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   to 124 percent of our gross domestic product. We spend more every year on   
   interest payments on that debt than we do on national security.   
      
   These are the conditions that have rightfully discredited the elites and   
   given rise to conservative populism.   
      
   ***   
      
   Despite being discredited, the elites do offer a critique of populism that   
   deserves to be taken seriously: the claim that populism is all style, lacks   
   substance, and cannot be trusted. Populism, according to this view, is a   
   rhetorical Trojan Horse that unprincipled demagogues use to advance their   
   narrow, selfish ambitions. And to be sure, history is full of corrupt   
   tribunes of the people who abuse their power and enrich themselves at their   
   nation’s expense.   
      
   The lesson to be drawn from this critique is that legitimate and enduring   
   change in democracies comes neither from philosophers nor rabble-rousers. It   
   only comes by strategically fusing populist energy and principled ideas. That   
   is what Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s. He harnessed popular frustration—   
   frustration with Washington incompetence, Soviet aggression, and economic   
   stagflation—to a positive agenda of conservative reform. Richard Nixon before   
   him and Bill Clinton after him also channeled populist frustrations and   
   aspirations toward their policy aims. Going back through history, so did   
   Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Theodore Roosevelt’s early progressivism,   
   Abraham Lincoln’s unionism and abolitionism, and Jacksonian and Jeffersonian   
   democracy.   
      
   Indeed, what was the Founding itself—and the Constitution in particular—but   
   the thoughtful harnessing of populist frustration on behalf of clear,   
   positive political principles?   
      
   Speaking of which, it is still the case that legitimate and enduring change   
   in the U.S. will only be accomplished through the Constitution. It’s too bad   
   that this point needs to be made, but there are anti-establishment voices   
   within the populist movement—especially among the young and online—who reject   
   the Constitution as an artifact of liberal, Enlightenment errors that must be   
   replaced with a pre-Enlightenment form of government. But the American people   
   are not interested in thrones and altars. They want a secure border, safe   
   streets, economic autonomy and opportunity, a family-friendly culture, and a   
   government that works for them instead of the other way around.   
      
   It would be a strange populism that haughtily dismisses the values of the   
   populace. It would be a strange nationalism that promises citizens   
   sovereignty only to turn around and rule them like subjects. Indeed, that is   
   precisely what the elite establishment does today—and why it is failing.   
      
   None of our problems are beyond our constitutional order’s power to solve.   
   What is it we need, after all? We need a Congress that acts like a   
   legislature rather than a company of moralizing performance artists. We need   
   a president who acts like a responsible chief executive rather than a drunken   
   king. We need a judiciary that acts impartially in accordance with the   
   Constitution and the laws of the land rather than in a partisan manner. And   
   we need to disperse the political power that is now concentrated in the hands   
   of the Washington establishment.   
      
   In short, the solution to our problems is not to scrap or transcend the   
   Constitution, but to start obeying and applying it again. Under that   
   document, “We the People” already possess every power we need to reestablish   
   majority rule, minority rights, democratic accountability, equal justice   
   under law, and national sovereignty.   
      
   Writing my recent book on this topic, I kept coming back to a quotation from   
   composer Gustav Mahler: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the   
   preservation of fire.” The preservation of fire strikes me as a good metaphor   
   for conservatism. It’s not rose-tinted nostalgia of an idealized past. It   
   preserves the best of the past and applies its lessons to the present—   
   maintaining a controlled burn as a way to a better future.   
      
   The greatest challenges we face today are fairly straightforward. The   
   necessary solutions, as Reagan said, may not be easy, but they are simple. It   
   is clearly possible for a nation to control its borders, to prosecute   
   criminals, to reclaim its sovereignty as it pertains to war, peace, and   
   trade, and to protect and promote the values that most Americans espouse.   
      
   Step back from the Left’s Oz-like faux-authority and think for a moment about   
   its legal fragility. Almost everything organizations of the Left do is either   
   funded by taxpayers or ignored by prosecutors. A principled, populist   
   conservative government could undo huge swaths of it with—in the immortal   
   words of President Barack Obama—“a phone and a pen.” The supposedly un-   
   fireable bureaucrats of the federal Deep State are nothing of the sort. The   
   president could reclassify, reassign, or simply dismiss thousands of them.   
   Moreover, agencies that have gone all-in on woke claptrap in the last decade   
   have advertised their own irrelevance to budget-conscious congressional   
   appropriators.   
      
   The U.S. Border Patrol could secure the border today if the president ordered   
   them to. Energy companies already know where to drill—they just need   
   permission. We already know which treaty loopholes China exploits to steal   
   our jobs and trade secrets. The loopholes could be closed, or we could   
   withdraw from the treaties altogether.   
      
   Cities and states that refuse to prosecute crimes or protect girls’ privacy   
   can be disqualified from federal aid. Corporations that practice ideological   
   discrimination can be prohibited from federal contracting. The Justice   
   Department now harassing Christians and conservatives could start exploring   
   Big Tech’s deliberate attempts to addict children to harmful online content.   
   We could reform the tax code to prioritize families and workers instead of   
   globalist corporations. We could do the same with education, labor, housing,   
   and transportation policy.   
      
   Instead of funneling more money into DEI offices on campus, we could invest   
   in trade apprenticeships. Instead of wasting money on global green energy   
   boondoggles, we could build nuclear power plants. We could reclaim our   
   sovereignty by withdrawing from the World Trade Organization and the United   
   Nations and by clarifying our strategic alliances. And the institutions we   
   need to revive—marriage and family, church and community, private enterprise   
   and public spirit—already exist. Like flowers in a garden choked by weeds,   
   they just need room, light, and water to grow again.   
      
   Returning to my metaphor of a controlled burn, we will need to ignite several   
   of those to fix institutions like the Department of Homeland Security, the   
   EPA, the Federal Reserve, the FBI, the Department of Education, the   
   military-industrial complex, and apparently now FEMA. Today these   
   institutions function as anti-American, anti-constitutional predators,   
   serving their own interests at the expense of the national interest. Their   
   institutional status quo is inconsistent with freedom and self-government.   
   America must break and reform them before they break and destroy us.   
      
   Not only in America but across the West, not-so-silent majorities today   
   consist of citizens that the elites, by nature and ideology, look down on and   
   treat as deplorables—those who believe in the rights of the individual, the   
   virtue of local communities, the centrality of the family, and the   
   sovereignty of the nation-state. This new conservative populist coalition is   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)