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Supposed Populism in the
United States in 2024 and the Upcoming Second
Trump Administration A "close-reading" of, and response
to, Populist
Conservatism and
Constitutional Order by Kevin D. Roberts,
President
of
The Heritage Foundation --
published
in Imprimis, a publication of Hilldale College.
My comments are
in the relevant places in this red font to make them
easily distinguishable
from those of Dr. Roberts. The
following [in black
font] is adapted from a talk
delivered in Christ Chapel at Hillsdale
College on October 23, 2024, as part of the Drummond
Lectures in Christ Chapel
series. The top-down,
elitist -- this has
become a disparaging pejorative term as
brandished by conservatives against liberals,
particularly those educated at or
affiliated with certain universities considered to
be liberal. The
implied charge is that liberals are out of touch
with society at large and with
the will of the people, and suffer from delusions
of superiority rather
than any actual
superior qualities, knowledge, or intellect.
But "elite" actually
simply means "a select group that is superior in
terms of ability or
qualities to the rest of a group or society" and the
election of
representatives in a representative democracy was
always intended to be
election of the people thought best to serve in that
capacity -- the so-called
'best and brightest', not the worst and least bright
or most average.
Elitism was never considered in America to be based
on birthright or wealth,
although both those things have individually or
collectively often helped
people become elected, particularly if their
expressed views matched the wills
of their constituents or if they were eloquent and
persuasive enough to be able
to change the will of their constituents to match
theirs -- brand
of politics that has dominated the United States since
the end of the Cold War and
long before that, from the beginning of the country
—under Republican and Democratic administrations
alike—has failed. As
the saying goes: "Success has many fathers, but
failure is an orphan." The problem here though
is what counts as
failure versus improvement or progress.
Conservatives, particularly those
who are reactionaries, tend to consider to be
failures what liberals tend to
consider (moral) improvements and (social)
progress. But in many cases
change brings both benefits and burdens, and the
truth is not as simplistic as
unqualified success or unqualified failure.
Yes, we are
materially richer than we
were in 1991, and our largest corporations are more
profitable. But we are [1]
militarily and strategically weaker -- presumably in the sense of
not now being the only ones
with nuclear weapons or intercontinental missiles or
with domination of, or the
strongest economic ties with, countries whose
natural resources have become
important as technology changes or advances.
But those developments are not necessarily
nor likely because of flawed
political decisions made by 'elitist' politicians
with a false sense of
superiority – [2]
fiscally endangered
-- only insofar as the
world is possibly now more
competitive; but it is a mantra of conservatives
that competition is a good
thing (though perhaps they mean only when it is not
competition against them)
-- and [3] spiritually
enervated -- but that is
a point of contention.
It equates spirituality with organized
conservative religion.
But even in
religion, there are liberal adherents who probably
agree more with the liberal
adherents of other religions than they do with the
conservative ones of their
own religion. As
a result, public
trust in the vaunted institutions that our elites
control—political,
scientific, journalistic, educational, religious—has
evaporated for different
reasons in each area.
Suspicions about science are limited to
particular areas, such as medical science (sometimes
oddly in that the same
people who adamantly distrust and refuse medical
vaccines, desire, or even
demand, medical treatment if they get the disease
the vaccine would have
prevented or mitigated), often because some medical
advice has become tainted
by false accusations.
Medical or
scientific advice also may involve unaddressed or
unresolved conflicts with
other areas of life -- political, economic, social,
cultural, religious, or
educational in various ways such as the financial,
educational, and social
development consequences of “social distancing” to
slow contagion.
And also people fear or resent science and
technology because it is difficult or impossible to
keep up with the changes in
the work place and elsewhere that science and
technology are more and more
rapidly bringing about, along with the fact that
scientific and technological
inventions can be appropriated for fraud and evil,
apart from their intended
and actual benefits). And populism—especially
on the conservative
Right—is on the rise. But whether that is
overall good or not and whether it is for the right
reasons is important to
bring to light and consider, along with the issue of
its relative strength to
what are considered liberal views. One of the
more interesting political
signs carried by 'right wing conservatives' in
recent elections was "Keep
the government out of my Social Security",
apparently without the
realization that Social Security is a government
program that is liberal or was
considered too liberal at the time of its origin,
and is something many
Republican legislators have always wanted to reduce
or eliminate and still want
to reduce or eliminate today.)
Although I
will focus on the U.S.,
this rise of populism is widespread. From Argentina to
Italy to France to the
United Kingdom to Hungary, there are similarities --
seemingly then casting doubt on the contention that
failure is the fault of
American Democratic and Republican leadership or
political philosophies.
The new populism tends to be economically and
politically nationalistic --
in times of rapid scientific, technological, moral,
social, and economic change, many people to tend to
want to go back to a more
comfortable past and narrower cultural environment
they believe they can better
navigate, especially without having to ascend what
seems to be too steep a
learning curve, or change too much in their
lives. It tends to be [called by those who want
it] culturally patriotic and socially
conservative, while being
considered merely reactionary, oppressive,
and backward thinking by those who do not want it.
It tends to
sympathize with workers over corporations --
seriously? Conservatives favor unions or their
goals of higher wages out
of considerations about how company earnings should
be distributed fairly?
It is also self-consciously, defiantly—often
mockingly—anti-establishment. So is
liberalism. Saturday Night Live and
most of the late night
'comedy' shows and hosts are hardly social
conservatives.
It is not a
coincidence that so many
of the West’s populist leaders—Javier Milei, Jair
Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán,
Giorgia Meloni, and Donald Trump—have, shall we say,
colorful personalities --
as do drunk, opinionated uncles everywhere.
Their political swagger may threaten elite politicians
almost as much as their
policy agendas do, because it punctures the bubble of
credentialed,
institutional authority that insulates elite power
from public scrutiny --
no; it is because it is blindly accepted without
public scrutiny by so many people whom the
educational system has clearly
failed to teach either general reasoning skills or
facts of history, science,
math, economics, etc. as is easily demonstrated by
formally or informally
testing those things in the general population.
An all too commonly given and accepted
political argument is that
problems that occur during one administration are
therefore the fault of that
administration, even though they may have been
natural consequences of the
policies of previous ones. Moreover,
the
accepted claim then is that those problems can only
be remedied by changing the
party in power.
It is like the belief
that divorced people have that their next marriage,
to someone else, will be
much more successful and satisfactory.
With few
exceptions, the Left as we
know it today has rejected populism out of hand,
embracing instead Big
Government, Big Business --
false --
Big Banks -- false--
Big Tech -- not all of it
-- Big Pharma --
false--, Big Labor --
which supposedly opposes Big Business --, Big
Ag -- not all of it -- Big Media --
not all of it -- and Big Entertainment -- ??
what does that even mean? Are conservatives
against entertainment or just
entertainment they consider too liberal and/or too
vulgar, etc., which even many
liberals oppose. For the most part,
today’s Left is hard at work
fortifying the power these institutions wield against
the rigors of democratic
accountability. Or
is that 'against the
conservative rigorous resistance to democratic and
popular change'?
Is it
more
“populist to have resisted or pushed for rural
electrification in the 1930’s
and for the interstate highway system construction
in the 1950’s, or for road
construction at all in the early 1900’s rather than
to protect all the jobs
that had to do with horses?
Thus the only
hope for a sustainable,
democratically legitimate populist reform movement
today is on the Right --
only if political and social pendulums can only
swing
fully in the opposite direction in regard to all
issues and problems instead of
being made to stop somewhere reasonable that may be
different for different
issues and problems. The real solution to any
problem is not likely to be
one that is either "liberal" or "conservative",
whatever
that even means; and especially not in its
entirety. For example,
competitive "free trade" markets are normally
considered to be a good
thing by both liberals and conservatives, and yet
there are circumstances and
occasions where they can cause harm to people, and
the question then is how
best to prevent, or at least minimize, that
harm. For, example when NAFTA
(the North American Free Trade Agreement) was
enacted, it should have been
pretty clear that was going to displace some jobs
and workers in the U.S. Those
workers should have been paid to
retrain for jobs that would be competitive under the
new conditions brought
about by the agreement, not just thrown to the
wolves and left to figure out
for themselves how to adapt. Most change, no
matter how it comes about,
brings with it problems for some people that need to
be addressed, no matter
how much the change might benefit others or even the
most people 'in the long
run'; short runs are also important, since as John
Maynard Keynes famously
pointed out “in the long run, we are all dead”, or,
as one graduate student one
time pointed out to friends who wanted him to go out
drinking with them one
night when they said the important exam he wanted to
study for that night
wouldn't matter in a hundred years, "No, but it will
matter next week and
for all of my career in the meantime." The
question is whether the
leaders of the movement can harness the highly
negative energy from which the
populism emerges and channel it toward a coherent,
positive politics of
national renewal and reform. And that is
true; but from what conservatives so far indicate,
including (especially) the
Heritage Foundation's own "Project 2025", it seems
unlikely the
renewal and reform will be positive or good, and
that it will simply exchange
current beneficiaries and sufferers by reversing
policies, rather than helping
more people benefit and fewer suffer by actually
improving policies. *** To see what
today’s populists are
reacting against, think back to 1991. The end of the
Cold War appeared to be a
great victory for the Washington establishment—never
mind that most leaders of
that establishment opposed Reaganism, which was
instrumental in bringing down
the Soviet Union. Regardless, this victory earned
Western institutions a high
level of public trust unimaginable today. In November
1989, for instance, when
the Berlin Wall fell, President George H.W. Bush’s
public approval rating hit
70 percent and would climb to 80 and even 90 percent
in subsequent years. With the Cold
War over, one would have
expected a recalibration of American foreign and
domestic policy. It should at
least have been a time for a national debate about
those topics. For four
decades, we had strung tripwires for nuclear war
around the world to contain a
foe that suddenly no longer existed. Working families
who had invested two
generations of blood and treasure during what
President John F. Kennedy called
the “long, twilight struggle” were ready to focus on
problems closer to home.
But the
Washington establishment had
other ideas. President Bush himself, in the lead-up to
the first Gulf War,
pledged allegiance to a “New World Order” that would
be governed by the United
Nations and policed, at its behest, by the U.S.
Between that tin-ear approach
and his backtracking on conservative economic
policies, Bush squandered his
popular support so badly that he suffered an
embarrassing electoral defeat in
1992. But
that is overly simplistic, since Bush faced two
opponents in that election, Bill
Clinton and Ross Perot, with Perot siphoning off
more than enough votes from
conservatives to have given Bush the victory in a
race against just Clinton.
In 1993,
Bush’s successor, President
Bill Clinton, led the fight to ratify the North
American Free Trade Agreement,
which gutted America’s industrial Midwest and lit the
fuse on an illegal
immigration bomb still exploding today. In 1994,
Congress passed a law
submitting the U.S. to the World Trade Organization,
surrendering America’s
economic sovereignty to globalist bureaucrats. Soon
thereafter, a bipartisan
majority in Congress granted Most Favored Nation
trading status to the People’s
Republic of China, handing over working Americans’
multi-trillion-dollar peace
dividend to our greatest international rival.
Clinton also
sent U.S. troops into
Mogadishu to referee the Somali civil war—with
infamous results in the Black
Hawk Down debacle—and orchestrated a bombing campaign
in the former Yugoslavia.
The climax of the White House debate about the latter
mission is
illustrative—it came when future-Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright snapped
at General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
“What’s the point of
having this superb military that you’re always talking
about if we can’t use
it?” And, of course, this was before President George
W. Bush led America into
the successive catastrophes of Iraq, the global
financial crisis of 2008, and
the Great Recession.
But people often
simply make mistakes predicting the
consequences of their options and decisions.
As it is said, prophecy is always precarious,
particularly about the
future. Undeniably
mistakes were made in
all those areas, but they were human errors, not
liberal versus conservative
ones and not populist versus elitist ones.
Neither war or pacifism, nor trade agreements
or protectionism tend to
take into account the suffering and loss of those
sacrificed for the supposed
long term greater good of the greatest number.
In the
decade-and-a-half since then,
America’s fiscal situation has deteriorated. Americans
–
and the rest of the world also -- suffered
under the Covid pandemic
while government bureaucrats (aided by the media)
censored and demonized anyone
who challenged the official (and often provably false)
pandemic narrative – I
don’t understand this claim; at the height of the
pandemic, some 3000 Americans were dying each day,
many of them previously
healthy, not just the elderly or those with
aggravating additional conditions;
and even today, group activities during a time of
contagious diseases tend to
increase the number of illnesses. It is
not clear to me at all that we would have come out
better if social distancing
was not imposed in those cases where it was imposed. It is
always easy to say a plan that didn’t
work perfectly was the wrong plan and that a plan
not tried would have been
better. Monday
morning quarterbacking
and hindsight make second-guessing easy about what
did not work, but not
necessarily any more accurate about what would have
worked. Sometimes
even the best of plans can fail; so
failure itself does not show a plan to have been
worse than proposed
alternatives. I
do think that giving out
‘relief’ checks to everyone, rather than just to
those who needed relief
because their jobs were affected by social
distancing or by COVID, was an
error, but I thought that at the time, in part
because of fairness and because
those whose incomes were not affected by social
distancing did not need the
relief money, but also in part because I thought
putting what would be “extra”
money in the hands of those who did not need it,
would likely allow and
motivate some businesses to raise their prices just
to take advantage of the
relief program to increase their profits (and which
then tended to also set off
inflation in some cases). And both
Trump
and Biden passed out relief check indiscriminately,
likely helping cause or at
least foster unnecessary inflation in some cases. But also,
the world supply change disruptions
from COVID contributed significantly to inflation
worldwide. The Supreme
Court redefined marriage –
yes, and made it more
inclusive, which was good, but which they could have
done by creating domestic
partnerships with all the same rights as marriage
without calling it marriage
or redefining marriage; but the Supreme Court
decision in Obergefell did not do
the following: establishing the legal
predicate for the trans fanaticism
now responsible for destroying women’s sports and
mutilating children across
the country any more than
it established the (at
the time, feared) right to marry your dog or cat, or
than it caused the COVID
pandemic. Supreme
Court decisions, even
problematic ones, do not cause every problem that
presents itself after them. The issues involved in the
concept of transgenderism are
serious ones that need much more systematic and
deeper consideration than that
which politicians on either side give it.
Similarly, abortion is a serious and complex
issue that is not solved by
either total (or near-total) abortion bans or by
“abortion on demand claimed
‘rights’ ”.
The
Justice Department, including the
FBI, has shown brazen political partisanship in
support of the elites and
against the populists. I’m
not really seeing this
or what the evidence is for it apart from the claims
that the FBI’s and Justice
Department’s investigating Donald Trump for alleged
crimes was somehow just
politically motivated or that pursuit of his alleged
crimes are purely political
prosecutions, neither of which seems true. Our nation has
been beset by an unprecedented
border crisis – yes, but
that is also a
humanitarian one, as has happened in the past, and
which we didn’t always
address in the best or most humane ways before or
now -- a mental health
crisis, and historically low birth rates -- the latter
of which is by people’s choice,
not by Republican or Democratic or by liberals’ or
conservatives’ demands. And while
it is true that a declining
birthrate can possibly mean labor shortages, the
conservative right is opposed
to allowing immigrants to meet those labor needs. And yes,
assimilation of immigrants is
difficult, but so is education of babies born here
to Americans. And
yet, conservatives seem to have an issue
even with allowing the so-called “dreamers” be
accepted as fully American
citizens even though they came to the U.S. as babies
or young children and grew
up totally assimilating to American life, and often
not even able to speak the
language of their birth. It would
be
like someone finding something technically wrong
with your own citizenship here
and saying they’ll have to think about whether you
should be able to stay or
not. How
can that be humane or right!
As
pointed out in the
movie The American President we have serious
problems to solve and they
require serious people to solve them, not just people
who make you afraid of
the problems and falsely or simplistically telling you
whom to blame for them. The
withdrawal from Afghanistan was a
national embarrassment –
set in motion by Donald
Trump in ways that crippled it in part; but so was
the withdrawal from Vietnam
under a Republican administration; wars are seldom
lost or abandoned graciously
or gracefully, and wars (and even lesser military
actions) sometimes end in
disaster, as do non-military actions and civilian
choices in times of peace,
wars rage on two continents – but not because of
liberal or conservative policies unless you want to
consider “might makes
right” to be a conservative policy that requires
smaller democracies not to
defend themselves against larger authoritarian
aggressors or receive any aid
from us in doing so -- antisemitism is on
the rise on college campuses – yes, a serious problem, but
not one that is caused or
allowed by conservative or liberal policies --
and China is financing
its own cold war against the U.S. with money and
technology American executives
gave the Chinese in exchange for corporate profits –
which also benefit Americans with lower prices; but
yes, the karma of
unfettered free enterprise can be unpleasant, even a
savage beast; yet
conservatives tend to favor unfettered free
enterprise, so there needs to be
ways to come to grips with it and distinguish when
money is ethically right to
exchange and when it is not – when profit-seeking is
legitimate and when it is
not (as in accepting bribes if one is a judge or
gifts if one is a legislator,
administrator, or judge). Again, we
have
serious problems that require serious solutions, not
simplistic ones.
Our $35 trillion national debt is now equal to 124
percent of our gross
domestic product. We spend more every year on interest
payments on that debt
than we do on national security. 1) This last claim seems to be
simply false, if Google is
correct. According
to Google the annual
interest payment on the national debt in 2023
was $658 billion, 2.4% of
the gross domestic product (GDP), and the defense
budget was $820 billion. Moreover,
2) Our national debt is caused as
much by unreasonably low taxes on many who could
easily afford more, as well as
by any unreasonable, or unreasonably high,
expenditures; it is not a function
of either by itself.
Trump’s tax break
to the rich during his first term increased the debt
by a considerable amount. And 3) the
ratio of debt to income or
productivity is misleading, as is the ratio of debt
interest payments to
national security.
According to Google
AI “A general rule of thumb is that you can afford a
mortgage that's 2 to 3
times your household income. For example, if
your annual income is
$30,000, you might be able to afford a mortgage of
$60,000 to $75,000.... The
percentage of your annual gross income that goes
toward your mortgage should
generally not exceed 28%, and the percentage of your
annual gross income that
goes toward your debts should generally not exceed
43%” If
I understand that
correctly, which I may not, since I am not an
economist (but neither are the
politicians generally making these kinds of claims or
the voters who blindly
accept them), insofar as national debt is like a loan
or mortgage, and our
slightly over $27 trillion GDP is like income, we
could afford a debt of $54 to
$81 trillion, not just $35 trillion. And insofar
as you can supposedly be
able to pay off a debt with up to 43% of your income a
year, we could pay off a
debt that cost us, $15 trillion a year instead of the
$658 billion we paid in
2023, which was 2.43%.
Of course, all
these numbers seem scary, but they are huge because
they involve the incomes
and expenditures of 258 million adults, and a total
population of 340 million
people over a number of years.
But
all this gets lost
in simplistic political rhetoric (by either liberals
or conservatives) that is
highly slanted and often even bogus or irrelevant.
These are the
conditions that have
rightfully discredited the elites and given rise to
conservative populism.
No, these are
conditions that need serious, careful, systematic
solutions by serious,
reasonable, thoughtful people, not simplistic
solutions offered by ubiquitous
drunk uncles or those who speak for them with the
same mind and thus win their
approval. Populism
by adults tends to
prefer the known, comfortable status quo over
progress and change (although
populism in youth tends toward change, even
impetuous changes sometime, that will
throw the baby out with the bathwater – which is a
problem for the unintended
and unexpected consequences of abandoning or tearing
down something problematic
without having a better or suitable replacement). And
populism tends to favor a return to the
past by those who had more wealth, power, and
privilege in the past that came
from unfair disadvantages imposed on the rest of
society, whether women, people
of color, immigrants, the poor in general, or any
minority even philosophic
minorities. The U.S. Constitution has never been one
that involved purely
majority rule.
It has always been
tempered by the way the electoral and legislative
processes were set up to try
to protect some (e.g., originally mostly white male)
minority interests along
with their rights as human beings. Those
interests and rights have been extended to more and
more people, sometimes
leading to conflicting rights and interests which
need to be solved and
resolved, again by serious people, not just by
populist opinion and pure
simplistic, potentially one-sided tyrannical,
majority rule.
Moreover, the concept of improvement in
society needs to include justice and fairness as
well as increased total wealth
and decreased hardships, because the distribution of
burdens and benefits can
be at least as important as their total
quantity.
*** Despite being
discredited, the elites
do offer a critique of populism that deserves to be
taken seriously: the claim
that populism is all style, lacks substance, and
cannot be trusted. Populism,
according to this view, is a rhetorical Trojan Horse
that unprincipled
demagogues use to advance their narrow, selfish
ambitions. And to be sure,
history is full of corrupt tribunes of the people who
abuse their power and
enrich themselves at their nation’s expense.
Well yes, there is
that, along with the
problem of its simplistic solutions and potential
rule by the tyranny of a
temporary majority. The lesson to
be drawn from this
critique is that legitimate and enduring change in
democracies comes neither
from philosophers nor rabble-rousers – how did
philosophers get thrown into this all of a sudden? Much of
the American Declaration of
Independence stems from Jefferson’s reading and
understanding of philosopher
John Locke’s Two Treatises of
Government,
specifically the Second Treatise on Government,
which outlines his
theory of natural rights, such as the rights to life,
liberty, and property,
and the concept of government being based on the
consent of the governed.
However, it is true that philosophy, by
itself, is not sufficient for bringing about change;
nor should it be, for, as
John Gardner pointed out in his book Excellence,
“The society that
scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a
humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an
exalted activity will have
neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its
pipes nor its theories
will hold water.”
It only comes
by strategically fusing
populist energy and principled ideas – which
neither liberalism nor conservatism does
automatically and which populism does
perhaps even less frequently, if we are talking
about good, worthy principles
and not just any fervidly adhered to despite its
flaws. Zeal
toward the wrong goals or the wrong way
of accomplishing them is not a beneficial attribute.
That is what Ronald
Reagan did in the 1980s. He harnessed popular
frustration—frustration with
Washington incompetence, Soviet aggression, and
economic stagflation—to a
positive agenda of conservative reform. Richard Nixon
before him and Bill
Clinton after him also channeled populist frustrations
and aspirations toward
their policy aims. Going back through history, so did
Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal, Theodore Roosevelt’s early progressivism,
Abraham Lincoln’s unionism and
abolitionism, and Jacksonian and Jeffersonian
democracy. But isn’t this
basically saying that people vote for a
change in leadership whenever they are unhappy with
something that they
attribute, whether reasonably or not, to either the
actions or inactions of the
current government or administration?
Indeed, what
was the Founding
itself—and the Constitution in particular—but the
thoughtful harnessing of
populist frustration on behalf of clear, positive
political principles? But
it was more than that.
It was philosophical and ethical principle,
not just ‘political’ ones. As pointed
out in the Declaration of Independence itself:
“… all men are created
… with certain unalienable Rights…. That to secure
these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the
governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and
Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such Government, and
to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Instituting
a democracy
with relatively frequent elections and other
safeguards of rights, including
against tyranny of the majority, made it easier to
change government officials
without having to overthrow ‘the form of government’
or the government itself. However,
obviously neither the Declaration,
nor the Constitution after the revolution was won,
included the rights of black
people or women whose consents through voting were
neither required nor
allowed. Part
of the progress of the
country was eventually including women’s votes and
women’s rights to at least
some extent, and the voting and civil rights of black
people. Other
laws gave children rights against
parental abuse that they did not have before when what
is now known to be abuse
was considered a purely private matter of disciplining
one’s children, and
still other laws gave wives rights against violently
abusive husbands in what
was previously considered the private matter of
marriage and the husband’s
right to total control of his wife. At
every step of the way to increase inclusivity of
rights against people
previously denied them, there was resistance by those
who had power and
control. Convincing
majorities that
change was important, particularly when it meant
giving up at least some power
and control, has never been easy or merely requiring
philosophical or ethical
reasoning. It
also requires
psychological persuasion and sometimes economic
persuasion or other forms of
motivation and manipulation. But the
essence is that it should be change for the better and
for what is right, not
just what the majority of people at any given time
might want, particularly for
their own selfish or even petty reasons.
While
democracy
presupposes that each person will vote in his or her
own best interest, it also
is known that 1) perceived self-interest is not
necessarily accurate and may
not produce the best result for the individual, and
that 2) majority rule can
be mob rule that tramples on the rights of individuals
who are numerical
minorities, whether philosophical minorities or
minorities in any other way. Today, there
are contentious issues that
cause discontent with policies and with court
decisions about who has what
rights, many of which have to do with the exercise of
power through office or
through wealth that brings with it influence, often
disproportionate influence. These
controversial issues play out with each
election now and with each relevant court decision,
particularly each relevant
Supreme Court decision.
Unfortunately
that is often because there is a lack of wise
philosophical and ethical
reasoning presented in legislatures, in courts, or in
media discussions which
tend to be just shouting matches where each side
points out the problems of the
other side without seeing, listening to, or trying to
resolve the problems of
its own side, and with neither side really seeking
what would be not only acceptable,
but also desirable, for both. Often,
even when not driven purely for greedy, selfish, or
indefensibly short-sighted ideological
reasons, policy debates are merely a form of haggling
where each side seeks
more than it wants out of fear of otherwise getting
less than it needs or
deserves. Democracy
works best when
everyone is well-informed and reasonable, but there is
today, unfortunately for
a variety of reasons, access to too much bad
information and too few people
with the ability to distinguish it from the good
information – too few who can
sort the wheat from the chaff. And
moreover, there are even fewer who can draw the most
reasonable conclusions,
either individually or collectively, from even the
good information.
Studies show that relatively few people are
good at making reasonable logical deductions, even
about empirical or otherwise
objective matters.
Speaking of
which, it is still the
case that legitimate and enduring change in the U.S.
will only be accomplished through
the Constitution. It’s too bad that this point needs
to be made, but there are
anti-establishment voices within the populist
movement—especially among the
young and online—who reject the Constitution as an
artifact of liberal,
Enlightenment errors that must be replaced with a
pre-Enlightenment form of
government. But the American people are not interested
in thrones and altars.
They want a secure border, safe streets, economic
autonomy and opportunity, a
family-friendly culture, and a government that works
for them instead of the
other way around. Yes,
but there is serious
disagreement about what that involves, how to
achieve it, particularly in being
fair to everyone.
Students in my ethics
courses mirror society at large when they cannot
even see what constitutes fair
pay for positions in a fictional company they own
where they get to decide what
to pay for each position in the company that is
given as being both necessary
for the company’s success and that is being done
well by the person who has
it. And
although they believe that there
is something not quite right with athletes and
entertainers making millions or
hundreds of millions of dollars while police,
nurses, K-12 teachers, trash
collectors, coal miners, etc. make far, far less
though doing more important
work, they cannot see for themselves what the
mechanism is that allows that and
whether that mechanism itself is a fair way to
distribute incomes.
They see that Nurse Jackie made $175,000 per
weekly
episode treating no one medically, while real nurses
with real patients only
make some $65,000 - $85,000 in a year, and
they see that something seems
wrong with it, but can’t see what, how, or why. And they can
consider taxes to be robbery, but
not low wages in a job where your income is reduced,
and basically given before
you see or receive it, to managers and stockholders
or individual owners from
the earnings for the business that you were
essential in generating. They also
cannot see that fairer wages might
require lower taxes for social services that might
not be as necessary if
everyone had a reasonable wage for their work and if
there was some sort of
affordable private or governmental general or
overall basic insurance available
for people who fall on hard times through no fault
of their own but just from
the luck of the draw.
It would be a
strange populism that
haughtily dismisses the values of the populace.
But disagreeing
with a value for a good
reason is not the same thing as “haughtily
dismissing” it.
Most people would vote for more gun control
than their conservative representatives do.
Most people would vote (and have voted in
state referendums) for legal
abortions which their conservative representatives
voted against, would vote
against, and would reject or repeal if they could. Elected
representatives need to vote based on
both the knowledge they have and the will of their
constituents, and they have
to try to inform their constituents to get them to
conform to their own views
or otherwise they have to choose between voting
their conscience about what is
best for their constituents or voting for what their
constituents want, which
may not be in those constituents own best interests
although they think it is. Representatives
in a representative democracy
sometimes have conflicting values between themselves
and their constituents,
and they have to deal with conflicting values
between different groups of their
constituents with each other. At the
federal level, the country is fairly evenly divided
in various ways.
Narrow winners of elections tend to talk
about mandates, but there are no mandates from an
electorate as divided or
diverse as ours is. It would be a
strange nationalism that
promises citizens sovereignty only to turn around and
rule them like subjects.
Indeed, that is precisely what the elite establishment
does today—and why it is
failing. And it would be a strange
“populism” as well that does
that too; yet it will be what you, Dr. Roberts, are
promoting as populism,
particularly at the end of your article.
Conservative, as well as liberal, legislators
often tend to be
dismissive of the views of their constituents,
sending back clearly
non-responsive letters or emails to requests they do
not wish to honor and
probably didn’t even fully read. None of our
problems are beyond our
constitutional order’s power to solve. What is it we
need, after all? We need a
Congress that acts like a legislature rather than a
company of moralizing
performance artists.
Of course we don’t
want legislators who moralize in the
sense of making unfounded summary moral
pronouncements with irrational, minimal
explanations they don’t allow to be challenged or
refuted, but we do want them
to pass laws which are actually moral and right, and
whose goals are, as the
preamble to the Constitution says, “to form a more
perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for
the common defence, promote
the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity", which are goals involving moral judgment
and moral concepts in
their nature.
We need a
president who acts like a
responsible chief executive rather than a drunken
king. We need a judiciary
that acts impartially in accordance with the
Constitution and the laws of the
land rather than in a partisan manner. And we need to
disperse the political
power that is now concentrated in the hands of the
Washington establishment –
except that Washington is the capital of the country
and the location
of the Congress, the
administration, and the Supreme Court; and the
Congress supposedly represents
the will of the people through the people they chose
to do that, so it is not
clear what it means to disperse what is already
supposedly dispersed.
Meeting in one place to conduct business does
not mean that the power they represent is not
dispersed among the people, their
constituents, as long as they truly represent all
their constituents and not
just their supporters or those who agree with them. In short, the
solution to our problems
is not to scrap or transcend the Constitution, but to
start obeying and
applying it again. Under that document, “We the
People” already possess every
power we need to reestablish majority rule, minority
rights, democratic
accountability, equal justice under law, and national
sovereignty. But that assumes
those things have been lost, which is highly
debatable and certainly
contentious.
Writing my
recent book on this topic,
I kept coming back to a quotation from composer Gustav
Mahler: “Tradition is
not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of
fire.” The preservation of
fire strikes me as a good metaphor for conservatism.
It’s not rose-tinted
nostalgia of an idealized past. It preserves the best
of the past and applies
its lessons to the present—maintaining a controlled
burn as a way to a better
future. Not
really a helpful metaphor, and probably could be
claimed to apply to liberalism
and progressivism as much as to conservatism. The greatest
challenges we face today
are fairly straightforward. The necessary solutions,
as Reagan said, may not be
easy, but they are simple –
“simple” is not always
best or right.
It is clearly
possible for a nation to control its borders – 1)
not when borders are immense, have access from all
directions and can be
tunneled under or flown over, etc. but 2) the
important issue is what to
control for; that is, what and whom to allow in and
whom to keep out, and why,
and whether it is right to keep out desperate
refugees willing to work hard and
lead decent lives, for example, to prosecute
criminals fairly, justly,
and rightly is apparently not that easy;
it is often as easy for guilty wealthy people to go
free as it is for innocent
poor people to be convicted -- to reclaim its
sovereignty as it pertains
to war, peace, and trade –
sovereignty does not
guaranty right choices or actions by a country any
more than individual
autonomy guaranties right choices by individuals. And
doesn’t one, as an individual or as a
country, give up sovereignty to at least some extent
when one enters into
agreements with other individuals or countries?
You don’t have the right to renege on an
agreement just because you
might have the power to -- and to protect
and promote the values that
most Americans espouse –
which is not always clear,
particularly in determining or discovering the
details, and even more
particularly in a country as diverse as ours in
which it might be said that if
you ask three people what they think about anything,
you will get four opinions. Step back
from the Left’s Oz-like
faux-authority and think for a moment about its legal
fragility. Almost
everything organizations of the Left do is either
funded by taxpayers – in
order to provide reasonable opportunities for people
unable to pay for the services that wealthy people
can, in some, but not all
cases, provide for themselves; but that includes
police, fire departments,
first responders, schools and state universities,
the military, street, road,
and highway building and maintenance, the courts
system, legislatures, government
administrations, etc.
Government is funded
in large part by taxpayers; that is how it works. The real
questions are how government should
best function, what services it ought to provide,
what the revenue/tax source
ought to be, and what the reasons are for answers to
all those questions, etc. Those
questions are always up for debate
about any existing and any proposed government
service or function -- or
ignored by prosecutors –
this will have to be spelled out and explained, and
shown not to also be a practice of conservative
prosecutors and courts,
especially those which seem to want to deny people
their legitimate
Constitutional rights.
Plus, as I
understand it, police and prosecutors seem to be
allowed at least some
discretion in what charges to bring, if any.
A
principled, populist conservative government
could undo huge swaths of it with—in the immortal
words of President Barack
Obama—“a phone and a pen.” The supposedly un-fireable
bureaucrats of the
federal Deep State – is
this a pejorative enough
phrase to apply to what are otherwise known as civil
servants whose job it is
to make the government function well for everyone,
even though they do not
always do that or don’t have the authority to meet
their responsibility -- are
nothing of the sort. The president could reclassify,
reassign, or simply – but
probably wrongly and/or unreasonably -- dismiss
thousands
of them. Moreover, agencies that have gone all-in on
woke claptrap – meaning
ethical ideas you disagree with and
prefer to dismiss by disparagement rather than by
reasoned argument or by
ethical principles that can withstand reasonable
scrutiny -- in the last
decade have advertised their own irrelevance to
budget-conscious congressional
appropriators – I don’t
know what this refers to or
means. The U.S.
Border Patrol could secure
the border today if the president ordered them to.
Energy companies already
know where to drill—they just need permission – but
there are pros and cons in justifying permission;
that is the problem.
Not everything that can be done should
be done. We already know which treaty
loopholes China exploits to steal
our jobs and trade secrets. The loopholes could be
closed, or we could withdraw
from the treaties altogether. I understand the problem, and
those need to be resolved
somehow, but most laws have loopholes and many
agreements have unintended
consequences, and you cannot legitimately advocate
following laws without
accepting their loopholes that are disadvantageous
to you or advocate for
making agreements if you have no intention to abide
by them if they turn out
not to suit you.
Cities and
states that refuse to
prosecute crimes – again
as I understand it,
prosecutors and law enforcement officers have a
certain amount of discretion in
whom to charge with what, if anything, but there are
also two other issues
involved in some of this: state and local rights and
conscientious objection to
following laws considered to be morally wrong.
Those issues are difficult to resolve and
they affect liberals and
conservatives alike, in that each side tends to
think some of the laws passed
by the other side are morally wrong and too evil to
obey -- or protect
girls’ privacy – many
gender and transgender
issues, whether old or new, have not been worked out
very satisfactorily in
some cases and need to be, but there are likely ways
to do that more reasonably
than either ardent liberals or ardent conservatives
demand -- can be
disqualified from federal aid. Corporations that
practice ideological
discrimination – most
likely a pejorative reference
here to either affirmative action or diverse hiring
and promotion practices,
but the problems are that just because something
doesn’t go your way, that
doesn’t mean you were discriminated against, and
helping someone previously
disadvantaged overcome those previous disadvantages
is not necessarily
discriminating against anyone who would otherwise
benefit from the previous
advantages; again, simplistic, overly general,
absolutist answers are not
likely to be the correct ones for all specific
issues -- can be
prohibited from federal contracting. The Justice
Department now harassing
Christians and conservatives – how, by not allowing
them exemptions from obeying laws they disagree
with? And aren’t conscientious
exemptions what you just said liberals should not be
allowed to have? --
could start exploring Big Tech’s
deliberate attempts to addict children to harmful
online content – which is
a serious problem that liberals and
conservatives both know, even if they may disagree
in some cases about which
content is harmful; but it is a problem liberals and
conservatives both need to
solve. We could reform the tax code to
prioritize families and workers
instead of globalist corporations – what
constitutes fair and just taxes is often an issue,
but, again, for both
liberals and conservatives, particularly when they
disagree about which
services government should provide. We could
do the same with education,
labor, housing, and transportation policy.
Again, which
services government should
provide and how and why are always up for debate,
and are not just about
taxation or costs alone, nor benefits alone.
As previously pointed out, you cannot
legitimately do cost/benefit
analyses if you only consider either aspect alone. When my
students consider costs alone, as
they often do, I ask them whether they would be
willing to buy a car from me
for $50,000 if it would be difficult, but possible,
for them to pay off a loan
for it. When
they say “No” without
asking any questions, I then say “Oh, okay, then I
won’t get that brand new
Lamborghini Aventador and its insurance for you
(starting price at
$500,000+). Or
consider the time the
board of Ford Motor Company was disagreeing about
whether to close one of its
large, but less profitable plants, until one of the
members sarcastically said
in disgust “Why don’t we just close all the plants? That would
save all the expenses.” The board
voted to keep the plant in question
operating.
Instead of
funneling more money into
DEI offices on campus, we could invest in trade
apprenticeships – a
legitimate issue to explore ways to resolve.
Instead of wasting money on global green energy
boondoggles, we could build
nuclear power plants –
sure, what can possibly go
wrong with nuclear energy as a primary source of
electricity or be problematic
about its financial cost? And what
is
your evidence “green” energy sources are all
boondoggles, apart from Trump’s
claims about windmills causing cancer from their
noise and killing birds and
whales, etc. We could
reclaim our sovereignty by
withdrawing from the World Trade Organization and the
United Nations and by
clarifying our strategic alliances
– but again,
whether we should is the question, not whether we
simply can. And the institutions
we need to revive—marriage and family, – as long as
they meet YOUR idea of what marriage and family
should be, which is what many
people disagree with, so it is not that your view is
necessarily “populist” -- church and community,
private enterprise and public
spirit—already exist. Like flowers in a garden choked
by weeds, they just need
room, light, and water to grow again.
Returning to
my metaphor of a
controlled burn, we will need to ignite several of
those to fix institutions
like the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA, the
Federal Reserve, the
FBI, the Department of Education, the
military-industrial complex, and apparently
now FEMA. Today these institutions function as
anti-American,
anti-constitutional predators, serving their own
interests at the expense of
the national interest –
these claims of
anti-Americanism and of being anti-constitutional
predators -- do not seem true
to me. Of
course, every department, as
with any organization, has various problems from
time to time, but in these
agencies, they seem to me to be specific and not
institutionally anti-American. FEMA was
overwhelmed by the quantity and
scale of recent disasters, and they were possibly
underfunded (difficult to
tell) and understaffed for the magnitude of those
disasters. But
if their quantity and magnitude are fostered
by climate change brought on by preventable fossil
fuel use and expansion, it
seems ridiculous to simultaneously advocate for
policies that will cause more
disasters and eliminate those who are supposed to
deal with them.
Each of the agencies mentioned has a purpose
and rationale for existing. They often
seem to work. The
Federal Reserve, for
example, certainly at least seems to have helped the
United States economy
revive from the economic part of the COVID pandemic
better than other first
tier economies.
If you want to argue
they could have done better or that any of these
agencies could do better and
should do better, then make those cases.
But to just say they are unamerican or
anti-American or even
unconstitutional seems to me to be an unsupported,
unreasonable, and unfair
broad, simply name-calling, indictment. Their
institutional status quo is
inconsistent with freedom and self-government –
well, any and every institutional, organized
government is inconsistent with
freedom and self-government by individuals.
Instituting any government is about
individuals giving up some freedoms
in order to secure other, more important, ones so
that the “law of the jungle”
is not what prevails in a way which makes life, as
Hobbes pointed out
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. America
must break and reform them before
they break and destroy us. How about just remedying
problems they have, rather than
breaking them?
As to “reforming them”, I
am willing to listen to your plans and the
rationales for that.
But if you just want to reshape them to suit
your personal desires, save tax dollars by stopping
their services, or conform
to your conservative ideologies, that is neither
populist nor constitutional.
Not only in
America but across the
West, not-so-silent majorities today consist of
citizens that the elites, by
nature and ideology, look down on and treat as
deplorables—those who believe in
the rights of the individual, the virtue of local
communities, the centrality
of the family, and the sovereignty of the
nation-state. Those are not the defining
characteristics of the people who are deplorable
even if many of the
deplorables share those qualities with decent
people. The
defining qualities of the deplorables are
their rabid racism, ethnocentrism, misogyny,
xenophobia, anti-science,
anti-intellectual, anti-education, violent white
supremacy views, and
exclusionary views in general of anyone not
sufficiently like them. This new
conservative populist coalition is not as ideological
as past iterations. But
conservatism isn’t supposed to be ideological.
Correct -- “not
supposed to be
ideological, but simply reasonable and justified!” Yes,
America was
founded on the basis of ideas, but it is a people and
a nation first. – meaning
or signifying what in this context?
American
conservatism exists to serve
the people and the nation through the Constitution.
This includes defending
them against enemies foreign and domestic. And the
fact is, elite institutions
have become the people’s and the nation’s enemies –
no, they haven’t, though possibly you
consider them somehow enemies of you
and people like you. They are openly
waging cultural war on those
they ostensibly serve –
not insofar as they are
trying to help others be treated more fairly and
decently than they have been
in the past and than they would be treated in the
future without change.
That you strongly oppose their goals and/or
methods doesn’t make them waging war on you any more
than it makes you waging
war against those they are trying to help. They cannot be
negotiated with or
accommodated. Or maybe you
can’t be
negotiated with or accommodated. They must be
defunded, disbanded, and
disempowered – that
doesn’t sound like being
“reformed” and it certainly is not what the people
they help and serve want nor
what is wanted by the people who want them to be
helped and served. The rewards
for doing so—for putting American families first
again—will be greater than we
can know. American
history is filled with successful, assimilated
immigrants wanting to deny other,
future immigrants the same opportunities.
And it is filled with denials of education
and training to those then
deemed to be inferior because they are unskilled and
uneducated. But
you can’t legitimately hold people at
fault for not taking advantage of opportunities you
prevented them from
having. And
you cannot legitimately
claim you did not deny people opportunities just
because you failed to prevent
all of them from having them or succeeding despite
your best efforts to make
them fail. Politicians
are all too fond
of pointing to those who succeed despite all odds as
showing there are no
impediments to success, even though there clearly
are such impediments that
make success highly unlikely, though not totally
impossible.
This is the
fight before us. If we
thoughtfully and tenaciously combine populist energy
with conservative
principles, it is a fight we can win. But previously you had written
“It would be a
strange nationalism that promises citizens sovereignty
only to turn around and
rule them like subjects. Indeed, that is precisely
what the elite establishment
does today—and why it is failing.” And yet
now you are arguing for “winning a
fight” (not just an election) by using means that
will allow just under and/or
barely over 50% of voters and their elected
officials to determine 100% of the
laws and policies of the country, even in many cases
denying the results of
referenda voted specifically about issues like
abortion in their states, but
still call that populism and instituting the will of
the people. But
that is only your will and the
will of your people. It will be
the same form of tyranny of the governing majority
that you despise when it
goes against you.
It is not the popular
will, nor populism, and it will likely be reasonably
contested in court cases
not to be constitutional or legal either.
Most of the
following is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
but
with some
modification and additions. It might
help put all the above into greater perspective. Populism is a range of
political stances that emphasize
the idea of the common 'people' and often position
this group in opposition to
a perceived 'elite'. It is frequently associated
with anti-establishment and anti-political
sentiment.
Anti-elitism
is widely considered the central
characteristic feature of populism, and the
"fundamental
distinguishing feature" of "the elite" is that it is
in an
"adversarial relationship" with "the people". In
defining "the elite", populists often condemn not only
the political
establishment, but also the economic elite, cultural
elite, academic elite, and
the media elite, which they present as one
homogeneous, corrupt group. Of course,
if you win elections and thus become part of the
political "elite" you will be one of the groups you
and your
followers despise. The word "populism" has been
contested,
mistranslated and used in reference to a diverse
variety of movements and
beliefs. The political scientist Will Brett
characterized it as "a
classic example of a stretched concept, pulled out of
shape by overuse and
misuse", while the political scientist Paul
Taggart has said of
populism that it is "one of the most widely used but
poorly understood
political concepts of our time". Interestingly enough, both “elite”
and “populist” are often
used pejoratively.
A common framework
for interpreting populism in a positive way and “the
elite” in a negative way
defines populism as an ideology that presents "the
people" as a
morally good force and contrasts them against "the
elite", who are
portrayed as corrupt and self-serving. Populists
differ in how "the
people" are defined, but it can be based along class,
ethnic, or national
lines. Populists typically present "the elite" as
comprising the
political, economic, cultural, and media
establishment, depicted as a
homogeneous entity accused of placing their own
interests above those of “the
people”. But
populists might support nationalism,
liberalism, free
trade globalism, protectionism,
socialism, capitalism or consumerism.
Thus, populists can be found at different locations
along the left–right
political spectrum, and there exist
both left-wing
populism and right-wing populism.
On the other hand, “populism” has
often pejoratively been
used synonymously with demagogy, to describe
politicians who present
overly simplistic answers to complex questions in a
highly emotional manner, or
with political opportunism, to characterize
politicians who exploit problems
and seek to please voters without rational
consideration as to the best course
of action, sometimes claimed to be linked to adverse
economic outcomes, as
"economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic
stability, and the erosion
of institutions are said typically to go hand in hand
with populist rule, even
if populist politicians promise economic improvement
with that erosion and
destabilization of the institutions. The
problem is the age-old one of condemning the status
quo because of its actual
and very real problems and deficiencies without having
a better, functioning
replacement. It
normally doesn’t help
just to remove a leaking pipe or its seal that are
under pressure. You
need to have a better pipe and/or seal to
replace it with.
Otherwise, in regard to
something like the functions of government, you end up
with disastrous
incompetent chaos and with absence
of service to people who need it. Making
a problem worse is not the desirable way to end it. One of the ways that populists
employ the understanding of
"the people" is in the idea that "the people are
sovereign", that in a democratic state governmental
decisions should rest
with the population and that if they are ignored then
they might mobilize or
revolt. A
second way in which "the
people" is conceived by populists combines a
socioeconomic or class based
category with one that refers to certain cultural
traditions and popular
values. The concept seeks to vindicate the
dignity of a social group who
regard themselves as being oppressed by a dominant
"elite" who are
accused of treating "the people's" values, judgements,
and tastes
with suspicion or contempt. A third use of "the
people" by
populists employs it as a synonym for "the nation",
whether that
national community be conceived in
either ethnic or civic terms. In
such a framework, all
individuals regarded as being "native" to a particular
state, either
by birth or by ethnicity, could be considered part of
"the people". My own suspicion is that
like-minded people who are being harmed, or who feel
they are being harmed, by the government in power at
the time, whether the problem is actually caused by
government policies or is caused by forces beyond any
government's control, will consider themselves to be
"the people" and the government to be an elitist group
turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to their problems
and concerns. In some cases, they may be a
majority or they may only believe they are when they
actually are not. But also, majorities do shift
from time to time, depending on how many people are or
feel they are adversely affected by the (perceived,
claimed) problems. Even apart from perceived problems,
in general, what is a majority view can change with
time. In the mid
to late 1950's, Americans, for example were becoming
more affluent, but many young people and many women
became disenchanted by the pursuit primarily of
material gain and typical suburban life. The
culture shifted despite affluence toward more inner
kinds of self-fulfillment or
"self-actualization".
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