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Many conservatives are exuberant that Donald Trump has won another term in the White House. And from a conservative perspective, there are undoubtedly reasons to celebrate Trump’s return to power, especially when compared with the Kamala-Harris alternative: the abrupt termination of the US government’s profoundly discriminatory “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programmes; a commitment to end government-sponsored censorship of Americans’ speech; a promise to cut government spending; the much-needed shake-up of the US pharmaceutical, health and food regulatory establishment; and withdrawal from a WHO compromised by glaring conflicts of interest such as support from Pharma investors like Bill Gates.

You do not need to be a front-row MAGA fan to be happy about these sorts of changes or see that they are far more sensible than what Kamala Harris was offering to the American people.

However, I have the sense that some people are so caught up in the excitement of the moment that they are losing sight of the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is this: the United States is an increasingly polarised society, divided between people who identify as “progressives” and/or Democrats, and people who identify as “conservatives” or libertarians and/or Republicans. This polarisation has translated into a divisive and acrimonious competition for federal power, that reaches its climax when both sides vie for the presidential office every four years.

Federal power, whether over public finance and spending, the monetary system, the healthcare system, education, banking, commerce, or public health and hygiene, has grown to such an extent that people’s everyday lives are at the mercy of the person who ends up in the White House or the makeup of the US Supreme Court. This puts people’s freedom and prosperity on a very precarious footing indeed.

Yet this has come to be widely accepted as the norm. And implicitly, it has come to be embraced by those who treat the president as a sort of messianic figure, who will either protect the “little American” against Big Money, or “make America great again,” and fight an epic, Batman-like battle against the allies of Big Pharma, Big Bureaucracy, and Big Taxes.

Don’t get me wrong. If you live in a centralised political system, it is rational to want the best candidate, or the least damaging candidate, to get into the White House. And you might be right in wanting a big shakeup of a corrupt oligarchic system, even if takes a bit of a “Batman” figure to pull it off. If I was Argentinean, for example, I would be happy that a country crippled by debt and cronyism was being shaken up by a powerful figure like Milei.

One might wistfully hope that the rise of a Trump or Milei to power would somehow spark far-reaching reforms that ultimately returned power to the people. But that does not seem at all likely, given that the path to political reform in both cases is not grassroots change but sweeping uses of executive power.

If anything, there is a strong possibility that both Milei and Trump will further strengthen the executive office and make the national government even more powerful than before by showing the world how it can be effectively leveraged by a powerful president.

Flip-Flop

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the man currently occupying the White House is a sensible, wise man who can restore “common sense” in the national government and introduce policies that favour freedom and economic growth, without allowing the national government to become too intrusive or domineering. Even assuming that this is the case, this individual will not occupy the White House forever.

The chances are, especially in a politically and culturally polarised country like the United States, that a very different candidate will come along in four, eight, or twelve years, and win enough votes to get into office and reverse his or her predecessor’s reforms.

For example, if an executive order can undo DEI policies, stop government collusion with Big Tech censorship, or weaken the hold of Big Pharma over the healthcare complex, then a future executive order can reinstate DEI policies, restore government-sponsored censorship of “misinformation,” and put Big Pharma and Big Food cronies in charge of the national food, drug and healthcare regulatory apparatus.

This means that political reform, however dramatic and exciting to behold, is inherently unstable in a centralised system with a strong executive office, particularly in a society that is deeply divided over the proper ends of the national government and over the values that represent the country at its best.

So those who care about the long-term health and stability of the United States should favour more far-reaching structural reforms, that weaken both Congress and the presidential office and return power to the State and local levels of government. This way, many highly divisive political disputes can be removed from the national stage and returned to the State and local levels, where different solutions can be developed that are tailored to local needs and local sensibilities. If people don’t like the results, they can “vote with their feet” and seek out a State more to their liking.

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Republished with thanks to The Freedom Blog via Mercator. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.