He’s unmasked the sophists of the cosmopolitan class.
Donald Trump’s significance to the American republic must be understood in light of his fight against despotism. He does not face a tyranny of blood and iron—he faces a tyranny of mass conformity, which bypasses the body and controls the will by controlling the mind. It seeks universal conformity, and for that reason, it is a more complete tyranny than anything imagined by ancient or medieval tyrannies. Kings could proscribe against their enemies, but they could find protection from the church, the aristocracy, or the people. There were threats to individual freedoms in the past, but they were never those of a mass society.
Trump’s candidacy was a declaration of war against a despotism that has restricted free speech and freedom of the mind more effectively than could any Roman emperor or European monarch. Our modern tyranny has been named, though not necessarily explained, using a variety of epithets: “political correctness,” “globalism,” “Cultural Marxism,” “the Deep State,” “the uniparty,” “the Swamp,” “the establishment,” and “the blob.” By challenging it, Trump forced it to drop its mask and reveal itself.
From the moment he descended the golden escalator in 2015, he was universally excoriated. It was not just the Democratic Party that opposed him, but also his own party and the entire ruling class, including the FBI, DOJ, media, and universities. Even Europe and the United Nations joined in, making it seem as if the voice of world civilization had spoken. This would have been enough to crush most men. But not Trump. His resistance and triumph are much-needed examples of greatness against the full forces of mass democracy arrayed against him.
Citizens vs. Cosmopolitans
Trump’s first sin was to speak against illegal immigration, for which he was immediately labelled a “populist.” He has embraced the term and has used it to his advantage, but it was meant as a slur to denounce him and the Americans for whom he spoke. The accusation of populism was meant to suggest that Trump was a dangerous demagogue, indulging the ignorance and inflaming the jingoistic hatreds of the vox populi. His patriotism was denounced as “xenophobic,” and he was frequently accused of “racism,” “sexism,” and “Islamophobia.” The intellectuals were essentially delegitimizing the republic by denouncing its people as unenlightened savages.
The accusation of “xenophobia” tells us more about the reigning despotism than it does about Trump and the MAGA movement. It is a cosmopolitan tyranny, or at least claims to rule in the name of a cosmopolitan ideal, often called “The Open Society.” As such, it opposes the basic condition for politics and, therewith, of a free republic, which is that nations exist and necessarily have friends and enemies. Western liberalism, in particular, is clearly at odds with Eastern despotism.
The cosmopolitans (as distinct from citizens, representatives, or statesmen) have contempt and hatred for the people and free elections, because, as members of a republic, the people are for their own country. They do not primarily speak for the oppressed groups, including poor foreign countries that have been victims of European colonialism. The oppressed groups are women, people of color (especially those with a history of slavery), non-Western foreign nations and foreigners, and those of unconventional sexuality and gender.
This coalition of the oppressed is known as identity politics, where identity is defined by victimhood, which in turn becomes a claim to entitled privilege. The Open Society demands population changes, that the oppressed be helped through the state, and that those in control of the state rule in favor of the oppressed groups through DEI or similar laws. As victims, the oppressed groups are humanity. Those who have compassion for them are the true rulers, with goals that supersede the people’s right to self-government. Thus unelected bureaucrats and media professionals constitute a moral elite that use their authority to advance these oppressed groups.
The Supreme Court essentially codified this view of identity politics, and therewith the belief that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic country, by recognizing the justice of affirmative action and group rights. Affirmative action, or what came to be called DEI, is inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Court knew it, so they qualified its legality by claiming it would be a temporary measure. Its recognition of affirmative action had to be based on a general principle of justice, which recognized the privileges of the identity groups.
Accordingly, a moral empire was set up with a new priest class that constantly propagandizes the nation about racism, sexism, and homophobia so that their enshrined status is preserved. The Court did exactly what it was meant to prevent. It essentially replaced the rule of law with group politics since it was understood that the privileged groups were part of a voting bloc.
Trump broke this tyranny by resisting its moral accusations and by recovering the principles of the American Founding. He embraced toleration, but not group rights. He accepted diversity, but only of a limited sort that did not deny the basic natural rights of each individual. He repeatedly stated he was trying to save the country, and not the least of his contributions toward that goal was to unify the country through appealing to its original idea of justice. This made him an enemy of the ruling regime.
Economic Nationalism, Economic Greatness
Trump speaks directly to the people with the manly frankness and sensible reason contained in the Founding. His urgency is not a manufactured hysteria like global warming, but the very real concerns of a free and powerful nation threatened by foreign dominance and internal tyranny. He speaks of wasteful wars like Iraq, where blood and treasure were lost to support what Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.” The benefits were private and the costs public.
Most urgent is China’s rise and America’s ever-increasing relative weakness, the cause of which was America itself. The lopsided trade relations were the effect of the uniparty, which sought to satisfy multinational corporations while still appearing to be democratic. In order to achieve this, the rule of law had to be replaced with sanctimoniousness. Sanctuary cities and open borders were decreed. Criticism of China was declared racist, and corporations had to promote DEI.
Trump challenged the uniparty in the name of common sense, which he called economic nationalism. He enforced immigration laws, and he leveraged the strength of our markets to impose tariffs. Economic nationalism is really the recovery of the political philosophy laid out by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in The Federalist. These founders thought American greatness would be achieved through economic greatness, and that economic greatness would be achieved through and accompanied by general prosperity.
Each man is an individual whose faculties are his own property. From this sense of freedom, inequality arises, especially an inequality of property, which is a source of faction. Economic nationalism helps to control the bad effects of faction by creating economic dependency between industrialists, landowners, artisans, and laborers. They all need each other, and if they prosper to unequal degrees, they prosper together. In particular, a rich nation can create a large middle class that moderates the animosity between rich and poor. Reinvesting in American manufacturing and forcing American corporations to relocate to the United States is in accord with our original idea of justice and our original practical sense.
The party realignment Trump achieved through economic nationalism reflects the original alignment of wealth and labor hoped for and effected by the Founders as they moved away from feudalism and slavery toward industry and commerce.
Nihilism, Cosmopolitan Style
The chattering classes incessantly deride Trump to satisfy their collective vanity. They especially dislike his love of glory. But Trump’s love of glory is part of the reason he took it upon himself to save the country from foreign domination and domestic tyranny. He did not oppose cosmopolitanism in the name of unprincipled interests. Instead, he opposed it in the name of a country grounded in the humane principles of natural rights declared in the Declaration and secured through the Constitution. In doing so, he showed it was actually the cosmopolitans who were unprincipled and corrupt.
Their love of humanity turned out to be a pose. It was quickly revealed that their institutions were involved in taking undeclared foreign money and channeling tax dollars to themselves. They of course condemned the investigations as unconstitutional. Even more to the point, they were frivolous. They wanted to live as they pleased without threat of law or fear of shame. What they really wanted was a moral pretext to liberate themselves from the claims made upon them by country and family. The love of humanity has no real duties, which frees them to be concerned with themselves.
The cosmopolitans embraced relativism to undermine the belief in truth, with the hope that if nobody believed in anything, society would be a conformist herd of harmless pleasure seekers. Their relativism corralled them in that direction, but it also opened the door to fanatic belief. Without the possibility of a rational way of life, fanatic commitment to culture is as justifiable an alternative as a nihilistic herd society.
The great irony is that the cosmopolitans think they are closer to philosophy than Trump because they are prejudice-free, whereas he is patriotic. They do not understand that America is a nation founded in rational philosophy, and to the extent that they do, they condemn it as Eurocentric for not honoring culture, while also condemning culture for not being rational. They have unmasked themselves as confused sophisticates. Cosmopolitanism provides them a mannerly politeness, which shields them from their own nihilism and the scrutiny of outsiders. Trump has penetrated this façade, and perhaps he will breathe new life into the universities as he has into the American republic.
