Populism Should Replace Liberalism

Elsewhere I have written that liberalism today, in America, is not really liberal in relation to the Constitution of the United States. If it truly were liberalism that was being dealt with, in relation to the Constitution, I would not have as much of a problem with it. We would be discussing matters in terms of what states can and cannot do and to what extent the government should stay out of people's lives. But the sad reality is that American liberalism is actually Marxist socialistic progressive totalitarianism. In this respect, American liberalism should not even be participating in the discussion at the governmental level because the principals that American liberals (at least at the political level) believe in are not compatible with system of government or economics that the founders of this country initially envisioned. Nonetheless, someone needs to act as a counter-balance to conservative ideas and a newly popular ideology has emerged that could legitimately take liberalism's place in the realm of politics: Populism.

Populism could probably be defined as a method of campaigning and governing that gives ear to the demands of the people. Some would say, "Yes, but that is what liberalism does as well." The flaws with that statement are that liberalism only seeks to please people at the level of the campaign and it undermines people entirely once officials are elected. Populism, as has been observed through Donald Trump, has emerged as the result of the government and the media telling people what they should want and the electorate swiftly rejecting it. Thus far, it appears that populists are respectful of the country's founding principals.

Donald Trump was not the first popular populist to step into the national spotlight. Some would argue that Sarah Palin was the first to carry the populist message to the mainstream. She campaigned, along with John McCain, under the banner of conservatism, but ever since the 2008 Presidential election, Palin's values have not seemed strictly conservative. The first hint of this was her affinity for union. Traditional conservatives battle tooth and nail against unions (not against their existence, but the corruption that exists inside of their hierarchies). Although most conservatives agreed with Palin's overall message, there were certain initiatives that she pushed that they struggled with. But that's exactly the point.

Most conservatives could never vote for a liberal Democrat. How many conservatives, though, voted for Donald Trump? There are those who would make the case that conservatives were tricked into voting for Trump, but the evidence is quite the contrary. As a conservative, there were other candidates in the primary that I preferred over Trump. From the day Donald Trump announced his run, however, I knew I would not be entirely disappointed if he won the nomination and went on to win the White House. There was a common ground that Trump bridged because he espoused the social issues that liberals care about, but stances on war, immigration, taxes, and so forth that a conservative could easily get on board with.

The only downside to populism is that it tends to flirt against Constitutionality and it appears that it could be a gateway into liberalism if left unchecked. As a conservative, I feel comfortable with that because we (conservatives) would be more than willing to make sure they don't overstep their bounds.

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