By Nathanael Blake
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
I am optimistic about President Donald Trump’s second
term, both that he will have one and that it will be good. On the first point,
it is not just that the president has been on a roll while the Democrats have
been in disarray. It is also that Trump and his team have shown they have a
solid plan for his reelection. From his Super Bowl ads to his State of the
Union address, Trump is hitting the right notes.
It helps that the country has enjoyed prosperity and
relative peace during his presidency. The economy has boomed for everyone, and
our military has struck our enemies without getting entangled in new wars. The
president has delivered on conservative priorities, especially judges. And as
seen in policies such as criminal justice reform, he has helped constituencies
that Republicans had tended to ignore.
Things are generally going well as Trump seeks
reelection, and the political reasons many conservatives (myself included)
mistrusted and did not vote for him in 2016 do not apply. This is why
Never-Trump holdouts such as David French are reduced to pounding the table
about Orange Man Bad. Their predictions of betrayal and disaster have not come
true, so they are stuck hyping every presidential error, or rumor of an error,
far out of proportion and reiterating that Trump is not a good man.
How Can Christians
Support Trump?
The last redoubt of right-wing opposition to Trump is
personal: How can you, especially if you are a Christian, vote for someone that
crude, crass, and callous? This has been answered
many times, including an extensive recent article
in National Review by Andrew Walker, who observes, “The constant criticism of
religious conservatives’ voting en masse for Donald Trump never comes with a
suggestion of better alternatives.”
Conservative Christians see Trump as a barricade against
Democratic Party leaders who want taxpayer-funded abortion on demand until
birth. We see him as a shield against leftists who want to drive religious
traditionalists from the marketplace, close our schools and charities, and tax
our churches for refusing to bend the knee to the dogmas of the sexual
revolution. We see him as a bulwark against a transgender lobby that wants to
take children away from their parents and mutilate them with chemicals and
surgery.
We need not admire the president’s personal character to
view him as, in Walker’s words, “a bed of nails on the road, temporarily
halting secularism’s advance.” Democrats’ efforts to enforce conformity with
leftist cultural norms have targeted the Little Sisters of the Poor and created
dissident cake artists, florists, and calligraphers. Trump and his judicial
appointments are the last line of defense against the left’s coercion of
cultural and religious nonconformists.
What Does Conservatism
Look Like?
Nonetheless, it may be that this reprieve comes at the
expense of long-term success. For example, Robert Tracinski recently argued
that support for Trump is emblematic of the right having given up on the
“contest of ideas.” This intellectual surrender means that “the only way
forward is to never lose another election.” Tracinski charges that we have
abandoned persuasion, and our use of Trump as a shield is an admission of
defeat, as the president at most gains us a sheltered decline rather than any
hope of victory.
Of course, Tracinski’s argument could be flipped against
him. If his faction of atheistic libertarians have lost influence on the right,
perhaps it is, in his words, their “own fault, for not making a good enough
case to the public.” Nonetheless, he is correct that if conservatives abandon
persuasion to rely only on Trump for protection, we will be overwhelmed when
the left regains power, even if his judges serve as a valiant rearguard during
our retreat.
But this grim forecast presumes Trump’s presidency is the
last gasp of a decadent conservatism. In contrast, I think Trump’s election has
created space for a necessary reconsideration of what conservatism is. There is
plenty of intellectual ferment on the right, from the popular heterodoxy of
Tucker Carlson to the discussions taking place in outlets such as First Things,
Public Discourse, National Review, and The Federalist. We have not despaired of
ideas and debate, even if our political leader is not an intellectual avatar
for our positions.
Conservatives have not been idle while the Trump
presidency shields us. Even with his imperfections in the Oval Office, another
four years may bring to maturity a revitalized conservatism, refocused on
family and community rather than individual autonomy. A Republican Party with
more leaders like Josh Hawley and the current version of Marco Rubio would be
an improvement over the business-as-usual GOP to which the party’s anti-Trump
diehards apparently wish to return.
Can Leftist Ideas
Prevail Without Political Power?
Additionally, four more years of Trump might be just the
prescription needed to break the leftist fever grip of the Democratic Party. It
might force moderation on a party that has careened further left than even its
own voters on issues such as abortion. Imagine a Democratic Party that has many
more officials like the pro-life Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Politically, another Trump term might force long-overdue
compromises, such as immigration reform that is humane toward those living here
peacefully while also regaining control of our national borders.
Culturally, the left’s current obsessions might pass if
they are kept from further political power. Leftist ideas of social justice
have attained great cultural influence and some economic and political sway.
But progressives’ vision of self-creating individual autonomy within a
socialist system does not promote genuine human flourishing, and that may be
its undoing.
The dogmas of intersectionality, socialism, gender
theory, and other leftist notions of social justice are efforts to fill the
void left by the decline of churches, communities, and families. They attempt
to explain the imperfections of the world and find meaning. But these secular
doctrines are poor substitutes for real transcendence. They bring rage and
misery, not peace. If they break, it will be because of those they have broken.
For example, the radical transgender ideology that denies
the biological reality of our embodied existence is hurting people. As one
young woman
succinctly put
it, “I transitioned because as a 15 year old it was easier to say ‘I’m a
boy’ than to say ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be a skinny attractive woman’ because
that’s how I felt. I will never be pretty enough or skinny enough; I can’t be a
woman. HOW did NO ONE see this????” The answer is that the conservatives and
some feminists who saw it were ignored and shunned, while radical trans
activists bullied the rest of the leftists, liberals, and moderates into
acquiescence.
Gender ideology is breaking people at the most basic
level, effacing the reality of our bodily existence as men and women — the
biological reality by which we are begotten into existence. Likewise, our
sexual culture is distorted; men and women are struggling to permanently pair
up, leaving them lonely and embittered. Americans have increasingly given up on
the future, as exemplified by birthrates far below replacement level.
Can such immiserating ideology endure if it is unable to
consolidate the power needed to ensure compliance? I do not think so, not if we
have our freedom and use it to boldly speak the truth and offer something
better to a nation that is materially prospering but relationally and
spiritually adrift.
My hope for another four years of Trump is that
conservatives, particularly Christians, will not just shelter, but rebuild and
go forth with confidence.
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