"Whatever his faults I love Donald Trump"

President Donald J. Trump addresses his remarks Monday, April 1, 2019, at the 2019 Prison Reform Summit and First Step Celebration in the East Room of the White House, urging employers to institute second chance hiring practices. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

At The American Conservative, Donald Devine gives credit to Tucker Carlson who, as Devine writes, was “ahead of the curve.” Carlson has awoken conservatives to the reality that today’s GOP isn’t their father’s GOP, nor will it be. Times are changing, and sharp eyed observers like Carlson will be necessary guides. Devine, in his piece also writes that whatever his faults, he loves President Trump for forcing this drastic rethink. He writes:

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Whatever his faults, I love President Donald Trump. He’s forced conservative and libertarian intellectuals to rethink their long-held assumptions, something mere reasoning could not accomplish.

Take Tucker Carlson, who was ahead of the curve, as he often is:

If you’re a kind of conventional conservative, like I have been for most of my life, you’ve been—I’m 49, so I grew up in the Reagan era and I was trained to believe that the singular threat to our liberty was government. That’s what Reagan said. He was probably right at the time. And it takes a while, if you’ve grown up believing that, to readjust to the new reality, which is now the singular threat to your freedoms, to your freedom of association, certainly to your freedom of speech, to your ability to think, is technology. It’s the big tech companies. It’s Google primarily, but it’s also Facebook and Twitter and the rest. Simple question: who knows more about you, Google or the Social Security Administration? There’s no contest.

A more scholarly nationalist critique of libertarian-conservative assumptions was presented by Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy:

I consider libertarianism to be every bit as much a suicidal ideology as left-liberalism. In some ways it is even more so, as libertarians are more oblivious than left-liberals to the consequences for themselves of hewing to their ideology. It seems to me that a healthy polity needs a middle class, and a country that is going to remain economically viable for as long as possible needs to have a commanding advantage in high-end manufacturing and producing goods that the rest of the world wants to buy. We still have some of these advantages right now, but we’re forsaking them. Our country went from being underdeveloped at its founding to being a techno-industrial powerhouse in the 19th and 20th centuries while employing a great many economic policies that libertarians don’t like.

McCarthy’s problem today is that “Libertarians take for granted the conditions of the 20th Century and don’t imagine anything could ever really change.” The 80-year-old New Deal is assumed to be the only challenge they’re worried about: “If we just cut taxes and de-regulate hair-braiding, the market will take care of the rest.” Rather, the market actually depends upon a civilization, a way of life, one that can survive even bankruptcy “but it can’t survive the global transformation that’s coming if we do nothing.” He argues that “the timeline for political crisis is shorter than the timeline for economic crisis.” Amid that crisis, “there will be a hard left or hard right political turn,” where the “urban administrative overclass will continue to grow in power and wealth, the urban and suburban lower class will become increasingly servile (or else restive), and the old middle class and heartland will be economically sidelined and in many places depopulated.”

E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.