{"id":89622,"date":"2016-03-10T14:41:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T22:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89622"},"modified":"2016-03-10T14:41:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T22:41:41","slug":"the-philosophical-underpinnings-of-trumpism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89622","title":{"rendered":"The Philosophical Underpinnings Of Trumpism"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Unz.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Trump is, in the decisive sense, more conservative than the entire conservative establishment. Unlike them, he is actually trying to conserve something bigger than his job and status: namely, the American nation. Yet \u201cTrumpism\u201d needs something Trump himself cannot provide. John Derbyshire praises Trump\u2019s \u201cgut conservatism\u201d as a welcome relief from the failures of the intellectual class. One can sympathize with his point without finding it altogether satisfying. \u201cGut conservatism\u201d after all still depends on some definition of what conservatism is. Which requires thinking and writing, i.e., intellectualism, and perhaps even philosophy. The gut may be right more often than a broken clock, but\u2014as Trump\u2019s contradictory pronouncements over the years illustrate\u2014it is unreliable and so must be ruled by the brain, which nature generously provides for the purpose. Derbyshire is thus too quick to dismiss conservative intellectualizing as irrelevant. Forging a fresh definition of conservatism, or of reinterpreting the old one to meet the necessities of the times, is not merely relevant but necessary.<\/p>\n

Yet it is unquestionably true that to this task, our current crop of mainstream conservative intellectuals is not merely unsuited but wholly useless. National Review\u2019s anti-Trump symposium reads as if it were written to make the point undeniable. Trump supports ethanol! Burn the heretic! At least listing the \u201cconservative\u201d boxes that Trump fails to check can be considered substantive. The rest of the symposium\u2014like nearly all other conservative anti-Trump broadsides\u2014consists merely of personal attacks. Many of which, to be fair, Trump has coming. But all this hardly amounts to a conservative refutation of, or counterproposal to, Trump\u2019s program. The most they could say on that score was to paraphrase, probably subconsciously, Lionel Trilling\u2019s dismissal of 20th century conservatism as \u201cirritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas\u201d and apply it to Trump.<\/p>\n

But Trumpism, while not yet a coherent body of thought, points the way to one. Trump himself\u2014no man of ideas, to say the least\u2014is unsuited to the task of thinking through what his popularity means or how to build on it. Others will have to do the real work. Herewith, an attempt to get started.<\/p>\n

America First<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s two slogans\u2014\u201cMake America Great Again\u201d and \u201cTake Our Country Back\u201d\u2014point to the heart of Trumpism: \u201cAmerica First.\u201d Some will no doubt flinch at being reminded of an alleged stain on America\u2019s past. This is not the place to explain or defend 1940-41\u2019s (unfairly maligned) America First Committee. It\u2019s just that those two words capture the essence and appeal of Trumpism as no others do or could.<\/p>\n

Trump seems to grasp intuitively something our elites have forgotten or smugly deny: politics is by nature particular. However arbitrary at the highest level of philosophical speculation, here on the ground, the distinctions between citizen and foreigner, compatriot and outsider, friend and enemy never go away. Even the ancient Greek philosophers\u2014the greatest abstractionists of all time\u2014understood the necessity of borders and the permanence of national distinctions. Socrates\u2019 \u201ccity in speech\u201d\u2014the greatest political abstraction of all time\u2014is closed to outsiders.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to understand why globalized elites\u2014including the Republican billionaire donor class\u2014favor the erasure of borders: they get, and stay, rich from it. More curious is why conservative intellectuals go along. No doubt some of their own funding comes from those same donors. Many of them also manifestly enjoy the preening that being on the side of enlightened opinion enables. In their hearts, nearly all \u201cconservatives\u201d long for absolution on the charge of \u201cracism\u201d. Like the atheist caricature of the devout husband guilt-wracked for coveting his own wife, the modern conservative believes the leftist lie that his natural affinity for people who look, think and speak like himself is shameful and illegitimate, to be internally repressed and publicly denied.<\/p>\n

In this, the only difference between our \u201cconservatives\u201d and the liberals they claim to oppose is that the latter aren\u2019t conflicted. Both groups have after all been educated at the same schools and steeped in the same post-American, far-left ideology. Thomas Sowell once eviscerated Rawls\u2019 \u201cdifference principle\u201d\u2014the insistence that no policy, however beneficial to the common good, should be enacted if doesn\u2019t help the lowest of the low\u2014as the \u201cwino\u2019s veto.\u201d Elite conservatives embrace it fully, not so much as an idea, but rather from the gut realization that privilege requires self-justification. Always taking the side of \u201cthe other\u201d\u2014the more alien and distant, the better\u2014over and against their own people and country is a high-octane way to display high-mindedness. Speaking up for one\u2019s own is the ultimate sign of a rube\u2014or worse.<\/p>\n

This yearning to appear high-minded has caused conservatives to equate principle with abstraction. They take the philosophic argument that \u201clove of one\u2019s own\u201d is ultimately an insufficient basis for goodness to be reason\u2019s last word and thus assume that anything particular\u2014including their own country\u2014must be, in and of itself, low and unworthy of their unalloyed allegiance: the high qua high always has some admixture of the abstract. Hence the continued insistence that, for America to be good, it must be conflated with its principles. Against any common-sense resistance to the latest righteous, destructive fad, conservatives and liberals alike scold from the same hymnal: \u201cThat\u2019s not who we are.\u201d To which Trump supporters instinctively respond: speak for yourselves. Maybe that\u2019s not who you are, but it\u2019s who we are, and we\u2019re fed up with your sanctimony.<\/p>\n

Paleo-conservatives are the notable hold-outs to this trend, but they embrace unreason in a different way. In their reverence for tradition, they must\u2014if only implicitly\u2014hold that tradition is good, or at the very least that their tradition is good for them. But for even that narrow formula to work, the good must have some content that transcends particulars. Those Greek philosophers\u2014indispensable founders of \u201cour tradition\u201d\u2014understood this clearly. But paleos are more hostile to abstraction than neocons are enamored of it, and insist that any theoretical investigation of the good or assertion of principle leads in a straight line to universalism, utopianism, quotas and open borders.<\/p>\n

Both sects could learn something from their common inheritance. The American Founders managed to be principled and particularist, abstract and grounded, broad-minded and loyal, all at the same time. The Preamble to the United States Constitution pledges its purpose to \u201cform a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.\u201d Note that there is no mention of tradition, culture or heritage. Not that the Founders dismissed or opposed these things, but they evidently\u2014and wisely\u2014concluded that unity, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare and liberty are all higher goods. And not merely our goods or good for us (though of course they are) but above all good simply.<\/p>\n

Yet, as the Preamble\u2019s final five words make abundantly clear, there are practical limits to how much good, and for whom, politics can accomplish. The Constitution and the social compact it enshrines are for us\u2014the American people\u2014and not for foreigners, immigrants (except those we choose to welcome), or anyone else. The original state constitutions of Massachusetts and Virginia\u2014twin cradles of the American Revolution\u2014state much the same: \u201cThe end of \u2026 government is to secure the existence of the body-politic; to protect it; and to furnish the individuals who compose it\u201d; and \u201cgovernment is \u2026 instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community.\u201d The same men who declared that \u201call men are created equal\u201d also, and in virtually the same breath, excluded \u201call men\u201d from de facto or implicit membership in the American nation.<\/p>\n

The American people\u2014like every people\u2014have always felt in their bones their particularity, their uniqueness, their status as a people distinct from other peoples. Elites\u2014donors and intellectuals alike, on both the left and the \u201cright\u201d\u2014scoff at this natural, healthy and true belief as \u201cnativism.\u201d Is it then any wonder that the first presidential candidate in a generation to speak of America as something more than just a \u201cshining city on a hill\u201d\u2014as an actual country, to be loved for what it is and not merely for what it represents or could become\u2014has found enormous appeal?<\/p>\n

Truth at Last!<\/p>\n

The other, related source of Trump\u2019s appeal is his willingness\u2014eagerness\u2014gleefulness!\u2014to mock the ridiculous lies we\u2019ve been incessantly force-fed for the past 15 years (at least) and tell the truth. \u201cDiversity\u201d is not \u201cour strength\u201d; it\u2019s a source of weakness, tension and disunion. America is not a \u201cnation of immigrants\u201d; we are originally a nation of settlers, who later chose to admit immigrants, and later still not to, and who may justly open or close our doors solely at our own discretion, without deference to forced pieties. Immigration today is not \u201cgood for the economy\u201d; it undercuts American wages, costs Americans jobs, and reduces Americans\u2019 standard of living. Islam is not a \u201creligion of peace\u201d; it\u2019s a militant faith that exalts conversion by the sword and inspires thousands to acts of terror\u2014and millions more to support and sympathize with terror. \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d does not require, or even encourage, us to democratize the world\u2014a task of which we are in any case incapable. The Iraq War was a strategic and tactical blunder that destroyed a country (however badly governed), destabilized a region, and harmed American interests. The benefits of free trade concentrate at the top (outsize profits) and bottom (cheap panem et circenses); the middle, and especially the working, classes have been hurt by globalization.<\/p>\n

When one hears words coming out of a politician\u2019s mouth finally reflect\u2014rather than diametrically oppose\u2014what one can see with one\u2019s own eyes, the effect, we\u2019ve (re)discovered, can be exhilarating.<\/p>\n

All of which is to say, the root cause of Trumpism is the spectacular failure of our elites to serve the people they ostensibly lead. Those howling the loudest about Trump\u2014the Davos overclass, establishment Republicans, and American \u201cconservative\u201d intellectuals\u2014are in Stage 4C denial that their obliviousness, coupled with their ability (ante Trump) to silence and marginalize all opposition, are the principal causes of his rise. Whether their failures stem from cynicism, venality, greed, rationalization, delusion or honest disagreement (I think it\u2019s all of the above) will need to be thought through by later historians. For now, it\u2019s enough finally to see clearly their errors and\u2014to revive and rehabilitate a Clinton-era phrase\u2014\u201cmove on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationhood, Sovereignty and Immigration<\/p>\n

The first task is a simple reassertion of American nationhood and sovereignty. Which begins, yes, with regaining control over our borders and dismantling our insane immigration policies, both formal (e.g., the idiotic visa lottery) and informal (the bipartisan consensus not to enforce any law that results in less immigration\u2014at least from non-European sources).<\/p>\n

Let the full enormity of the crisis we face finally be realized. The left supports mass immigration and the Davos economy\u2014top plus bottom against the middle\u2014for obvious reasons. Republicans support it in fealty to their true masters (their donor class) and in the vain hope that they will get credit from the left for not being \u201cracist.\u201d More mysterious is why conservative intellectuals, whom one would think should know better, use abstractions to happy-talk themselves into believing all will turn out for the best, despite all observable evidence showing the contrary.<\/p>\n

Here I address my neoconservative friends specifically, and also those Trump supporters who are either hostile to or try to wave away America\u2019s founding creed. Yes, it is true that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d But Lincoln adds the crucial caveat: all men are not \u201cequal in all respects\u201d (emphasis in the original). They are not \u201cequal in color, size, intellect, moral developments or social capacity.\u201d People from different nations with different circumstances, histories, beliefs and traditions will\u2014by definition\u2014hold very different conceptions of good government, some irreconcilably opposed to our own. It has been said that a principal cause of Rome\u2019s fall was that \u201cmany men who never knew republican life and did not care for it \u2026 became Roman citizens.\u201d Why then do we Americans continue to import millions upon millions who have never known republican life and do not care for it? In doing so, we do not uphold our Founding creed; we hasten and enable its oblivion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Unz.com: Trump is, in the decisive sense, more conservative than the entire conservative establishment. Unlike them, he is actually trying to conserve something bigger than his job and status: namely, the American nation. Yet \u201cTrumpism\u201d needs something Trump himself … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89623,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89622\/revisions\/89623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}