This volume gathers together a set of essays which, like its companion volume, Trump and Political Philosophy: Leadership , Statesmanship and Tyranny , seeks to make sense of contemporary politics through the works of many of the greatest political thinkers. Although the essays here are arranged chronologically and grouped by time period, it may be approached thematically. The purpose of this introduction is to explain how the reader may do just that.
This collection focuses on the socio -political context surrounding Trump , rather than on the man and his tactics. Principally, its questions revolve around the relationship between national interest and universal moral norms , their relationship to the character of good citizens, and the actual quality of citizenship in the United States today. By patriotism, we understand devotion to one’s country; in modernity this means devotion to a nation -state . By cosmopolitanism , we refer to a commitment to universal norms which transcend national allegiance and entail a willingness to subordinate devotion to one’s own to those norms. And by civic virtue, we refer to the qualities needed by citizens to sustain the polity , whether these are grounded in universal norms or specific commitments to their particular communities. Thus it can be argued that civic virtue is the term which mediates patriotism and cosmopolitanism , defining their normative and practical limits.
Prominent in this volume are three contemporary questions: Why did (some) voters support Trump? Is there a Trumpian ideology , and if so, what is it? And how do the motivations of Trump supporters connect with the values implicit in the Trump agenda? In short, our contributors seek to understand what makes a Trumpian, what “Trumpism” is, and why Trumpians support Trumpism. Underlying these concerns are themes which literally define the volume: What does patriotism mean in a globalized world? To what extent does Trump’s rise force us to question the relationship between one’s own and the universal values? And finally, what kind of people supported Trump—does their support indicate civic health or political decay?
Underlying the essays in this volume is the assumption that the values Trump represents are at best implicit . During the campaign this was reflected in the commonplace that one should take Trump seriously, but not literally. Certainly Trump and his “movement” cry out for explication, by both defenders and critics—as indicated by debates about the importance to his campaign of working class resentment, political correctness , racism and foreign policy (including free trade ). Our contributors take this interpretive task a step farther, connecting explanations of Trumpism to debates about the ends of the state and interpretations of Trumpians in terms of human nature .
The essays approach these questions from two broad perspectives. On the one side are analyses of the rise of Trump, which posit essentially rational motivations and account for Trump’s support as a reasonable response to threats to the American way, however conceived. These chapters explain support for Trump by articulating something we might call “Trumpism.” On the other side are contributors who provide interpretations of Trump supporters which explain their support in terms of subrational features, broadly conceived, with reference to their passions , their presumptions or the features of democratic discourse itself. These chapters are essentially interpretations of “Trumpians,” i.e., those who support Trump’s policies, either particularly or generally, and hope for the success of his administration .
Naturally, many accounts here combine features of both. These emphasize the elements of political culture and institutional features which facilitate or impede rational deliberation by the people, an issue most salient to those who oppose Trump either due to his character or his politics.
A Rationalized Trumpism
In the first category—interpretations which account for Trump’s rise by means of a rationalized Trumpism—we can include the essays by Carson Holloway, Douglas Kries, Kevin Slack, Cole Simmons, Jean Yarbrough, and Julius Krein and Adam Adatto Sandel. Each of these essays, either directly or indirectly, explains Trump’s support as a defense of values central to the political thought of the thinkers examined, be it Aristotle , St. Thomas Aquinas , Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , Alexis de Tocqueville or G.F.W. Hegel . Although these essays are not necessarily unalloyed in their defense of “Trumpism,” they tend to put the best face on Trumpian politics and to see Trump-supporters in a positive light. “Trumpians” are seen as citizens with fundamentally rational motives for supporting the man.
Given that Aristotle was the founder of political science , it is appropriate that Carson Holloway shows how Aristotelian political science can be applied to contemporary U.S. politics. Holloway deploys the framework of the Politics , and in particular its analysis of factional conflict, to explain Trump’s surprising electoral victory. Central to this analysis are disagreements between the many and the few over the nature of justice . For Holloway, Trump’s rhetoric is an explicit appeal to the many , identified as “the people—or at least to the sense of an electorally decisive part of the people,” and, in particular as the white working class. As he presents Aristotle’s teaching in Politics Book V, factions form because groups of citizens disagree on the meaning of justice , specifically, what constitutes the equality that should define fair treatment, above all with respect to the goods of honor and wealth. Trump’s populism is thus a successful appeal to the many , who demand that the few give their concerns equal weight. For Holloway, the core of Trump’s appeal was giving voice to a demand for economic security and linking this demand to issues of trade and immigration . Although the demand was in the first instance for a fair share of economic goods, Holloway points out that having this demand recognized was also a call for respect by the white working class. Reasonable resentment by the many is thus seen as the root of Trump’s surprising electoral victory. However, a caveat is in order. Although Aristotle’s political science is rooted in the idea of justice , the very term faction is critical—as in the famous definition offered by Madison in Federalist No. 10. Like Madison , Aristotle held that no one section of the body politic has a complete or true conception of justice . Thus, while Holloway does not state so explicitly, Trump’s appeal cannot be based on justice per se.
Aristotle’s notion of natural right was elaborated and given more definite content in St. Thomas Aquinas’ idea of natural law , which is at the center of Douglas Kries’ chapter on “Thomism and Trumpism.” Kries offers a Thomistic analysis of Trump’s supporters in two ways: first, by providing an interpretation of how Trump’s program might plausibly accord with the teaching of Thomas; second, by showing how Thomas might explain the personal appeal of Trump to decent citizens. In the first part of his essay, Kries argues that one could see economic nationalism , “America First,” and fears about immigration as expressing a positive attachment to one’s own patria, rather than as hatred of the other. This patriotism, which he argues typifies many Trump supporters, especially in less globalized places, is in accord with Thomistic teaching, because while natural law defines the universal moral standard in the concrete instance these standards are rightly informed by myriad local conditions. In the second part of his essay, Kries argues that while opposition to a neglect of the local explains rejection of Clinton, Trump was preferred over his Republican primary opponents on the basis of personality traits that might seem to fit Thomistic notions of virtue. Thus, Thomas considered courage and prudence essential virtues for political leadership , a...