The Road to Smurfdom

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Imagine being Pete Hegseth—possibly sober and an idiot, but a Princeton- and Harvard-educated possibly sober idiot—standing there insisting that the recent attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was “the most complex and secretive military operation in history.” 

Eisenhower liberated Europe, Hannibal crossed the Alps, and, in Anno Domini 2025, some airplanes took off from Missouri, dropped some massive bombs on an effectively undefended military installation, and then flew home without so much as a bolt-action .22 rifle being popped off in their general direction. None of that is to sneer at the Iran operation, the skill and courage of the professionals who carried it out, the inherent danger of such undertakings, or the marvelous technological sophistication of the U.S. military—my admiration for them is deep. (And the better part of two days straight in a B-2? I don’t like flying coach.) But “Midnight Hammer” (also grandly named) wasn’t the most complex or secretive military operation of the past 10 months—surely that laurel goes to the Israelis and the “Grim Beeper” caper—much less the whole of human history. 

It is not universally true that there is an inverse relationship between the greatness of the man and the greatness of his manner—Winston Churchill did not exactly evince paralyzing insecurity—but there is something to the notion. That something ought to be even more pronounced in an American president, who is, after all, the chief executive officer of one branch of the federal government—not a king, not a god-emperor, not even a king’s prime minister, as Churchill was. There is a direct relationship between the existential smallness of the man and how small he tries to make others feel, which is why Donald Trump has spent his entire life on the road to Smurfdom, destined to forever feel, however secretly, small and blue. 

But, my goodness, these people talk like cretins. Trump himself is, of course, all superlatives all the time, the sort of man who was born to sell fake Rolexes out of the trunk of a Nissan Altima and would be a tedious barstool blowhard if only he had the decency to drink. When a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst suggested that the Iran mission may have amounted to less than we all hoped, Karoline Leavitt—who is the White House press secretary in large part because she lacks the intellectual sophistication to turn the letters around on “Wheel of Fortune”—raged that the report was the work of a “loser.” Nobody bothered to ask her why it is that Donald Trump, supposedly an executive for the ages, has had so many losers working under him, often in senior security and intelligence roles: John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, Gen. John Kelly, Gen. Mark Milley, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. H.R. McMaster, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, etc. 

(Perhaps this is what the moral philosopher Raylan Givens was talking about when he observed: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”)

Trump is out there insisting that he is the greatest president since George Washington—and maybe greater than Washington, too. Eisenhower, who at the apex of his military career outranked George Washington (Washington died a three-star general; his posthumous promotion to his current statutorily unsurpassable rank came in 1976), knew that he would lie in state after his death and insisted that he did so in his regular army uniform, in an $80 standard-issue soldier’s coffin, with a minimum of decoration rather than the full Nork-style fruit salad. (Specifically, only his Army and Navy distinguished-service medals and the Legion of Merit.) Who doubts that Donald Trump will be entombed in whatever Tutankhamun would have dreamed up if he’d had Liberace to consult? 

And don’t think I’m off my rocker in looking to the ancient world. Trump recently described his ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, as a “warrior … like no other warrior in the history of Israel.” Well. We know that Trump is not much of a Bible-reader, though he is a Bible salesman. “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. But Bibi, so much winning.”

Okay, let’s go.

And While I’m At It … 

We hold these truths to be … awfully inconvenient. 

We are coming up on Independence Day, when those of us dumb enough to be innocently going around in public places across these fruited plains are going to be treated to the ghastly spectacle of a great many Donald Trump sycophants in dopey red caps reading aloud from the Declaration of Independence. 

And I am going to throw up in my mouth a little bit. 

The founding generation more or less ignored the Declaration, for reasons that are easy to understand (no sense waving around a manifesto for revolution while you’re trying to set up a new state), but the Trump cultists approach that inspired document the way certain superstitious ignoramuses treat the Bible, i.e., venerating the object itself as a kind of magical totem while ignoring, inverting, or perverting what the text actually has to say. As they do with the Constitution, they treat the Declaration of Independence the way the German composer Max Reger treated hostile assessments of his musical works: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house,” he wrote to one unimpressed critic. “I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.”

The people who most loudly proclaim themselves “patriots” are, in point of fact, adherents of a politics that is fundamentally opposed to the principles spelled out in the Declaration, hewing to a vaguely articulated ideology that is not only illiberal but anti-liberal, autocratically personalist to a degree that would have made poor old King George puke from anxiety, and entirely hostile to the revolutionary document’s universalism. Above all, they reject its theology, operating from the assumption that liberty is not an endowment from the Creator but the gift from patron to client, from the powerful man to his abject petitioners. 

It is a Caesarist politics, not an American politics. It is gross, low, and atavistic. 

Whom do I mean? There is in our politics at the moment something that calls itself the “new right” or MAGA or “national conservatism,” and one name is as good as another for a movement that does not quite exist: In practice, there is only Donald Trump and his concentric circles of sycophancy, and everything else is intellectual pretense. 

But even pretense can be revealing: The Trump world’s leading intellectual (“tallest building in Wichita”) is probably Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future, and the school of thought (“thought”) associated with him is sometimes called “postliberalism.” Deneen castigates the pantheon of classical liberal thinkers from Adam Smith to John Locke, whose prose Thomas Jefferson freely plagiarized when writing the Declaration: “Long train of abuses”? “More disposed to suffer … than right themselves”? All that jazz? Quotations from Locke, the grand poohbah of Anglo-American liberalism. Locke’s famous list of basic rights—“life, liberty, and property” became “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” under the editorial quill of Thomas Jefferson, relying on George Mason’s earlier adaptation. But the mark of Lockean liberalism cannot be missed. 

It is not only a few phrases here and there that marks the Declaration as a quintessentially liberal document. Mike Huckabee and the other Elmer Gantry-type figures of the Evangelical world talk of Trump as divinely appointed in approximately the same way European kings understood themselves to be selected by God with His favor; the Declaration rejects that monarchical pretense: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Trump treats the powers of the presidency as a kind of personal fief, handing out financial favors and pardons to friends and donors while using the awesome powers of the national state to target political enemies ranging from Harvard to the City of Los Angeles, a personalist and might-makes-right approach that cannot be squared with the notions that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” American liberalism, as attested to by the Declaration of Independence, is founded on the notion that rights reside in the individual—not in the nation as a whole, in the race, in a class, or in a caste or a guild—and that these rights are both inherent and non-negotiable rather than subject to ad hoc revision as demanded by the vagaries of political reality or the national situation. Trumpism is all ad–hoc-ism all the time.

The thing that calls itself the “new right” rejects liberalism partly out of illiterate linguistic habit (in U.S. political jargon, liberal long meant the left wing of the Democratic Party rather than the British liberty tradition, George McGovern rather than Adam Smith) but also, in its more intelligent (and, hence, more blameworthy) quarters in full knowledge of what is being rejected—which is the American proposition itself as expressed most famously in the Declaration of Independence. Free trade, a liberal immigration policy, due process—these are not mere policy preferences appended to some Völkisch ethno-nationalist uprising in New England, but the foundation of the thing itself. 

Everybody knows the preamble. But have you dug lately into the specific complaints the Founders catalogued? If Mark Twain was correct that history doesn’t repeat but rhymes, then there’s a whole sonnet lurking in the text of the Declaration for anybody who will bother to read it. 

“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” 

King George was faulted for setting aside duly enacted laws and frustrating their intents; Donald Trump simply refuses to enforce the law when it doesn’t suit him, as in the matter of the TikTok ban, laws that remain effectively “suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” Trump may not have “called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository,” but who can deny that he has usurped congressional power at every turn, from unilaterally enacting tariffs with no legal authorization to creating new executive “departments” such as DOGE ex nihilo (“he has erected a multitude of new offices”) with no legal power to do so, gutting legally authorized programs, abusing “acting” appointments to avoid confirmation hearings, etc.? The colonists condemned King George for going to great lengths to prevent immigration and for seeking to make “judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices,” etc. The Founders blamed the English king “for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent,” which is Trump’s go-to economic policy. For now, it is mostly only immigrants that Trump is engaged in “transporting … beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses,” but give him time. 

What else did the Founders say about rotten, batty old George? “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” Well, there’s that, sure. And they proclaimed that a national leader “whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” 

Indeed—well said.

With the Declaration of Independence, the American Founders elevated themselves from a lower state—that of subjects—to a higher state: that of citizens. Americans in our time—too many Americans—have devolved from citizens to subjects and then all the way down to beggars: “Please, Mr. President, may we have your permission to buy some lumber from the Canadians to build our houses? Without incurring ruinous taxes that have no legal basis? Pretty please?”

When they write the history of the Trump years, it will be “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States.” The tyrannical project will fail, not because we are such firm and unwavering patriots but because Donald Trump is too lazy and stupid to make himself into a Napoleon, and the worst of those around him mainly care about making a little easy money and playing big shots on social media rather than becoming a proper junta. 

Our hope is not in our virtues but in their vices. 

The Founders set down their objections to the king in writing out of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Never mind the whole of mankind: We cannot even muster the self-respect to tell ourselves the truth about our situation.

Economics for English Majors

When I write about socialism—and about the general lack of it in places such as Denmark and Sweden for many decades now—I often hear complaints that I am overlooking the high taxes in those countries, their government-dominated health-care systems, their suffocating regulation, etc. “How high do the taxes have to be before it is socialism? Because 59 percent is pretty high!” 

As I alluded to in my piece on the Democrats’ callow young nominee for mayor of New York City, many on the right use “socialist” just to mean “bad” or “I don’t like this.” Many of the European welfare states U.S. conservatives sneer at are, in my view, well-governed and reasonably happy places. But there are aspects of their systems that are dysfunctional and in need of reform. And, here’s the thing: There is more than one model of statist, high-tax, high-intervention, overbearing economic management. Not every bad government or program based on certain assumptions we associate with American progressives is socialism. Socialism is socialism. 

Thomas Jefferson once quipped that given a choice between government without newspapers or newspapers without government, he’d choose the latter. (Forget anarcho-capitalism—bring on the anarcho-journalism!) I suspect that Jefferson was being something less than entirely serious, but Jefferson could be pretty flakey, too, so maybe he meant it. 

Thinking about choices based on real-world situations can be illuminating. 

Consider Singapore, for example. Singapore is a very, very capitalistic country. It has low taxes and a pretty small state, with government spending accounting for only about 14 percent of GDP, as opposed to almost 38 percent (all-in, from federal to municipal) in the United States. But it is a real country with a real history, which means there are going to be quirks: Singapore has almost no private ownership of land, for example, with the government owning virtually all land in the country and owners of buildings holding 99-year leases or similar instruments in lieu of actual ownership. Government-owned hospitals are a prominent feature of its healthcare system; while government-owned, those public hospitals are largely independent, compete with one another, and have a reputation for being at least as good as the better kind of private hospital in the United States. And to Jefferson’s concern, Singapore also practices both formal and informal censorship that would strike most Americans as very heavy-handed. 

People and societies are not blank slates or machines that can be tinkered with, disassembled and reassembled and improved like so many Honda hatchbacks being souped up by tuners. But: Would you rather have Singapore’s smaller overall government footprint and more robustly capitalist economy even with its quirks, or would you prefer the messy and increasingly expensive American version in which you get to keep your land title (provided you stay up on the taxes!) and say what you want and enjoy our sometimes amazing, sometimes idiotic healthcare system? 

Would you rather pay painfully high taxes to a well-run, reasonably efficient, and trustworthy government such as Denmark’s or pay relatively low U.S. taxes to a dysfunctional and increasingly corrupt federal government, and, in many cases, to state and municipal governments that are no better and often worse? Would you rather have your freewheeling U.S. culture or Iceland’s extraordinarily safe streets? European capitals are full of intelligent and enlightened men and women who wish that their countries had something like the U.S. system of higher education, its venture capital industry, and its Silicon Valley-dominated start-up ecosystem (things too many Americans, especially on the right, take for granted or hold in contempt), but they don’t know how to get them without also importing the rest of the culture that created these.

Real life isn’t a Chinese menu, and we don’t get to pick and choose one from column A and one from column B. That isn’t how it works. But it is worth considering the tradeoffs other people and other governments have made over the years with an eye toward the underlying values that are being addressed. Singapore is Singapore for a reason—Denmark, too. 

It is useful to understand ideas such as socialism and nationalism, and it is necessary to understand our own traditions of constitutional liberty, free enterprise, democracy, innovation, etc. But there is a place for history and specificity and particularity, too—and often these will be at odds with what we would expect from the headline political principles and stated fundamental ideas of a country. Which is a long way of saying that the key to understanding life in Denmark is not where the Danish model falls on some imaginary capitalism-to-socialist spectrum, but understanding the facts of Danish life.

Words About Words

A headline from National Review: “Bunker Busters Delivered Destruction, but More Importantly, Deterrence.” My friends over at NR are celebrating the centennial of William F. Buckley Jr., who did sometimes say things importantly but is mainly remembered for saying things that were important. Deterrence is more important than destruction, not more importantly than destruction. 
The location of the modifier in relation to the verb confuses us sometimes when it comes to important and importantly, but what’s being said is: “The bombs did this other thing that was more important” or “more important is the fact that” etc. Bombs do important things; the people who order the bombings sometimes—often—do things importantly. In fact, the ladies and gentlemen in Washington are remarkable for how often they do unimportant things importantly.

And Furthermore

Do read Michael Tanner on the tricky business of marriage and poverty:

Any strategy for reducing poverty in America has to consider the “success sequence,” which posits that if someone finishes high school, gets a job, gets married, and only then has a child, they are unlikely to live in poverty. There is a strong circumstantial case to support the success sequence. Few Americans who finish school, work, and delay childbearing until they are married live in poverty. In fact, as Richard Reeves writes for the Brookings Institution, 73 percent of poor whites and 59 percent of poor African Americans who follow the sequence not only escape poverty but actually reach the middle class.

However, not all components of the success sequence carry the same weight or can be linked directly to outcomes. For instance, work seems obviously linked to avoiding poverty.

Just four percent of full-time workers are poor, though even part-time work makes a measurable difference. Only 10 percent of part-time workers are poor compared to nearly 30 percent of those who do not work at all. Education’s impact is less direct, but linked with employability and other opportunities. Among people 25 and older, almost one-quarter of those without a high school degree are poor, nearly double the percentage for high school graduates. Marriage, though, may be the most tenuous and contentious aspect of the success sequence.

Tanner offers a cool and intelligent evaluation of the evidence in a debate that too often sees people getting carried away by their priors.

Elsewhere

You can buy my most recent book, Big White Ghetto, here. 

You can buy my other books here. 

Please subscribe to The Dispatch if you haven’t. 

You can check out “How the World Works,” a series of interviews on work I’m doing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, here. My most recent guest is the charming and interesting Matthew Polstein, owner of the New England Outdoor Center in Millinocket, Maine.

In Closing

Those of you who were young in the ’90s may remember these immortal lines from Cracker: 

I don’t know what the world may need

But a V-8 engine’s a good start for me.

Think I’ll drive and find a place

To be surly.

That song is almost universally known as “What the World Needs Now,” though its actual title is “Teen Angst.”

I don’t know what the world may need, but Mercedes-Benz does. A headline from Car and Driver: “Report: Mercedes-AMG to Drop Four-Cylinder for Inline-Sixes and V-8s.” 

Automakers, especially at the high end, have been dialing back the green stuff for a few years now, as customers continue to make it clear that they do not want as many electric cars as their betters want them to want, and that while hybrids such as the wonderful Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid have their place, people paying very large bucks for products from AMG (Mercedes’ performance line) want big honkin’ V-8 engines that produce speed and a terrific noise. Car and Driver:

Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand. That isn’t to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. “Technically, the four-cylinder is one of the most advanced drivetrains available in a production car. It’s also right up there on performance. But despite this, it failed to resonate with our traditional customers. We’ve recognized that,” a source at Mercedes told Autocar.

Whether it is sippier cars from Mercedes, Nike lecturing people about watching women’s sports, or all of the “pride” stuff in June, businesses are starting to be reminded that for executives not named Anna Wintour, the main job is to give people what they want, not to tell them what they want. (Wintour is stepping down as editor at Vogue, but she’ll still be telling people what they should desire in her role as a senior executive.) I happen to like Mercedes’ beastly four-bangers (the AMG GLA is super fun), I’m happy for people to watch women’s sports (and I personally watch almost exactly as much women’s sports as I do men’s sports—none), and I wish the best to my gay friends (and endless consternation to my gay enemies!) even if I am not inclined to concede to them the entire rainbow for the month of June. I don’t feel like I need a lot of moral direction from Reebok or Apple or Levi’s or Kroger or, you know, Germans. 

What the world needs now is another corporate social-justice campaign, like I need a hole in my head.

Postscript

Which reminds me, all praise to Michael Rosenwald of the New York Times for this utterly deadpan sentence: “She had a number of love affairs with men who also drilled small holes in their heads.”