during his share of the event. No one cares about that. No, the point is that Trump said something that was bafflingly daffy, said it with total seriousness, and blithely moved on to the rest of his anti-vaccine argument. A soda bottle? Really? Have we become so accustomed to Donald Trump’s incoherence, ignorance, and foolishness, that there still remains a need to – sanewash – his presidency, as part of some massive, nationwide effort to pretend that the United States still has a functioning president?

A psychological concept called the incredulity effect helps us to understand that. This effect occurs when sources, such as respected speakers, say something that is so astonishing that the audience literally does not believe they said it. In other words, even if they are faced with a direct quotation, news report, or video clip, we cannot expect Trump’s supporters, who endow him with credibility far beyond what he deserves, to admit that he said something that was so completely absurd. Worse, if they admit that he did say it, they could tell themselves he was just joking, speaking hyperbolically, playing five-dimensional chess, or “owning the libs.” Alternatively, as in this case, pretty much everybody just ignores Trump’s departure from reality. Maybe the nation is collectively unwilling to admit that our nation voluntarily gave the nation’s governance, the leadership of the free world, and authority over the nuclear codes, to a person whose brain no longer functions as it should.

"It's All about Control:" Conservatives, Public Health, and the Jackhammer Method of Persuasion

 

Oops, Trump Asked His Voters to Take a Vaccine

 
Sadly, not one of those excuses makes sense. First, Trump did say it and there is a video. Second, he was reading from a prepared manuscript that someone, one hopes, must have vetted. Third, Trump neither flinched nor smirked when he spoke. No, he was serious. Unfortunately, it seems that neither the press nor Trump’s millions of loyal acolytes will accept the obvious.

Nevertheless, their obliviousness changes nothing. The only part of Trump’s entire presentation, indeed, the only part of the entire lengthy panel discussion, that we should care about was that one searing burst of irrationality: a dose of vaccines “the size of a bottle of soda.” That was the one part of the speech that actually woke Trump up, leading him to gesticulate emphatically. That one sadly underreported phrase should have been enough to convince the entire nation that no one should take Donald Trump seriously. Trump’s incisive destruction of his own credibility should render the rest of his presentation moot.

Anyone who follows the news knows that Trump is not the only American leader who has passed his prime. Luckily, however, those people do not control a fearsome military machine. Never an intellectual marvel, Trump has deteriorated past the point at which he can address even the most basic national problems. The Republican majority in Congress supinely ratifies every foolish decision that Trump makes. All too often, even the Supreme Court bows at his irrational commands. But is that what is best for the country?

Will the public notice, or not? After all, in the long run, credibility is an audience response, and Trump's audience, which is the entire nation, seems to be floundering in his wake. In the moment that he rattled on about the soda bottle, Trump presented irrefutable evidence that he deserve no credibility from anyone, at any time, even as his increasingly daft presidency waddles along.

by William D. Harpine

Linguistic Note: The charming neologism “sanewashing” often crops up among anti-Trump bloggers; I think that Jennifer Rubin coined the term, but who knows?

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image: White House photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Martin Luther King's Inspiring Language at Temple Israel of Hollywood

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

So said civil rights organizer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood” on February 26, 1965. Temple Israel of Hollywood was holding a fundraiser to support the Civil Rights movement. King laid out civil right’s moral foundation. A Reform Jewish synagogue, the Temple has been the spiritual home of Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis, Jr., Edward G. Robinson, and Leonard Nimoy.

While introducing King, the Temple’s distinguished rabbi, Dr. Max Nussbaum, praised King as:

“The man who has changed the moral climate of America to a point by which our country and our nation will never be the same again.”

Long admired as the master of spiritual language, King employed a profound knowledge of philosophy and theology, a gift for choosing the exact word needed to relate his ideas to his audience, and passionate delivery. In this magnificent sermon, King’s aphorisms conveyed his moral ideas to his audience. An aphorism is a short, thought-provoking, memorable statement that reflects wise, careful insights. Aphorisms, like King’s statement about “the arc of the moral universe,” encourage the audience to reflect on important issues in deep, provocative ways. As the master of aphorism, King wove his moral points around a series of wise sayings. 

As we study King’s wise sayings, let us turn first to:

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” 

The word somehow, a word that denies certainty, reaches instead toward the inexplicable: the arc of justice is spiritual, not scientific. King used that aphorism to organize a message of hope. King wound that aphorism around the traditional gospel song, “We Shall Overcome.” The song and the aphorism alike implied that justice might come slowly, but we can take it as a matter of faith that it cannot be stopped. He then quoted Thomas Carlisle that “No lie can live forever.” King continued that “With this faith we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” He concluded the topic by quoting a hopeful prophecy from the biblical book of Job, “the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.”

Another of King’s aphorisms reminded the audience to focus on moral ends:

“The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.” [Italics added]

Developing that aphorism, King complained that “we have allowed our technology to outdistance our theology.” Our failure to recognize “the ends for which we live” had led the country, King insisted, onto a wrong moral path:

“Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.” [Italics added] 

Temple Israel of Hollywood

That brilliant contrast between neighborhood and brotherhood accentuated the aphorism’s wisdom: that we must never forget the ends for which we live.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

  
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Recognizing that Americans value prosperity, but wishing to direct attention to the ethical realm, King introduced yet another moving aphorism:

“A great nation is a compassionate nation.”

That is, prosperity alone did not make a nation great. Neither, as King noted later in the speech, does military might. Instead, a compassionate nation, King insisted, must concern itself with people who are “smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society.” A compassionate nation must, he continued, rise above what King then called “the mountain of indifference.” He insisted that we all live together “in a single garment of destiny.” (What a powerful metaphor!)

Metaphors in the Temple Israel of Hollywood Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

 
In the speech's most powerful passage, King laid out a series of aphorisms and metaphors that emphasized the centrality of love:

“I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good.”

King followed that statement with a powerful aphorism about love and religion:

“He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God.

That theme led King to describe love as “the supreme unifying principle of life.”

Driving that point home, King quoted Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew (22:37): “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” The Jewish congregation would, I think, have immediately noticed that Jesus was echoing Deuteronomy 6:5 from the Hebrew Scriptures.

As he neared his speech’s end, King warned the congregation that anyone who stands up for love or justice was certain to be branded with “bad names:”

“Some will be called reds and communists simply because they believe in the brotherhood of man.”

King’s prediction proved to be stunningly true. King’s brilliant aphorism about the “brotherhood of man” predicted the civil rights’ ongoing struggle with darkness. Such a profound warning! Indeed, even two generations later, we hear Erec Smith of the conservative Cato Institute stating that the idea of diversity, equality, and conclusion “draws from radical Marxist theory.”  That is, in my view, for every person who preaches love and community, we can always find someone else who gives wickedness the moral high ground.

Finally, let us hearken back to Rabbi Nussbaum’s introduction. King had indeed “changed the moral climate of America” to the end that the United States would “never be the same again.” Although we, as a nation, continue to struggle with civil rights - which conservatives are, once again, attacking in vicious fashion, King’s statements that public policy must follow a moral, religious code continue to resonate. His unforgettable statements echo through the years.

by William D. Harpine  

___________


Rhetorical Note: How does an aphorism differ from a slogan? I say that the difference lies in the human heart: an aphorism is a wise saying that leads people to reflect about what is right and wrong, good or bad, or wise or unwise. A slogan, in contrast, is a glib statement that discourages discussion.

Here are two simple examples. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” is an aphorism that helps us think about justice and divine guidance. King’s statement gave people hope as they struggled to overcome a segregated society. Also, it encourages us to reflect on our societal values. King’s aphorism contrasts with “My country, right or wrong,” which is merely a slogan. Its purpose is to shut down conversation: if we follow that slogan, its blind nationalism tells us to ignore public policy’s morality. We can better understand the distinction if we remember Captain Stephen Decatur’s original statement: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.” Unlike the crude sloganeering of “my country right or wrong,” Decatur saw that a wise nation should act justly. Decatur’s full statement was not an aphorism (it was balance and contrast, a different kind of rhetorical figure), but the crude, morality-free slogan “my country right or wrong,” coldly stripped from Decatur's original context, mistakenly teaches that patriotism must erase our conscience. That reflects how a slogan is not an aphorism. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr.: US News & World Report, 

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Temple Israel of Hollywood, stevendamron, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Trump's Election Fraud Speech and the Illusion of Proof, Part Two

Donald Trump

In his July 16, 2026 speech about election security, United States President Donald Trump made several startling claims about the nation’s elections. Furthermore, he simultaneously released documents in an attempt to prove them. Among his claims, he asserted that noncitizens are illegally voting: 

“According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” 

As I pointed out in yesterday’s post, Trump’s speech created the illusion that he was proving things that he did not, in fact, prove. Instead of stating the proof during his actual speech, Trump referred listeners to the White House website. Note to readers: when a speaker promises to prove something, but instead refers the audience to an outside source for proof, you need to get suspicious right away. That tactic raises a giant red flag. 

Trump's Election Fraud Speech and the Illusion of Proof, Part One

Anyway, I accordingly browsed the White House website. I found a note, which did not prove election fraud as promised. Instead, it said that the White House was “addressing key areas of election integrity.” Basic government-speak. Typical Deep State hedging. I then looked at the link that said, “Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls.”  Curiously, only one page in that link (and by page, I mean, literally, one printed page) dealt with noncitizens on state voter rolls (the only other page on that link was on a different topic, pointing out that the Chinese government has been accessing American voter rolls, which is apparently legal, albeit extremely disturbing). Here it is. 

White House Document; Click to Enlarge

Thus, now that we have browsed through several confusing links, we finally find Trump’s supposed evidence that 

“OVER 250,000 NON-CITIZENS ARE ILLEGALLY REGISTERED TO VOTE IN JUST THE FOUR STATES FOR WHICH PUBLIC DATA FILES HAVE BEEN REVIEWED.” [italics added]

This page then petulantly lists 10 states (far short of 50 but more than 4, which makes me curious about the White House’s editing team) that have been “proactive” to scan their voter rolls for alien voters. Worse, even if we count all 10 states from the White House chart, the number of non-citizens registered to vote only adds up to 10,716. If that turns out to be true, it is 10,716 too many, but it is nowhere near 250,000, as the headline claims. Now, I am no math genius, but evidently I can out-count the White House’s wizards. 

The document conspiratorially concludes by claiming:  

“There is an undeniable pattern emerging as DHS begins to unravel the horrific damage done by the open border policies of the Biden administration. States that have adopted alien-first policies instead of American-first policies have a disproportionate number of non-citizens on their voter rolls.”  

Okay, as the old hamburger advertisement asked, “where’s the beef?”  

First, where is the valid evidence proving that these thousands of noncitizens are (1) registered to vote as noncitizens and (2) actually voting? A chart, by itself, proves nothing. Since I have been trained in social science research methods, I immediately want to know the methodology by which the chart was created. Unfortunately, that methodology is not given. This matters, for legal actions have claimed that the supposed lists of noncitizen voters include legal immigrants who obtained a driver’s license while non-citizens, but subsequently became naturalized and are therefore now legally allowed to vote. In one such lawsuit, the State of Texas backed down on its claim! Analyzing Texas’ actions, David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research commented that, “Their claims would likely be dismissed [in court] until they could come up with something that actually documents how they got to those numbers.” 

Since the one-page document – the only evidence that Trump presented on this point – fails to address this well-publicized criticism, what, if anything, has been established?  

Second, if there are, indeed, thousands of noncitizens illegally registered to vote, why have these supposedly patriotic, data-driven states not prosecuted them – by the thousands? The evidence does not support Trump’s claim. That is not just a logical gap; it is a logical cavern. 

Trump made a simple, but vital, claim about election security. He presented no evidence in his speech, instead referring listeners to his website. The website provides only pathetic documentation. This reduces his claim to mere political posturing. It was easy for him to make false claims, but making such a claim in a speech does not prove it to be true. The speaker either offers proof or does not offer proof. In this case, Trump did not present the promised proof. Making a wild accusation proves nothing! 

Smoke, mirrors, and misdirection! A magician’s classic tricks. Trump’s speech directed me to a website. I plowed through the website, link after confusing link, only to find that any proof is doubtful. It is easy to make accusations. It is much harder to discover and present proof. It was easy for Trump to make these accusations. I, however, needed to do a lot of work to discover that he had not proven anything. Throwing out a puff of smoke in front of a mirror? That’s easy. Digging into the facts? That requires effort. That, in fact, underlies Trump’s real trick. 

Trump's Speech of January 6, 2021: A "Firehose of Falsehood"

Social science explains why Trump’s trick works. RAND Corporation researchers introduced the concept of the “Firehose of Falsehood.” The idea is that dishonest speakers, like Donald Trump, can spew out vast numbers of false charges. A firehose of false charges. One false charge after another. Their gullible audience doesn’t expect them to prove anything. However, to disprove even one charge is a lot of work. Look at how much effort I needed to create this blog post just to disprove one questionable claim. It’s easy for a speaker to spew out an unsupported accusation, but hard for a careful listener to prove that it’s false. Critical listeners eventually get overwhelmed. Trump’s speech made many claims. He proved none of them. I suspect that most of them are false. Do I, however, want to spend the next week or two parsing the speech, point by point, to prove that every single claim was false? No, of course not. I have other things to do with my life. 

One flaw in Trump’s documentation is absolutely fascinating: although the United States government is stuffed with skilled web designers, Trump’s team made his election documents hard to access and even harder to link. Why? Well, maybe Trump just hired the worst web designers in the government. I wouldn’t doubt that. Or, maybe, he and his team just schemed to make the documents hard to access. I lean toward the former, because of the old slogan that we should never accuse somebody of dishonesty when incompetence explains things perfectly well. Still, who knows? 

I hope, in a future post, to explain the ancient concept of Burden of Proof. Ultimately, Trump’s genius as a rhetorician, and his failure as a leader, is that he asserts things that he cannot prove. His loyal supporters’ biggest weakness may be their gullible eagerness to accept Trump’s dubious, unproven claims. Next time around, when Trump makes outrageous claims, our simple response needs to be: “you made the claim, now you need to prove it!” 

by William D. Harpine

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Donald Trump: official portrait, public domain

Image of Homeland Security Document, White House website, public domain

Trump's Election Fraud Speech and the Illusion of Proof, Part One

Magician Pretending to Saw a Woman in Half

As a child, I used to watch magicians on the Ed Sullivan Show put a pretty young woman into a box, saw the box in half, and then reassemble the woman, quite unharmed. As an adult, I know perfectly well that nothing happened to the woman. The magician just created an illusion. He made me think that I was seeing something that I was not seeing at all.

President Donald Trump is good at that kind of thing. In his White House speech of July 16, 2026, Donald Trump created the illusion that he was proving something, but it was mostly smoke and mirrors. A magicians’ trick. Now, Trump did not promise to saw a woman in half and put her back together. He did, however, promise this:

“Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”

Trump promised to expose “vulnerabilities” in our election system. However, did he prove his point? I contend that he did not, for he failed to live up to his own standards. A reasoned argument has three essential parts: (1) the evidence, (2) the conclusion, and (3) a link that connects the evidence to the conclusion.

Trump then emphasized that he was going to present wonderful evidence, a “declassification and release of critical intelligence,” evidence that the powers that be, the mysterious Deep State, had covered up for years:

“This vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you, the American people — our beautiful, our great American people.”

Sadly, Trump’s argument failed because the evidence that the White House subsequently published on its official website continued to cover up much of the information that the American people might want to see. He gave the illusion that he had proved something, but the evidence he cited did not prove his conclusions.

Here is Trump’s claim, and here is his reference:

“You can see these documents for yourself at whitehouse.gov, that's whitehouse.gov, go check it out. Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly, and that's what we're doing.” [italics added]

Trump never described this information in any detail during his actual speech. That always makes me suspicious. Instead, he told us to look at a website. So, I looked at WhiteHouse.gov, where I quickly found that a number of the cited documents did not open on my computer. Hmm. What about the ones that did open? Well, it just seems to me that if the speaker’s idea is “disclosing” information, that well, information should be disclosed. Alas! When I opened one of the White House links to information about alleged problems with our election systems, I uncovered this glorious page: 

And this one!

I went over quite a few of the documents, finding that many of them were heavily redacted, and that the ones that were not redacted were, for the most part, uninformative procedural comments. I am no expert in foreign intelligence or election systems, but it does not seem to me that these pages disclosed useful information. Nor do I feel that I now, as Trump had promised, “can see these documents” in any useful way. What do you think?

The reader is surely thinking, maybe there is secret information in those documents that needs to stay private. I don’t doubt that for a moment. Still, Trump said that his purpose was to disclose secret information for the public to examine, information that had been hidden by the Deep State, and yet that information was not disclosed. I see no way to think that Trump kept his promise.

  

To me, as a somewhat critical listener, it seems obvious that anyone who looks at these blanked out pages is going to say, well, these are just blanked out pages. Blanked out pages don’t show anything, do they? So what purpose do they accomplish?

Those questions are easy to answer. Trump’s bizarre semi-disclosure proved little but accomplished plenty. After all, neither Trump nor his team showed even the slightest interest in proving anything that a careful listener or reader would care about. No! They presented what communication professionals call “the illusion of proof.” Trump claimed that our elections are in danger. He seemed to present enormous amounts of evidence, not in his speech, but on a website. That evidence, if we trouble ourselves to navigate to the website and look at it, which some people will and some people will not, proved little, but an uncritical listener could – and probably will – imagine that Trump had now proved something important, that Democrats should be ashamed of themselves, and that Trump had now established that the Democrats and the Chinese and who knows who else have cheated in our elections. After all, Trump made an important claim, and then gave evidence, and, if one doesn’t look into too much detail, one might think that Trump had established his claim. One might even think that he had disclosed something useful to know.

Donald Trump Created the "Illusion of Proof" in His April 13, 2020 Coronavirus Task Force Press Conference

In a Rose Garden Speech, Trump Pretended to Have a Healthcare Plan

Yet, even a casual glance shows that Trump failed to prove his claim. Unfortunately, he failed to live up to his own standard, which was to disclose secret documents. Instead, we got smoke and mirrors. An illusion worthy of a great magician. But proof? No. Magicians do not saw young women in half and put them back together. That is only an illusion. Neither did Trump prove that anything big was wrong with our elections. He only created an illusion. 

by William D. Harpine

________________   

N.B.: Note that mainstream news media have, with great care, gone over all of the released documents so far, and generally concluded that Trump, at best, overstated his case. They are obviously right. What I add is that Trump created an illusion, a pretense, a dramatic and convincing demonstration that he had proved something, while proving little.

Research Note: The concept of the “illusion of proof” comes from a landmark article by an important communication professor, the late Barnet Baskerville, "The Illusion of Proof," Western Speech, 25 (1961): 236-242. The journal is now called Western Journal of Communication. Although this invaluable article is not readily available online, a large research library should be able to find you a copy. 

To understand the structure of reasoned arguments, there is still no better source than Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument. 

Note: Here is the follow-up post, Part Two

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Images of redacted pages are public domain, from WhiteHouse.gov

Image of magician is public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Liberty or Bread? Herbert Hoover's Ode to Freedom during the Great Depression

Herbert Hoover

“Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon Liberty.” [italics added]

So said former President Herbert Hoover in Denver Colorado, on October 20, 1936 on behalf of Republican candidate Alf Landon’s presidential campaign. Hoover used the god term “freedom” to override the practical economic failures of the Republican Party’s attempts to overcome the Great Depression.

The God Term

Widely considered to have been one of the United States of America’s worst presidents, Hoover asserted a stark disconnection between conservatives and liberals. Ardently pounding on the god term “freedom,” Hoover ignored the disastrous consequences of the conservative economic policies, tight money and protective tariffs, which aggravated the Great Depression’s horrors. Instead, he reframed the debate with the word “freedom.” While Democrats cast the debate in terms of Hoover’s failed policies versus Roosevelt’s New Deal, Hoover debated on national values. The great conservative rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver explains god terms in, The Ethics of Rhetoric: “By “god term” we mean that expression about which all other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and powers.”

As he began this speech, Hoover warned against the growth of federal government power, which he called “illegal invasions of the Constitution.” Ignoring the economy’s wholesale decline, the 16.9% unemployment rate, and the banking industry’s collapse, Hoover instead focused on the god term:

“I gave the warning against this philosophy of government four years ago from a heart heavy with anxiety for the future of our country. It was born from many years’ experience of the forces moving in the world which would weaken the vitality of American freedom. It grew in four years of battle as President to uphold the banner of free men.” [italics added]

Hoover then railed, albeit in abstract terms, against President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. Again, ignoring his own policies’ abject failure, Hoover attacked “economic planning,” “attempts to centralize relief in Washington,” and “attempts at currency inflation and repudiation of government obligation.” He histrionically called the latter policy “robbery of insurance-policy holders, savings-banks depositors and wage earners.” Hoover omitted that people who held financial instruments like insurance policies and savings accounts ranked among society’s more successful members.

Donald Trump's Tariff Speech: "Liberation" as a God Term

Continuing, Hoover used inexact terms about policies while deriding Roosevelt’s supposed assault against freedom. Thus, when Hoover criticized “Marxists,” “Brain Trusters,” and “American radicals,” he may have felt that the god term overrode point by point details. Instead, consistent with conservatives’ habitual opposition to government spending, 

Hoover boasted that:

“I vetoed the idea of recovery through stupendous spending to prime the pump. That was born of a British professor.”

One presumes that the British professor was Lord John Maynard Keynes, the economist who founded the modern science of macroeconomics. Interestingly, Hoover never said what was wrong with priming the pump. By this point, the influence of the god term rendered details needless. Going further, Hoover literally condemned macroeconomic stimulus in biblical terms:

“The New Deal repudiation of Democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.” [italics added]

The Ark of the Covenant is found in the Hebrew scriptures (e.g., Deut. 31:9) Hoover thundered that the New Deal, with its vastly increased governmental power, would destroy national freedom and spread suffering:

“Let me say to you that any measure which breaks our dykes of freedom will flood the land with misery.” [italics added]

Indeed, continuing to slight the practical pros and cons of economics, Hoover instead emphasized the god term of freedom:

“I am proud to have carried the banner of free men to the last hour of the term my countrymen entrusted it to me.” [italics added]

Mystical Power Overrides Economic Details

Soup Kitchen Feeding the Hungry, 1936

Since Hoover was using “freedom” as a god term, a term that had by now achieved almost mystical power, he implied that freedom overrode mere economic considerations. Nearing his conclusion, Hoover marked a line between economic welfare (which he said he supported!) and moral principles. He did not, however, rank economics and moral principles equally: instead, his first and foremost principle was freedom. Without freedom, he asked, what good could material success do for us? Why, he wondered, would we sacrifice our freedom at the cost of moral collapse? Offering another biblical allusion, Hoover said:

“There are things far more important to a nation than material welfare. It is possible to have a prosperous country under a dictatorship. It is not possible to have a free country. No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men. What is the nation profited if it shall gain the whole world and lose its own soul?” [italics added]

That last question recalls Mark 8:36 from the Christian Bible: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

The reader will have noted by now that Hoover discussed freedom in an entirely negative sense. That is, freedom meant the absence of government restraint. Hoover never mentioned restraints that business conglomerates and trusts might impose upon their workers or customers, nor did he consider the kind of freedom that means nothing more than the freedom to do without. In contrast, a few years later, Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech would include Freedom from Want. Freedom from Want placed freedom in a more positive sense – not merely the absence of restraint, but the positive freedom to live a fruitful life. Thus, Hoover repudiated not just Roosevelt’s policies, but also the value structure that Roosevelt was still developing.

Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” Speech, a Lesson in Positive Justice

Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech about the Struggle for Freedom

Conclusion

Hoover asked an important question, and we should not underestimate it. His lofty reification of the moral issue of freedom deserves our respect. At the same time, his casual dismissal of the economy’s nearly total collapse, like his stubborn review of his own failed policies, gives us pause. His attempt to equate the New Deal with Marxism and dictatorship was hyperbolic enough to weaken his credibility. For him to equate the free enterprise system with biblical values seemed to me like quite a stretch. Still, when lofty moral goals conflict with a harsh economic disaster, we need to wonder what kind of freedom Hoover was talking about. People enjoy liberty, yes, but no one wants to starve free while other people thrive.

Yet, to economic historians, it is entirely unclear that Roosevelt’s economic policies were actually much better than Hoover’s. Nevertheless, what made the rhetorical difference is that Roosevelt gave people hope by speaking as if he cared about the people, while Hoover only seemed to care about abstract values that somehow only seemed to support individuals who were already thriving. Perhaps that difference in attitude is what propelled Roosevelt to one landslide election victory after another.

The same harsh rhetorical contrast between liberty and prosperity marks our political discourse today. Both sides have a point. For example, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, told the Faith and Freedom Conference that:

“The danger that we have right now is the energy, the excitement, the grassroots operation, the money is on the side of the insurgent left and they are openly running as Marxists, communists, for Congress!”

Governments can, indeed, oppress our freedom. Yet, wise government can sometimes alleviate our suffering. As a god term, “freedom” carries great rhetorical power. Can the god term, however, fill an empty dinner table?

by William D. Harpine   

______________

Personal note: My parents both grew up during the Great Depression. My paternal grandfather left his family’s rocky farm in the Shenandoah Valley and made a good living as a wholesale grocery salesman. As a result, my father grew up in a large house that was decorated with glorious woodwork and equipped with modern appliances, and his childhood never knew poverty. My father later joked that his father’s business sense never passed down to his descendants, and, to my regret, he had a point. In contrast, my mother, the child of eastern European immigrants, grew up desperately poor. Her father was a carpenter in a steel mill but handled his money poorly, while her mother raised chickens and sold eggs. They still raised 12 successful children through the Great Depression.

Here Is My Family's Immigration Story

Research Note: The rhetorical theorist and literary critic Kenneth Burke wrote about “god terms” in his 1945 book, The Grammar of Motives. Richard M. Weaver later made god terms central to his theory of rhetoric in The Ethics of Rhetoric. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Herbert Hoover, Executive Office of the President, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of soup kitchen line, US government, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons