By David French
Monday, February 22, 2016
In the past few weeks and months, I’ve had countless
conversations with friends and neighbors who support Donald Trump. I live in
the heart of Trump Country, in a small southern town with a median income well
below the national average. And while the dominant Evangelical vote is split
between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio, Trump gets more than his share of support, even
from people who are staunchly pro-life and supported the Iraq War until the
end.
When Trump first announced his candidacy, many of my
Evangelical friends and neighbors were thrilled by his stance on border
control. They were tired of the notion that “compassion” somehow required
immigration policies that made America more vulnerable to terrorism, drove down
wages for working-class voters, and overwhelmed social services. And they were
sick to death of political correctness. So while they didn’t necessarily admire
Trump’s character, they admired his strength.
Indeed, that strength is the secret to Trump’s success.
It’s the quality that allows him to paint such an effective contrast to the
Republican political class, so widely perceived as weak and feckless. Trump
voters find themselves caught between a Democratic political class that will
bend every engine of the government to its will and a Republican opposition
that can’t seem to hold a single public official accountable, conduct a single
hearing with real competence, or do one meaningful thing to stop the president’s
overreach. As one neighbor put it, “Can you honestly tell me that Republicans
and Democrats are equally dedicated to their principles? Republicans say
they’ll fight, and they never do.”
Yes, there are unrealistic expectations. Generations of
bipartisan congressional action helped create the runaway regulatory state, and
the Democrats control the bureaucracy so effortlessly because they are the bureaucracy. What Obama wants,
the bureaucrats will give him — and more. What Republicans want, the
bureaucrats will resist to the point of lawlessness. But the bottom-line
criticism rings true. The Democrats are very good to their base. Republicans
are very good at using their base to win elections, and abandoning their
promises at the first opportunity thereafter.
But the argument for Trump as a cure-all for this sorry
state of affairs kept collapsing every time he opened his mouth. As the race
has dragged on, he’s proven that he would be a “strong” leader. But for what
purpose would that strength be employed? To keep funding Planned Parenthood? To
establish a bizarre form of touchback amnesty disguised as “toughness” on the
border? To ruin relationships with the Kurds, our most stalwart fighting force
against ISIS? To cozy up to Vladimir Putin? To replace Obamacare with something
even worse?
As the evidence mounts that Trump isn’t exactly
channeling justifiable conservative (or even populist) anger for constructive
ends, Trump’s fans have found themselves reduced to a single argument in his
defense: Even if he’s wrong on substance and they reject his personal values,
at least he’ll “burn it all down.” He’ll wreck the broken system and destroy a
failed party. Every other Republican will maintain some form of the status quo,
but not Trump. He’s the destroyer. And given the failure of the Republican
party, destruction is the answer Trump voters seek.
Yet it’s hard to think of an answer more antithetical to
the spirit of the American Revolution and our Constitution than “burn it all
down.” The American colonists, faced with a crisis far graver than the crises
we face today, decided not to “burn it all down” but to build something. Even before the “shot heard round the world,” they
built a Continental Congress, a representative body that could express their
grievances to the crown.
Immediately after the fateful shots on Lexington Green,
they built a standing army led by a distinguished general, and fashioned a
coherent argument about liberty and democracy that has endured for more than
two centuries. The constitution that is that argument’s foundational document
has endured for two centuries, underpinning a participatory democracy and the
individual liberty it represents.
The torch and pitchfork, meanwhile, are instruments of
the French revolutionary, of the nihilist who lives only to take revenge on his
enemies, with a will to power but no interest in justice. Replace men who
surrender to Planned Parenthood with a man who embraces Planned Parenthood?
Replace men who supported a path to legalization with a man who supports
amnesty? Replace men who failed to stop Obamacare with a man who embraces
single-payer health care? Nominate a man who believes in Iraq War conspiracy
theories to confront the party that spawned those theories? Meet the new boss.
He’ll be the same as the old.
You say you want a revolution? Well, “burn, baby, burn”
is the language of the Left. The true American revolutionary builds, and that
means supporting people with high character and true conservative convictions.
It means doing the difficult work of repairing our constitutional democracy,
which includes repairing our own families and communities. It means supporting
a convention of states to undo decades of damage inflicted on our constitution
by feckless ideologues in the judiciary and in public office.
An American revolution isn’t a temper tantrum. It’s hard
work. It’s anger channeled into virtue. Trump represents anger stripped of
virtue. He will burn the GOP, but what will he build in its place?
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