Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
When Donald Trump entered office, he faced a number of choices that had confronted the last three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They all had the choice to either shrink government and reduce deficits or slow government growth while cutting taxes.
They had the choice of using American power to restore deterrence by invading belligerents (e.g., Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan) or targeting enemies without deploying ground troops to change governments.
Republicans could either impose tariffs to ensure trade balances and fair trade or argue that free, even if unfair, trade was in the U.S.’s interest by lowering consumer prices, keeping domestic producers competitive, and assuming foreign subsidies were unsustainable.
They had the choice to either reverse the left-wing domination of culture or moderate its fated influence.
They could have shut down the open border and eliminated illegal immigration or publicly condemned it while tacitly maintaining an influx of hundreds of thousands per year for the corporate world, rather than millions.
In general, no Republican president of the past 50 years sought to radically reduce the size of government and balance the budget. None closed the border and began deportations. None avoided optional ground wars while solely hitting aggressors from the air. None led a cultural counter-revolution to reverse the left’s long march through our institutions.
Why?
Because to have done so would have constituted a veritable cultural counter-revolution that would incur an unacceptable level of hatred and resistance from the entrenched left—defined by the nexus of the media, bureaucracies, campuses, foundations, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the Democratic Party. The latter were deemed just too formidable—and dangerous—to confront in a single term, if ever.
Or so it was felt by prior Republican administrations. So, most stayed clear and sought to deregulate, cut taxes, keep illegal immigration to about 30,000 or so a month, and use rhetoric to oppose the left’s cultural revolution.
Not so with Trump. The target of four years of lawfare in his wilderness years, he has now become a true counterrevolutionary determined not to slow down the progressive trajectory of the last 60 years but to end it and return the U.S. to the center—at least as now defined by a balanced budget, reciprocal fair trade, full use of all modes of energy, a closed border, legal only immigration, no optional ground wars abroad and a fierce effort to end the woke/DEI/ESG/Green New Deal leftwing orthodoxy.
Will it work?
The left’s revolution had become so deeply institutionalized that the once-bizarre had become the politically correct norm: three, not two, sexes; illegal aliens de facto not different from American citizens; a country without borders; massive debt and trade imbalances propped up for years by near-zero, de facto interest rates; and nation-building abroad as the country’s interior at home was hallowed out.
Trump is currently waging a 360-degree, 24/7 effort to undo at least the last 20 years of the most recent manifestation of the leftist cultural revolution inaugurated by Barack Obama.
Given that war and the economy often determine the legacy of a president’s tenure, Trump’s success or failure will hinge on several factors:
1) Flooding the Zone – Can he achieve enough massive cuts to the federal workforce and federal spending to realistically project a balanced budget in 2-3 years? Can he use tariffs to adjudicate rough trade parity without panicking Wall Street and reduce our huge trade deficit—while stimulating the economy through increased energy production, some tariff income, massive inflows of foreign capital and private-sector jobs, deregulation, and tax cuts? And in addition, can he end the war in Ukraine while denuclearizing Iran without blowing up the Middle East? The answers remain uncertain because no one has really attempted all of these measures simultaneously.
2) Speed – Speed is of the essence. He must see most of his major counterrevolutionary steps enacted this year while avoiding a recession before the midterms. Otherwise, he may see a new Democratic majority House in 2026 that will do nothing but issue subpoenas, conduct investigations, and impeach him. The Democrats seem to have little desire to offer a comprehensive counter-agenda that would reflect their own ideas on how to achieve balanced budgets, a secure border, a deterrent foreign policy, fair trade, and energy dynamism. For now, bizarrely, these new Jacobins are de facto Trump’s allies by becoming so unhinged, often so repugnant in their smutty rhetoric and street violence, and so angry without constructive alternatives that the counter-revolutionary Trump seems centrist in comparison.
All know that Trump’s agenda of cutting the size of government, balancing the budget, deregulating, achieving trade parity, expanding gas, oil, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy, and leveraging massive foreign investment in the U.S. will soon result in a booming economy. But the question is, how long will the bitter medicine of cutting spending, federal jobs, and the size of government, forcing trade symmetry, and shocking voters with layoffs and deregulation last? Or to put it another way, will the new oncologist be allowed to apply sufficient harsh radiation and chemotherapy to a near-terminal patient to see him recover?
3) The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court must restore our constitutional tripartite government. The court must stop allowing the brazen lower-court judiciary’s hijacking of U.S. foreign policy and national security—and do it within the next month or so. Otherwise, a group of minor federal judges, some 300-400 unelected but cherry-picked liberal appointees, will essentially be running the country. Power has gone to their narcissistic heads, and they grow ever more emboldened as special activist lawyers—funded by foundations and political action committees—send them an endless stream of marching orders and writs. Currently, a once-unknown but now megalomaniac Judge Boasberg believes he is a more powerful adjudicator of U.S. foreign policy and national security than the combined power of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and the President. And he may be right.
4) No Margin of Error – Trump has no margin of error, given thin congressional margins and the left-wing cultural juggernaut.
So far, his nascent counter-revolution has been largely disciplined and well-managed. But he can afford no more avoidable psychodramas like the still inexplicable Signal leak to the likes of a hyper-partisan Jeffrey Goldberg.
Cabinet officials should grow more silent but carry even bigger sticks. The entire messaging of Team Trump must be sober, even tragic, without braggadocio. The latest Fox interview by Brett Baier of a reflective, soft-spoken Elon Musk and his DOGE team did more to win the public over to their thankless but critical task than all the grandstanding on social media or chainsaw theatrics.
They need to remind Americans that the Trump team did not open the border but are now forced to close it if the country is to exist.
The public needs to recall that it is recklessly easy to allow entry to 12 million illegal aliens but almost impossible to find them all in a country of 345 million.
It is not hard to borrow and spend, but it is unenviable and unpopular to cut and save.
It is much less trouble in Washington to dine with and leak to media celebrities, become a power couple on the A list, and play tit-for-tat and don’t-rock-the-boat than to become a despised disrupter on behalf of far-away people in rural Kansas, along the southern border, or in the inner-city without lobbyists, national audiences, or a fat checkbook.
It is easy to smile, pal around, and hand out money and commitments abroad at summits while foreign leaders welch on their military commitments and run up unsustainable trade surpluses with the US. But it quite another thing to demand from our allies and neutrals trade parity, reciprocity, and keeping defense commitments as prime ministers and their state media damn you as either crazy or sinister.
In sum, we are witnessing the greatest effort to reinvent or, rather, restore the U.S. since the first 100 days of FDR’s radical New Deal revolution. It can succeed even against the street theater nihilism, mainstreamed vulgarity, neo-terrorism, lawfare, and the congressional circus arrayed against it.
But success hinges on speed and audacity (“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”), the rapid reassertion of its constitutional duties by the Supreme Court, constant discipline to prevent needless errors and leaks, calm and tragic explication and messaging rather than boastful high-fiving, and a constant reminder that their desperate opposition wishes to destroy this last effort to stop what had become sheer madness.
I too am impressed with a lot that Trump has done. And I have the deepest respect for Dr. Hanson. That said, this beautifully written article missed the point.
The article puts our solutions to our problems at the foot of one man. Trump can’t do it by himself. He needs us and we need him.
But Trump is not using the bully pulpit to explain the thinking behind his actions so that more “on the fence” citizens come over to our way of thinking. Men like VDH have the apperceptive mass to explain the deeper principle so that more citizens join together to keep this counter-revolution going long after Trump leaves office.
“the once-bizarre had become the politically correct norm” A few minutes of You Tube videos will confirm that.
get rid of the Income tax and restore the original American Revolution
Thank You VDH.
Crucial in the battle to restore sanity and world standing that he has in place so many toughened (by leftist attacks), knowledgeable, bright, articulate, assertive sub-leaders.
If the three branches of government are truly co-equal, just as the Constitution establishes them to be, then why must the president take orders from the judicial branch at all? Perhaps President Trump should issue an executive order to the Supreme Court and order it to put the district courts back in their places. Perhaps the president should order the Congress to impeach these rogue district court judges or to pass some law he likes. Undoubtedly the Supreme Court and the Congress would ignore such orders from him. He should do the same to them, including any orders coming from the Supreme Court. What makes a petty district court judge, or even SCOTUS, so high and mighty when it comes to a co-equal branch? There are two ways to deal with a president who oversteps his bounds, the voters and impeachment. Until those measures are taken, President Trump should consider himself free to be the president just as We the People chose him to be.
Don’t forget the Protestant Reformation.
Sounds like wishful thinking rather than critical thinking. The judges working against the executive branch is not democratic.
Check what promises made and promises kept means and what “the people”
are speaking about the difference between the past administration’s open border. A failed attempt to permanently change the country to blue forever.
Do Democrats really think that men in women’s sport is a hill you want to die on? This subject spits you down the middle and rightfully so.
Now that the NGO cat is out of the bag. I would be readjusting my ideas about how popular you folks think your direction for the country really is.
More like the lacklustre performance of Snow Woke and Seven Democrat Fever
Dreams.
If you want to make radical changes to America, like Pres. Trump and his Republican Party is attempting, you have to bring “The People” with you. We are still a democratically run society — at the national level, as well as state and local levels.
Pres. Trump and the Republican Party had a broad sweeping victory this past November; but, they all have slim margins of victory — Trump just barely 50% of the popular vote, 31 states for the electoral college with 312 electoral votes (Biden had 306 in 2020), and small margins in both the House and Senate. This is neither a national mandate, or a landslide election.
Defining a national landslide election as the presidential candidate getting around 60% of the popular vote (limiting the opposition to around 40%), and his party getting a wide margin in the House to dominate the House and a wide margin in the Senate to dominate the procedures of the Senate — then what are the landslide elections in America? The only landslide national elections in American history are: 1920, 1928, 1932, 1936, and 1964.
The reason we have the government we do is because that is what “The People” voted for in the last three landslide elections; and FDR was re-elected with the Democratic control of the House and Senate in 1936 with wider margins of victory than they had in 1932.
Right now “The People” on Wall Street are reacting negatively to Pres. Trump’s economic agenda.
In Israel, it looks as if the balance between executive, legislative and judiciary is swinging towards the legislature. In America, I don’t know what the Supreme Court will do, obviusly, but reason suggests power will be shifted away from one layer of the judiciary. I don’t understand Europe’s parliamentary system well enough to speculate. Only one branch is left: the Executive and they have the military. Are you, Dr. Hanson, surprised that force has not become a factor?
You understate what DJT is attempting. Nothing less than a new governing consensus that basically changes the paradigms that have been in place since 1945. He is attempting to break the existing Overton window and replace it with one that restores merit, living within the nation’s means and most importantly a smaller less intrusive federal government.
Jim: You’re absolutely correct! We had Bill Clinton because of Ross Perot! I’ve always called it a “Texas sized pay-back” however have never understood why Perot did it as he had no chance of actually winning. I actually gave Bush a lot of credit for his reversal on taxes as it indicated his strong character and understanding of reality.
The English language has only one word to describe love’s many emotions.
The Greek writers were more nuanced; to them ‘Love’ can be storge, meaning affinity and affection (an emotion you can have towards people or things like ice cream or a great book); or eros, the romantic kind which includes the emotional high of sensual attraction and is always at some level self-gratifying; or phileo, brotherly fondness (denoting personal attachment, as a matter of sentiment or feeling); or finally there’s agapé, self-denying love.
Agapé, while teaming with emotions, is the only form of love that is an objective state. It is wider, especially embracing the judgment and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety toward the beloved.
“Agapé always wills the objective good of the beloved, thus it wills or tolerates suffering when suffering is necessary for the beloved’s true, objective good. It results in helping the beloved to find that which truly satisfies including the development of moral character and virtue.”
Victor – Thank you for giving understanding to our times. Your presentation of the context and alternatives are very helpful. President Trump is doing outstanding work, and he should go down in history as America’s best and most courageous president.
The “lack of jurisdiction” problem with regional fed judges must be decided on now.
It’s funny. All the election-tampering charges (2020) were thrown out (not tried in court) due to lack of standing and/or jurisdictional issues.
Yet now we have piss-ant, grand standing local judges deciding on international law.
How does the equate?
Bush Sr lost because of Ross Perot. Most of you weren’t around to remember this.
I liked Perot’s message (“giant sucking sound”) and voted for him, along with almost 20% of the electorate.
Those voters were mostly conservatives.
Anyway, don’t fool yourself, that’s how Clinton got into the WH. He did not have a magic message. The tax quote hurt Bush, but Perot defeated him.
Threats and intimidation?
Prof. Thank you for reminding us that we are the heirs of the ancient Greek Enlightenment and of the European Enlightenment. It is time to rebuild what has been thrown aside.
You are correct. I don’t hear anyone talking about the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, but you can be certain the Madison teachers union liberals will have an incredibly high voter turnout. They typically do very well in these April elections. Unfortunately, we who do inform ourselves and vote will have the right to complain, but it isn’t going to make me feel any better.
Yes, and we should now refer to that judge as “Boassberg”.
Trump should ignore the Federal Courts that are bringing the mandate to a snails pace. Force them to go to the Supreme Court with their cases.
The 12 years of Reagan/Bush Sr should have, could have gotten that transistion of government done had not Bush gone back on his word of “Read my lips, no new taxes”.
Should Trump be moderately successful in his attempt and show the nation taxes can be reduced and a balance budget achieved we may well have a minimum of 12 years of MAGA/America First. Trump has to reign in his ego and stop the push for a 3rd term against Constitution 22nd Amendment. Trump is the oldest inagurated president in history, should he complete this term he will be the oldest president ever. He has the energy of a much younger person but age can come on quickly in ones elder years.
Victor is superb, as always. I wish every sentient being would read his columns and listen to his podcasts. That’s the problem. They don’t! What is so deeply troubling is how hard it is to get the truth out to people. They only listen to the legacy media whose lies and fearmongering should be perfectly obvious by now. The hysterical and aggressive left makes better news than the quieter Republicans. Bret Baier’s interview with Musk and his DOGE team was so informative, the participants hugely impressive and self sacrificing, yet my elite, ‘highly educated’ demographic insists it’s kids with a wrecking ball dismantling the government and harming us all. They cannot be persuaded otherwise. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana suggested Musk and his DOGE team hold weekly or biweekly news conferences to explain directly to the American people the critical work they are doing. What a great idea! The question is which media outlet, other than FOX, of which the left is witheringly contemptuous, would carry it! Maybe I’m naive, but if intelligent, well meaning people really knew what was going on–the truth, they would support Trump’s critical and revolutionary agenda. Or does TDS trump everything? Tragic if it does.
Trump is applying ‘Tough Love’ to the people in the USA. Tough love refers to a form of love or affection that is expressed in a stern or unsentimental manner, often through discipline, to promote responsible behavior. It involves deliberately not showing too much kindness to someone who has a problem, with the intent to help them in the long run. This approach is often used to set boundaries and encourage personal accountability, especially when dealing with self-destructive behaviors.
One important ramification of bringing manufacturing back to America with high tariffs is that the unions, who are exempt from anti trust laws, will be artificially insulted from foreign competition and will once against wield power beyond that they would enjoy if they faced foreign competition.
US consumers need protection from these excesses. Not suggesting that unions be abolished but they need to be reined in a bit. I don’t see any indication that the Trump Administration has given this any thought.
As I often do, I am sharing this on my own social media. It should be “required reading”. Too many are, in Margaret Thatcher’s words, going “wobbly”. They claim to support DJT’s agenda with words but shy away from the hard work and pain of execution. They try to appease themselves and others by tsk-tsking the [sometimes] hard but necessary measures. This counter-revolution was never going to be easy but it is critical.
Madness – that is definitely where we have been heading for many decades. I hope and I pray for an outcome that returns sanity to the public purse and the public policy. May God bless these efforts and bring fruit to the people.
Progressives have adopted: I wish to do what, when and where I want, without consequence or repurcusssion. The degree to which you ensure that, I will vote for you and not care what you do.
ALso from Nathanial Brandon; we must deal with reality the way it is, ‘cause that’s how it’s dealing with us.
And John Steinbeck’s we don’t seek advice. We seek corroboration.
“Speed and Audacity.” I believe that’s how they describe the actions and accomplishments of Julius Caesar.
We need a “good Julius Caesar”…… and I think we have one. And he plays golf, too.
Great insights, VDH, as always, and much appreciated. I wish you were a formal advisor to PT. We’d all be better off.
Why is Justice Barrett joined to Roberts at the hip? She has no known skeletons in her closet.
The Signal sent to Jeffery Goldberg looks like a precisely placed slow-moving curve that batters miss time after time. Great press, and a great distraction from what the Right Hand was doing while the Left Hand was swinging. hahaha
Thank you, Dr. Hanson. From your pen/lips to Mr. Trump’s ears and that of his cabinet/staff, any other course you prescribed is declining at a more casual pace, yet declination is unabated.
Thanks for another session of wisdom, information, and news.
While having a cup of joe, I came across some interesting bits of information on my morning feed.
Elon Musk’s 100-minute town hall meeting, and what DOGE found at SSA.
I’m looking forward to your take on how we can get out of this mess!
Take care, stay well and God Bless you
Send this piece to the White House. I’m very for everything the Trump administration is attempting to do but so much of the general public are indifferent to things until they personally are affected negatively. I know I’m my small corner of Wisconsin I don’t know a single coworker or friend discussing the important state Supreme Court election. I doubt many are voting at all. Ignorance and indifference rob you of your right to complain when things don’t go your way in my opinion. just wish more in my circle held that opinion as well.
Send this piece to the White House. I’m very for everything the Trump administration is attempting to do but so much of the general public are indifferent to things until they personally are affected negatively. I know I’m my small corner of Wisconsin I don’t know a single coworker or friend discussing the important state Supreme Court election. I doubt many are voting at all. Ignorance and indifference rob you of your right to complain when things don’t go your way in my opinion. just wish more in my circle held that opinion as well.
The worst short term problem is getting Chief Justice John Roberts to do his job and instruct these lowest Federal court “justices”(?) to stop unlawful injunctions against lawful actions by the Executive Branch. If he is too afraid to do this, he is the first Justice that should be impeached by Congress.
Enough is enough from this man.
VDH,
The first thing that got a reaction from me reading your essay was,
“ They had the choice to either reverse the left-wing domination of culture or moderate its fated influence.”
Forget about moderate, the three Presidents should have reversed the unfair, bias, indoctrinating effects of the left wing culture that has destroyed the USA.
The next thing that got me going was,
“Speed is of the essence.”
I said to myself, yes, yes, yes.
The Supreme Court has already waited to long in stopping these minor District Court Judges from running the country. Speed please and let’s not give congress a pass..
Finally your last paragraph.
But success hinges on speed and audacity (“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”), the rapid reassertion of its constitutional duties by the Supreme Court, constant discipline to prevent needless errors and leaks, calm and tragic explication and messaging rather than boastful high-fiving, and a constant reminder that their desperate opposition wishes to destroy this last effort to stop what had become sheer madness.
But it’s that last line that got me going, and rings so true.
Stopping the sheer Madness.
Thanks VDH
THANK YOU VDH! Always clear, accurate, beautifully written, and right on point!
Thank you Victor! Well thought out and well presented. These are extremely difficult times. Can we do what must be done to save our great nation from the Left’s desired outcome which is the destruction of our Republic? I often think that related conversations concerning the will of the people occurred frequently in the Green Dragon’s meeting space. We know how that unfolded. Hopefully, the number of vertebrae in the spines of Patriots has not decreased! We shall see!