Claremont’s Codevilla On The Coming Revolution: “Americans Will Be Nostalgic For Donald Trump’s Moderation.”
We are nearing the climax of a watershed election. The Ruling Class understands that Donald Trump represents a counter-revolution to all they have built up over the last 50 years. That emphatically includes GOP leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan, who hastened not merely to step on Trump’s bounce back in the second debate by announcing he was suspending support, but is signaling he will continue to damage Trump as much as possible [Inside Ryan’s decision to (almost) dump Trump| The speaker might still fully rescind his endorsement before Nov. 8, sources told POLITICO, by Jakee Sherman and John Bresnahan, Politico, October 11, 2016]
This phenomenon has inspired an important essay from Angelo M. Codevilla, a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and emeritus professor of International Relations at Boston University, After the Republic. [Claremont Review,September 27, 2016]. Codevilla’s basic idea: the cultural revolution of the last 50 years has destroyed America as a constitutional republic. As many on the Alt Right have noted, there is nothing left to conserve. The question now is where our post-republic period will take us. Codevilla [Email him] writes
Because Republicans largely agree with Democrats that they need not take seriously the founders’ Constitution, today’s American regime is now what Max Weber had called the Tsarist regime on the eve of the Revolution: “fake constitutionalism.” Because such fakery is self-discrediting and removes anyone’s obligation to restrain his passions, it is a harbinger of revolution and of imperial power. [Emphasis added]
This is why we see repeated crazy comparisons of Trump to Hitler—most recently, This New York Times ‘Hitler’ review sure reads like a thinly disguised Trump comparison. [By Aaron Blake, Washington Post, September 28, 2016] Despite absolutely no statements from Trump suggesting that he would suspend the Constitution and assume dictatorial powers, the concern is lurking that, like Hitler, he would do just that.