whom I realize is not a favorite of many here. He was a speechwriter for a Bush, and if you did not know, was once involved in the Presidential campaign of one former mayor of NYC named Rudy.
He is, however, one of the more prominent among the conservative intellectuals who are considered “Never Trumpers.”
I have, off and on over the past few months, been dipping into his 2018 book (written before that ear’s elections) in its revised paperback from, the work titled Trumpocracy and subtitled”The Corruption of the American Republic.”
The paperback edition has a new preface which, like much of the book, is well worth pondering. The cover as the following quote from Robert DeNiro:
This is an essential guide to the malevolent tragedy that is Trumpocracy.
I will not in this brief post offer an analysis of the book, but rather merely quote its final paragraph, in part because as we have now embarked on the primary campaign to select our candidate to defeat the noxious creature in the Oval, I find them very worth pondering.
So here are those words:
Those citizens who fantasize about defying tyranny from within fortified compounds have never understood how liberty is actually threatened in a modern bureaucratic state: not by diktat and violence, but by the slow, demoralizing process of corruption and deceit. And the way liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence on the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them. We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.