The MAGA Doctrine Read online

  Chapter 17

  The Opposition to MAGA

  Whether conservatives have embraced Trump or joined the recalcitrant “Never Trump” faction has hinged in large part on whether they saw our republic as desperate enough to need a heroic rescuer figure. Many donors, politicians, and pundits saw themselves as part of a stable establishment guiding the United States on its steady path to peace and prosperity.

  Some establishment conservatives have by now been won over to siding with the people against the powerful. They’re starting to realize they were drifting sleepily toward disaster, and Trump is daring to stage the rescue mission they had largely abandoned. Better to help him than to fight him.

  It’s a little painful and scary having to snap out of your stupor and fight the political battle at hand instead of just haughtily commenting on it. For the past few centuries, most of the modern political philosophies, very much including Progressivism and conservatism, have shared the view that politics is a protracted struggle, a few metaphorical inches of territory gained or lost with each subsequent election or major policy decision. Even revolutionary doctrines such as Marxism gauged time in terms of centuries of political and industrial change.

  As a culture, we convinced ourselves things would never really come to a head in our lifetimes. We didn’t want to be arrogant by daring to think we were living at the crucial moment of decision. That’s humble and healthy, but it made it easier to treat existing regulations, existing think tanks, familiar TV pundits, and all the rest as if they were permanent. No likelihood of change and thus no need to exert the effort necessary to make a change.

  The slow decline began. And we were lucky enough to have one politician willing to rise up and say so.

  The left-leaning parts of the establishment see Trump differently, to put it mildly.

  The 2016 election was much more than a loss to them. Both parties have lost close elections before. This was something deeper, more primal, as if the slow drift of that ship of state, sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right—but gradually sinking—had abruptly been replaced by frenzied new activity on dry land. The left panicked, went through a period of denial, then processed their loss as trauma (there are so many stories of media and political professionals in Hillary’s camp crying that night). They were entirely unable to see Trump as a jovial patriot and a defender of Joe Six-Pack against an increasingly tyrannical world. They could only see that as a façade hiding a secret fascist who would do the exact opposite of his campaign promises, starting wars, selling the country out to foreigners, and promoting the interests of the rich and powerful.

  The most mature way to cope with the trauma would have been to ask how the Democratic Party could partner with Trump on those things about which they agreed with him and how it could oppose him in a respectful, civil fashion on the things that hopelessly divide the two parties.

  The left decided instead to stick with “This can’t be happening.” Their intransigent opposition—pardon me, “Resistance”—to Trump since then can only be described as delusional. It will always still be 2015 in the hearts of some traumatized leftists. They cannot accept that Trump may have not just beaten Hillary but derailed their train, ended their dialectical process, steered progress in a very different direction, bent the “arc of history” at a new angle, and debunked so many things they believed to be inevitable—the empirical corollaries of the things they believed were desired by “all decent people.”

  Again, both parties have suffered losses before, but the usual reaction—the sane reaction, the healthy-for-democracy reaction—was to focus on making arguments that would persuade the public to support at least some of the minority party’s legislative agenda. Can anyone deny that the Democrats after 2016, almost immediately, have instead poured most of their (highly) emotional energy into finding some way to prove that 2016 didn’t happen?

  The preferred culprit has shifted around—the imagined demon who made this illusion of a Trump victory afflict us—but always it is as if there has to be some explanation. Sexism, racism, the unconstitutional Electoral College (which is laid out in the Constitution), xenophobic anti-Islam sentiment, and of course the Russians, the Russians, the Russians (and then Ukrainians, apparently). It is tempting at times for conservatives to think this left-wing fury and confusion is a great thing: Stay crazy and keep losing as America recoils in horror from the weeping, screaming protestors.

  Trump has always sided with the underdog. He has always admired any David succeeding against a Goliath in any field. It is not a coincidence that Trump gets along well with visionary science-oriented entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel (who was a Trump delegate at the 2016 Republican National Convention and later served on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team) and Elon Musk (who discussed his Hyperloop idea for superfast train tunnels with Trump early in his first term). People like Thiel and Musk are in some ways the modern equivalent of classic American inventors whose creations in turn enabled other Americans: Edison, the Wright brothers, Samuel Morse, Jonas Salk, and so many more.

  These sorts of people, and the divine creative spark they display, are the foundation of American greatness—not the perpetual lamentations and guilt-tripping of the left. Who really does more to alleviate poverty, to take just one of the genuine ills plaguing the world, someone like Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaping machine, who helped radically lower the cost of food production, or the campus protestors saying poverty is a plot by the wealthy to oppress the rest of us, who cannot be expected to flourish in an unfair society? I think Trump senses, as many of us do, that we are at a tipping point in American cultural history at which our ability to create guilt-tripping campus protestors may far outstrip our ability to create Cyrus McCormicks.

  That way lies ruin—and more poverty, no matter how loudly the protestors rail against it and display their concern. We won’t colonize Mars by protesting, but we might get there surprisingly fast with an optimistic start-up mentality.

  It may sound paradoxical, but I think conservatives are the people eager to embrace tomorrow, and the leftists are the ones who now want to dwell in sorrow on our past, thinking we can never transcend the worst parts of it.

  Embrace tomorrow with the will to invent, to compete, and to Make America Great Again, and I’ll bet we will be startled to discover how good life in this nation can be.

  It is easy to forget how profoundly different the picture of the future carried around in the heads of many on the left is from the optimistic sketch above.

  When someone on the left tells you that energy use must be curtailed, the birthrate must be lowered, national pride must be diminished, masculinity and bravery must be rejected, and Obama’s apology tour of the world must be preferred to Trump’s assertiveness, keep in mind the pessimism at the heart of their worldview. Many on the left think the world is dying due to industry-caused global warming.

  Of course, they don’t like to see anyone who seems proud or who seems to be having fun or who sounds as if he’s expecting a rosy future! The left used “hope” as a slogan for a few years, but they treat hopefulness almost as if it’s an obscenity. They think we should be dissecting and atoning for the American dream, not readying its next and greatest phase.

  If you ask a believer in the MAGA Doctrine what the future looks like, assuming we win the war of ideas, that person will tell you about peace and prosperity. If you ask a typical leftist these days what the future looks like, they’ll very nearly say that we don’t have one. No wonder they’re bitter.

  I suspect optimism also contributes to the greater tolerance shown by Trump supporters. Many of us spent years thinking the country’s political direction couldn’t be altered but then had our eyes opened by Trump’s election. Good things could still happen in this world! For all our worries, we’re having fun now, and it’s hard for others not to notice. Look at the Trump rallies. Remember the victory parties. Watch us laugh at some of those tweets.

 
; Avoid engaging in Antifa-style violence, and we’ll be happy to bring you along with us to the big Trump-themed party ahead. We don’t want a world of constant fighting and enemies around every corner. We believe many of society’s tensions will fade away naturally as increased prosperity and a renewed love of our culture infuses all sectors of society.

  The left thinks if we carry on as we have, we’re all going to be fighting to the death over scraps as we bake in the superheated atmosphere. That sounds like a very dark future. I don’t think it’s the one we’re destined to experience. I think tomorrow’s going to be great.

  Before we can get to that bright future I was describing, we have to be aware that the president’s detractors and the opponents of the MAGA Doctrine will fight us, and they’ve proven they’re willing to fight dirty.

  Unlike some people on the right lately, I do not counsel sinking to the left’s level. That would be hard to do if they’re willing to engage in online harassment, smear campaigns, and physical attacks in the street and on college campuses. Responding in kind would not set a good example for the future—and wouldn’t be legal in some cases. If we want a future of peace and rational discourse, we need to practice those timeless virtues now.

  Let them make their best, most honest argument for turning over control of our lives to the East Coast media, Twitter mobs, government red tape, international bureaucrats, and globalist billionaires. That’s a debate we can win.

  Many people will flock to our banner precisely because they see us behaving better than the far left. Our willingness to engage in rational conversation on campuses is already making a difference. Every time people try to shout us down, tear down our posters, or knock over our display tables, the undecided are reminded which side is trying to foster civilization and which side keeps veering into barbarism.

  As I write this, much more subtle and unsettling tactics are being deployed against the president, though. Maybe by the time you read these words, you will know how that conflict played out and whether the president prevailed. I expect he will, as he almost always does in defiance of his detractors’ predictions, but history has its moments of jarring backward motion, as I suggested earlier.

  I worry about what will become of this country if Trump is ousted in the 2020 election or even before that by the Democrats’ overhyped impeachment threats.

  However, the MAGA Doctrine is larger than one man, however large he lives.

  Chapter 18

  Never Surrender

  The doctrine underlying the Trump movement’s effort to Make America Great Again is mostly implicit. There hasn’t been a short checklist of political commandments in Trump’s playbook, and he does operate on a sort of intuition at times. But as we look back over the major planks of Trump’s thinking, we can see a set of recurring principles, ones that have also guided America as a whole during its history. Among others, those are:

  Disruption of calcified systems is a good thing. We haven’t just faced one bad party but a static two-party cartel. President Trump is unafraid to go after both parties and both orthodoxies. If it doesn’t make sense, he won’t defend it for partisan sake.

  Boldness, on issues ranging from trade to peacemaking, is preferable to timidity. Patterns of behavior that impoverish or kill may appear permanent only because no one has dared challenge them. President Trump didn’t run for office to slightly alter the regulation books in Washington, he ran to change the course of history and restore America’s greatness. While others might have tinkered around the edges, President Trump has never met a challenge too big to face.

  Recognize that the wisdom of the ancients, such as Cicero, shapes the best aspects of our culture today. We are not just the pawns of today’s experts. We stand on the great wisdom of many that have come before us.

  The foreign policy establishment can be as wrong as the domestic policy establishment. A great nation does not waste trillions on never-ending wars. For decades, private citizen Donald Trump championed the idea we must put America first and shouldn’t be wasting our precious resources on building around the world. The foreign policy establishment has been wrong for decades, and this president is unafraid to call them out on their failures.

  Nationalism can be a philosophy of peace. Loving one’s own country does not mean attacking others. On the contrary, it means recognizing that each country will tend to pursue its own best interests, while we should often be suspicious of those who claim to speak selflessly for the whole world. President Trump ran to represent the rights of Americans on the global stage. He didn’t run to rule the world. Each leader is better if they do what is best for their nation. Globalist institutions such as the United Nations have done very little for our nation except drain our tax coffers.

  A freed economy is a robust economy. Get rid of taxes and regulations, and American ingenuity will soon raise standards of living more effectively than any government program. When government is out of the way, the economic engine of America roars.

  America is not a mistake. Patriotism is natural and good. The left tries to make us feel guilty about our past, our cultural inheritance, to soften us up and make us easier to control. We should be proud of being the best in the world. We should strive to be the best at all times.

  America produces larger-than-life characters, and that is wonderful. Trump is the kind of bold, experimenting giant that the Founders hoped would one day flourish in the United States. Let’s not allow the left to turn us into cramped and cowardly shadows of our former selves.

  A great nation wants justice for all people, not just a few. Our laws have sometimes been too punitive, our prisons too crowded, and we can affirm conservative values and the rule of law even while showing mercy where we have failed to do so in the past.

  Healthcare requires the sort of transparency and market freedom we see in other businesses. Everything opaque tends to become a scam. America spent decades making healthcare an overlapping mess of government, markets, employers, and insurance companies. We can simplify and improve that important sector of the economy instead of layering on new mandates as Obamacare sought to do.

  Civilization needs an array of fuel sources. We cannot continue to be so afraid of oil and every other method of energy production that we end up “clean” but literally powerless.

  Free speech is necessary for all problem-solving. As Trump said, we can’t fix society’s problems if political correctness prevents us from even talking about them. And while we applaud the technical achievements of social media and computer companies, we should recognize their growing power to stifle and skew public discourse.

  The Bill of Rights is still the law of the land. The Constitution is our guide, and it enshrines principles that remain true no matter how far modern lawmakers might like to stray from them. The Constitution was not written for its times but written to stand the test of time.

  A conservative judiciary is a practical link to our nation’s core principles and the original intentions of its Founders. The MAGA Doctrine is not, as some of the most vicious critics would say, a “strongman” philosophy of rule by whim. It is a restoration of the rule of law after too many decades of thinking we could safely leave most of the nation’s decisions to unelected bureaucrats and elected legislators more enamored of the latest social justice fad than the traditions that have bequeathed us this great nation.

  Many challenges lie ahead even if we hew closely to the MAGA Doctrine. There will be crises. There will be domestic turmoil. There will be foreign enemies even if we do not go looking for them. But I think President Trump has set a good and sometimes underappreciated example of how a brave person meets those challenges.

  You greet challenges with actions, not just comforting words.

  You tackle problems with practical strategies, not just hopes.

  You give the public that has entrusted you with power victories, not just apologies and rationalizations.

  Challenges bring growth, and growth is good. Challenges go hand in hand
with building—and before all else, Trump is someone who builds.

  Trump is also a man who never surrenders.

  I know that to his detractors, that must sometimes look like stubbornness. They think he’s the sort of person who can’t admit errors and so has to be stopped by impeachment threats or electoral setbacks.

  That’s not quite right. He admits defeats—even does so with a self-deprecating laugh now and then. But he doesn’t give up. He keeps striving for that win.

  American resilience is a trait that has been admired and envied around the planet. We push ourselves harder than any other nation. We don’t settle for second or third place. We never used to, anyway. And I don’t think we’re about to start doing so.

  We are the inheritors of the tradition that set out across the frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  We are the nation that invented more devices than any other, from cars to global positioning systems—from televisions to radio telescopes.

  We were first to the Moon.

  Why do Saudi royals come to the United States for healthcare? It’s because we continue to be pioneers in medicine.

  We bankrupted the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, and we outmatched them at the Olympics numerous times before that.

  Yet over the last two decades, we have seen a slow-emerging push, mostly from the left, to settle for second. Has your child come home with a participation ribbon or medal yet? If not, be thankful! We are nowadays told “everyone is a winner,” even if no one competed and gave it their all.

  If the left’s mentality on “participation” and being a “winner” had been around in the days of George Washington, we might not have a nation today.

  To understand who Donald J. Trump is, and what the Trump philosophy really is, you must believe in American exceptionalism, resilience, and perseverance.