.
This book was created, in my opinion, by Conservatives to explain Donald Trump’s election to President. The essays are uneven in connectedness and in quality. But I found two essays to be outstanding, that by Barry Strauss and the last essay by Roger Kimball. In general, the essays posit that Donald Trump was elected by a populous movement rather than by establishment processes and elites. Each essay attempts to explain why this occurred.
I liked Strauss’s essay because it has a solid analysis of why populous movements occur. In a nutshell, it is because the elitist establishment in their drive to forward their ideologies fail to address the needs of a population which on the surface, lacks an ideology. These needs are are seized by an ambitious demagogue who creates and leads the movement. The populist movement is usually short-lived because it lacks a convincing ideology. However, the demagogue often succeeds in gaining lasting power by creating a favorable reflexive establishment while the populous is often left no better off. When the demagogue fails, it is often disastrous.
I liked Kimball’s essay because of his analysis of the administrative state. Make no mistake: the United States to day is an administrative state which is nowhere consistent with the US Constitution. But I am getting ahead on myself in this review.
In Kimball’s word, “Still, I suspect that in the present context the apparently unbreakable association between populism and demagoguery has less to do with any natural affinity than with cunning rhetorical weaponization. “Populism,” that is to say, is wielded less as a descriptive than as a delegitimizing term. Successfully charge someone with populist sympathies and you get, free and for nothing, both the imputation of demagoguery and what was famously derided as a “deplorable” and “irredeemable” cohort. The element of existential depreciation is almost palpable.”
Thus, “Populism” is used by the establishment to dismiss those that disagree with their positions. But what are these positions? Who used the word “deplorables” in the last Presidential Campaign? Why, it was the representative chosen by the establishment.
Again in Kimball’s words, “The question of sovereignty, I believe, takes us to the heart of what in recent years has been touted and tarred as the populist project.” Who rules? In this case it is the administrative state, the “deep state,” or the “swamp.” In Kimball’s words, “we are increasingly governed not by laws but by ad hoc dictats emanating from semi-autonomous and largely unaccountable quasi-governmental bureaucracies, many of which meet in secret but whose proclamations have the force of law.” He points out that the 18th Century statesman would have accepted that the only valid law is that which was Congressionally pass. But today, the administrative state has subsumed much the Congressional responsibilities and placed both law making, enforcing and judicial duties in a large number of agencies where the people holding these responsibilities have not been elected by the people, the so-called, “knowledge class.”
The knowledge class, has under the Progressive Program, has shifted power away from the electorate to a body of self described, right people, enlightened professionals. What this body has shown itself to be good at is solidifying its own power and power base while ignoring the needs of the population.
Again in Kimball’s words, “That discovery stands behind the growth of the administrative state. We still vote. We still have a bicameral legislature. But behind these forms of a free government, the essentially undemocratic activities of an increasingly arbitrary and unaccountable regime pursue an expansionist agenda that threatens liberty in the most comprehensive way, by circumventing the law.” And so, populism has been a pejorative word used dismiss any effort to diminish the administrative state.
These essays are worth reading and thinking about. Clearly, the word “populist” is being used to describe President Trump. We need to ask the question, what is populism, then ask the question, why is this term being used and finally what does it mean for this nation. This book provides some of the answers.
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