Traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.
Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Holding Up Stephen Strang'sBook God and Donald Trump
Lance Wallnau Hears from God in May of 2016 that the 45th Chapter of Isaiah Identifies Trump as the 45h President, God's New Cyrus
If America is a Christian nation chosen by God, and if God providentially enters history to carry out his purposes, is it possible that the miracle of Donald Trump's election in 2016 was an act of God to save America from its decline into secularism? Many American evangelicals say yes, and they point to the evangelical prophecies of Trump's victory, when almost no one thought he could win.
Although most of us might be skeptical of this, it is true that almost a third of the votes cast for Trump came from evangelical Christians, most of them in the states that were crucial for Trump's electoral college victory. If many of these evangelical Trump voters were motivated by their belief that Trump really was God's chosen one, then it would seem that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We now have the story of how this prophetic vision of God's providential intervention changed American history in the new book by Stephen Strang--God and Donald Trump--which has been endorsed by evangelical politicians such as Mike Huckebee and Michelle Bachmann. In the picture above, you can see Trump proudly waving his copy of the book at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Strang is a leading Pentecostal evangelical who publishes Charisma magazine, and part of his story is how the Pentecostals were the first Christians to support Trump. As early as 2003, Paula White Cain, a Pentecostal television minister, became Trump's spiritual advisor after he had seen her TV show.
Here is a video of Cain and other charismatic ministers laying hands on and praying for Trump in his Trump Tower office on September 30, 2015, six months before the first presidential primaries:
This appeals to the grandiose narcissism of Trump's chimpanzee personality, which has been a topic of my post here.
Christians like Strang who believe that Trump's election came from a miraculous intervention by God must make at least two kinds of arguments--an interpretation of the American founding and an interpretation of the Bible.
First, they must argue that the American founders established America as a Christian nation specially chosen by God to be under his providential care. So, Strang refers to "Benjamin Franklin's surprising declaration during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when he said famously, 'God governs in the affairs of men'" (xiv). And Strang says that the purpose of his book in telling the story of God's intervention in the election of 2016 is to confirm this idea "that God is involved in the affairs of men" (184).
Remarkably, however, Strang is silent about the circumstances of Franklin's declaration at the Constitutional Convention. Franklin was proposing that the Convention should have daily prayers and Bible reading so that God would providentially intervene to help them write the Constitution. The members of the Convention refused to even allow a vote on his proposal, and Alexander Hamilton quipped that they "had no need for foreign aid"! I have written about this previously here.
Christians like Strang must also argue that identifying Trump as God's chosen one is consistent with the Bible. Is there any evidence in the Bible that God would choose someone like Trump--who is not a Christian--to act as the savior of God's people? Well, yes, as Lance Wallnau explains in the video above, God could chose Trump just as God chose the pagan Persian Cyrus as his "anointed one" or "messiah" to liberate the people of Israel from their Babylonian captivity. In fact, God spoke to Wallnau and noted the connection between the 45th chapter of Isaiah and Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States. In that chapter of Isaiah, God speaks to Cyrus as his "anointed one," although "you do not know me." Although Cyrus does not worship Yahweh--he worships other gods--Yahweh can use him for his purposes. Likewise, then, God could use Trump to bring America back to God even if Trump himself is not a believer. And that is what many evangelicals decided: Trump's sinful character and lack of any clear belief in Christianity need not weaken his claim to be chosen by God to carry out God's plan for saving America from Hillary Clinton!
There is a problem here, however, that Strang briefly mentions and then passes over without resolving it (75-76). As the evangelical Tom Horn has pointed out, God used the pagan leader Nebuchadnezzar as "the servant of the Most High God" to punish Judah by taking them into the very Babylonian captivity from which Cyrus would later liberate them (Jeremiah 25). So if God is using Trump, we can't be sure whether Trump is to be America's savior (like Cyrus) or America's punishment (like Nebuchadnezzar). And indeed many Christians who refused to vote for Trump worry that the Christians supporting Trump are showing a shameless lack of moral authority. Is God punishing these Christians for their hypocrisy?
There is another problem for the Christian here: if Cyrus was the "messiah," does that deny the claim of Jesus that he was the fulfillment of these prophecies in Isaiah? As I have indicated in a previous post, that's a problem for Handel's Messiah, which was an attempt to refute the deistic denial of providential prophecy.
And, of course, there is the fundamental problem with all claims of prophecy that they are stated in such vague and confused ways that they cannot be verified, or if some seem to be verified, they are mixed up with others that are falsified.
Consider, for example, this claim by Strang: "As far back as 2007, the late Kim Clement had prophesized, 'Trump shall become a trumpet. . . . I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet, and Bill Gates to open up the gate of a financial stream for the church.' The first has come true, but we'll have to wait and see about the second part" (69).
The first prophecy is ridiculously vague: "Trump shall become a trumpet"? The second prophecy that Bill Gates will give his money to the church is false.
If you go to Kim Clement's Elijah's List for April 14, 2007, which is Strang's source, you will see that Clement issued hundreds of prophecies every year, most of them in vague language, and most of them have not been plausibly fulfilled. Here is the passage from which Strang quoted an excerpt:
"I am God and you have called to Me, and many from this Nation has said, 'Enough--enough of religion, and enough of dead speech.' The Spirit of God said, 'This is a moment of resurrection.' For the Spirit of God says, 'Honor Me with your praise and acceptance of this that I say to you. This that shall take place shall be the most unusual thing, a transfiguration, a going into the marketplace if you wish, and into the news media. Where Time magazine will have no choice but to say what I want them to say; Newsweek what I want to say; and The View, what I want to say.'"
"'Trump shall become a trumpet,' says the Lord! 'I will raise up Trump to become a trumpet, and Bill Gates to open up the gate of a financial realm for the Church,' says the Spirit of the Living God!'"
It's been 11 years now since the Spirit of God prophesized that Time, Newsweek, and ABC's The View would become outlets for God's message. How long should we wait for the fulfillment of this prophecy? Strang is carefully silent about this and many other dubious prophecies from Clement.
Many of us find it hard to take this stuff seriously. But many evangelical Christians do take it seriously. For example, Strang reports that during the 2016 election, Cindy Jacobs, a Charismatic prophet, mobilized tens of thousands of people to "prayer walk" through the seven critical states that helped to elect Trump (20-21). These "prayer warriors" walked around courthouses and centers of towns praying for God's intervention in the election. We cannot ignore the fact that many of the millions of evangelical Christians who voted for Trump could have done so with the belief that he was God's chosen one; and if so, that would mean that this belief in divine intervention could have been the deciding factor in giving the presidential election to Trump.
As an alternative to the view of God as a providential interventionist in the world, which creates these problems, we might consider returning to the deism of the American founders, whose deity was not the God of the Bible but Nature's God. That's the topic for my next post.
Three years ago, I wrote a post on those Christians who believed that Donald Trump was God's Chosen One as indicated by the fact that his election in 2016 was a fulfillment of prophecy. This was the argument of Pentecostal Christians like Stephen Strang, the publisher of the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. Before the election of 2020, Strang publicized the new prophecies that God had foreordained Trump's reelection. Last March, Strang apologized for this mistake. "There were a number of prophets who were very certain that Trump would be elected," he explained. He continued: "I hope that you'll give me the grace--and Charisma Media the grace--of missing this, in a manner of speaking." As reported in The New York Times, Strang has written a new book--God and Cancel Culture--warning that "there are people who want to cancel Christianity," but the book is silent about his mistaken prophecies.
So where did Strang and the other fundamentalist Christians who believed Trump was ordained by God go wrong? As I indicated in my post on Strang's book God and Donald Trump, there are two issues here--the interpretation of the Bible and the interpretation of the American founding.
Some of the Trump prophets saw a connection between the 45th chapter of Isaiah and Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States. In that chapter of Isaiah, God spoke to the Persian leader Cyrus as His "anointed one," although God said "you do not know me." They saw this as suggesting that just as God used Cyrus, He could use Trump to bring America back to God even though Trump himself is not a Christian believer.
There are lots of problems with this interpretation of the Bible. For example, God used the pagan leader Nebuchadnezzar as "my servant" to punish Judah by taking them into the very Babylonian captivity from which Cyrus would later liberate them (Jeremiah 25:9, 27:6). So, if God is using Trump, we can't be sure whether Trump is to be America's savior (like Cyrus) or America's punishment (like Nebuchadnezzar).
The second issue for the Christian Trump supporters is whether they are right in their interpretation of the American founding. The idea that God would anoint Trump to save America assumes that God has taken America under His providential care as His Chosen People, just as He cared for ancient Israel. The Christian Trumpets might argue that the American founders established America as a Christian nation specially chosen by God. After all, the Declaration of Independence appeals to God as the Lawgiver, the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the world, and the Providential Caregiver for America. So why shouldn't God miraculously intervene in history to support Trump?
But as I have noted in a previous post, Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence has only one reference to a deity--"Nature's God"--which is the naturalistic divinity of Lucretius, Spinoza, and perhaps Darwin. This is the mysterious First Cause of nature, the ultimate source of nature's laws that never acts outside those natural laws to exercise any supernatural power.
If America's God is Nature's God, we can know that this God would never anoint Donald Trump to save America, because this God exercises no miraculous powers of providential intervention into history.
Against this, American fundamentalist Christians insist that America's God is the God of the Bible understood as the literal Revelation of God's will. There is plenty of evidence, however, that most of the Americans of the Founding generation did not believe in this Biblical God. There is also growing evidence that most Americans are moving back towards the deistic religion of Jefferson and the other Founders, a religion that explains the world as governed by the laws of nature that can be known by natural science, including the evolutionary science of human nature and human history.
Those who believe in Nature's God feel no need to participate in religious ceremonies of worship, to pray for God's providential care, or to expect eternal salvation or condemnation in the afterlife, because all of this falsely assumes a divine power--the Biblical God--acting outside of the laws of nature as known by natural science.
The number of Americans who believe in the Biblical God can be measured by tracking membership in religious bodies and participation in religious ceremonies. Recently, Lyman Stone has published a report that surveys the data for this over 300 years of American history. He shows that the percentage of Americans who are members of religious bodies hit a high of about 70% in 1720, declined to 20% to 30% in 1800, and then began rising over 150 years and hit a high of about 75% in 1960, but then has steadily declined to about 50% in 2020 (see page 12 of his report). Notice that the lowest ebb of American religiosity was during the founding period (1770 to 1800). So the recent decline in religiosity in America could be interpreted as a return to the Nature's God of the Founding.
Another piece of evidence for this is that as recently reported, the majority of Americans now believe that human beings arose by natural evolution from earlier forms of life, which denies the literal interpretation of the Bible, particularly Genesis 1-11. The surveys clearly indicate this because the primary reason for Americans rejecting evolution is religious fundamentalism, which is measured by how people answer five questions. (1) They agree that "There is a personal God that hears the prayers of individuals." (2) They agree that "The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally." (3) They report that they usually attend at least one religious service in a typical week. (4) They report that they pray at least once in a typical week. (5) And they agree that "We depend too much on science and not enough on faith."
Still, one might argue that it is possible to accept both the Bible and evolution, both the Biblical God and Nature's God, by saying that the God of the Bible has chosen to work His creative power through the laws of natural evolution. That's the argument for "theistic evolution" or "evolutionary creation," the position adopted by people like C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Deborah Haarsma.
But as I have suggested in a previous post, the problem with this position is that one is forced to distinguish between those parts of the Bible that must be read literally and those parts that are not literal. So the evolutionary creationist will say that while the six-day creation story is not literally true, the Bible's teaching that God is our Creator and Savior who hears our prayers and who will resurrect us to eternal life really is literally true. The fact that faithful Christians cannot agree about this--what is literal in the Bible and what is not--indicates the failure of Biblical revelation.
If the Biblical God has not clearly revealed Himself, then we are left with Nature's God, who has revealed himself through the natural order of things.
Mike Johnson's Speech After Being Reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives
Yesterday, Mike Johnson was reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives. In his acceptance speech, he summarized the major points of Donald Trump's MAGA agenda for the Congress; and in doing that, he insisted that the election of Donald Trump and the new Republican Congress was an act of divine providence. He explained: "I don't believe in luck or coincidence. I believe in the idea of providence." As evidence that the belief in God's providential care for America is part of America's exceptional position in the world, he read what he identified as Thomas Jefferson's "Prayer for America," and he said that Jefferson had said this prayer each day of his eight years as president, and every day thereafter until his death. In the video above, this comes at around 14 minutes into the speech. You can also read the text of the speech at Johnson's congressional website.
Johnson identified Jefferson as "the primary author of the Declaration of Independence," in the context of noting that the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence would occur during the term of this 119th Congress in 2026.
Here's the prayer:
Almighty God who has given us this good land for our heritage. We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves, that people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues endow with thy spirit of wisdom, those whom in thy name, we entrust the authority of government. That there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the Earth. In times of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail, of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Johnson then immediately claimed that the election of the Republican Congress was an "act of providence," and that it was "providence that spared President Trump from the assassin's bullet." In this way, he suggested that God miraculously intervened to save Trump's life so that he could be elected president. I have written previously about this belief that Trump is God's Chosen One--like God's choice of Cyrus as the Messiah for Israel.
This raises at least two questions. Is Johnson correct in identifying this as Jefferson's prayer? And is Johnson's invocation of God's providential care of America compatible with America's fundamental principles? Or does it contradict the Jeffersonian principle of separating church and state?
The answer to the first question is clearly no. As indicated by a statement at the website for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, there is no evidence that this prayer was written by Jefferson.
Moreover, that Jefferson would not have written such a prayer is clear from his refusal as president to proclaim any national day of prayer for the country. In 1808, Samuel Miller (a minister) sent a letter to Jefferson asking him if he would be receptive to a request from some ministers that he issue a presidential proclamation of a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" before God. Jefferson replied by saying that he would have to refuse such a request because it would violate the First Amendment's provision that "no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion." He did indicate, however, that since the First Amendment applies only to the national government, a state government might have the right to issue some such proclamation of a national day of prayer.
Apparently, Jefferson believed that a presidential prayer for America like that attributed to him by Johnson would have violated what Jefferson had called the "wall of separation between church and state" in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. He was responding to a letter from the Danbury Baptists congratulating him on his election in 1800 and endorsing his affirmation of "religious liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals," and therefore that civil government has no rightful power prescribe religious belief.
As I have indicated in some previous posts, this puts Jefferson on the side of Roger Williams in asserting the "wall of separation" of church and state against the theocracy of John Winthrop. I have also argued that Jefferson's God in the Declaration of Independence is "Nature's God"--or Spinoza's God who is immanent in the laws of Nature--and this God is not a transcendent God who miraculously intervenes in natural history in answer to prayer.
If this is correct, then Speaker Johnson's political appeal to divine providence violates the American principle of separation of church and state. It's notable that in his speech, Johnson mentions "seven core principles of America," which are "individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity." But notice that separation of church and state is not included.
What should Johnson say in his defense? Unless I am overlooking some documentary evidence for Jefferson's "Prayer for the Nation," Johnson would have to admit that he was wrong about this.
But even if Johnson was wrong about attributing this prayer to Jefferson, Johnson could argue that the religious doctrine of divine providence really is an American political principle. After all, even if the only reference to God in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence was "Nature's God," it is revealing that the revisions of the Declaration coming from others in the Continental Congress added three more references to God--"by their Creator," "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world," and "with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence."
Doesn't this show that America's God is more than just Jefferson's Spinozistic God of Nature--that America's God is a Creator, Judge, and providential Protector of America?
And yet isn't it interesting that we don't see any of this talk about God in the Constitution? In his speech, Johnson refers to the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution: "we're all going to take an oath--the same one oath, for one nation, and under the banner of one great American flag." But he is silent about the exact language in the Constitution prescribing this oath: all officers "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Article VI).
As I have pointed out, this part of the Constitution has been vehemently criticized by Christians who have said that this allows the offices of government to be filled by "godless" people. Johnson says nothing about this.
Another problem for Johnson is that he does not explain how he can be so sure that he knows the truth about God and God's will for America. As I have indicated in a previous post, Johnson is a Young-Earth Creationist who is a follower of Ken Ham, and who therefore believes that God created everything exactly 6,000 years ago, and so the Darwinian science of natural evolution is false and morally degrading. The fundamental difficulty with this is that he believes that God has revealed this truth to him through the Bible, even though most biblical believers disagree with this. So, the Holy Spirit has failed to clearly convey God's revelation to all believers.
Remarkably, in his first speech as Speaker of the House, when he was first elected, Johnson suggested that his becoming Speaker was ordained by God: "I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us. And I believe that God has allowed and ordained each and every one of us to be here at this specific moment. This is my belief."
Well, okay, this is his belief. But how does he know that that this is a true belief coming from the Holy Spirit? Other Christians in the tradition of Roger Williams would say that the New Testament does not support the kind of Mosaic theocracy found in the Old Testament, that New Testament Christianity demands a wall of separation between church and state, and therefore that it is blasphemy to say that God has chosen Donald Trump to be President. How can Johnson be sure that these Christians are wrong?
Detroit Pastor Lorenzo Sewell's Prayer at President Trump's Second Inauguration
Leading up to the presidential election, scholarly commentators like Robert Kagan and Steven Hahn claimed that if Donald Trump were elected, this would show the triumph of the illiberal tradition of American politics in defeating the American liberal tradition.
As I indicated in a post last November, I agree with Kagan and Hahn that the political history of America has been a continuing battle between liberalism and illiberalism. But I think the liberal tradition of American political thought--as expressed in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence--has ultimately prevailed over the illiberal tradition. And I see that even in the MAGA movement. I agree that much of Trump's rhetoric has illiberal, and even fascist, overtones. But most of the MAGA voters accept the liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence. (I have written previously about the prominence of the Declaration of Independence in the rhetoric of the 2020 Republican National Convention.)
Here I use the term "liberalism" in the broad Lockean sense that includes both those who we call "liberals" in America and those we call "conservatives"--as opposed to the illiberal Left (such as the socialists), on the one extreme, and the illiberal Right (such as the reactionaries and fascists), on the other extreme.
We can see the triumph of the American liberal tradition in Trump's election. The American illiberal tradition defends the national racial, religious, and ethnic homogeneity of a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America against subversion by both internal and external enemies. (Consider the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, for example.) But Trump's electoral victory depended on a pluralistic coalition of voters who were racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse. As opposed to a WASPish illiberal America, it was a culturally heterogeneous liberal America that voted for Trump. If Trump's presidency gives into his illiberal propensities, he will alienate these MAGA voters.
If Trump appealed only to illiberal voters like the proponents of Christian theocracy and the white racists, he would never win any election. Given the religious, racial, and ethnic pluralism of the American electorate, Trump can win only with the support of a multireligious, multiracial, and multiethnic coalition that includes Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and most of the white working-class voters with large portions of the Hispanic, Asian, and black voters. The evidence for that became clear in the 2020 election, as compared with the 2016 election, in which Trump's vote share in each of these groups trended in his favor. That trend continued in the 2024 election.
As I have argued previously, Trump's chimpanzee politics requires a minimum winning coalition. Trump paid tribute to the liberal pluralism of his winning electoral coalition in the ceremony and the speech for his second inauguration. But he also showed the illiberal face of MAGA by filling the front row seats behind him with tech CEO billionaires, which was a symbolic display of the illiberal thinking of MAGA intellectuals like Curtis Yarvin (more about that in the next post).
In his Inaugural Address, Trump proclaimed that having been miraculously saved from assassination, "I was saved by God to make America great again." This echoes the illiberal message of the MAGA theocrats that Trump has been chosen by God as His Cyrus to save America. But in saying that "we will not forget our God," Trump was careful to suggest that this was an ecumenical God, and therefore he did not establish any particular religious tradition as America's church. In this way, he favored the liberal tradition of Roger Williams over the illiberal tradition of John Winthrop.
Trump's endorsement of religious pluralism was clear in his selection of clergy to deliver the opening and closing prayers--two Catholics (Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Reverend Frank Mann), two Protestants (Franklin Graham and Lorenzo Sewell), and one Jew (Rabbi Ari Berman). Remarkably, the first printed program for the inauguration included a Muslin cleric--Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a prominent Muslim leader in Dearborn, Michigan, who had endorsed Trump and thus helped Trump win the Muslim votes that he needed to win Michigan. This would have been the first time in history for a Muslim cleric to appear at a presidential inauguration. There was no public explanation for why Al-Husainy was dropped from the program, but there were some newspaper reports from Michigan that Trump's pro-Israel supporters objected that Al-Husainy was sympathetic to Iran and Hezbollah.
Although the Trump voters include Protestant theocrats and Catholic integralists, the liberal religious pluralism of Trump's inauguration gave no encouragement to either group.
By endorsing such a broadly ecumenical religious pluralism, Trump was following the example set by the coronation of King Charles III two years ago, in which the monarchic head of the Church of England displayed his Lockean liberalism by allowing all religious faiths to be represented.
Moreover, one of the dramatic high points of the inaugural ceremony was Lorenzo Sewell's prayer, which was actually an abbreviated rendition of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which was appropriate since January 20th was Martin Luther King Day. Sewell emphasized King's appeal to the Lockean liberalism of the Declaration of Independence, particularly in its principle that "all men are created equal."
King's "Dream" was that America would finally fulfill the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Trump stressed this explicitly in his speech: "Today is Martin Luther King Day. And his honor--this will be a great honor. But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true."
In support of this promise, Trump pointed to the racial and ethnic pluralism of his winning coalition:
"As our victory showed, the entire nation is rapidly unifying around our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society: young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban, rural. And very importantly, we had a powerful win in all seven swing states, and the popular vote, we won by millions of people."
"To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote. We set records, and I will not forget it. I've heard your voices in the campaign, and I look forward to working with you in the years to come."
And yet any careful viewer of Trump's inauguration should have noticed that it was Janus-faced. The liberal face was the invocation of King's "Dream" of equal liberty for all racial, ethnic, and religious groups. The illiberal face was the prominent front row audience immediately behind Trump--with the seats filled by a half dozen tech CEO billionaires who are the richest human beings on the Earth. If Trump meant this to suggest that these are to become the new oligarchic rulers of America, then he's showing the influence of the illiberal fascist Curtis Yarvin.
Trump's Teleprompter Speech in Warsaw, Poland, July 6, 2017
Trump Tosses Out His "Boring" Speech Notes
I have been thinking about how political philosophy might help us understand Donald Trump. I have been prompted to do that by my reading of Trump and Political Philosophy, a two-volume collection of papers edited by Angel Jaramillo Torres and Marc Benjamin Sable (published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018). This will be the first of a series of posts on the questions raised by those papers.
One of those questions is whether Trump's rhetoric can be rightly understood as following in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln. This question is posed sharply by the contrast between John Burt's paper ("The Lesson of Lincoln in the Age of Trump") and Kenneth Masugi's paper ("The Great Emancipators Oppose the 'Slave Power': The Lincolnian--and Aristotelian--Dimensions of Trump's Rhetoric").
Burt argues that Trump rejects Lincoln's view of the Declaration of Independence as affirming a Kantian politics of human equality and liberty, and instead Trump promotes a rhetoric of resentment and grievance based on a Schmittian conception of politics as a battle between friends and enemies. On the contrary, Masugi argues, Trump's rhetoric affirms Lincoln's vision of the Declaration of Independence in declaring that "making America great again" will renew America's devotion to the principles of Lincoln and the Declaration.
The reason for this disagreement is that they are looking at two different versions of Trump's rhetoric. Masugi is looking at the rhetoric of the Teleprompter Trump, who reads off a teleprompter an eloquent and thoughtful speech written for him by others--like his speech in Warsaw, Poland, on July 6, 2017. Burt is looking at the rhetoric of the Turbulent Trump, who tosses out the speech notes prepared for him because he finds them "too boring," and then launches into a rambling rant full of resentment, boasting, and lying as he attacks those he identifies as his enemies.
Once one sees this, then the question is which of these two Trumps is the true Trump? Or must Trump's populist rhetoric always be a confusing mixture of both? Or can Trump's two rhetorical styles be understood as different ways of expressing the same ideas?
THE SCHMITTIAN POLITICS OF THE TURBULENT TRUMP
Burt is the author of Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism (Harvard University Press, 2013), which interprets Lincoln's political thought in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as founded on Kantian liberal principles. This connection between Lincoln and Kant runs through his paper in Trump and Political Philosophy.
Burt sees Lincoln's interpretation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence as based on the Kantian principle that all human beings are equal in their moral dignity as persons, and therefore that the legitimacy of government arises from the consent among equals who respect one another's worth as moral agents. Against this is the contrasting view assumed by Stephen Douglas and elaborated in the writings of Carl Schmitt that politics is ultimately about the contest between friends and enemies. Until recently, Burt believes, America has been on the side of Lincoln and Kant; but now Trump and his populist movement are pushing America to the side of Douglas and Schmitt.
Burt sees Trump as denying two ideas that have been core values for America until recently:
"1. That America sees itself as destined to be an equal multicultural society that will root its sense of being a nation in a common political culture rather than in common blood; that in attempting to become a multicultural democracy America will blaze a path for democracy worldwide."
"2. That America is committed to a world order founded upon multilateral agreements (as opposed to two-sided bargains of a temporary and transactional kind), to international institutions of collective security ruled by open covenants openly arrived at, in short to an order which extends to the world the political culture of liberal democracy" (215).
These two ideas are presented in Kant's writings--particularly, in his essay "Perpetual Peace." The first idea comes from Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's interpretation of the Declaration as affirming the equal liberty of all human beings and of their right to establish governments to secure their rights by their consent acting as one people. The second idea is the application of the first idea to international politics, which was expressed in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and elaborated by later presidents, as part of the post World War Two understanding of the liberal international order, in which equally sovereign nations would cooperate through international agreements to secure peaceful security, free trade, and human rights for the mutual benefit of all nations.
According to Burt, Trump's Schmittian populist rejects both of these ideas, because Trump sees both national politics and international politics as violent contests between friends and enemies. As Trump sees it, American politics is a battle between the Elites and the People, and some Americans are not part of the American People because they are actually "Enemies of the People." For example, Muslim Americans are not real Americans because they are in sympathy with foreign terrorists, as illustrated by the thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, whom Trump knows cheered the attack on the Twin Towers. And Mexican Americans are not real Americans because most of them are rapists, drug dealers, and murderous gang members, although "some, I assume, are good people." Consequently, American judges who are Muslims or Mexicans are "haters" of Trump who cannot be trusted to be fair judges.
For Trump, international politics is also a battle between friends and enemies, because in the competition between nations, there must be winners and losers. Under the false appearance of an international order of globalist cooperation, the United States has been losing in its competition with other nations; and only now, with Trump's policy of America First, America is finally winning again.
THE LINCOLNIAN POLITICS OF THE TELEPROMPTER TRUMP
While Burt supports his view of Trump's ugly rhetoric by citing Trump's inflammatory remarks at his campaign rallies, in his Twitter messages, and in some informal remarks, Masugi supports his view of Trump's noble rhetoric by reading three of Trump's formal speeches in 2017, in his first six months in office--his Inaugural Address (January 20), his first State of the Union Address (February 28), and his Speech to the People of Poland in Warsaw (July 6). For each of these three speeches, Trump was careful in reading his prepared speech off a teleprompter. Notably, Burt never mentions any of these speeches.
In his Inaugural Address, Trump began by acknowledging the presence on the platform of four former presidents--Carter, Clinton, Bush, and Obama--by thanking President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid, and by noticing that "every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power."
But then he asserted that his inaugural ceremony was different from previous presidential inaugurations in a way that set the theme for his entire speech.
"Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another--but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People."
"For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost."
"Washington flourished--but the people did not share in its wealth."
"Politicians prospered--but the jobs left, and the factories closed."
"The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country."
"Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land."
"That all changes--starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you."
"It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America."
"This is your day. This is your celebration."
"And this, the United States of America, is your country."
"What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people."
"January 20th 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again."
"The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer."
"Everyone is listening to you now."
"You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before."
"At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a nation exists to serve its citizens."
Here Masugi sees Trump condemning all previous administrations--both Republican and Democrat--as promoting what Aristotle and the American Founders called a "faction"--promoting the narrow interests of "the establishment" rather than the common good of the People. But now as "the people became the rulers of this nation again," Trump reaffirmed the teaching of the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that just government must be of, by, and for the People.
The most often quoted passage of Trump's speech was his description of "American carnage":
"But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential."
"This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."
In the middle of the speech, Trump uttered the one and only sentence in which he shifted from "we" to "I."
"From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land."
"From this moment on, it's going to be America First."
"Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families."
"We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."
"I will fight for you with every breath in my body--and I will never, ever let you down."
"American will start winning again, winning like never before."
So here Trump clearly identified himself as the one Leader of the People against the Elites who have exploited the People.
In some parts of this speech, Masugi sees Trump affirming what Aristotle called "political friendship"--the communal feeling or allegiance of all citizens to one another that creates a patriotic solidarity.
"At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other."
"When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice."
"The Bible tells us, 'how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity.'"
"We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity."
So here, it seems, there need be no Schmittian division of the American people into friends and enemies as long as they live together in patriotic solidarity.
But notice how Trump did point to some divisions within the American People. First, he set "the establishment" against the People, as what Masugi calls a "faction" that exploits the People. And then when Trump identified the "tens of millions" who became part of "this movement," he was apparently referring to those voters who elected him, as opposed to those who voted for Hillary Clinton in opposition to "this movement."
Here we see the fundamental problem for all populist rhetoric that claims to speak for the People as opposed to the Elites. Who are the People? All of the citizens? Or only some of the citizens--only those who support the populist leader against the Elites? Is the contest not only between the People and the Elites but also within the People divided into opposing groups?
In his review of Trump and Political Philosophy in the Claremont Review of Books, Michael Anton said that Aristotle's distinction between "the many" and "the few" does not clearly apply to the United States, where there is no clear-cut "many" comparable to the demos of the ancient Greek cities. Anton observed: "We instead have two popular classes: unmarried and mostly poor blue-state urbanites, and red-state, rustbelt, heartland blue-collar workers, middle managers, and homemakers." Yet like the ancient city, "we have only one ruling class" that has chosen to take the side of "the urban mob." So now we have three groups--the ruling class, the "urban mob" that supports the ruling class, and the rural or small town working class and middle class that supports Trump.
If Trump speaks for the American People, does that mean that those in the "urban mob" who oppose him are not real Americans?
As I have indicated in some previous posts (here and here), this analysis creates serious problems for those Claremont Straussians like Anton and Masugi who want to defend Trump.
According to Anton, the election of 2016 was a life-or-death war, with Trump fighting for the true Americans, the working class and middle class Americans, who are not Third World immigrants or urban poor minorities or cosmopolitan elites, and these Trump voters supported constitutional republicanism. On the other side of the war, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats represented "half the country and all our elites," who wished to overturn the constitutional republic and replace it with one-party rule with absolute power to rule over the country.
Actually, "half the country" was a majority of the voters, because as Anton indicated, the Republicans have lost the popular vote for the presidency in every election since 1988 except for 2004; and in 2004, Bush won with only 50.7 percent. And, of course, Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016; and he lost again in the mid-term congressional elections in 2018, which Trump turned into a referendum on his presidency.
Anton and Masugi employ a populist rhetoric that presents a Manichaean war between good and evil--the Virtuous People versus the Evil Elites. This becomes complicated, however, as soon as one notices that some of the People are evil, because they vote for the Evil Elites, and some of the Elites (like Trump, Anton, and Masugi) are virtuous because they lead the Virtuous People against the Evil Elites. Doesn't this sound like Schmitt's Friends Versus Enemies? Where's the "political friendship"?
That the Virtuous People who support Trump are a minority was suggested at Trump's Inaugural Address, because the crowd of people on the Washington Mall for the speech was smaller than the crowd for Obama's Inaugural Address. Trump was so resentful about this that he had to lie by insisting that his crowd was the largest inaugural crowd in American history.
The Crowd for Trump (Left) Was Smaller than the Crowd for Obama (Right)
The next day Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared: "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration--period." A photographer for the National Park Service was asked by the White House to crop out the empty space in the photographs of Trump's crowd to make the crowd appear larger than it was.
Five weeks later, in his first State of the Union Address, Trump continued to claim that he spoke for the People; and Masugi sees in this speech more evidence that Trump appeals to the principles of the Declaration of Independence as interpreted by Lincoln. Masugi rightly points out that Trump placed his speech in the flow of American history from its founding in 1776 to its future 250th anniversary in 2026.
Trump began the speech by saying:
"In nine years, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding--250 years since the day we declared our independence. It will be one of the great milestones in the history of the world. But what will America look like as we reach our 250th year? What kind of country will we leave our children?"
He then indicated that "in 2016, the Earth shifted beneath our feet," and "the chorus became an earthquake, and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand: that America must put its own citizens first. Because only then can we truly make America great again."
Most of his speech was a summary of his policy proposals, which included a quotation from Abraham Lincoln as a congressman speaking for a protectionist trade policy. It's certainly true that trade protectionism was part of Lincoln's Whig ideology.
In speaking about the need to build a great wall on the southern border to restrict immigration, Trump appealed to what Masugi identifies as "natural law":
". . . we will soon begin the construction of a great, great wall along our southern border. As we speak tonight, we are removing gang members, drug dealers, and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak, and as I promised throughout the campaign."
"To any in Congress who do not believe we should enforce our laws, I would ask you this one question: What would you say to the American family that loses their jobs, their income, or their loved one because America refused to uphold its laws and defend its borders?"
Masugi says that this is a "natural law" stated in the Declaration of Independence in that it is natural for the people to establish government to secure their "safety and happiness." But is it a matter of "natural law" that we must agree with Trump's claim that undocumented Mexican immigrants are mostly "gang members, drug dealers, and criminals" who want to steal from and murder innocent Americans? Or is it possible that the proportion of criminals among immigrants is actually lower than among native-born Americans?
At the end of his speech, Trump declared:
"When we have all of this, we will have made America greater than ever before--for all Americans. This is our vision. This is our mission. But we can only get there together. We are one people, with one destiny. We all bleed the same blood. We all salute the same great American flag. And we all are made by the same God."
"When we fulfill this vision, when we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began."
As Masugi indicates, Trump is suggesting here that in 2026, a year and a half after an eight-year Trump presidency, we will see how his "Make American Great Again" policies renewed the greatness of the American founding with the Declaration of Independence. And while Trump does not explicitly affirm the Declaration's principle of human equality, there is perhaps an echo of "created equal" in Trump's "we all are made by the same God."
While Masugi respects Trump's rhetorical achievements in his Inaugural Address and his first State of the Union, he thinks "Trump's most profound speech of his presidency" (247) is the speech in Warsaw on July 6th, 2017.
In this speech for Trump's first presidential trip to Europe, the central theme was the survival of the Western world. In the history of Poland in the 20th century, Trump saw the threats to the West coming from German Nazism and Russian communism and the noble triumph of the Polish people in prevailing against those threats. But then he saw new threats both internal and external that will require the West to courageously and resolutely reaffirm its distinctively Western cultural identity.
". . as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"
"We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive. If anyone forgets the critical importance of these things, let them come to one country that never has. Let them come to Poland. And let them come here, to Warsaw, and learn the story of the Warsaw Uprising."
One of the new external threats to the West, Trump declared, is "radical Islamic terrorism." And he said that he had called on more than 50 Muslim nations to join in defeating these shared enemies.
Other external threats include "new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare."
He also mentioned the new threat from Russia:
"We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes--including Syria and Iran--and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself."
The new internal threat to the West is "the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people. The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies."
To meet these new threats, the survival of the West, Trump claimed, would depend on a revival of the core values of the West. He mentioned at least five values. The first was "individual freedom and sovereignty." The second was human rights: "above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization."
The third value was the agreement of "this great community of nations" in affirming that "it is the people, not the powerful, who have always formed the foundation of freedom and the cornerstone of our defense." This "community of nations" was manifest in the NATO alliance of "free, sovereign and independent nations" for the defense of our freedoms and our interests. In support of NATO, Trump declared the continuing commitment of the United States to Article 5 of the NATO treaty--the mutual defense commitment.
He also repeated his often expressed desire that the NATO powers should do more in spending their fair share of money on defense, and he praised Poland for being one of the NATO members that has made the target of military spending that is 2% of its GDP.
The fourth crucial value of the West that Trump mentioned was what Masugi calls "the divine and transcendent": Trump told the story of Pope John Paul II's visit to Warsaw on June 2nd, 1979, when one million Poles gathered for a mass with the Pope.
". . . every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II's sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: 'We Want God.'"
. . .
"As I stand here today before this incredible crowd, this faithful nation, we can still hear those voices that echo through history. There message is as true today as ever. The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out 'We want God.'"
Masugi sees this appeal to the divine as comparable to Lincoln's appeal to the Biblical God in his Second Inaugural Address.
Finally, Masugi also sees Trump invoking another distinctive value of the West--the Socratic philosophic longing for knowledge, including self-knowledge (251, n. 12). "We debate everything," Trump observed. "We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves."
If these values of the West are defended, then, Trump declared at the end of his speech, "the West will never, ever be broken."
Although he did not exactly so it, Trump implied that he was putting forth a new slogan--"Make the West Great Again."
This is a remarkable speech for Trump because it truly does--as Masugi argues--strike the chords and themes of a Lincolnian rhetoric. And against Burt, it even suggests the principles of Kantian liberalism--equality of human rights promoted by a community of nations.
But then we must wonder--how do we resolve the apparent contradiction between the Teleprompter Trump of this elegantly written and thoughtfully composed speech and the Turbulent Trump who goes on incoherent rants full of lies, insults, grievances, and narcissistic boasting about himself as the "very stable genius"?
Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump was not a big landslide, but it was still big. Biden got the largest popular vote for the presidency in American history, and it was over 4 million votes more than Trump. Biden flipped some of the states that went to Trump in 2016, while Trump did not flip any of the states that went to Hillary Clinton.
But still, looking at the voting patterns that led to Biden's defeat of Trump, it is clear that I was wrong to suggest that Trump's defeat could be a general defeat for the Republican Party.
The Democrats have lost some seats in the House of Representatives, and they have only a slim chance of taking control of the Senate. Moreover, the Democrats have not won big in the races for state offices.
Many voters who punished Trump by voting for Biden voted for other Republican candidates down the ballot. So with many voters, their vote against Trump was not a vote against the Republican Party. On the contrary, they were careful to vote for other Republican candidates, to create a divided government, so that the power of the Republicans could check the power of the Democrats, and thus prevent the Democrats from enacting extreme left-wing policies.
What was it that made Trump so uniquely unpopular? One possibility is that it's Trump's immoral character--that he's a grandiose narcissist who does not show any of the traditional cardinal virtues of character: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage.
In fact, Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, has argued that Trump lacks these four virtues as defined by Cicero in his De Officiis, which is one of the classic philosophic statements of the virtuous character that distinguishes a good man and a good statesman. Taylor was the anonymous author of the famous article in the New York Times in 2018 that claimed there was a resistance movement against Trump in the Trump administration--people who wanted many of Trump's policies to be successful, but who saw Trump's immoral temperament as a threat to the country. (I wrote about this in a previous post.) He later wrote a book--A Warning--in which he applied Cicero's account of the moral and intellectual virtues to Trump and argued that Trump failed to manifest any of those virtues. Trump is an evil man.
If I am right, Trump's failure to win reelection shows that many voters--including Republican voters--agree with this assessment: the character of a President matters, and a president who has an immoral character must be rejected, regardless of what one thinks about his policies.
Biden recognized this by turning much of his campaign into a moral criticism of Trump's character and by arguing that the campaign was a "battle for the soul of the country."
I am old enough to remember the 1960 presidential election, and I cannot remember any other election that has moved me so emotionally as this one. Apparently, many other Americans have had the same experience, as indicated by the many people across the country who have gone out to the streets this afternoon to cheer, shout, and dance to express their joy that Trump has been thrown out. Unfortunately, many families and friendships have been disrupted by this election. This evening, I had a big family dinner at my home, and we could not talk about the election outcome at the dinner table, because we knew that we were split between Trump supporters (Calvinists who believe that Trump is God's Chosen One) and Trump opponents (who believe Trump is evil). I have heard about many Americans who have had the same experience, which testifies to the strong moral symbolism of presidential elections for Americans. This may not be healthy. But it is a fact.
For years, beginning in 2016, I have argued that Trump's populist authoritarianism was not really popular enough to win the popular vote. After all, he lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020. This indicated to me that although he had a solid base of 35 to 40 percent of the voters, he did not have a majority, although he could win in the Electoral College. That's why I predicted that Harris would win the election yesterday.
So, now that Trump has won the popular election, we face two questions. First, will Trump be the kind of populist authoritarian that he has promised to be?
If he does fulfill this promise, he will use his power as Commander-in-Chief to use the military to punish "the enemy within"--those who disagree with him. He will use his pardoning power to protect himself and his supporters from criminal prosecution (including the January 6th insurrectionists). He will also act vigorously within the immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts" recently granted to him by his Supreme Court. He will use the military to help him in forcibly deporting over 10 million illegal immigrants. He will raise tariffs on imports so high as to impede international trade and create what will be effectively a high sales tax on imported goods. He will establish an isolationist foreign policy that weakens the NATO alliance and withholds support for Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion.
Trump and his supporters have said that he is God's Chosen One to save America. After all, didn't God miraculously intervene to turn his head away from the assassin's bullet? If they believe this, will they treat Trump's opponents as evil enemies of God?
If Trump carries out these and other promises for acting as a populist authoritarian, that will raise a second question: will the Americans who voted for him say yes, this is just what they wanted? Or will they regret their choice?
Actually, I see no evidence that Trump's supporters voted for his populist authoritarianism. But I do see evidence that they voted against the inflation during Biden's term. In the summer of 2022, the inflation rate was over 9 percent--the highest inflation rate in 40 years. Overall, consumer prices have gone up over 20 percent under Biden. Home prices have gone up 37 percent. Gasoline prices 33 percent. It is true that over the past year, the inflation rate has dropped to about 2.4 percent. But notice what that means: Prices are not dropping. But the rate of increase has slowed.
Among voters who said that the poor economy--and particularly high inflation--was the primary issue for them, the great majority (60 to 70 percent) said that they were voting for Trump. This would explain the Latino and Black male vote for Trump.
Yesterday, the Associated Press released its AP VoteCast--a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide--that shows the primacy of the high-inflation issue for the Trump voters.
My mistake was not seeing that the American voter's hatred of high inflation will defeat any candidate who is identified as responsible for inflation. Harris pointed to the indicators of a growing economy with low unemployment. But she could not escape responsibility for inflation.
One of the Trump campaign's most effective tv ads juxtaposed these comments from Kamala Harris:
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS, 2024: Everyday prices are too high... Food, rent, gas, back-to-school clothes.
HARRIS, 2023: That is called Bidenomics!
HARRIS, 2024: A loaf of bread costs 50% more... ground beef is up almost 50%... There's not much left at the end of the month.
HARRIS, 2023: Bidenomics is working!
HARRIS, 2024: The price of housing has gone up. It feels so hard to be able to just get ahead.
HARRIS, 2023: We are so proud of Bidenomics!
That one ad might have been enough to defeat Harris.
How could Harris have answered this charge that Bidenomics caused high inflation? She could have argued that Bidenomics was an extension of Trumpenomics. Four years ago, the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats enacted the American Rescue Plan that pumped $1.9 trillion into the economy, which included $1,300 payments to American families. As predicted by economists like Larry Summers, this overstimulated the economy and created a surge in inflation starting in 2021 and peaking in 2022. But Harris could have argued that this ARP stimulus was simply adding to the $2.7 trillion in pandemic relief spending enacted under President Trump. So, if this was a mistake, it was a mistake made by both Trump and Biden.
Nevertheless, the American economy has recovered from the pandemic economic downturn faster and more robustly than any other economy in the world. And the rate of inflation has gone down dramatically in the past year, although Americans are now suffering from the overall increase in prices of over 20% over the past four years.
When Harris was asked whether she would have done anything different from what was done during Biden's term, she said she couldn't think of anything she would have done differently. What she should have said is "Yes, of course, the big spending programs supported by Biden--and by Trump!--drove up inflation. So, I promise to keep inflation low, and if inflation rises during my term, I promise that I will not run for a second term."
Harris could then have argued that if Trump were elected, voters would quickly become dissatisfied with Trump when his policies (such as high tariffs on imports) create a new surge in high inflation. The U.S. is the world's largest importer. The value of imported goods and services is over 3.8 trillion dollars a year. Imagine the higher prices that would come from putting tariffs of over 20% on all of that.
If this happens, the voters will turn against the Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election, just as they turned against the Democrats in this year's election.
ADDENDUM (November 21)
On election night, Trump claimed that he had won an "unprecedented and powerful mandate."
As more late ballots have been counted, we now know that that is not true. In fact, Trump did not even win a majority of the national popular vote. His percentage now stands at 49.87 percent.
His popular vote margin over Kamala Harris now stands at 1.62 percent. That's about a half-percent smaller than Hillary Clinton's national popular vote margin over Trump in 2016. By comparison, Obama won the popular vote by 3.9 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2008. George W. Bush won the popular vote by 2.4 percent in 2004.
We can now say that having run for the presidency three times, Trump has never won a majority of the popular votes. That's not an "unprecedented and powerful mandate."
The Roman Fasces, A Symbol of the Authority and Unity of the Ancient Roman State
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The January 6th Insurrectionists Storm the Capitol Building
Is Donald Trump a fascist? If he is, does the history of fascism help us to predict whether he is likely to take power as a fascist ruler?
My answer to the first question is Yes. My answer to the second question is that the history of fascism tells us that fascists cannot take power by majority vote or by force, because they need to be given power by conservative elites. For Trump to become a fascist ruler, he would have to be put into power by the political and military elites.
THE CONCEPT OF FASCISM
Since he is one of the leading historians of fascism, Robert Paxton has often been asked whether he identifies Trump as a fascist. Up to the end of Trump's term as president, Paxton said No. But on January 6, 2021, as he watched the Trump-inspired insurrection on Capitol Hill, which was meant to overturn the election of 2020 and keep Trump in power, he changed his mind. A few days after the insurrection, he wrote an essay for Newsweek explaining how that insurrection was the final piece of evidence pointing to Trump's character as a fascist.
We now have even more evidence for that conclusion coming from General Mark Milley, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump's presidency, and retired General John Kelly, who was Trump's Chief of Staff for almost a year and a half. They have reported that Trump wanted to use the military against his political opponents and that he expressed his admiration for how Hitler had used his generals. Both Milley and Kelly told Trump that their oath to uphold the Constitution would take precedence over their loyalty to the President. And both concluded that Trump was a fascist.
Paxton's position in the debate over Trump's fascism is unusual. There are two questions in this debate. Is Trump a fascist? And is it helpful to identify him as a fascist? Most people in the debate either say yes to both questions or no to both. As he told the New York Times, Paxton says yes to the first question but no to the second. Yes, Trump is a fascist. But no it doesn't help the debate to say that, because "fascist" is "a word that generates more heat than light."
I agree that most of the time "fascist" is a sloppy epithet that we throw around to express our moral disgust with someone we disagree with strongly, and therefore using that word enflames emotions without clarifying the debate. But when a historian of fascism like Paxton says that Trump is a fascist and explains the exact similarities and differences between Trump and fascists like Mussolini and Hitler, that illuminates the debate by showing how the history of fascism might explain and predict Trump's behavior.
Recently, Trump has said that he is planning to use military force against the "enemy within," which includes "bad people" like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. This convinced John Kelly (Trump's Chief of Staff from July 2017 to December 2018) that he needed to speak out, and he was interviewed by the New York Times. Kelly read aloud a definition of fascism:
"Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy."
"Certainly, the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators--he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."
Much of the discussion among historians is about whether there really is a "general definition of fascist." Some historians argue that since Benito Mussolini originated the term, it should apply only to the specific historical movement of Mussolini's Italian fascism. In 1919, Mussolini coined the Italian fascismo from fascio--a bundle or sheaf--recalling the Latin fasces: an axe encased in a bundle of rods carried in public processions to symbolize the authority and unity of the Roman state.
This explains why the Oxford English Dictionary identifies the primary definition of "fascism" as "a nationalist political movement that controlled the government of Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini."
But then the OED also provides a generic definition of "fascism": "an authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization which emerged after the end of the First World War in 1918, and became a prominent force in European politics during the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Italy and Germany; (later also) an extreme right-wing political ideology based on the principles underlying this system."
As Paxton indicates, there are two reasons for why it's hard to reach agreement on these or any other definitions of fascism. First, it is hard to define fascism as an ideology because the fascists did not care very much about ideas or doctrines. They were devoted more to action than thought--they were driven more by feelings than by reason. That explains why there is no authoritative statement of their ideas comparable to say Marx's Communist Manifesto as a statement of communist doctrines. Mussolini and Hitler did issue some programmatic statements of fascist ideas. But then their actions often contradicted what they had promised to do, and they never felt compelled to justify their actions as consistent with their ideas. By contrast, Marxist leaders like Lenin and Stalin had to make elaborate arguments for why their actions were in conformity with the texts of Marx and Engels.
The second reason for why it's so hard to define fascism is that fascism never had a fixed or static identity because it changed as it passed through five stages: (1) the initial creation of a fascist movement, (2) the rooting of the movement as a party in a political system, (3) the acquisition of ruling power by the fascist leader and his party, (4) the exercise of that ruling power, and (5) the long term development of fascist power towards radicalization or dissolution. Fascism looks different at each of these stages. And while every fascist movement reaches Stage One, only a few reach Stage Two. And very few--maybe only in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany--reach Stage Three by actually gaining ruling power. (Most of what have been commonly assumed to be examples of fascists taking power--like Franco in Spain or Salazar in Portugal--are really examples of traditional authoritarianism rather than pure fascism.)
Paxton has explained this fascist history of five stages in an article--"The Five Stages of Fascism" (1998)--and he has elaborated this history and analysis in a book--The Anatomy of Fascism (2004).
Despite his reluctance to reduce fascism to a single definition, Paxton does think that from this history of fascist actions in five stages, one can deduce the ideas implicit in those actions, which he summarizes in one long "functional definition of fascism":
"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion" (1998: 21; 2004: 218).
He also states this as nine "mobilizing passions" that "belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions":
(1) "a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;"
(2) "the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;"
(3) "the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;"
(4) "dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;"
(5) "the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;"
(6) "the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny;"
(7) "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;"
(8) "the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;"
(9) "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle."
Do Trump and his MAGA party manifest most of these fascist passions? You can answer this for yourself by watching the video of the recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden and checking off the items on this list.
Okay, so you're not going to watch all six and a half hours of this! But you can skip around it and see if it shows the "mobilizing passions" of fascism.
Now there are a few items in Paxton's definition and list of passions that don't show up here. For example, Trump and his people don't express any interest in "external expansion"--they're not proposing to invade other countries.
We also might question whether there's any "collaboration with traditional elites" here, since the speakers repeatedly attack the "elites" in the Democratic Party. But there is certainly a collaboration with some economic elites (such as Elon Musk) and some of the conservative elites in the Republican Party.
On the other hand, there are some distinctive traits of American Fascism here that are not prominent in Paxton's sketch of fascism. While fascists like Mussolini and Hitler have been secular or perhaps pagan, American Fascists are often Christian Nationalists defending American Christians as the Chosen People of God against their godless enemies. So, you'll notice that the Madison Square Garden rally begins with a prayer read by Tiffany Justice, one of the founders of "Moms for Liberty," who prays for God to intervene in support of Trump's election, and she thanks God for His miracle in saving Trump from being assassinated. Later in the rally, David Rem holds up a cross at the podium and declares that Kamala Harris is the "Devil" and "the Antichrist." Thus, we have the image of Trump as God's Chosen One fighting for America against the forces of demonic evil led by the Antichrist in the Last Battle as described in the book of Revelation.
Previously, I have written about the Christian Evangelicals who identify Trump as being the Messiah like Cyrus in the Old Testament.
NEITHER BY VOTE NOR BY FORCE
So, how do fascists come into ruling power (Stage Three)? And does the history of fascists taking power help us to predict whether Trump's fascism could come into power in America?
It has been commonly assumed that fascists have come to power by force alone--through a coup d'etat. Or, occasionally, you'll hear people say that fascists like Mussolini and Hitler took power through majority vote at the ballot box. As Paxton and other historians have shown, both claims are false.
"Both Mussolini and Hitler were invited to take office as head of government by a head of state in the legitimate exercise of his official functions, on the advice of civilian and military counselors. Both thus became heads of government in what appeared, at least on the surface, to be legitimate exercises of constitutional authority by King Victor Emmanuel III and President Hindenburg. Both these appointments were made, it must be added at once, under conditions of extreme crisis, which the fascists had abetted." We should see then that "no insurrectionary coup against an established state has ever so far brought fascists to power" (Paxton 1998: 17; 2004: 96-97).
The story that Mussolini's Fascists seized power over Italy through their "March on Rome" is fascist propaganda. It is true that on October 28, 1922, about nine thousand Blackshirts marched to the gates of Rome. But they were "poorly armed, wearing makeshift uniforms, short of food and water, and milling about in a discouraging rain" (Paxton 2004: 89). Mussolini arrived in Rome from Milan on the morning of October 30, and he met with the King. Although the King had plenty of soldiers who could have dispersed the Blackshirts, he foresaw that this would be bloody. He decided, instead, to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister. Mussolini was bluffing, and his bluff worked.
The next day--October 31--with Mussolini already in office, ten thousand Blackshirts marched in a parade through Rome. That evening, Mussolini had all of his Blackshirts sent out of town in fifty special trains. The parade had established the myth that his Blackshirts had taken power by their own will and force. October 28 became a national holiday and the first day of the Fascist New Year.
A year later, Hitler showed that he had been taken in by Mussolini's propaganda about the "March on Rome." He attempted his own "march" on November 8, 1923. During a nationalist rally in a Munich beer hall, he tried to kidnap the leaders of the Bavarian government and force them to launch a coup d'etat against the federal government in Berlin. This "Beer Hall Putsch" was easily put down by police who fired on the Nazi marchers. Hitler was arrested and imprisoned. He learned the lesson that fascist political power could not be taken by force alone as long as the police and soldiers remained loyal to the government.
Hitler also learned that while he would have to work within the parliamentary party system, he could not come to power by winning a majority vote for his party. The Nazis became the largest party in the German Reichstag in the parliamentary elections of July 31, 1932, when they won 37.2 percent of the vote. But this dropped to 33.1 percent in the election of November 6, 1932. Even when Hitler had become chancellor, and he could use his Storm Troopers to intimidate voters, the Nazi Party won only 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections of March 6, 1932. By comparison, the Italian Fascist Party won 35 out of 535 seats in the parliamentary election of May 15, 1921.
Just as Mussolini had become the Italian Prime Minister by the appointment of the King, Hitler became the German Chancellor by the appointment of President Paul Hindenburg. In both cases, conservative elites decided that appointing fascist leaders as the heads of government was the only way to form parliamentary majorities capable of vigorous governing without having to form coalitions with radical socialist and communist parties.
These conservatives saw this as the only way to resolve the unprecedented crises that they faced. The first crisis was the social and political crisis created in the wake of World War One, which included the threat of a communist revolution in Western Europe sparked by the Russian Revolution. The second crisis was the Great Global Depression that began in 1929. By 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, over 30% of the German workforce was unemployed. Part of this was the "crisis of liberalism" insofar as it seemed that liberal democracy could not solve these problems.
On February 28, 1933, a fire set by a Dutch communist youth gutted the Reichstag building in Berlin. This was generally believed to be the beginning of a communist coup. This provoked President Hindenburg into using his emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, and he issued a decree suspending the legal protection of personal liberties. This allowed Hitler's Brownshirts to use violence against Jews and others suspected of left-wing activities. Then, on March 24 of 1933, parliament passed an Enabling Act that delegated its legislative powers to the executive. This allowed Hitler to rule by his own personal authority from 1933 to the end of the war. He was free to use violence against the "enemies of the people." Here we see the fatal flaw in the Weimar Constitution--its openness to unchecked executive prerogative powers.
So, what does this history suggest as to whether and how Trump's fascism could gain ruling power in America? First, we should say that Trump has never won an election by majority vote, although he won in 2016 in the Electoral College. Like Hitler, he seems to have about 35-40 percent of the voters as a solid base. When he ran in 2016, he was not clearly identified as a fascist candidate. But now, after the January 6th insurrection and his open threats to use military force against the "enemy within," his fascist propensities have become clear to many voters. And that's why I am predicting that Harris will win this election.
But if he does win, perhaps only in the Electoral College, can't we predict that he will make himself a fascist dictator? And even if he loses, can't we predict that Trump will say the election has been stolen again, as it was in 2020? And won't he lead his MAGA movement into a violent insurrection to take power by force alone?
Well, sure, we can imagine that he will try something like this. But from what we have seen from his failure to overturn the election of 2020, we can predict, as I argued a few years ago, that Trump will not have the guts or the guns to launch a successful coup.
In his last year in office, Trump's fascist advisors told him that he needed to declare martial law (under the Insurrection Act) and order the military to suppress the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and to overturn the election. He did not act on their advice because he lacked the courage to try this, and because his generals had told him they would not obey his orders if they violated the Constitution. There is no reason to believe that there will be any change in these circumstances after the election.
Here is where I disagree with Robert Kagan's argument that regardless of whether Trump wins or loses the election, his fascism will destroy liberal democracy in America. As I explained in my response to Kagan, the "crisis" that America faces today is nowhere near as deep as the crisis faced by Italy and Germany between the wars. There is no threat of Communist Revolution in America despite Trump's silly assertion that the Democrats are Communists. There is no Great Depression in America. The American economy is more prosperous than it has ever been.
And, most importantly, there is no "crisis of liberalism" in America today comparable to what may have happened in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. While I agree with Kagan's claim that Trump's fascism is rooted in an American tradition of illiberalism, the American liberal tradition is stronger today than it has ever been. One sign of that is that Trump and his supporters must insist that of course Trump is not a fascist, and of course the theme of his campaign is "freedom."
Moreover, even Kagan recognizes that illiberal fascists like Trump are desperate to win this election because they recognize that America is experiencing a "demographic shift" that favors liberalism over illiberalism: as America becomes ever more multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, and religiously pluralistic, it becomes impossible for any single ethnoreligious group to dominate American politics and culture, and the appeal of liberalism as the only means of holding such a pluralistic society together will grow ever stronger.
In this election and its aftermath, we will see the confirmation of Francis Fukuyama's argument for the "end of history": liberalism will prevail over fascism.
THE LIBERAL REFUTATION OF ILLIBERALISM: BY FORCE OF IDEAS AND ARMS
Remember the ninth "mobilizing passion" of fascism: "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle."
Lockean Liberals can accept that challenge and agree that liberalism must prevail over illiberalism through Darwinian cultural group selection in the war of ideas and arms.
Although ideas don't matter very much to fascism, particularly in its later stages when it takes political power, ideas do matter in the early creation of fascist movements. I have written about the "Nazi philosophers"--from Plato and Fichte to Nietzsche and Heidegger. And I have suggested the ways in which liberalism wins the intellectual war with illiberalism. Indeed, the intellectual victory of liberalism has been so clear that even those who pose as antiliberals--Patrick Deneen, for example, turn out ultimately to be liberals.
Moreover, as Locke saw, there is a practical expression of the theoretical appeal of liberalism when people "vote with their feet" and choose to immigrate to those countries with more freedom, which is one form of cultural group selection.
But Locke also saw that the power of liberal ideas must ultimately be backed up with the power of liberal arms in the "Appeal to Heaven." So, for example, the Declaration of Independence was not only a declaration of the "self-evident truths" of equal natural rights but also a declaration of war, in which the outcome would depend on the "popular Lockeanism" of the Americans fighting in the war.
Then, in 1861, the Confederate States of America declared themselves a nation conceived in the liberty of white men to enslave others and dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal; and they engaged in a great war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. That nation did not endure because it was defeated by a Lockean liberal regime with a larger population of well-armed fighting men, including emancipated slaves, many of whom understood that they were fighting for the principles of the Declaration of Independence. As the proslavery Southerner George Fitzhugh admitted, the Union defeat of the Confederacy was the victory of John Locke over Robert Filmer.
But that was not enough to ensure the "new birth of freedom." The use of military force to suppress the fascist militias of the Klan in the Reconstruction Era and then in the Second Reconstruction (the Civil Rights Movement) to reform the Jim Crow South was required for overthrowing the illiberal tradition of the American South. This included a Black tradition of armed self-defense and rebellion. Ultimately, Lincoln's rhetoric of equal liberty defeated George Wallace's rhetoric of freedom as domination.
Similarly, in World War Two, we saw a test in war of the fascist "right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint." And with the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in war, we saw that there is a sense in which might does make right, when people in the state of nature exercise "the executive power of the law of nature" to resist and punish those who would dominate them.
REFERENCES
Kagan, Robert. 2024. Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again. New York: Knopf.
Paxton, Robert O. 1998. "The Five Faces of Fascism." The Journal of Modern History 70 (March): 1-23.
Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Random House.
Paxton, Robert O. 2021. "I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now." Newsweek, January 11.
Schmidt, Michael S. 2024. "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator." The New York Times, October 22.
Zerofsky, Elisabeth. 2024. "Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His MInd." The New York Times, October 23.
