Libertarianism is a naïve ideology that risks cutting deeply into the core functions of a state. What’s insidious about libertarianism is that it looks good at first. Listening to Trump talk about over-taxation and overregulation with Rogan, I couldn’t help but nod along. The problem is the erosion of state capacity and mounting red ink.
The author confuses libertarianism with anarchism. Libertarians do not embrace the destruction of the state, but merely cutting it back to its necessary functions as stated in the Constitution. Protecting property rights is one such function, and is a strong basis for opposing illegal immigration. Libertarianism is often called “minarchism” since it allows for anarchy of those things that the state is not explicitly empowered to do, but recognizes that the state does have core functions.
Kahn makes a blanket statement he shouldn’t (and probably doesn’t) expect many self-declared libertarians and libertarian-to-a-degree people, like me, to agree with. He doesn’t take a sympathetic view of the political philosophy, let alone speak for all, even most, who follow it. But I don’t think you do either. In plenty time spent sampling the BTL discussion at Reason.com, I’ve seen many people, for example, decrying the outrage of needing a license to drive a car, own many guns, or even practice medicine. And much opposition to any safety net whatsoever, including hospitals, schools, and prisons of a not-for-profit kind.
I think the definition of “necessary functions” is very much in legitimate dispute. Originalist dogmas aside, it has also changed a great deal since the 1780s. The Constitution is the law of the land (of course)—but not in isolation; state and local laws are also needed. (Except according to some anarcho-libertarians, who do exist, or whatnot). And it is not infallible holy writ; we’d probably at least agree there. Many of the Founders envisioned a much more robust and frequent amendment process, and Jefferson thought each generation should have the right and likely duty to revise the existing document.
Hugh Bryant
7 days ago
Trump comes from a long and time-honoured tradition of Americans who distrust their government – with good reason. We could do with more of that here. And the Europeans could do with more of it still.
Cantab Man
7 days ago
I was told by CNN, MSNBC, the NYT and WaPo that Trump is an Evil Capitalist, Russian Spy, and Hitler.
I can’t fathom how anyone could ever start to question these pillars of truth in society.
Russell Sharpe
7 days ago
“The fascist theory of Trump remains prevalent among progressives to this day”
Well, they pretended to believe it, and maybe the more gullible ones really do, even at this late stage. But that narrative has been thoroughly shredded by the promise of a “peaceful transition”: not really the kind of thing principled and dedicated anti-fascists would be concerned to ensure as they hand over the country to anyone they genuinely considered to be the new Mussolini or Hitler.
Carlos Danger
7 days ago
Throwing around labels like this — libertarian, populist, fascist, progressive, authoritarian, even conservative and liberal — seems too facile. The categories are too amorphous and porous to be helpful.
It’s like calling some foods ultra-processed. Why use a word like that? It seems to have meaning but doesn’t. It’s just jargon.
Thor Albro
7 days ago
Trumps “core philosophy” is pragmatism, which is and has always been the core philosophy of America.
Maverick Melonsmith
7 days ago
“….and for nobody, really, to have any clear definition of his core political philosophy“. I figured it out on Day 1. Trump’s core political philosophy is “Trump”.
Bret Larson
7 days ago
If he drops the size of government by 5% he will have done a favour to future generations.
It needs to drop 30%, alas, and no mechanism or movement exists in the Federal government to make that happen.
Samuel Ross
7 days ago
This lousy author managed to waste 2 minutes of my time. A profusion of words does not make for a well-written article, sir. Ah, well, a learning experience. I know what (and who) to avoid later.
Steve Jolly
7 days ago
It’s difficult to be a pure libertarian these days. For example, how does one reconcile free trade with a hostile regime with a command economy manipulating its currency and pursuing monopolies on strategic goods and resources in order to exert political pressure. Doctrinaire libertarianism has no suitable answer as both punitive tariffs and and a taxpayer funded industrial policy are considered unacceptable. There are a number of other modern issues where libertarianism fails the test of pragmatism. As such, the party is on the political fringe, much like the Green Party on the left. A lot of them are closer to anarchists.
Since the 1990s when Newt Gingrich based his contract with America on budget balancing and cutting spending, there has been a faction of libertarian leaning Republicans because they are aligned on many issues. The most visible leader of the faction these days is Rand Paul. He has often been allied with Trump but clashed at other times. Even Rand isn’t a pure libertarian these days. Also, even the politicians that run as libertarians and get less than 10 percent of the vote are likely to have held office as Republicans. It’s just not a viable political ideology in its pure form and nobody can sell it to the people. Trump can’t either, but he isn’t really trying.
The only label that really fits is that of a nationalist. It’s the only consistent theme. Whatever policy he embraces, his logic is that it is good for America, makes the nation stronger, and puts the nation in a stronger or that it directly benefita the American people. It’s a testament to how far the globalist ideology has gone that a leader adopting policies according to the needs of his or her own country over and above the wants and needs of other nations is somehow controversial. Moreover, that basic statement of America first, which shouldn’t even need to be said, was sufficient for a political outsider with no experience and an established reputation of being a womanizer, a con man, and an obnoxious jerk, to bring the political establishment of the richest and most powerful nation on earth to its knees.
That’s what still staggers me. That the establishment was so incompetent, so blind, and so wedded to their internationalist projects, that not only did they fail to stop Trump, they failed to understand why he succeeded. In a healthy, content, and well run democratic nation, Trump could never have come to power. Yet there are so many progressives and neocons and globalists who still don’t get it. As much as I think Trump is an opportunist whose entire political career represents little more than a way to appease his ego. As much as I am convinced he has very little idea what he’s doing and is in over his head, I can’t honestly say the other side is any better. They’re horrible in a completely different way. At least Trump may accidentally stumble into some new policy that works. The other side won’t deviate from their failed, unpopular ideology.
I don’t have high hopes for Trump’s second term. He has yet to demonstrate he has a good understanding of the reforms and changes we need. He just throws crap at the wall and sees what sticks, which is still an improvement over what we have had. He has picked an eclectic cabinet from many political ideologies and factions who are almost guaranteed to be fighting each other at the first sign of trouble, as indeed they already are fighting over the visa issue. These disagreements are not a bad thing. The last thing we need is more echo chambers where everybody agrees. Just through disagreements and internal conflicts, we are bound to do at least marginally better Hopefully, Trumpwill continue to be inconsistent, pragmatic, and responsive to the people. If he somehow turns too many off by veering too far from his promises, he runs the risk of being labeled a sellout. It bears remembering that while Trump’s takeover of the Republican party seems complete, the underlying political instability that allowed Trump to rise hasn’t gone away, and probably won’t without far more drastic reforms than Trump will take for the very reasons this author states.
We still will need a real populist who knows what they’re doing and does have a longterm plan based on pragmatic thinking and reining in the excesses of international finance and taking a sledgehammer to the largest corporations. That’s a libertarian position as well, one I don’t expect Trump will touch now but others might. That person could still come from either party depending on the circumstances. Further, there will still be support for economic globalism, from libertarians and others, but globalism is likely dead as a political philosophy.
I agree with most of your detailed analysis. Nationalism is clearly a better single-word description, at least of his rhetoric. A problem does arise with something else you point out: for the incoming president, Trump First will tend to supersede America First whenever he is able to get his way. That introduces the would-be authoritarian, or cult-of-personality aspect that is clearly there too. I’d welcome a populism with more genuine concern for the people, less vilification of perceived enemies, and less hunger for the spotlight at the top.
It gets to your key point about doctrinaire libertarianism, which is in large measure applicable to any rigid or doctrinaire belief system. Populism or nationalism to the exclusion of significant balancing influence has a nasty history, with bloody lowlights on the left and right. I hope that a few in Trump’s hand-picked circle will have the nerve to introduce some balance and bigger picture thinking, the absence of which is (conveniently) symbolized by having a large painting of oneself on the wall.
A spirit of destruction may be called for, even overdue. But I happen to think that even in this society, which you correctly diagnose as sick, discontented, and poorly-run, there is much worth preserving, at least against a short-list of extreme, but possible alternatives. May the spirit of self-preservation at all costs prevail somewhat less, on either side of the aisle.
Not all of our national malaise is related to Trump in any real way, of course. Viable third party now! Guess we’d already have three if more than a rare few in the GOP hadn’t been swallowed into the Party of Trump.
Trump’s ego is definitely a problem. So is his narcissism, his erratic nature and lack of consistency. If his second term is like his first, it will be mostly a lot of big talk that never translates into meaningful policy, fights with the media over trivial issues, and a few laws passed on the small number of issues Congressional Republicans actually agree on. As I said, I don’t have high hopes. I just have to concede that we’re no better off than we would be with Harris. I actually have always liked Biden. He’s an old fashioned American finger in the wind politician who listens to voters and changes his positions over time. There’s something to be said for being a servant of the people. I’d rather have someone that triangulates their position based on the popular will than someone who has an ideological agenda like Obama or Bush. If we could transport the Joe Biden from the 1990’s, I think he’d be an acceptable candidate. It’s unfortunate that old age caught up to him, and it’s unfortunate that since his time, the Democrats have taken a turn towards being a party of elites and intellectuals that reject the fundamental principle of democracy, that power comes from the people and the government’s job is to serve the people, not the other way round. The younger Democrats simply don’t have any cross party appeal, and most of them have gained office through identity politics, race baiting, and all the activist nonsense that never has enjoyed broad appeal. Most African Americans actually oppose reparations for slavery and affirmative action when put to them as policy questions. We’ll see what happens in 2028, but I anticipate the party leadership will at least figure out they need to avoid another cackling DEI candidate. I anticipate a primary contest that will be between unknown centrists in the vein of Joe Biden who nobody has heard of at the national level and probably at least one candidate who picks up the Sanders agenda.
The problem with a third party is that there is at this point a huge amount of inertia for the two parties that exist. There’s quite a bit of existing law at the state level that makes it hard for a third party to compete. Witness how hard it was for RFK to even get his name on the ballot in all states. Some of it is actually pretty old and comes from earlier times when there was a threat of third parties, particularly communist parties, and some of it was simply a part of the process that sought to democratize the primary process that chose candidates for the two major parties. We can thank the first populist movement for these types of laws. It’s fitting that a process that came out of an earlier populist movement allowed a modern populist candidate to defeat the establishment in the present. Of course the major parties won’t touch these laws now. These laws have been around longer than most voters, who aren’t generally aware they exist. There’s also the fact that the political parties are large organizations with significant resources. They are essentially large non-profits with full time staff and local organizations. Duplicating all of that would be extremely difficult.
Still, as we’ve seen, change can happen because the parties themselves are not monolithic. The Republican party as it is today is a prime example. It’s barely identifiable as what it was in 2010, and that party barely resembles the one from 1980, and so on. It has changed radically over the past decade, and it isn’t only because of Trump. Before Trump won in 2016 there was the Tea Party movement that defeated many establishment candidates in the House of Representatives and at the state level. Further, there are factions within the parties whose political fortunes rise and fall as well. Rand Paul is the de facto leader of the libertarian wing of the party. Josh Hawley is a better example of what a truly populist agenda would look like. Further, at any given point there are a lot of politicians who are careerists who will change their views if voter attitudes shift. Witness Marco Rubio, who was once an establishment darling, turning populist and now a Trump appointee. There are still a lot of Republicans that are basically similar to Joe Biden in the ways I mentioned earlier. There are far fewer Democrats. The party has become too much of an echo chamber, limited to urban enclaves, affluent white collar workers, and minorities. Their coalition is extremely vulnerable because they can’t lose basically any of that coalition and expect to win. If the trend of splitting minority voters continues, the Democratic Party is in deep trouble, and will have to reinvent itself or be rendered irrelevant. I for one hope for the former. As I have always stated, I would rather have two innovative, flexible parties that are responsive to the people and willing to stand up for the people against corporate interests, foreign powers, and internationalized oligarchs. At least now we have one, and we can hope the other one finally sees which way the wind is blowing and gets their act together.
Agree on most points again. I disagree that Harris was an equally bad or desperate choice, but I accept the validity of the opposing position, especially when the failures and shortcomings of the status quo are highlighted.
I share your overall take on Biden. I’ve always considered him pretty average, but decent and sane, with more knowledge and good sense than people (including me) have often credited him with. And average is above the norm in D.C. where character in concerned. I don’t think he was ever intelligent enough to be a great president, but then again neither was Bush Jr., though far from the idiot some painted him to be. (He was also decent and sane). Too true that Biden was already nearly too diminished on the day he took the oath of office four years ago. Now it’s sad and embarrassing.
I’m baffled by the number of people who believe or want to believe that Trump will go after oligarchs or do much of anything to help the proverbial common man. Unless that given man is a small business owner or corporate bigwig. Or possibly a Tech Bro.
It’s amazing how acceptable the influence of a billionaire becomes when he supports your candidate, or throws bombs for your side of the sociopolitical divide! I used to like Musk and still respect his high intelligence, as well as the better side of his defiant originality. But holy cow his digital bully pulpit and right-hand insider political power are oversized, and dangerous. And anyone who doesn’t think X, Fox News, the New York Post, and right-wing radio constitute some version of Mainstream Media is mistaken, in my opinion.
Also worrisome is the influence of less volatile and confrontational mega billionaires like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Soros. Kind of a new Gilded Age with new-model robber barons, but with more power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, one could easily argue, than in those infamous times.
Whatever happens in these unstable times that figure to get dicier still, I expect you’ll call things as you see ‘em, in a fairminded and civil way. I’ll strive to do the same.
That’s pretty much hitting the nail on the head in my opinion. We need a real populist with a real plan, not a celebrity pretending to be a populist to sate his own ego and taking his policies from whoever his favored advisor is this week.
Musk does concern me to a degree.. If he truly does have Asperger’s, he’s likely about as fake as any of us when interacting with people publicly, but far, far more skilled. That kind of ability combined with his obvious intelligence would allow him to manipulate people and situations in ways others can’t or won’t.He can be manipulative in ways that normal people don’t consider. I can do some of that myself, but certainly not at his level of skill. It’s hard to explain, but we see things other people don’t and it allows us to better predict others behavior while being able to confuse others with our own inconsistencies. It has benefits and costs. It allows us to sometimes get the outcomes we want in social encounters at the cost of alienating people over the longer term. If he’s like me, he doesn’t care about ‘people’ in any collective sense. He probably has individuals he values, respects, and cares about. He may or may not have some abstract or moral sense of valuing human life and culture. He may or may not share my profound dislike of seeing any creature suffering or in pain. Without knowing such details, it’s hard for me to say exactly how dangerous he is, but I can say if I didn’t have those things (and weren’t so lazy), I probably could be very dangerous.
Musk’s sudden pivot from a wealthy maker of electric cars and ally of the globalist left to what he is now is not surprising to me. It’s something I could do if I cared to. We don’t feel social pressures and allegiances the same way normal people do. If he changes his mind or concludes that the situation has changed from the evidence, he’ll simply change his strategy, break his old alliances, and make new ones without much regard for his old allies or his previous image except for any particular individuals he respects and values. I would imagine that’s part of what unsettles you as well. It’s not normal for someone to veer suddenly from one end of the political spectrum to the other without having some way to spin it to their old political allies because normal people have a lot of social connections and friendships that are not easy to abandon. Even growing up, it was nothing to me to ditch a group I hung out with for another group because I got bored or something else captured my attention or I just felt like standing in a different place.
Musk could have a lot of synergy with Trump. Trump is a narcissist who is obsessed with his image and being loved by his people. Most of his social relationships outside his adoring admirers are probably transactional. His foreign policy has been described as transactional and his willingness to outright state the cold calculations of power and interest that drive geopolitics is likely something that resonates with Musk, who probably looks at the world in the same way for different reasons. Other politicians make the same calculations of power and interest, but they don’t say it out loud, they couch it in the language of diplomacy. Trump doesn’t and Elon probably doesn’t care, because at the end of the day, geopolitics is a game of cold hard calculations of power and interest. Pretending it isn’t and pretending we all get along about everything serves very little purpose beyond making people feel better about themselves and their countries, which Elon probably doesn’t care about any more than I do. It also leads to bad decision making when we start believing in our own righteousness and turn geopolitics into a moral crusade, which never ends well.
Trump’s ego and narcissism, while it isolates him, makes him place extreme value on his image. He wants to be loved, adored, and supported by his people. On the other hand, if Musk is like me, he cares almost nothing about being admired and adored by anybody except the handful of people he likes. Interacting with a narcissist is difficult for most people, but I personally wouldn’t care, if the person in question was interesting enough in some other way. I personally don’t see what could possibly be interesting about Trump, but I haven’t personally met the man, so maybe he’s different in a private setting. At any rate, narcissists aren’t much more insufferable to me than normal people are. They all have social hangups that I will never understand. It’s really no difference to me. My dislike for Trump comes from the fact he’s a loud, confrontational bully besides.
You can kind of see how their different abnormalities can complement each other. They are similar in some ways, both isolated, both skilled manipulators, both highly individualistic, but in other ways almost opposite, as for Trump, his image is everything, and for Musk it’s nothing more than a means to an end. This alliance may actually be based on more than simple convenience and could last longer than most think.
The thing that makes me less suspicious of Musk is I’m fairly sure I understand his underlying goals and philosophy, and they don’t have any obvious conflicts with decent responsible governance. He’s a futurist, a technologist, and an innovator. He craves stimulation and hates stagnation. He wants to go to space, to keep making scientific discoveries, to keep human possibilities opes. Above all he wants the human race to keep on moving forward with the freedom to innovate, create, and expand into new areas intellectually and physically. He’s one of the few people who is making serious efforts at finding ways to live in space and on Mars and even beyond at a time when even NASA is barely interested. He doesn’t strike me as someone who wants to have power or wealth just for its own sake. Honestly I could say he shares that in common with Trump. With Trump, he wants the power and wealth because it gets him attention, approval, and validation. Musk wants the power because he has actual goals and a vision for humanity. Do I completely agree with it? No to both, but it’s at least some kind of change, a different agenda. Sometimes if you find yourself on the wrong path, you have to do a bit of backtracking to get back on the right one, or just pick through the brush. I think the logical philosophical endpoint of globalism is a stagnant, controlled, managed society, rather like 1984, something where individuals are suppressed and the collective is supreme. I think Musk and I would agree that such a future would be a truly tragic waste of potential for the species and for untold millions of individuals within it.
To me your post, interesting analysis that it is, just proves the point that political philosophy labels are too facile to be useful. Why try to pin a label on Donald Trump’s lapel? Isn’t it just another case of oversimplifying the complex?
To some extent politicians group themselves under a label with their party identification. But I think even that misleads as much as helps when it is used as a guide to a position on a particular issue.
My careers in both law and science have led me to focus on the concrete — the real world — rather than arguing over the abstract. That’s the way to get things done. And that’s where Donald Trump excels.
Please provide specific examples of that excellence, in concrete terms.
It’s a sincere request. I’m genuinely interested in hearing your response, some of which I might agree with.
*I’m in robust agreement—in the abstract—with your contempt for labels that masquerade as analysis, “isms” that pretend to be insights or guiding lights. I’ve often made similar points here and elsewhere (not that I invented them). But in the realm of politics, ideas, and society, and what those abstract stand for, one can’t communicate much in an efficient way, especially via typed characters, without resorting to some generalities and abstractions. Even -isms can provide a useful placeholder or point of departure, as long as we avoid staring through the prism of isms. To insist otherwise is…negationism?
“And that’s what the Left/Right/Socialists/Populists always do. They never recognize exceptions and always speak in absolute, simplistic terms!” [source: half the posters on a typical website]
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
5 days ago
“There is simply no way to trim $2 trillion from the federal budget”
Cough, cough Pentagon.
Carlos Danger
7 days ago
Throwing around labels like this — libertarian, populist, progressive, authoritarian, even conservative and liberal — seems too facile. The categories are too amorphous and porous to be helpful.
It’s like calling some foods ultra-processed. Why use a word like that? It seems to have meaning but doesn’t. It’s just jargon.
True enough. But Trump has associated himself with libertarians, at least in an appeal for votes. I also think the author’s analysis—agree with him or not—goes deeper than any facile label, such as f a s c i s m, authoritarianism, libertarianism, or progressivism. It’s not mere jargon if the terms are used as a beginning framework, followed by something of more substance. For one article, I find plenty of marrow here.
I didn’t find any marrow here. So Donald Trump is a libertarian. Does that tell us anything important? He’s also a Gemini, being born on June 14. To me, that about as meaningful. Which is to say, neither label is meaningful at all.
You seem to pretend that anyone who uses a label is doing nothing more than using that label. Like Steve, I think Kahn’s central point of analysis is off the mark. I agree with you, to an extent, that no such label means much. But Kahn’s look into the specifics of Trump’s stated aims—like 2 trillion in unattainable cuts coinciding with ongoing tax breaks for the super rich, while claiming to be on the side of the common man—strikes me as apt. As does his emphasis on Trump’s pro-business agenda and strong-man wannabe side that (many hope) he’s unlikely to realize, if only for lack of discipline and focus. Meanwhile you claim (below) that Trump has a record of excellence and getting things done, which are very vague claims. What record? Let hear it because I know you have a few examples, perhaps good ones.
Kahn has a freewheeeling style, but this article seems substantive and well-organized overall to me. I’m not saying that’s a fact, or that there aren’t legit reasons to disagree with him, as I do on some points. But it’s not correct to reduce his whole argument or article to one or two ism-labels. That would be gross reductionism.
Dash Riprock
2 days ago
Everyone agrees there should be no income tax
Will D. Mann
7 days ago
Trump has shown little sign of having any firm beliefs, he is simply saying things and making promises which will get people to support him.
His actions as a business man led to short-payment or non-payment of many contractors and employees. He managed to run a casino into failure and his businesses have been declared bankrupt 6 times. He ran a university that has been exposed as little more than a cash grab. He is also very enamored of the abstract concept of the Big Deal, which leads him to take wild chances as long as he anticipates personal accolades or more credit for being a great deal maker, which he is not in many instances. Example: 2020 deal with Taliban.
Though abstract, Beliefs and Principles—or their absence—inform real-world actions and failures to act.
I wonder if you’ll observe the actions and non-actions of Trump in a practical and specific way during the upcoming term. For the greater good, I hope he and those who attempt to control him will do well enough that you can praise him in a way that isn’t dishonest or star struck.
UK
US
Libertarianism is a naïve ideology that risks cutting deeply into the core functions of a state. What’s insidious about libertarianism is that it looks good at first. Listening to Trump talk about over-taxation and overregulation with Rogan, I couldn’t help but nod along. The problem is the erosion of state capacity and mounting red ink.
The author confuses libertarianism with anarchism. Libertarians do not embrace the destruction of the state, but merely cutting it back to its necessary functions as stated in the Constitution. Protecting property rights is one such function, and is a strong basis for opposing illegal immigration. Libertarianism is often called “minarchism” since it allows for anarchy of those things that the state is not explicitly empowered to do, but recognizes that the state does have core functions.
Kahn makes a blanket statement he shouldn’t (and probably doesn’t) expect many self-declared libertarians and libertarian-to-a-degree people, like me, to agree with. He doesn’t take a sympathetic view of the political philosophy, let alone speak for all, even most, who follow it. But I don’t think you do either. In plenty time spent sampling the BTL discussion at Reason.com, I’ve seen many people, for example, decrying the outrage of needing a license to drive a car, own many guns, or even practice medicine. And much opposition to any safety net whatsoever, including hospitals, schools, and prisons of a not-for-profit kind.
I think the definition of “necessary functions” is very much in legitimate dispute. Originalist dogmas aside, it has also changed a great deal since the 1780s. The Constitution is the law of the land (of course)—but not in isolation; state and local laws are also needed. (Except according to some anarcho-libertarians, who do exist, or whatnot). And it is not infallible holy writ; we’d probably at least agree there. Many of the Founders envisioned a much more robust and frequent amendment process, and Jefferson thought each generation should have the right and likely duty to revise the existing document.
Trump comes from a long and time-honoured tradition of Americans who distrust their government – with good reason. We could do with more of that here. And the Europeans could do with more of it still.
I was told by CNN, MSNBC, the NYT and WaPo that Trump is an Evil Capitalist, Russian Spy, and Hitler.
I can’t fathom how anyone could ever start to question these pillars of truth in society.
“The fascist theory of Trump remains prevalent among progressives to this day”
Well, they pretended to believe it, and maybe the more gullible ones really do, even at this late stage. But that narrative has been thoroughly shredded by the promise of a “peaceful transition”: not really the kind of thing principled and dedicated anti-fascists would be concerned to ensure as they hand over the country to anyone they genuinely considered to be the new Mussolini or Hitler.
Throwing around labels like this — libertarian, populist, fascist, progressive, authoritarian, even conservative and liberal — seems too facile. The categories are too amorphous and porous to be helpful.
It’s like calling some foods ultra-processed. Why use a word like that? It seems to have meaning but doesn’t. It’s just jargon.
Trumps “core philosophy” is pragmatism, which is and has always been the core philosophy of America.
“….and for nobody, really, to have any clear definition of his core political philosophy“. I figured it out on Day 1. Trump’s core political philosophy is “Trump”.
If he drops the size of government by 5% he will have done a favour to future generations.
It needs to drop 30%, alas, and no mechanism or movement exists in the Federal government to make that happen.
This lousy author managed to waste 2 minutes of my time. A profusion of words does not make for a well-written article, sir. Ah, well, a learning experience. I know what (and who) to avoid later.
It’s difficult to be a pure libertarian these days. For example, how does one reconcile free trade with a hostile regime with a command economy manipulating its currency and pursuing monopolies on strategic goods and resources in order to exert political pressure. Doctrinaire libertarianism has no suitable answer as both punitive tariffs and and a taxpayer funded industrial policy are considered unacceptable. There are a number of other modern issues where libertarianism fails the test of pragmatism. As such, the party is on the political fringe, much like the Green Party on the left. A lot of them are closer to anarchists.
Since the 1990s when Newt Gingrich based his contract with America on budget balancing and cutting spending, there has been a faction of libertarian leaning Republicans because they are aligned on many issues. The most visible leader of the faction these days is Rand Paul. He has often been allied with Trump but clashed at other times. Even Rand isn’t a pure libertarian these days. Also, even the politicians that run as libertarians and get less than 10 percent of the vote are likely to have held office as Republicans. It’s just not a viable political ideology in its pure form and nobody can sell it to the people. Trump can’t either, but he isn’t really trying.
The only label that really fits is that of a nationalist. It’s the only consistent theme. Whatever policy he embraces, his logic is that it is good for America, makes the nation stronger, and puts the nation in a stronger or that it directly benefita the American people. It’s a testament to how far the globalist ideology has gone that a leader adopting policies according to the needs of his or her own country over and above the wants and needs of other nations is somehow controversial. Moreover, that basic statement of America first, which shouldn’t even need to be said, was sufficient for a political outsider with no experience and an established reputation of being a womanizer, a con man, and an obnoxious jerk, to bring the political establishment of the richest and most powerful nation on earth to its knees.
That’s what still staggers me. That the establishment was so incompetent, so blind, and so wedded to their internationalist projects, that not only did they fail to stop Trump, they failed to understand why he succeeded. In a healthy, content, and well run democratic nation, Trump could never have come to power. Yet there are so many progressives and neocons and globalists who still don’t get it. As much as I think Trump is an opportunist whose entire political career represents little more than a way to appease his ego. As much as I am convinced he has very little idea what he’s doing and is in over his head, I can’t honestly say the other side is any better. They’re horrible in a completely different way. At least Trump may accidentally stumble into some new policy that works. The other side won’t deviate from their failed, unpopular ideology.
I don’t have high hopes for Trump’s second term. He has yet to demonstrate he has a good understanding of the reforms and changes we need. He just throws crap at the wall and sees what sticks, which is still an improvement over what we have had. He has picked an eclectic cabinet from many political ideologies and factions who are almost guaranteed to be fighting each other at the first sign of trouble, as indeed they already are fighting over the visa issue. These disagreements are not a bad thing. The last thing we need is more echo chambers where everybody agrees. Just through disagreements and internal conflicts, we are bound to do at least marginally better Hopefully, Trumpwill continue to be inconsistent, pragmatic, and responsive to the people. If he somehow turns too many off by veering too far from his promises, he runs the risk of being labeled a sellout. It bears remembering that while Trump’s takeover of the Republican party seems complete, the underlying political instability that allowed Trump to rise hasn’t gone away, and probably won’t without far more drastic reforms than Trump will take for the very reasons this author states.
We still will need a real populist who knows what they’re doing and does have a longterm plan based on pragmatic thinking and reining in the excesses of international finance and taking a sledgehammer to the largest corporations. That’s a libertarian position as well, one I don’t expect Trump will touch now but others might. That person could still come from either party depending on the circumstances. Further, there will still be support for economic globalism, from libertarians and others, but globalism is likely dead as a political philosophy.
I agree with most of your detailed analysis. Nationalism is clearly a better single-word description, at least of his rhetoric. A problem does arise with something else you point out: for the incoming president, Trump First will tend to supersede America First whenever he is able to get his way. That introduces the would-be authoritarian, or cult-of-personality aspect that is clearly there too. I’d welcome a populism with more genuine concern for the people, less vilification of perceived enemies, and less hunger for the spotlight at the top.
It gets to your key point about doctrinaire libertarianism, which is in large measure applicable to any rigid or doctrinaire belief system. Populism or nationalism to the exclusion of significant balancing influence has a nasty history, with bloody lowlights on the left and right. I hope that a few in Trump’s hand-picked circle will have the nerve to introduce some balance and bigger picture thinking, the absence of which is (conveniently) symbolized by having a large painting of oneself on the wall.
A spirit of destruction may be called for, even overdue. But I happen to think that even in this society, which you correctly diagnose as sick, discontented, and poorly-run, there is much worth preserving, at least against a short-list of extreme, but possible alternatives. May the spirit of self-preservation at all costs prevail somewhat less, on either side of the aisle.
Not all of our national malaise is related to Trump in any real way, of course. Viable third party now! Guess we’d already have three if more than a rare few in the GOP hadn’t been swallowed into the Party of Trump.
Trump’s ego is definitely a problem. So is his narcissism, his erratic nature and lack of consistency. If his second term is like his first, it will be mostly a lot of big talk that never translates into meaningful policy, fights with the media over trivial issues, and a few laws passed on the small number of issues Congressional Republicans actually agree on. As I said, I don’t have high hopes. I just have to concede that we’re no better off than we would be with Harris. I actually have always liked Biden. He’s an old fashioned American finger in the wind politician who listens to voters and changes his positions over time. There’s something to be said for being a servant of the people. I’d rather have someone that triangulates their position based on the popular will than someone who has an ideological agenda like Obama or Bush. If we could transport the Joe Biden from the 1990’s, I think he’d be an acceptable candidate. It’s unfortunate that old age caught up to him, and it’s unfortunate that since his time, the Democrats have taken a turn towards being a party of elites and intellectuals that reject the fundamental principle of democracy, that power comes from the people and the government’s job is to serve the people, not the other way round. The younger Democrats simply don’t have any cross party appeal, and most of them have gained office through identity politics, race baiting, and all the activist nonsense that never has enjoyed broad appeal. Most African Americans actually oppose reparations for slavery and affirmative action when put to them as policy questions. We’ll see what happens in 2028, but I anticipate the party leadership will at least figure out they need to avoid another cackling DEI candidate. I anticipate a primary contest that will be between unknown centrists in the vein of Joe Biden who nobody has heard of at the national level and probably at least one candidate who picks up the Sanders agenda.
The problem with a third party is that there is at this point a huge amount of inertia for the two parties that exist. There’s quite a bit of existing law at the state level that makes it hard for a third party to compete. Witness how hard it was for RFK to even get his name on the ballot in all states. Some of it is actually pretty old and comes from earlier times when there was a threat of third parties, particularly communist parties, and some of it was simply a part of the process that sought to democratize the primary process that chose candidates for the two major parties. We can thank the first populist movement for these types of laws. It’s fitting that a process that came out of an earlier populist movement allowed a modern populist candidate to defeat the establishment in the present. Of course the major parties won’t touch these laws now. These laws have been around longer than most voters, who aren’t generally aware they exist. There’s also the fact that the political parties are large organizations with significant resources. They are essentially large non-profits with full time staff and local organizations. Duplicating all of that would be extremely difficult.
Still, as we’ve seen, change can happen because the parties themselves are not monolithic. The Republican party as it is today is a prime example. It’s barely identifiable as what it was in 2010, and that party barely resembles the one from 1980, and so on. It has changed radically over the past decade, and it isn’t only because of Trump. Before Trump won in 2016 there was the Tea Party movement that defeated many establishment candidates in the House of Representatives and at the state level. Further, there are factions within the parties whose political fortunes rise and fall as well. Rand Paul is the de facto leader of the libertarian wing of the party. Josh Hawley is a better example of what a truly populist agenda would look like. Further, at any given point there are a lot of politicians who are careerists who will change their views if voter attitudes shift. Witness Marco Rubio, who was once an establishment darling, turning populist and now a Trump appointee. There are still a lot of Republicans that are basically similar to Joe Biden in the ways I mentioned earlier. There are far fewer Democrats. The party has become too much of an echo chamber, limited to urban enclaves, affluent white collar workers, and minorities. Their coalition is extremely vulnerable because they can’t lose basically any of that coalition and expect to win. If the trend of splitting minority voters continues, the Democratic Party is in deep trouble, and will have to reinvent itself or be rendered irrelevant. I for one hope for the former. As I have always stated, I would rather have two innovative, flexible parties that are responsive to the people and willing to stand up for the people against corporate interests, foreign powers, and internationalized oligarchs. At least now we have one, and we can hope the other one finally sees which way the wind is blowing and gets their act together.
Agree on most points again. I disagree that Harris was an equally bad or desperate choice, but I accept the validity of the opposing position, especially when the failures and shortcomings of the status quo are highlighted.
I share your overall take on Biden. I’ve always considered him pretty average, but decent and sane, with more knowledge and good sense than people (including me) have often credited him with. And average is above the norm in D.C. where character in concerned. I don’t think he was ever intelligent enough to be a great president, but then again neither was Bush Jr., though far from the idiot some painted him to be. (He was also decent and sane). Too true that Biden was already nearly too diminished on the day he took the oath of office four years ago. Now it’s sad and embarrassing.
I’m baffled by the number of people who believe or want to believe that Trump will go after oligarchs or do much of anything to help the proverbial common man. Unless that given man is a small business owner or corporate bigwig. Or possibly a Tech Bro.
It’s amazing how acceptable the influence of a billionaire becomes when he supports your candidate, or throws bombs for your side of the sociopolitical divide! I used to like Musk and still respect his high intelligence, as well as the better side of his defiant originality. But holy cow his digital bully pulpit and right-hand insider political power are oversized, and dangerous. And anyone who doesn’t think X, Fox News, the New York Post, and right-wing radio constitute some version of Mainstream Media is mistaken, in my opinion.
Also worrisome is the influence of less volatile and confrontational mega billionaires like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Soros. Kind of a new Gilded Age with new-model robber barons, but with more power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, one could easily argue, than in those infamous times.
Whatever happens in these unstable times that figure to get dicier still, I expect you’ll call things as you see ‘em, in a fairminded and civil way. I’ll strive to do the same.
That’s pretty much hitting the nail on the head in my opinion. We need a real populist with a real plan, not a celebrity pretending to be a populist to sate his own ego and taking his policies from whoever his favored advisor is this week.
Musk does concern me to a degree.. If he truly does have Asperger’s, he’s likely about as fake as any of us when interacting with people publicly, but far, far more skilled. That kind of ability combined with his obvious intelligence would allow him to manipulate people and situations in ways others can’t or won’t.He can be manipulative in ways that normal people don’t consider. I can do some of that myself, but certainly not at his level of skill. It’s hard to explain, but we see things other people don’t and it allows us to better predict others behavior while being able to confuse others with our own inconsistencies. It has benefits and costs. It allows us to sometimes get the outcomes we want in social encounters at the cost of alienating people over the longer term. If he’s like me, he doesn’t care about ‘people’ in any collective sense. He probably has individuals he values, respects, and cares about. He may or may not have some abstract or moral sense of valuing human life and culture. He may or may not share my profound dislike of seeing any creature suffering or in pain. Without knowing such details, it’s hard for me to say exactly how dangerous he is, but I can say if I didn’t have those things (and weren’t so lazy), I probably could be very dangerous.
Musk’s sudden pivot from a wealthy maker of electric cars and ally of the globalist left to what he is now is not surprising to me. It’s something I could do if I cared to. We don’t feel social pressures and allegiances the same way normal people do. If he changes his mind or concludes that the situation has changed from the evidence, he’ll simply change his strategy, break his old alliances, and make new ones without much regard for his old allies or his previous image except for any particular individuals he respects and values. I would imagine that’s part of what unsettles you as well. It’s not normal for someone to veer suddenly from one end of the political spectrum to the other without having some way to spin it to their old political allies because normal people have a lot of social connections and friendships that are not easy to abandon. Even growing up, it was nothing to me to ditch a group I hung out with for another group because I got bored or something else captured my attention or I just felt like standing in a different place.
Musk could have a lot of synergy with Trump. Trump is a narcissist who is obsessed with his image and being loved by his people. Most of his social relationships outside his adoring admirers are probably transactional. His foreign policy has been described as transactional and his willingness to outright state the cold calculations of power and interest that drive geopolitics is likely something that resonates with Musk, who probably looks at the world in the same way for different reasons. Other politicians make the same calculations of power and interest, but they don’t say it out loud, they couch it in the language of diplomacy. Trump doesn’t and Elon probably doesn’t care, because at the end of the day, geopolitics is a game of cold hard calculations of power and interest. Pretending it isn’t and pretending we all get along about everything serves very little purpose beyond making people feel better about themselves and their countries, which Elon probably doesn’t care about any more than I do. It also leads to bad decision making when we start believing in our own righteousness and turn geopolitics into a moral crusade, which never ends well.
Trump’s ego and narcissism, while it isolates him, makes him place extreme value on his image. He wants to be loved, adored, and supported by his people. On the other hand, if Musk is like me, he cares almost nothing about being admired and adored by anybody except the handful of people he likes. Interacting with a narcissist is difficult for most people, but I personally wouldn’t care, if the person in question was interesting enough in some other way. I personally don’t see what could possibly be interesting about Trump, but I haven’t personally met the man, so maybe he’s different in a private setting. At any rate, narcissists aren’t much more insufferable to me than normal people are. They all have social hangups that I will never understand. It’s really no difference to me. My dislike for Trump comes from the fact he’s a loud, confrontational bully besides.
You can kind of see how their different abnormalities can complement each other. They are similar in some ways, both isolated, both skilled manipulators, both highly individualistic, but in other ways almost opposite, as for Trump, his image is everything, and for Musk it’s nothing more than a means to an end. This alliance may actually be based on more than simple convenience and could last longer than most think.
The thing that makes me less suspicious of Musk is I’m fairly sure I understand his underlying goals and philosophy, and they don’t have any obvious conflicts with decent responsible governance. He’s a futurist, a technologist, and an innovator. He craves stimulation and hates stagnation. He wants to go to space, to keep making scientific discoveries, to keep human possibilities opes. Above all he wants the human race to keep on moving forward with the freedom to innovate, create, and expand into new areas intellectually and physically. He’s one of the few people who is making serious efforts at finding ways to live in space and on Mars and even beyond at a time when even NASA is barely interested. He doesn’t strike me as someone who wants to have power or wealth just for its own sake. Honestly I could say he shares that in common with Trump. With Trump, he wants the power and wealth because it gets him attention, approval, and validation. Musk wants the power because he has actual goals and a vision for humanity. Do I completely agree with it? No to both, but it’s at least some kind of change, a different agenda. Sometimes if you find yourself on the wrong path, you have to do a bit of backtracking to get back on the right one, or just pick through the brush. I think the logical philosophical endpoint of globalism is a stagnant, controlled, managed society, rather like 1984, something where individuals are suppressed and the collective is supreme. I think Musk and I would agree that such a future would be a truly tragic waste of potential for the species and for untold millions of individuals within it.
To me your post, interesting analysis that it is, just proves the point that political philosophy labels are too facile to be useful. Why try to pin a label on Donald Trump’s lapel? Isn’t it just another case of oversimplifying the complex?
To some extent politicians group themselves under a label with their party identification. But I think even that misleads as much as helps when it is used as a guide to a position on a particular issue.
My careers in both law and science have led me to focus on the concrete — the real world — rather than arguing over the abstract. That’s the way to get things done. And that’s where Donald Trump excels.
Please provide specific examples of that excellence, in concrete terms.
It’s a sincere request. I’m genuinely interested in hearing your response, some of which I might agree with.
*I’m in robust agreement—in the abstract—with your contempt for labels that masquerade as analysis, “isms” that pretend to be insights or guiding lights. I’ve often made similar points here and elsewhere (not that I invented them). But in the realm of politics, ideas, and society, and what those abstract stand for, one can’t communicate much in an efficient way, especially via typed characters, without resorting to some generalities and abstractions. Even -isms can provide a useful placeholder or point of departure, as long as we avoid staring through the prism of isms. To insist otherwise is…negationism?
“And that’s what the Left/Right/Socialists/Populists always do. They never recognize exceptions and always speak in absolute, simplistic terms!” [source: half the posters on a typical website]
“There is simply no way to trim $2 trillion from the federal budget”
Cough, cough Pentagon.
Throwing around labels like this — libertarian, populist, progressive, authoritarian, even conservative and liberal — seems too facile. The categories are too amorphous and porous to be helpful.
It’s like calling some foods ultra-processed. Why use a word like that? It seems to have meaning but doesn’t. It’s just jargon.
True enough. But Trump has associated himself with libertarians, at least in an appeal for votes. I also think the author’s analysis—agree with him or not—goes deeper than any facile label, such as f a s c i s m, authoritarianism, libertarianism, or progressivism. It’s not mere jargon if the terms are used as a beginning framework, followed by something of more substance. For one article, I find plenty of marrow here.
I didn’t find any marrow here. So Donald Trump is a libertarian. Does that tell us anything important? He’s also a Gemini, being born on June 14. To me, that about as meaningful. Which is to say, neither label is meaningful at all.
You seem to pretend that anyone who uses a label is doing nothing more than using that label. Like Steve, I think Kahn’s central point of analysis is off the mark. I agree with you, to an extent, that no such label means much. But Kahn’s look into the specifics of Trump’s stated aims—like 2 trillion in unattainable cuts coinciding with ongoing tax breaks for the super rich, while claiming to be on the side of the common man—strikes me as apt. As does his emphasis on Trump’s pro-business agenda and strong-man wannabe side that (many hope) he’s unlikely to realize, if only for lack of discipline and focus. Meanwhile you claim (below) that Trump has a record of excellence and getting things done, which are very vague claims. What record? Let hear it because I know you have a few examples, perhaps good ones.
Kahn has a freewheeeling style, but this article seems substantive and well-organized overall to me. I’m not saying that’s a fact, or that there aren’t legit reasons to disagree with him, as I do on some points. But it’s not correct to reduce his whole argument or article to one or two ism-labels. That would be gross reductionism.
Everyone agrees there should be no income tax
Trump has shown little sign of having any firm beliefs, he is simply saying things and making promises which will get people to support him.
Beliefs are abstract. Saying things and making promises are abstract. Abstractions don’t matter; actions in the real world do.
Donald Trump comes from the real world of business where the focus is on getting things done. That’s the right focus.
His actions as a business man led to short-payment or non-payment of many contractors and employees. He managed to run a casino into failure and his businesses have been declared bankrupt 6 times. He ran a university that has been exposed as little more than a cash grab. He is also very enamored of the abstract concept of the Big Deal, which leads him to take wild chances as long as he anticipates personal accolades or more credit for being a great deal maker, which he is not in many instances. Example: 2020 deal with Taliban.
Though abstract, Beliefs and Principles—or their absence—inform real-world actions and failures to act.
I wonder if you’ll observe the actions and non-actions of Trump in a practical and specific way during the upcoming term. For the greater good, I hope he and those who attempt to control him will do well enough that you can praise him in a way that isn’t dishonest or star struck.