Trump and the Vice of False Moderation By Daniel J. Mahoney
https://tomklingenstein.com/trump-and-the-vice-of-false-moderation/
We find ourselves in a protracted struggle, fighting the advocates of a pernicious ideology that aims to radically transform the American way of life. Compromise is essential to free political life, but there can be no compromise with those driven by totalitarian impulses. What is needed more than ever is tough-minded moderation, and not a false sense of complacency.
In the very recent past, why have so many intellectuals and politicians — even professed conservatives — either bowed to or shown little courage in the face of the disruptive mobs that threaten free speech and discussion, the censorious militants obsessed with imposing critical race theory and gender ideology on the rest of us, the terrorists who maim and kill in the name of liberation and decolonialization, and the activists and semi-educated students who shamelessly applaud their crimes? These are enemies of Western civilization, and we must act accordingly. Civic courage has been in short supply. It very much needs to be renewed and reinvigorated.
True, we must be prudent, even in the midst of battle. But authentic prudence does not mean meeting assaults half-heartedly. While the free man in principle prefers peace to war and the arts of persuasion to endless conflict, he cannot be afraid to stand up and fight when he must — to the death, if necessary. Edmund Burke put things well at the beginning of his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790): In resisting the fanaticism of those who war against ordered liberty, we must embody and defend what he called “a manly, moral, and regulated liberty.”
We need to rally a broad “anti-revolutionary party,” as Jordan J. Ballor has called it, comprising all who refuse to deny common sense and the moral truths reflected in the Decalogue, to sever attachment to what is good and noble in our patrimony, and to deny affection for our country. There can be no compromise with the revolutionary party.
To be sure, as I have mentioned, a healthy civic order values compromise, but such compromise requires what we lack today: a shared commitment to the life of reason and to the decencies and shared values required for a functioning republic. Emphasizing civility at the expense of these fundamentals opens the door wide to the revolutionaries. When this happens, good people become weak and ultimately complicit in the assault on their own way of life — on the premises, institutions, and traditions on which a free society rests. Conservatives need to remember this as we move forward.
The members of this anti-revolutionary party — conservatives, old-fashioned liberals, dissident leftists, traditional religious believers, and those who simply want to breathe freely — must together oppose revolutionary public policies, educational approaches, and cultural assumptions. Many are opposing these things today, but we must do so with more strength, determination, intention, and urgency. We have had successes. We should be inspired by them, but we must not let our guard down. Even with Trump in office, we have a long way to go. We risk the all too human tendency to become complacent.
We must make it clearer than we have that we have been confronted by totalitarian impulses, in some ways as dangerous and radical as the more familiar (and bloody) totalitarianisms of the 20th century. They have a different face and structure than these previous tyrannies, but they wish to avail themselves of the same functions: powerful propaganda, issued by a tightly controlled media and education apparatus; the politicization of law enforcement agencies; the ability to spy on its citizens and to punish those who reject the ideology of the regime. To achieve all this, the destructive Left must create unlimited disdain for the greatness of Western civilization.
In the 2024 election, to his great credit, President Trump put together a multicultural, multiracial coalition uniting those who believe that a self-governing, self-respecting nation must have meaningful borders and that the distinction between citizens and non-citizens remains of the greatest moral and civic import. Parents of all races and ethnicities revolted against invented pronouns and pretend genders and offered a resounding “No!” to the bodily and psychic mutilation of the young. They said “No!” to the bogus project of “saving democracy” by subverting it, and to a non-stop cultural revolution that subverts moral good sense and familial attachments while cutting new generations off from the salutary wisdom and inspiring heroes of the past.
If President Trump carries through on his commitments to turn the tide in the battle against woke despotism, political correctness, gender madness, and racial obsessiveness, he will be a very consequential president, indeed. But he cannot do, or even fully articulate, the entirety of what needs to be done. The good common sense evidenced by the recent election still needs a rational defense and vigorous political articulation. That will not come from the political class. It will depend on those thinkers and theorists, attentive to real political life, who know how to combine tenacious civic courage with a commitment to the true moderation that underlies a free and decent political order.
The truth is that the Woke aren’t going anywhere. Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one election cycle doesn’t make a counter-revolution. Major conservative figures (think Reagan and Thatcher) have won decisive victories in the past and yet the larger revolution of nihilism proceeded apace. A sober survey of the scene is still required to win the battle in which we are engaged.
Recall that in the final days before a majority of this country cast its votes for Donald J. Trump, a large part of the political and journalistic class was engaged in a concerted effort to liken the candidate to Adolf Hitler. What has changed in the ten weeks since? Those elites are still animated by the same hatreds — including, it seems, a hatred of objective reality. They must be opposed without hesitation.
Happily, the anti-revolutionary party is beginning to fight back with not just arguments but increasingly effective political action. Indeed, it is on the offensive — up to a point. This conflict will define Trump’s second term, just as it defined his election. He must keep the end in mind: so that a “manly, moral, and regulated liberty” can again flourish in the United States.
Civic friendship is the ultimate end of a well-constituted constitutional republic. But friendship requires a common understanding on the fundamental questions. As Lincoln said, we shall be all one thing or another. These crucial preconditions have been under assault for a very long time now. Those assaults must be resisted — prudently, but manfully. Moderation and civility depend upon the civic courage that allows us to keep fanaticism and nihilism at bay. We must be in this for the long haul.
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