On Providence and Presidents: Happy Birthday, President Trump

It is altogether natural and fitting that Donald J. Trump turns 80 as the United States approaches its 250th year. That the man most hated by our administrative class should stand at the helm during the Semiquincentennial would have struck the Founders as the mark of Providence: of “the hand of God,” of “the smiles of Heaven.” They understood, better than we, that republics are lost by internal decay and not by foreign invasion, and that sometimes a single, obstinate statesman can arrest it.

We have been instructed for decades that history has ended, that liberal democracy is now a matter of administration, that politics is to be turned over to experts, foundations, and bipartisan commissions whose great virtue is that no one can remember what, if anything, they believe. These are called “norms.” It is also called decline. Not the dramatic, noble kind that furnished themes to tragic poets, but the soft descent into comfort, cowardice, and mental flabbiness: the bipartisan managed decline of a civilization that has grown ashamed of itself but still expects the fruits of its former greatness.

Enter Donald J. Trump. What most outrages his critics is not his vulgarity, his tweets, his Queens accent, or even his obstinate refusal to speak the language of the credentialed classes. It is his refusal to accept America’s decline as either necessary or noble. He does not merely disagree with the genteel funeral directors of the West; he exposes them. Worse, he enjoys doing it. ---More...