Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 based on his “America First” platform. It’s three main planks were cracking down on illegal immigration, ceasing “endless wars” overseas, and economic nationalism. That last plank posited that “terrible trade deals” like NAFTA (1994) and allowing China into the WTO (2000) had hollowed out America’s manufacturing base, outsourcing the output and the high-paying manufacturing jobs to China and other lower-cost labor markets.
This assertion has no basis in reality, as the two charts below clearly show, but it was a big part of his appeal to Middle Americans. Trump promised to withdraw from the trade deals and use tariffs to bring manufacturing and manufacturing jobs back within American shores.
Industrial Production – 100 Year Historical Chart
The most curious aspect of this now-hoary populist canard was that it was sold as being pro-American worker. Tariffs weren’t going to simply make America as a whole more autarkic, or benefit business owners who otherwise could not compete with foreign manufacturers. They were going to benefit the so-called “working class” by bringing back higher paying jobs.
This is ironic because tariffs have historically been considered a transfer of wealth from the working class to big business. The original argument for an income tax was precisely to remove the burden of higher prices for consumer goods from the working class and shift some of the tax burden to big business. This was the case for the first peacetime federal income tax passed (and later found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court), the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act.
Roe vs. Wade came as a shock, even to people who believe the power to regulate abortion is reserved to the states. Lost in the triumphant celebrations of the decision on one side and the abject horror and hysteria on the other is the fact states like my own (New York) are now less restricted in liberalization of their abortion laws.
The 1973 decision didn’t just strike down state laws prohibiting abortion. It wrote new ones, something no court, state or federal, has any legitimate power to do. This is the other edge of the sword in allowing federal judges to override state law. They have taken the power away from the states forever.
The Court did two things in its Roe decision. First, it implicitly affirmed the Incorporation Doctrine, the legal theory that the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporated” most of the first ten amendments to the Constitution to apply against the states. I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with constitutional scholar and historian Kevin Gutzman on an episode of my podcast (neither of us believe the doctrine is valid).
The Incorporation Doctrine was necessary to arrive at the original Roe decision. It provides the basis for a federal court to strike down state laws. Without this doctrine, the Bill of Rights is only applicable to the federal government, leaving protection of individual rights to the bills of rights in the state constitutions.
Second, the Court narrowed interpretation of the Incorporation Doctrine to those rights specifically enumerated in the Constitution or “rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” The Court did not find any evidence of an American tradition of a right to abortion, but rather a tradition of precisely the opposite: the longstanding tradition of states prohibiting abortion before Roe.
Note that this is not a finding that no right to abortion should exist. It is merely a finding that protecting this right, if it does exist, is not a power delegated to the federal government.
Neither is regulating immigration, according to James Madison, the man who wrote the words of the Constitution. In his Virginia Resolution of 1798, in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, he wrote,
That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the constitution, in the two late cases of the “alien and sedition acts,” passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government;
Like Roe vs. Wade, the federal government’s power to regulate immigration was simply “discovered” by the Supreme Court in a decision at least as spurious as Roe. There are no words in the Constitution indicating this power is delegated to the federal government.
Proponents sometimes point to the naturalization power as somehow implying a power to regulate immigration. But this is ridiculous. Naturalization concerns only the power to determine who becomes a citizen of the United States. It has nothing to do with regulating who can or cannot cross the borders of any of the states.
Others point to the 1808 clause as meaning the federal government was delegated the power after 1808. While this argument is slightly more plausible, both it and the naturalization clause were written by Madison himself, who nevertheless stated regulating immigration was a power “no where delegated.”
Jefferson added in his own Kentucky Resolution of the same year that the 1808 clause was added merely out of “abundant caution,” not a grant of this new power after 1808.
As there has been no subsequent amendment to the Constitution delegating this power to the federal government, it must remain with the states.
While the Incorporation Doctrine would not apply as this is not a dispute regarding the federal Bill of Rights, it is noteworthy that at the time of the decision, there was no tradition or history of the federal government regulating immigration. On the contrary, the case in which the Court concluded this was a federal power concerned a dispute over the way the California State immigration officers were regulating immigration.
If there has been a federal power as contentious as regulating abortion, it has been regulation of immigration. Cities run by liberal politicians have declared themselves “sanctuary cities” in defiance of federal immigration laws. States like Florida and Texas, run by conservative politicians, have taken to shipping “undocumented immigrants” sent to their states either back to their point of entry or to Washington, D.C. in protest.
This is no way to conduct civil society.
The rancor over immigration is the predictable result of the federal government exercising authority never delegated to it by the states. The Post Office may be abysmal, but it doesn’t inspire the hatred federal immigration enforcement does because it is recognized as a power the states agreed to delegate to the federal government.
If either Democrats or Republicans brought a case on immigration, it would test the Court’s conviction to its constitutional principles. Immigration checks all the boxes of the Court’s own reasoning for a power improperly usurped by the federal government through a previous SCOTUS decision. In Dobbs, the Court wrote, “This Court cannot bring about the permanent resolution of a rancorous national controversy simply by dictating a settlement and telling the people to move on.”
In the cases of both abortion and immigration, that is precisely what the Court did. Overturning Chy Lung vs. Freeman would right precisely the same wrong.
It is not as if federal regulation of immigration is working now. Under both liberal and conservative presidents, the process to immigrate legally has been woefully deficient, resulting in millions of immigrants entering the country illegally or (more often) staying long past their visas expire. There is every reason to believe the states would do a better job at this and could also tailor their immigration laws to be as strict or lenient as they wish.
To those who find the consequentialist arguments of Chy Lung vs. Freeman compelling, there is an opportunity to offer an amendment to the Constitution to properly delegate this power to the federal government. This would not simply be a dead-on-arrival letter. It would give Americans across the political spectrum a chance for input on the language of such an amendment and the limits, or lack thereof, on the power.
If no amendment agreeable to the requisite number of states can be written, then the process of trying will have proven this is a power which must be reserved to the states. If an amendment can be ratified, then the federal government can go on sucking at regulating immigration, just as it does at delivering the mail, without risking a civil war.
“If libertarianism works, why has there never been a libertarian country?” We hear it all the time from those whose historical perspective can be measured in weeks and months. We also know the answer to this question: “There has been: the United States of America.”
The American republic was libertarian to the core at its birth. The Declaration of Independence posited the existence of natural rights that preexist government, and that government is instituted for one purpose and one purpose only: “to secure these rights.”
Conservatives don’t believe this. Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke didn’t believe it. Nor did Russell Kirk. Republican politicians may claim to believe it to get votes, but they legislate as if they do not. True conservatives believe the purpose of government is to restrain man’s savage inclinations. What liberty is permitted is subordinate to that end.
Neither do liberals believe in this “American Creed.” Like their philosophical father, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, they believe the purpose of government is to restore some mythical “equality” that existed in nature before private property evolved and ruined everything. A just society, Rousseau and the liberals contend, requires, “the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community.”
Rights cannot be both inalienable and totally alienated. This worldview, like the conservative, is fundamentally opposed to the ideals of the Declaration.
In opposition to Hobbes, Rousseau, and their contemporary Edmund Burke, the founding generation were all “channeling” John Locke in 1776. Jefferson called Locke one of the three greatest men who ever lived on multiple occasions. Near the end of his life, he penned a resolution for the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia to ensure it was Locke’s worldview that was taught to students.
When George Mason referred to himself as “a man of 1688,” he was referring to the Glorious Revolution and English Bill of Rights, both inspired by Locke’s principles.
So far from these founding principles had the republic strayed under Federalist rule, believed Thomas Jefferson, that he referred to his presidential election as “the revolution of 1800.” In his first inaugural, he called for a return to libertarian principles, describing “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”
It was not the only time Jefferson asserted a libertarian role for government. In an 1816 letter to Francis Gilmer, he wrote, “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.” In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson wrote, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
These principles won election after election and led to the death of two opposing parties, the Federalists and the Whigs, in the first half of the 19th century. The Federalist platform of high protectionist tariffs, government infrastructure projects, and a central bank was defeated over and over again until the new Republican Party found success by being on the right side – the libertarian side – of the slavery issue.
The new party was able to ride a coalition of former Whigs and abolitionists to victory in 1860 and dominance over American politics for the next half century. Unfortunately, the Republicans were on Alexander Hamilton’s side rather than Jefferson’s on most policy matters.
Still, it was not until the Progressive Era that Jefferson’s libertarian principle was officially repudiated by Woodrow Wilson, directly, and indirectly by the American electorate when they put Wilson in the White House. Wilson couldn’t have been clearer that it was a government limited to enforcing the libertarian non-aggression principle that had to go. He wrote in The New Freedom,
“We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple that all that government had to do was to put on a policeman’s uniform, and say, “Now don’t anybody hurt anybody else.” We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained in Jefferson’s time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live.”
It doesn’t get much plainer than that.
Jefferson had defined liberty as, “unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
For Wilson, it was something quite different. “Human freedom consists in perfect adjustment of human interests and human activities and human energies,” wrote Wilson. Of course, it was the government that was to do the “adjusting” necessary to achieve this “new freedom.”
The Great Reset is the logical conclusion of this reasoning.
The 20th century was dominated by progressives attempting to do precisely what Woodrow Wilson said needed to be done: adjust mankind until they achieved their utopian vision of perfect equality and “social justice.” Today, those adjustments have reached the ridiculous extremes they were always destined to reach.
From time to time, the Republican Party, notably during the Reagan years, has opposed this vision with a watered-down libertarian message, always riddled with loopholes that allowed it to expand the government even faster than the liberals when elected. But notice it was the libertarian message that resonated. Ask rank and file Republicans what attracts them to conservatism, and they will often say things like “limited government” and “God-given rights.” George W. Bush won in 2000 promising “a humble foreign policy.’ But these are antithetical to true conservative principles.
The Libertarian Party has recently had a dramatic change in leadership. The Mises Caucus won every national committee seat it ran a candidate for, including the national chair. It won based on repudiating what it said was weak party leadership too concerned with not offending anyone and too focused on approval from the progressive establishment. The new leadership promises a bolder, purer libertarian message focused on the issues that truly affect the lives of most Americans.
To them I humbly offer this advice: Do not forget we are not conservatives or liberals or any combination of the two. We do not fall on any “spectrum” between right and left. We are not “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” We see the world in a completely different way, based on completely different principles than conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats.
I use the words, “conservative” and “liberal” solely in a political sense. They have nothing to do with one’s personal preferences, although many try to blur the line between personal and political to skew the libertarian message one way or the other. These political terms refer exclusively to the role of government, or for hardcore Rothbardians, what can be responded to with force even in a stateless society. Our answer is simple: only a previous violation of property rights.
Americans are starving for a radical message. That explains both the Trump phenomenon and the success of Bernie Sanders and “the Squad.” But unlike these conservatives and liberals, libertarians can point to a clear record of success when their principles were implemented. It was called the Industrial Revolution and the meteoric rise in living standards for the majority of society.
Libertarians should resist pedantic distinctions between “classical liberal” and “libertarian” – they are one in the same, merely at different points in development. As the late, great Will Grigg once said, “I reserve the right to get smarter over time.” So do libertarians, who have learned over time to apply their principles more consistently than their proto-libertarian ancestors.
Do not be afraid to take “extremist” libertarian positions. Jefferson cut military spending by over 90 percent. Libertarians should run on doing likewise. That’s what allowed Jefferson and his party to eliminate all internal taxes. But it doesn’t end there.
All of the damage done during the progressive era must be undone. Repeal the New Deal root and branch. Close the federal Department of Education and then go to work on ending public schooling at the state and local levels. Legalize competing currencies for the dollar. And once sound money’s superiority to central bank larceny is clear to all, End the Fed.
Unlike fringe issues like “legalizing sex work,” however valid they might be from a libertarian perspective, these are the policies that can change the lives of every American citizen. They also have the potential to reawaken that yearning for liberty that Bastiat said, “makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world.” At the same time, they will be most viciously opposed by all the forces who benefit from an unfree world.
If you’re not being falsely labeled a racist, a bigot, a Russian operative, a fascist, or all of the above by the totalitarian establishment, you’re probably not being effective. Refuse to engage the enemy on its terms. Trust that there is an untapped yearning for freedom out there in those who see through these cheap, cartoonish tactics, especially now as the Regime is failing so spectacularly.
The 20th century saw a reversal in the trend towards human freedom. The 21st has so far been worse. We are at a crossroads. It is not hyperbole to say the choice is freedom or slavery. Let no one for a moment be confused as to which side we’re on.
Bob Dole passed away last weekend. I never voted for him but offer condolences to his family. He had a long life of over 98 years, 35 of which he spent in the U.S. Congress (8 years House Rep.; 27 years U.S. Senator).
He was also a WWII veteran who was seriously injured during the war, suffering permanent loss of the use of his right arm and lifelong numbness in his left.
His death has provided one more opportunity for the childish glorification of WWII. Today being the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will inspire more still.
Down the memory hole has gone the reality that FDR provoked Japan’s foolish attack with an oil embargo, ostensibly for Japan’s treatment of the Chinese. This just a few decades after FDR’s own cousin, the equally-as-awful Teddy Roosevelt, encouraged Japan to go into China in the first place.
In reality, Roosevelt was just looking for a reason to get into the war against Germany. Japan merely provided a convenient vehicle.
This wasn’t the first or the last time the D.C. Empire allied with an authoritarian regime only to turn on it later. That’s more like business as usual.
We hear a lot about political correctness and applaud people who refuse to be censored. Well, here is some real politically incorrect talk that will have most conservatives running for a safe room:
WWII was not a triumph of good over evil. It was a disaster from which Western Civilization has never recovered.
Too many people look fondly on “the good war” as if it represented the west at its best. That this is how Bill Kristol thinks should tell you there is something very wrong with this reasoning.
War is always and everywhere a disaster. It is government at its apex, meaning civilization is at its nadir. This one was no different.
Yes, the Nazis were defeated and that was a good thing. But at what cost? Why was handing half of Europe to the brutal Soviet Empire for 46 years better than handing it to the Nazis? The Soviets killed far more people, albeit over a longer time period. Why do communists always get a pass?
Woodrow Wilson had hoped WWI would result in his regimentation of the economy and American life becoming permanent. It didn’t. WWII did. The war resulted in the U.S. becoming a permanent garrison state while most of Western Europe descended into socialism, only pulling back from it slightly at the end of the century to avoid becoming failed socialist states themselves.
I disagree with Pat Buchanan about quite a bit, but not on foreign policy during the past 30 years. He convinced me WWII could have been avoided without allowing Hitler or Stalin to conquer vast amounts of territory.
Take my advice on this one; read Buchanan’s book. Disabuse yourself of the lie that there was anything good about the “good war.” It will help you wholeheartedly support what really needs to be done.
Today is the 77th anniversary of the day the tyrant FDR succeeded in getting the U.S. into WWII, over the wishes of the people who elected him. Ironically, Roosevelt’s excuse for seizing Japanese assets and cutting off their oil was Japan’s brutal occupation of China, begun with the support and encouragement of Roosevelt’s own cousin just a few decades earlier, as the late William N. Grigg explained. Thus did Franklin Roosevelt goad Japan into the foolish attack that would eventually lead to the end of the empire Teddy Roosevelt encouraged them to build.
This was one of the more momentous in a long list of examples of Washington, DC cozying up to authoritarian powers and then turning on them when they no longer served DC’s purposes. Americans of this century might remember the Muhadajeen, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Ghaddafi, etc.
An Atlanta, Georgia, charter school announced last week its intention to discontinue the practice of having students stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance during its schoolwide morning meetings at the beginning of each school day, opting to allow students to recite the pledge in their classrooms instead. Predictably, conservatives were immediately triggered by this “anti-American” decision, prompting the school to reverseits decision shortly after.
The uproar over periodic resistance to reciting the pledge typically originates with Constitution-waving, Tea Party conservatives. Ironically, the pledge itself is not only un-American but antithetical to the most important principle underpinning the Constitution as originally ratified.
Admittedly, the superficial criticism that no independent, free-thinking individual would pledge allegiance to a flag isn’t the strongest argument, although the precise words of the pledge are “and to the republic for which it stands.” So, taking the pledge at its word, one is pledging allegiance both to the flag and the republic. And let’s face it, standing and pledging allegiance to anything is a little creepy. But, then again, it was written by a socialist.
But why nitpick?
“One Nation”
It’s really what comes next that contradicts both of the republic’s founding documents. “One nation, indivisible” is the precise opposite of the spirit of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (“under God” wasn’t added until the 1950s).
The government in Washington, D.C., is called “the federal government.” A federal government governs a federation, not a nation. And the one persistent point of contention throughout the constitutional convention of 1787 and the ratifying conventions which followed it was fear the government created by the Constitution would become a national government rather than a federal one. Both the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights were written primarily to address this concern of the people of New York and the states in general, respectively.
We’re fighting the Civil War again. Whenever both major parties drop any pretense of addressing the real problems facing American taxpayers, their constituents revert to having at each other in “the culture wars.” And no culture war would be complete without relitigating what should now be settled history: the reasons for the Civil War.
Americans sympathetic to the Union generally believe the war was fought to end slavery or to “rescue the slaves” from political kidnapping by the slave states, that seceded from the Union to avoid impending abolition.
“No,” say those sympathetic to the Confederacy. The states seceded over states’ rights, particularly their right not to be victimized by high protectionist tariffs, paid mostly by southern states, but spent mostly on what we’d now call corporate welfare and infrastructure projects in the north.
The declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas don’t mention taxes or economic policy at all.
That the states seceded for a different reason than the war was fought seems to elude everyone.
Four days after Mike Pence was lectured by the cast of the hit musical Hamiltonand booed by its audience, the controversy rages on. President-elect Trump sent out the expected angry tweet demanding an apology. The left melodramatically gasped, “freedom of speech,” even though no one has suggested government action against the actors. And, suddenly, the right is more offended than an SJW at an Ann Coulter lecture. Even Trump whined about the theater being a “safe space.”
The only person who doesn’t have a strong opinion on this is Mike Pence. He handledthe situation with uncommon grace, shrugging off the boos from the crowd with a line for the ages: “That is what freedom sounds like.”
All of this pales in comparison to the supreme irony everyone is missing in this whole overblown controversy. Here we have the cast of a musical that holds Alexander Hamilton in an admiring light expressing deep anxiety about a president who just won a stunning upset victory after running his campaign largely based on the political ideas of – wait for it – Alexander Hamilton.
Donald Trump lost it on Fox News Monday after learning Ted Cruz has secured 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention. The Colorado GOP canceled its caucus vote last August, electing to choose its delegates at its state convention. The Centennial State is only the latest in which Cruz has won a larger percentage of the delegates than his percentage of the popular vote.
Trump called the process “a crooked deal,” adding, “That’s not the way democracy is supposed to work.”
Newsflash to Trump: This isn’t a democracy. It’s a republic and this is exactly how a republic is supposed to work. The whole reason Colorado and many other states don’t assign their delegates on a winner-take-all basis after the popular vote is they want their nominating process to be more republican (small “r”) than democratic.
If this sounds like déjà vu, it’s because Ron Paul employed the same strategy in 2012, winning the most delegates in eleven states, despite not winning a single primary or caucus popular vote (although he may have been robbed in Maine). Paul was the anti-establishment candidate that year and many of the same people who are now riding the Trump train were Paul supporters who defended the strategy vehemently.
But while it is widely accepted that Trump picked up a large portion of Paul’s 2012 supporters, he obviously hasn’t captured the contingent that mastered Robert’s Rules of Order and took over state conventions in 2012. That’s not surprising, given the difference between the candidates. Paul’s delegate core were highly principled libertarians who typically understood and believed Paul’s message of limited, constitutional government.
That’s what saw them through the long, tedious process of advancing through local, district, county and state conventions. It’s relatively painless to show up at your local polling place and pull a lever behind a curtain. It doesn’t cost anything in time or money. But when the “beauty contest” is over, the real political work has just begun. The months-long process requires would-be delegates to make their candidate’s arguments hundreds of times and hear their opponents’ arguments just as many. By the time they are elected at a state convention, they are fully informed and vetted.
These aren’t the type of people likely to respond to Trump’s largely emotional pitch. Yes, Paul’s supporters may have been “angry” with the status quo, but it was a much more deliberative anger. Unlike Trump’s supporters, Paul’s were always the victims of any violence that broke out at meetings and conventions. And these followers of Austrian economics would never support Trump’s spurious economic theories, although some of his statements on foreign policy may have caught their attention.
While it is true Trump’s support is much wider than merely white working class voters, as pundits initially described it, it is still largely a protest vote. Doctors, lawyers and other professionals can be just as justifiably fed up with Washington, D.C. and its connected interests. It’s not surprising an independent candidate like Trump, apparently impervious to the influence of the donor class, would appeal to voters over a wide demographic. But while their dissatisfaction with the status quo is legitimate, whether Trump is the solution is another story entirely.
The truth is Trump is the type of candidate the whole republic-not-a-democracy idea is supposed to prevent. The founders’ chief concern with democracy was its susceptibility to the “turbulence” resulting from “common passion,” as James Madison put it. That was the reason for the electoral college. They wanted to give the people a direct say in choosing their government’s leadership, but they also wanted a buffer between the multitude’s passions and the reins of power. They would have been horrified by Trump’s rhetoric, no matter how refreshing his destruction of “political correctness” might be.
Trump can rage all he wants about the nominating process being rigged, but the truth is he’ll have to inspire something besides fist-shaking in his supporters if he wants to be president. In many states, it takes more than a fifteen-minute commitment to pull a lever behind a curtain to get your candidate nominated. That’s not such a bad thing.
As Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for President, comparisons to Hitler continue. And while references to the dictator are never absent from political hyperbole, one can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a bit more legitimacy to them when it comes to the Donald. Even the creator of Godwin’s law won’t dismiss the comparison out of hand.
Superficially, there is something there. Trump appeals to the same kind of nationalist worldview that inspired Hitler’s supporters. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” isn’t substantively different than Hitler’s. Neither are his arguments for what has caused the decline: corrupt politicians who have sold out the nation, the presence of subversive or merely unwanted elements (Jews and communists for Hitler; illegal immigrants and Muslim refugees for Trump), and inept economic policy, meaning not enough of or the wrong kind of state intervention.
Like Hitler, Trump touts himself as the only hope to save his country, a strongman-type leader who will run a command economy, rid the country of subversive elements, and restore lost international respect. His disdain for civil liberties like free speech and open support of torture are an even more chilling similarity. For Trump, government isn’t the problem, it’s the solution, as long as the right leader is running it.
But for all the similarities, there are important differences. He certainly can’t be accused of sharing Hitler’s racial beliefs. Trump’s wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico will have a yuuuuge door in the middle to admit legal immigrants of the same ethnicity. He has repeatedly voiced his admiration and respect for the Chinese, because “you can still respect someone who’s knocking the hell out of you.”
Most striking is Trump’s foreign policy differences with the Fuhrer. While Trump does advocate some sort of military action against ISIS, he’s strikingly noninterventionist in general. His willingness to come out and admit the Iraq War was a mistake – in South Carolina no less – and his general view that America should start questioning its ongoing military posture everywhere, including NATO, are the opposite of the aggressive military component integral to Hitler’s plan from the beginning.
So what do you call Trump’s brand of nationalism, if not outright fascism? If you take away the boorishness of Trump’s personality and insert more thoughtful, elegant rhetoric, you’d call it traditional American conservatism, before it was infiltrated by more libertarian ideas. American conservatism was always about creating an American version of the mercantilist British Empire and it really never changed.
Since the founding of the republic, American conservatives have argued for a strong central government that subsidized domestic corporations to build roads and infrastructure, levied high protectionist tariffs and ran a central bank. This was Alexander Hamilton’s domestic platform, championed by his Federalist Party. Henry Clay and the Whigs adopted it after the Federalist Party died. From the ashes of the Whigs emerged Lincoln and the Republicans, who were finally able to install Clay’s “American System” after decades of electoral failure.
The Republican Party has remained startlingly consistent in its economic principles, despite incorporating free market rhetoric in the 20th century. Republicans from Lincoln to McKinley to Coolidge to George W. Bush have been protectionists. Hoover reacted to the Depression by signing the Smoot-Hawley tariff, for all the same reasons Trump threatens tariffs now. And what was the first thing Republicans did in the 1950s, after two decades of Democratic Party domination? A huge government roads project that had Hamilton smiling in his grave.
Trump promises more of the same, justifying his stance against nation-building by saying, “I just think we have to rebuild our country.” Make no mistake, Trump isn’t suggesting cutting military spending and allowing the private sector to build what it chooses to build. “We” is the government, with Trump as its intellectually superior leader.
Trump isn’t Hitler; he’s Hamilton, advocating the kind of centralist government Hamilton spoke about in secret at the Constitutional Convention and attempted to achieve surreptitiously throughout the rest of his political life by eroding the same limits on federal government power he had trumpeted to sell the Constitution in the Federalist Papers. Trump wants to be Hamilton’s elected king, running a crony-capitalist, mercantilist economy just as Hamilton envisioned. Even Trump’s campaign slogan is Hamiltonian. Hamilton’s stated goal was “national greatness,” something he referred to again and again in his writing.
And while Hamilton was certainly a more eloquent and well-mannered spokesman for conservatism, Trump is actually superior to him in at least one way: Hamilton was a military interventionist, whose ambition to conquer the colonial possessions of Spain was much more like Hitler’s desire to seize the Ukraine for Germany than anything Trump wants to do internationally.
One has to wonder: Is that the real reason neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are so anti-Trump?
Today is the 77th anniversary of the day the tyrant FDR succeeded in getting the U.S. into WWII, over the wishes of the people who elected him. Ironically, Roosevelt’s excuse for seizing Japanese assets and cutting off their oil was Japan’s brutal occupation of China, begun with the support and encouragement of Roosevelt’s own cousin just a few decades earlier, as the late William N. Grigg 
An Atlanta, Georgia, charter school 
We’re fighting the Civil War again. Whenever both major parties drop any pretense of addressing the real problems facing American taxpayers, their constituents revert to having at each other in “the culture wars.” And no culture war would be complete without relitigating what should now be settled history: the reasons for the Civil War.
