Trump's
appeal is based on the tag line from his TV show. The voters want somebody to
go to Washington, DC and tell everyone there, "You're fired!" That's
why Trump being rude and crude was attractive. Being polite got us nowhere.
Unfortunately,
Trump has nothing going for him other than the tag line from his show. Will he
back a Convention of the States to put a check on the Supreme Revolutionary
Council calling itself the Supreme Court? Will he force an amendment to require
Congressional approval for all regulations coming out of regulatory agencies?
Will he separate executive legislative and judicial functions in regulatory
agencies? Will he follow the rule of law and make sure everyone in the federal
government does the same? Nope! All he really offers is the entertainment of
watching the high and mighty left wing press and the DC politicians have a big
moment of extreme discomfort knowing that the unchecked power of the presidency they created for
Barry the Brilliant and Hillary the Inevitable is instead in the hands of Trump
the Terrible. All of the checks and balances the left has spent the last 80
years removing will now offer no protection against whatever Trump decides to
do.
Will it be a
teachable moment? I very much doubt it. The left is supremely confident that
the right side of history, their side, will win. Possibly that's because they spend
a lot of time rewriting history to make it conform to their beliefs. Their
Orwellian belief, that controlling the historical narrative will give them power,
is instead giving them Trump. Liberals believe they are smart enough to run the
world, but their results show they are dumb enough to believe that they can run the world even after
an unbroken string of spectacular failures.
The left has
systematically removed the knowledge of the history of England from 1600 to
1700 from the general knowledge of American voters. King Charles I, Oliver
Cromwell and King James II were fresh in the minds of the founders. Their
abuses of concentrated power gave us separation of powers. Very few voters have
any idea who John Locke is. (Hint: In 1687, Locke came up with the concept of
government ruling by "the consent of the governed" and also that
government existed to secure "life, liberty and property" of its
citizens.) Forgetting the abuses of concentrated power is giving us a federal
government with all its power concentrated in the hands of the president and
executive branch regulatory agencies.
The left has
rewritten the history of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
to make both documents about slavery and racism. This distortion removes the
role both documents played in abolishing slavery and removing racism's effects.
The Declaration of Independence was a statement of goals. When abolitionists
argued against slavery, they argued that blacks and whites had the same natural
rights as stated in the Declaration of Independence. It was a winning argument.
After the Civil War, Republicans knew that when Confederate veterans were
allowed to vote again the gains from emancipation could be reversed. That's why
they wrote and ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments to outlaw slavery and to
prevent state courts from mistreating recently freed blacks. Republicans knew
that racist Southern Democrats would not be able to repeal Constitutional
Amendments and the protection that the amendments provided. Recently, the
Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868, when homosexual acts
were illegal in every state, to mandate same sex marriage. If constitutional
amendments can be stretched to that extent, the Constitution no longer offers
any protection at all. The Constitution means whatever the elite of Washington, DC, decide
they want it to mean at the moment. The meaning can change if it suits the
convenience of the DC elite.
Trump is the reaction of voters to the lawless behavior
of the Obama Administration. If there are no rules for the Democrats,
Republicans are saying we can break the rules too. It's not a rational
reaction. It's an emotional reaction. In a way, it's very satisfying. In another way, it most likely will not solve the problems.