Monday, June 06, 2016

Trumpism is Easy












Toward a Sensible, Coherent Trumpism
The Constitution and the social compact it enshrines are for us—the American people—and not for foreigners, immigrants (except those we choose to welcome), or anyone else.


#RealConservative

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 “Trumpism” needs something Trump himself cannot provide. John Derbyshire praises Trump’s “gut conservatism” as a welcome relief from the failures of the intellectual class. One can sympathize with his point without finding it altogether satisfying. “Gut conservatism” 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
Trump seems to grasp intuitively something our elites have forgotten or smugly deny: politics is by nature particular. ... Even the ancient Greek philosophers—the greatest abstractionists of all time—understood the necessity of borders and the permanence of national distinctions. Socrates’ “city in speech”—the greatest political abstraction of all time—is closed to outsiders.
often than a broken clock, but—as Trump’s contradictory pronouncements over the years illustrate—it 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.

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’s anti-Trump symposium reads as if it were written to make the point undeniable. Trump supports ethanol! Burn the heretic!


At least listing the “conservative” boxes that Trump fails to check can be considered substantive. The rest of the symposium—like nearly all other conservative anti-Trump broadsides—consists 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’s program. The most they could say on that score was to paraphrase, probably subconsciously, Lionel Trilling’s dismissal of 20th century conservatism as “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas” and apply it to Trump.  [The Full Monty]

(Mark Miller)
This all seems so simple to intuitively grasp, but evidently it is not.


1 comment:

BlogDog said...

The GOP establishment is NOT conservative. To allege that Trump is "more conservative" than the GOPe is express a ridiculous comparison. Cruz was the only conservative in the race. I find Trump to be no conservative either but his role of destructor could be quite valuable. I'll wait to see how he cuddles up with the Mitch McConnells of the world.

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.