The New Republicanism: “Illiberal” Democracy

Americans are used to hearing that this is the most important election of their lifetime. It’s the real thing this year, or the end of what Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance calls the “late republican period,” and a political reversal on a broad scale.

If the Trump restoration succeeds, a President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance are clear in their direction: They intend to barrel through the balance of powers that has sustained America’s government for more than two centuries.

The Republican ticket agrees that a strongman is needed and required to win America’s culture war. The presidential nominee has spoken of the need for “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”  The running mate would, in his words, “seize the administrative state for our own purposes.”

These people are serious. They have taken the Republican Party on a 180-degree turn from the familiar small-government conservatism. In the words of Sen. Vance, spoken on a podcast, “If we are going to push back against (liberalism), we have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

That discomfort is not hard to see. The main street conservatives tuning into the Trump-Elon Musk conversation on Monday night heard “the Donald” speak highly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, saying: “They’re at the top of their game. They’re smart, they’re vicious, and they’re going to protect their country.”

“Getting on well with them” is “not a bad thing,” Trump added. Vance, who describes himself as a “post-liberal conservative Catholic,” has spoken highly of Hungary’s authoritarian ruler Viktor Orban and has said we should “fire every civil servant in the administrative state and replace them with our people.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, a steadfast small-government conservative who voted to impeach Trump, has put it bluntly: “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” 

The Haven Hamilton character, a country music singer in the great 1970s movie Nashville, delivered a signature lyric: “We must be doing something right to last 200 years.” Of course, we had the Civil War. But our system of government has endured thanks to separation of powers, enlightened adjustment, and acceptance of the verdict of voters. Or as Democratic prankster Dick Tuck put it on losing a state senate race in California, “The people have spoken – the bastards.”

In Britain, Winston Churchill put it more elegantly and memorably in 1947, two years after being bounced from power: “Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

On this side of The Pond, our democracy has worked to expand individual liberties and protect individual rights, at least until recently. American society has grown more inclusive, more pluralistic, thanks to four social forces. All rose out of the citizenry. All spoke truth to power and attained power. They were, and are:

• The Civil Rights movement opened the American dream to African Americans, securing the right to vote and economic opportunity. The country has elected and reelected a Black man as president and is about to see a woman of African and South Asian ancestry nominated for its highest office.
• The LGBTQ movement has lifted gay and lesbian Americans out of ostracism, given them the right to marry those they love, and secured – in much of the nation – protection against discrimination. American society has become more inclusive, especially among millennials and Generation Z.
• The women’s movement has opened the workplace, opened a choice of lifestyle and direction, and made strides toward equal rights and opportunity. We can now say a woman’s place is in the house — the House of Representatives.
• The environmental movement has pushed back against those ravaging the planet. We’ve seen passage of a Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Wilderness Act. Slowly – although too slowly – a clean energy revolution is taking hold. Coal plants are closing. Solar and wind energy are expanding.

Our 21^st Century culture warriors, however, are pushing back. A foreign leader who has influenced Vance, Hungary’s Orban, has a phrase for it – “illiberal democracy.” Its tenets include severe limits to immigration, rejection of critical race theory, state control of university curriculum, opposition to same-sex marriage, and more families with more children.  Vance has gone so far as to advocate giving parents extra votes, one for each child.

The goal, as defined by University of Notre Dame political science professor Patrick Deneen, is “the peaceful overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class.”  He, too, is a Vance buddy. Deneen argues for bringing “a fundamentally different ethos” to America, with a “common-good conservatism” supplanting the current emphasis on individual liberties.

The goal is overthrow of what social critic (and sometime Seattle resident) Christopher Rufo calls “liberal totalitarianism.” Such a “regime change” will require, in Deneen’s words, “the very robust exercise of political power.”  Or to quote Vice Presidential nominee candidate Vance, “Culture war is class war.” 

Goodbye, small government. Hello, exercise of power from the top down. Donald Trump will make this possible but understand little of it. This enabler’s agenda is simply vengeance. He will sit in the dining room off the Oval Office, watch Fox News, accept plaudits from right wing pundits, and use Truth Social or X to fire Cabinet secretaries. 

Is this what is meant by making America great again?