DONALD TRUMP AND THE RETURN OF LIBERALISM

by Keith Preston

"Let me give you a definition of the word 'liberal.'…Franklin D. Roosevelt once said…It is a wonderful definition, and I agree with him. 'A liberal is a man who wants to build bridges over the chasms that separate humanity from a better life." – Richard Nixon

"Richard Nixon was our last liberal president." – Noam Chomsky

"Imagine a president who expands affirmative action, actively promotes school desegregation, enacts important new laws in social welfare, environmental protection, occupational health and safety, and consumer protection, supports comprehensive health insurance and a system of guaranteed income for all citizens, and whose Justice Department opposes the RICO Act on the grounds that it gives the government powers that are much too broad and sweeping for prosecuting criminals. In 2011, such a president would be considered far to left of Barack Obama and far to the left of almost everyone in Congress. Forty years ago, such a president was called Richard Nixon."-Matthew Lyons ("Right-Wing Movements 101")

Now that Donald Trump has won an upset electoral victory and will be assuming the office of the presidency in a couple of months, I am going to offer the unconventional and, certainly to many people, counter-intuitive opinion that it was Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton that was the most left-wing of the two major party candidates.

THE PARALLEL GROWTH OF “BIG GOVERNMENT” AND “MOVEMENT CONSERVATISM”

A slightly modified version of this article originally appeared in The Great Purge: The Deformation of the Conservative Movement, edited by Paul Gottfried and Richard Spencer, and issued by Washington Summit Publishers in 2015.

by Keith Preston

Among the few successes the “conservative movement” can reasonably claim is having established the descriptive epithet of “big government” as a term of opprobrium in American political discourse. Indeed, a review of the literature, websites, and broadcast media associated with American conservatism reveals “big government” to be an ongoing and consistent target of rhetorical invective. For example, an August 15, 2014 piece of commentary appearing on the Townhall.Com website bears the title, “Dismantling Big Government One Step at a Time.”[1] Two days earlier, a post with the curious title of “How to Transcend Obamacare” appeared on National Review Online, and discussed the widely held conservative view that Obamacare “represents our best opportunity to roll back Big Government” largely because of the “less entrenched” nature of this “newest entitlement.”[2] Even the most casual conversation with rank and file conservative movement activists, dutiful Republican voters, fans of “conservative” talk radio, and loyal viewers of the FOX news network will reveal a mentality that regards “big government” as a primordial evil approximating that of original sin. It is therefore fascinating to compare the striking difference between the movement’s rhetoric and stated ambitions, and the reality of what the conservative movement has actually produced when it has had access to power in the political realm.