How can conservatives recover from Trump?

Home Election 2016 How can conservatives recover from Trump?
How can conservatives recover from Trump?
A child praying | Wikimedia
A child praying | Wikimedia

We elected a man with the soul of a tyrant. Donald Trump has consistently shown it throughout his public record. His personal life is repugnant. He has behaved with total dishonor throughout this entire campaign. He has used his fortune to move the levers of power to crush ordinary Americans and accumulate even more wealth.

In “The Republic,” Plato wrote that the tyrant “grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.”

If Plato is right, then we don’t have much to look forward to over the next four years.

However, that’s not to say the outcome of this election is wholly bad.

Charles Buskirk, the editor of pro-Trump website “American Greatness,” wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he laid out a way forward for a “Greatness Agenda.”

“That means abandoning overly scripted campaigns in favor of authenticity, listening to voters instead of to elite opinion,” Buskirk argued. Buskirk and others hope that Trump will be able to restore constitutional self-government to the American regime.

I certainly hope that Trump can succeed in this mission, but Buskirk and I disagree on the capacity of Trump and his “movement” to address these problems. Buskirk believes that Trump is truly a man of the people, whereas I truly believe that Trump and his ilk — the Steve Bannons and Alex Joneses of the world — are fooling ordinary Americans into believing a vicious lie.

Regardless of which view is correct, the conservative’s mission has not changed. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is under threat, and we must do everything to defend it.

Donald Trump has tapped into something very real. The American people are — rightly — angered by the way the elites in Washington have behaved. They are angered that their way of life has been trampled by arrogant technocrats in D.C.

The way forward is clear.

George Washington warned that “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

A Trump victory is not necessarily a victory for American self-government, and we cannot afford to think that opposition to Trump is unpatriotic.

In fact, a vigorous defense of Americans’ constitutional rights is precisely the most patriotic path ahead. Pro-Trump conservatives — and #NeverTrump conservatives— owe it to the people to stand firmly on that ground.

Most importantly, conservatives in the Congress must do everything they can to oppose any unconstitutionality from the President. The legislature is a coequal branch of our government, and it is incumbent on its members that they act as such. Congress cannot afford to let the President seize still more expansive power. They cannot afford to act like they did the past eight years — or, really, the past several decades.

In “Macbeth and the Moral Universe,” Harry Jaffa wrote “Whose actions have the widest consequences and are most in need of virtue to direct them? The rulers’. Hence morality in all its dimensions can be best seen in the lives of rulers.”

Our representatives in Congress can either prove themselves equal to the task of restoring constitutional government, or weak and servile to the interests of faction over country — the very creatures of petty politics Washington warned us of in his Farewell Address.

Now, more than ever, the very existence of our republic depends on the conduct of Americans. Now, more than ever, this country is in need of high statesmanship. Now, more than ever, conservatives need to convince the American people to steer this state away from the danger of a post-constitutional regime.

The future is admittedly murky. But the permanent things remain just as Good, True, and Beautiful as they ever have been. So long as conservatives make the best arguments for the best ideas, we can still salvage this republic.

Much work lies ahead. Many arguments are going to be had. But, for now, the best response is simply an appeal to heaven.

Mr. Lucchese is a junior studying American history and journalism.