Trump and the Founders' Vision

Michael Anton, writing at Real Clear Politics.

Independence Day is, or should be, a time to reflect on the great gifts bequeathed to us by the American founders, and to judge ourselves by their standards. How well are we maintaining the country they built for us, and the principles which helped to make it great?

The answer is at once not so well--we have drifted far from the founders' vision, mostly to our detriment--but also better than we have done in many years. That's because Donald Trump's political philosophy is closer to the founders' than was that of any president since at least Reagan.

This assertion will no doubt occasion some sniggering. But Trump's approach to politics addresses many of the American founders’ central concerns, in ways they would likely recognize and approve.

For the founders, government has one fundamental purpose: to protect person and property from conquest, violence, theft and other dangers foreign and domestic. The secure enjoyment of life, liberty and property enables the "pursuit of happiness." Government cannot make us happy, but it can give us the safety we need as the condition for happiness. It does so by securing our rights, which nature grants but leaves to us to enforce, through the establishment of just government, limited in its powers and focused on its core responsibility.

Trump’s Inaugural address reasserted the fundamental duty of government to protect every citizen--and enforce the laws--equally. The speech was naturally not well-received by a political class that has manifestly failed to protect their constituents from dangers ranging from terrorism to crime to drugs, all the while looking the other way at malfeasance in high places. But the founders would have understood it.

And then there's Maude. Cap'n Bill gathered up his billionaire donors' couch-change and ran a pro-immigration ad today, which (deliberately?) conflated legal and illegal immigration.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:40 PM

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