VDH: Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in America

“We are witnessing the greatest effort to reinvent or, rather, restore the U.S. since the first 100 days of FDR’s radical New Deal revolution. It can succeed even against the street theater nihilism, mainstreamed vulgarity, neo-terrorism, lawfare, and the congressional circus arrayed against it.

But success hinges on speed and audacity (“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”), the rapid reassertion of its constitutional duties by the Supreme Court, constant discipline to prevent needless errors and leaks, calm and tragic explication and messaging rather than boastful high-fiving, and a constant reminder that their desperate opposition wishes to destroy this last effort to stop what had become sheer madness.”

Victor Davis Hanson reflects on the counter-revolution in America

When Donald Trump entered office, he faced a number of choices that had confronted the last three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They all had the choice to either shrink government and reduce deficits or slow government growth while cutting taxes.

They had the choice of using American power to restore deterrence by invading belligerents (e.g., Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan) or targeting enemies without deploying ground troops to change governments.

Republicans could either impose tariffs to ensure trade balances and fair trade or argue that free, even if unfair, trade was in the U.S.’s interest by lowering consumer prices, keeping domestic producers competitive, and assuming foreign subsidies were unsustainable.

They had the choice to either reverse the left-wing domination of culture or moderate its fated influence.

They could have shut down the open border and eliminated illegal immigration or publicly condemned it while tacitly maintaining an influx of hundreds of thousands per year for the corporate world, rather than millions.

In general, no Republican president of the past 50 years sought to radically reduce the size of government and balance the budget. None closed the border and began deportations. None avoided optional ground wars while solely hitting aggressors from the air. None led a cultural counter-revolution to reverse the left’s long march through our institutions.

Why?:

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