{"id":18431,"date":"2016-10-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2016-10-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T00:00:00","slug":"protest-and-its-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/10\/protest-and-its-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Protest and its Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

N<\/span>o American needs to be told that it\u2019s been a tumultuous, often bewildering, political season. Democrats were rocked from the left by an aging socialist; the GOP has been taken over by a politically inexperienced showman. Clearly, the natives are restless. <\/p>\n

About what? What do Trump supporters want? What were Bernie\u2019s troops protesting? Why is everyone so alienated from the political leadership? <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Ross Douthat hit on a key element of the cross-party protest with his typology of post-liberalisms<\/a>. Douthat focused on anti- or post-liberal intellectuals\u2014new radicals like Thomas Pikkety and Naomi Klein; new reactionaries like Michel Houellebeecq; and religious dissenters, some of whom proclaim the \u201csocial kingship of Jesus,\u201d a gospel that Douthat rightly sees, \u201cattacks the modern liberal order at the root.\u201d But he also noted that some of these same instincts are on display on a larger scale in the Presidential election.<\/p>\n

Douthat\u2019s analysis highlights the similarity between the movements Trump and Sanders started. It\u2019s true but superficial to say that they\u2019re united in angry frustration about the political status quo. The similarity is more fundamental, and so is the protest. They\u2019re not simply objecting to this or that policy, or even a policy orientation. It\u2019s a protest against political and media elites, but even that doesn\u2019t get to the base line of protest. Trump and Sanders appeal to voters who are united in the conviction that something is structurally, systemically amiss with American political society. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s equally important, though, to ask what these protestors are for<\/em>. Trump calls it \u201cAmerican greatness,\u201d but we can perhaps we more specific. The Trumpist protest targets what has become a tyrannical multiculturalism, the demand for recognition of the other that, in Levinasian fashion, cannot stop short of self-annihilation. What Trump supporters want is a political system devoted to America<\/em>. They believe there is such a thing as \u201cAmerica,\u201d such a thing as the \u201cAmerican way of life,\u201d and they believe these are goods worth defending and preserving. <\/p>\n

They want to curb immigration not because they\u2019re ungenerous or because they hate people with darker skin, but because they\u2019re suspicious that many recent immigrants don\u2019t share American values. They worry that the malaise of the American economy will make it impossible for us to sustain the way of life we\u2019ve become accustomed to. (This is all admittedly an oversimplification, and an intentionally charitable one.)<\/p>\n

I<\/span>f we step back a few paces, ratchet up the abstraction even further, we might see this: Though few are likely to put it this way, the protest is against bureaucratic, managerial politics. It\u2019s a protest against the purely formal, technocratic conception of politics that dominates contemporary liberal order. Positively, it\u2019s agitation for the restoration of American purpose and the protection of an American way of life. Trumpism seeks a teleological politics, a politics not of means but of ends.<\/p>\n

That might be a sign not of the demise of American democracy but of its health. It\u2019s a sign that Americans in large numbers have recognized the poverty of liberal order and want something more. What they\u2019re looking for isn\u2019t the technical tinkering that Clinton has so obviously mastered; they want vision and purpose and national meaning. 2016 looks like a variation on the passions of Obama\u2019s first candidacy, when Americans voted for Big Ideas.<\/p>\n

Now, assuming that\u2019s close to accurate, a few points of reflection. First, there are several levels of irony in making Trump a focal point for a protest against liberalism and agitation for a renewal of American identity. Bureaucratic governance is theoretically amoral; the genius of the system is that you don\u2019t have to find good people to man the controls. A protest against liberalism should be a protest in favor of virtuous<\/em> leaders. Even Trump\u2019s supporters acknowledge that Trump doesn\u2019t quite fit this bill (\u201cwe\u2019re not electing a Sunday School teacher\u201d). The deeper irony is that Trumpism is a political<\/em> movement seeking to restore American purpose through a Presidential election. It may be a protest against liberalism, but it betrays the same confidence in electoral politics that got us where we are.<\/p>\n

Second, Trumpism advocates a politics of ends, and the end (as stated) is to make America great. We might ask, Why<\/em> make America great again? And the answer is murky at best. American greatness seems a sufficient end in itself. When we reach that point, Trumpist anti-liberalism has come full circle back to liberalism, for which there can be no ultimate political end beyond the perpetuation of liberalism itself. And the self-referential nationalism of Trumpism bears enough family resemblance to the fascisms of the twentieth century to set off a warning bell. Love of country isn\u2019t cause for worry; love for country becomes dangerous when it is not enclosed within and checked by some higher purpose.<\/p>\n

Finally, most forms of anti-liberalism end at a similar impasse. To transcend liberalism, one needs, well, transcendence. An effective anti-liberalism has to break open liberalism\u2019s self-enclosure. In Douthat\u2019s typology, it\u2019s only the religious anti-liberals who can do that. \u201cJesus is King; kiss His feet\u201d strikes at the root in a way that \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d and \u201cFeel the Bern\u201d do not.<\/p>\n

And that implies that a truly post-liberal politics will require a dramatic change of stance, strategy, and tactics among American Christians. Instead of positioning ourselves along the political spectrum, we need to regard America and its politics as a field of mission, to assess our cultural and economic challenges as opportunities for ministry, to pursue America\u2019s good not fundamentally for America\u2019s sake but for the contribution that our country can make to the reign of God.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No American needs to be told that it\u2019s been a tumultuous, often bewildering, political season. Democrats were rocked from the left by an aging socialist; the GOP has been taken over by a politically inexperienced showman. Clearly, the natives are restless. About what? What do Trump supporters want? What were Bernie\u2019s troops protesting? Why is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-politics","category-donald-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nProtest and its Limits<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No American needs to be told that it\u2019s been a tumultuous, often bewildering, political season. 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