The essay which follows is adapted from a presentation given last weekend to the Davenant Trust Toronto Regional Convivium at West Toronto Baptist Church. Thanks to Ian Clary and Justin Galotti for their hospitality.

The Anatomy of Trumpism

In this paper, I want to sketch Richard Hooker’s remarkably prescient diagnosis of Trumpism 423 years in advance. Trumpism, it should be noted, is simply the culmination of a disgruntled radicalism that has been brewing in the Republican Party since at least the election of Obama in 2008; it is the chickens coming home to roost for the Republican leadership, which has actively fomented an anti-intellectual anti-establishment anti-government message for the past seven years. What are some of the basic features of this tendency, and its dark apotheosis in Donald Trump (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and other leading Republican presidential candidates)?

Most obviously, the Movement is characterized by a profound distrust of authority—first and foremost, perhaps, governmental authorities in the positions of most centralized power (the White House, Supreme Court, Federal Reserve, and various federal bureaucracies above all, then the Senate, then the House of Representatives, and only then state governments), but then, not far behind, and closely connected, various forms of intellectual authorities—media, academic scholars and economists, and especially scientists. In place of these discredited authorities, the Movement embraces the wisdom of the common man and the neophyte. With the center clearly corrupted, one must look to the periphery for purity; experience is a liability, and inexperience an asset. The most trusted figures of all are those who, untainted by prior experience in government or credentialed expertise, can articulate in the most fearless and undiluted terms the common sense of the common man, heightening as much as possible its contrast with the voice of the Establishment. Around such trusted figures, promising to clean house and govern autocratically by their own individual vigor and insight, personality cults rapidly develop, fuelled by the invigorating language of liberty even while quietly evacutating it of much of its traditional meaning. The personal leadership of the demagogue, who speaks after all for the common man, is in many cases to replace the heavy-handed, inefficient, and compromise-ridden rule of law.

For if there is one thing the Movement distrusts most of all it is compromise. After all, once the truth and the right course of action have been discerned, what could compromise be but a concession to falsehood and corruption? What could motivate it except cowardice? The Movement, after all, is quite confident that the truth and the right course of action have been grasped—not, to be sure, by the arrogant and overeducated Establishment, which after all is probably just using its truth claims to mask its will to power (the Right, it seems, has learned their Foucault as well as any Berkeley protester)—but by sanctified intuition of the Common Man. This intuition, being an intuition, prefers to operate at the level of broad, sweeping, generalizations—it is uniquely gifted at connecting the dots and discerning the underlying corruptions that lie behind the myriad evils afflicting the commonwealth. Details can be easily postponed to be dealt with later; what matters is grasping the big picture of what is wrong and what needs to be fixed. This truth, even if only a minority have grasped it, is not complicated or difficult to discern—that is indeed one of its recognizable hallmarks, and the introduction of nuance, complexity, or doubt is one of the surest signs that one has been tainted by the Establishment. As certitude of the Common Wisdom takes hold of the movement, the Movement develops an ironclad shell of defense against any attacks, which actually serve only to strengthen it. Given the obviously self-serving character of the Establishment, attacks by any of its representatives (whether political leaders, scholars, or reporters in the media) on the Movement and its anointed leaders simply serve as proof that the Movement has hit a raw nerve, has discovered some deception. The Movement’s certainty of its own truth and righteous cause increases with every contradiction from “above,” and as internal criticism is mere evidence of defection to the enemy motivated by self-interest, it can no more gain a hearing than external criticism. Attempts by the Establishment to reassert its power and stamp out the menace of the Movement are recognized as the persecution which every righteous movement must expect, and so only succeed in confirming its confidence and even adding recruits to its number.

So what is the common root of this malaise, if there is one (recognizing, self-critically, that the search for a single common root can itself be a manifestation of Movement mentality)? Perhaps the most common diagnosis, and one in which I have indulged several times myself, is that what we have is a stark individualism that reflexively eschews all forms of social solidarity that might take institutional form. I myself have often made this diagnosis, and of course, we would be foolish to ignore the centrality of such individualism to the modern Western social imaginary. But its very centrality suggests that, even if this might be a necessary condition in any explanation of contemporary radical conservative movements, it is hardly a sufficient condition. After all, is not such individualism just as dominant—nay, more so—on much of the contemporary left, and in the center? Is it not well-developed in the European countries, where one is hard-pressed to find constituencies that resemble the current US Republican Party? Our political rhetoric, to be sure, is still deeply infused with Cold War-era tropes, in which the Right stands for individual liberty and the Left for various forms of collectivism or communitarianism, but everyone knows that communitarianism nowadays is even scarcer on the Left than on the Right. Tea Party types are perhaps more likely to be embedded in strong communities, defined primarily by faith and family, than are the “liberals” they decry. Nor is the radical Right today defined by private judgment to the extent that both its advocates and opponents might claim—rather, any number of fiercely held, if usually unwritten, orthodoxies dominate its ranks and tend to stifle any internal dissent: orthodoxies about the fictitiousness of climate change, the imminent explosion of the national debt and the collapse of the welfare state, the dangerousness of Muslims and immigrants in general, the sanctity of the rule of law when applied others and its illegitimacy when applied to “true freedom-loving Americans,” the self-regulating power of the market, etc. So what is really going on?

Hooker’s Diagnosis of Radicalism

Before undertaking an answer, I should admit that this may seem a dark and unduly apocalyptic portrait, and to be sure, I am a person congenitally prone to dark and unduly apocalyptic narratives, but before dismissing it too quickly, consider how just six months ago, or maybe even three, this would’ve been considered a ridiculously overdrawn caricature, and today it is obviously too close to the truth for comfort. To be sure, radical movements often grow in fits and starts and go dormant for a long time, but they are not to be casually neglected. Hooker’s dark prophecies of Anabaptistical revolutionaries in chapter 8 of the Preface to his Lawes may have seemed a bit hysterical at the time, but they looked frighteningly prescient in 1643.

Not, of course, that the radicals, whether in Hooker’s day or ours, do not have a point. I am painfully aware that I am addressing you in West Toronto Baptist Church, offspring of a tradition that, depending on which narrative you accept, was birthed out of the Anabaptists Hooker luridly recounted in that chapter or the English Separatists he luridly predicted there. And I am well aware that all of Christendom owes you, and your more moderate elder brethren the Presbyterians, an enormous debt. The Church of England establishment in Hooker’s day was often undeserving of trust and respect, and the political-media-scientific establishment of our own day is even more so; both, in any case, are often vulnerable to their opponents’ charge of being corrupt and power-seeking. This, however, is precisely what makes diagnoses such as Hooker’s so important. For Hooker’s is not the voice, as so often it is misdescribed, of the repressive status quo, a peremptory authoritarian call to obedience that counters the accusation of being self-seeking and power-hungry with the accusation that the radicals are self-willed libertines. Hooker does not accuse his puritan opponents of a seditious individualism, at least not as their primary vice, and in this he stands in remarkable contrast to most of his contemporaries, who jumped quickly to such language, and to their favorite prooftext Romans 13, when faced when any opposition from below. Indeed, as my friend Andrew Fulford has shown in a recent paper, this accusation was the more mild of the two options usually available in the sixteenth century. The other was to quite literally demonize one’s opponents—to accuse them of having been stirred up by the devil as implacable enemies to the truth and the peace of church and state. Hooker, quite interestingly, takes neither of these strategies. Rather, he engages in a patient and keen-eyed dissection of the social psychology of radical reform movements, which, he argues, quickly derail them from the entirely appropriate and perhaps needed task of reform, and lead them

“into other more dangerous opinions, sometimes quite and clean contrary to their first pretended meanings: so as what will grow out of such errors as go masked under the cloak of divine authority, impossible it is that ever the wit of man should imagine, till time have brought forth the fruits of them: for which cause it behoveth wisdom to fear the sequels thereof, even beyond all apparent cause of fear.”

Although his analysis is aimed at a particularly theological form of radical reform, the basic diagnosis, as Eric Voegelin well recognized sixty years ago, applies just as well to all radical reform movements, particularly those of modernity. So we would do well to learn form his diagnosis, all the more so since many of us will have seen modern-day parallels in contemporary church movements as well as political ones.

Elusive Certainty

So what, for Hooker, is the root problem, if it is not individualism? It is a failure to discern the properly certain from the uncertain. He begins his diagnosis in chapter 3 of his Preface by explaining that while “some things are so familiar and plain, that truth from falsehood, and good from evil, is most easily discerned in them, even by men of no deep capacity” (including, he argues, as a good Protestant, those things necessary to salvation), most things are not so easy:

“Other things also there are belonging (though in a lower degree of importance) unto the offices of Christian men: which, because they are more obscure, more intricate and hard to be judged of, therefore God hath appointed some to spend their whole time principally in the study of things divine, to the end that in these more doubtful cases their understanding might be a light to direct others.”

Because of the complexity of both divine and human matters, God has ordained a distinction of vocations, with some called to spend their time in mastering these complexities; those who do so are to play a role in the establishing of laws which can serve as norms of action for others who may not have the time or the ability to thus search into things. Hooker is not afraid to sound a bit elitist in defending this point, and let’s be honest with ourselves—elitism does have a bit of a point in a time when elections are decided by a voting public 30% of which supports the bombing of Agrabah, the fictional city in Aladdin, according to a recent poll by Public Policy Polling—

“the matter wherein ye think that ye see, and imagine that your ways are sincere, is of far deeper consideration than any one amongst five hundred of you conceiveth. Let the vulgar sort amongst you know, that there is not the least branch of the cause wherein they are so resolute, but to the trial of it a great deal more appertaineth than their conceit doth reach unto. I write not this in disgrace of the simplest that way given, but I would gladly they knew the nature of that cause wherein they think themselves throughly instructed and are not; by means whereof they daily run themselves, without feeling their own hazard, upon the dint of the Apostle’s sentence against “evil-speakers as touching things wherein they are ignorant.” (3.3)

Sometimes, indeed, the discernment of truth from falsehood, the right course of action from the wrong, is so fraught with difficulty that even the wise and well-trained cannot discern it with any certainty. This, however, cannot mean that we revert to an “every man for himself” mentality, for “if God be not the author of confusion but of peace, then can he not be the author of our refusal, but of our contentment, to stand unto some definitive sentence; without which almost impossible it is that either we should avoid confusion, or ever hope to attain peace” (6.3). Every political body has to have a mechanism for establishing such “definitive sentences,” which is to say laws, even in the absence of certainty or universal agreement about what the best course of action is. Citing the example of the Council of Jerusalem, he says, “When therefore they had given their definitive sentence, all controversy was at an end. Things were disputed before they came to be determined; men afterwards were not to dispute any longer, but to obey” (6.3). To be sure, any man or woman, armed with a demonstrative argument from reason or Holy Scripture has his or her conscience “set at full liberty” from a human law shown to be unjust. But on disputed political questions of great complexity, it is highly unlikely that such an argument is forthcoming. At most they will have a probable argument of their own private judgment, to hold up against a probable argument of public judgment. And, he insists, “of peace and quietness there is not any way possible, unless the probable voice of every entire society or body politic overrule all private of like nature in the same body” (6.6).

The Progress of Radicalism

The individualism, then, that disregards established authority in obedience to what it takes to be some higher law, stems, according to Hooker, from a failure to understand the inexpungible uncertainty and complexity that bedevils human social and political affairs, and the attempt instead to solve all the problems in one fell swoop by appeal to simple, clear, and undeniable principles. If this, then, is the root of radicalism, both political and religious, how does it grow to full maturity? Hooker offers a compelling account throughout the remainder of chapter 3 of the Preface, which I will walk through, pausing to paraphrase comment after each stage.

“The method of winning the people’s affection unto a general liking of “the cause” (for so ye term it) hath been this. First, In the hearing of the multitude, the faults especially of higher callings are ripped up with marvellous exceeding severity and sharpness of reproof; which being oftentimes done begetteth a great good opinion of integrity, zeal, and holiness, to such constant reprovers of sin, as by likelihood would never be so much offended at that which is evil, unless themselves were singularly good.” (3.6)

In other words, anyone who wants to lead the Movement against the Establishment (whether because they are convinced that they have found the Answers, or because they cynically see it as an opportunity to gain personal power) must begin with negative campaigning and attack ads. They need to explain to you why those currently in power have not failed because of the complexity and intractability of the problems they have faced, the unfortunate circumstances that have bedevilled them, or the inherent limitations of human nature, but due to their singular foolishness and depravity. Indeed, so effective is this strategy that the demagogue pursuing it will not even waste time attacking his immediate opponent as such, but rather on attacking the highest-profile members of the Establishment, with whom his opponent can be plausibly linked. They do not even need to waste time or effort extolling their own virtues; their white-hot moral fervour and indignation against the evils of their opponent is eloquent testimony enough. It was telling to witness in this regard the behavior of various Republican candidates during the debates last fall, and how often, instead of questions about their own views or policies, they used their time in railing against the evils of Obama, who was not even on the ballot. Predictably, those who did so most tended to receive the biggest bump in the polls.

Hooker again:

The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corruptions, wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical government established. Wherein, as before by reproving faults they purchased unto themselves with the multitude a name to be virtuous so by finding out this kind of cause they obtain to be judged wise above others.

Having highlighted the turpitude and incompetence of those in authority, the next step is to connect the dots. If a hallmark of truth is its unity and clarity, then, the masses assume, whoever can tell a narrative that succeeds in weaving together the most diverse phenomena as all manifestations of the same basic problem, as effects of one cause, earns the reputation for having the keenest insight. Moreover, we can be sure that the one cause that stands behind all these “faults and corruptions wherewith the world aboundeth” will be the leaders of the establishment and their warped political vision. Again, we see this tendency keenly in contemporary political rhetoric. Job losses? Increasing national debt? Inflation? Stagnant wages? All easily chalked up to some one unifying policy mistake or other, which must be the fault of the highest leader in the land. Terrorists in Syria? Rising Chinese power? Too many immigrants? Saber-rattling in Russia? Again, all attributed to a simple lack of resolve, or loathing of America, at the highest levels of government. Trump has taken the art of the grand narrative, thin on detail but rich in unifying power, to another level. And it is so tempting to fall for this strategy; it is so comforting by making so much sense of so many problems, and by holding out the hope that perhaps the solution to all of them is just around the corner, that just one election, just one changing of the guard, will make everything right.

In reality, though, says, Hooker, “the stains and blemishes found in our state . . . springing [as they do] from the root of human frailty and corruption, not only are, but have been always more or less, yea and (for any thing we know to the contrary) will be till the world’s end complained of, what form of government soever take place.”

But no one wants to hear this message. So what is the next step on the road to radicalism?

“Having gotten thus much sway in the hearts of men, a third step is to propose their own form of church-government, as the only sovereign remedy of all evils; and to adorn it with all the glorious titles that may be.” (3.8)

Again, we could simply remove the specification “church” from “church-government” here, and the description would apply equally to political radicalism in every day, and especially ours, in which mass media helps channel rapid and polarizing public opinion shifts. Having established their righteous zeal by their denunciation of evil, and their keen insight by their diagnosis of its roots, the leaders of the Movement are then in a position to propose their own platform as the solution to all the faults and corruptions wherewith the world aboundeth. “And,” says Hooker acidly in one of his greatest lines, “the nature, as of men that have sick bodies, so likewise of the people in the crazedness of their minds possessed with dislike and discontentment at things present, is to imagine that any thing (the virtue whereof they hear commended) would help them; but that most, which they least have tried.” (3.8)

The current election cycle in the US is an eloquent example of this crazedness. For a spell this fall, the three leading Republican candidates for President of the most powerful nation on earth were the three candidates who possessed zero governmental experience whatsoever, and precious few claims to leadership qualities outside government either: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina. Even as common sense has prevailed to the degree of Carson and Fiorina dropping back into the pack, Trump has inexplicably consolidated his support, and has been joined at the top by the politician who among actual politicians has the least experience, the least establishment support, and the greatest history of wildly impractical grandstanding, Ted Cruz. The voting public is convinced that whatever solution they have least tried before is likely to help them most.

Hooker’s next remarks might seem at first glance quite specific to the ecclesiastical sphere, but a moment’s reflection will reveal their broader relevance:

“From hence they proceed to an higher point, which is the persuading of men credulous and over-capable of such pleasing errors, that it is the special illumination of the Holy Ghost, whereby they discern those things in the word, which others reading yet discern them not.”

Thus they will conclude

“that the same Spirit leading men into this opinion doth thereby seal them to be God’s children; and that, as the state of the times now standeth, the most special token to know them that are God’s own from others is an earnest affection that way. This hath bred high terms of separation between such and the rest of the world; whereby the one sort are named The brethren, The godly, and so forth; the other, worldlings, time-servers, pleasers of men not of God, with such like.” (3.10)

In other words, those in the Movement will become convinced that, whether for religious reasons or simply because of their superior virtue, purity, and patriotism, they have been gifted with the insight to see clearly the cause of the evils plaguing their nation and its revolutionary solution. To be sure, the public as a whole remains divided, many loud and prominent voices line up on the opposing side to cry down the errors of the Movement and its demagogues, but these numerous objections need not worry the followers or cause them to pause and doubt the justice of their cause. For is it not manifest that all those who thus object are infected with worldly wisdom, with the disease of “liberalism” or “socialism” or “Marxism” (to use the current labels of choice, but every Movement has its own), or else, just as bad, are cynically concerned only with their own advancement, wealth, and power. Those true followers, though, true Americans, who care for God and country, who care for the future of their children, and hence are willing to name the evil that confronts them for what it is and oppose it to the utmost of their ability—these hail one another as a band of brothers, a proletarian illuminati who “get it” and having gotten it will brook no compromise.

Having once adopted such a hardened “us versus them” mindset, the Movement will render itself impermeable to any objection. For this final stage, I will simply quote Eric Voegelin’s brilliant paraphrase and commentary on Hooker in The New Science of Politics:

“Once a social environment of this type is organized, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to break it up by persuasion. ‘Let any many of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them, they close up their ears, his reasons they weight not, all is answered with rehearsal of the words of John: ‘We are of God; he that knoweth God heareth us’: as for the rest ye are of the world, whose ye are, heareth you.’ They are impermeable to argument and have their answers well drilled. Suggest to them that they are unable to judge in such matters, and they will answer, ‘God hath chosen the simple.’ Show them convincingly that they are talking nonsense, and you will hear ‘Christ’s own apostle was accounted mad.’ Try the meekest warning of discipline, and they will be profuse on ‘the cruelty of bloodthirsty men’ and cast themselves in the role of ‘innocency persecuted for the truth.’ In brief: the attitude is psychologically iron-clad and beyond shaking by argument.” (137)

 

This keen diagnosis explains much that has otherwise seemed inexplicable in the current election cycle. Time and time again, a leading candidate has made a statement so grossly offensive, or so manifestly false, or so obviously out of touch with reality, that pundits on every side predicted his imminent demise. “There’s no way Trump will survive this one” we heard over and over again through the summer, but he not merely survived, but thrived. The opposition provoked by his outrages became itself confirmation of their truth—“if they’re shooting at you, you must be doing something right” was the maxim, so whoever could get shot at the most must be the most right. Having for many years carefully sowed among their constituency the idea that the media was grotesquely biased and frankly mendacious, the establishment leaders on the Right suddenly found themselves powerless to bring down upstarts like Trump and Carson through basic fact-checking. Whenever the media uncovered a statement as simply false, their credibility decreased and the candidate’s increased. Likewise, having for many years carefully sown contempt of the idea of “political correctness,” the sorts of things that were simply inappropriate to say in civilized public discourse, the mainstream candidates found that they were standing on quicksand when they tried to gain traction by Trump’s slurs against women, Mexicans, Muslims, and even veterans. Trump’s willingness to trample on sacred cows (and to a lesser extent, Carson and Cruz’s) was simply proof of his righteous zeal, and the opposition he provoked was proof of the moral bankruptcy of his opponents.

All this is worrisome enough, I think we would grant; but for Hooker, the greatest danger in this style of thinking is that, having once convinced themselves of the righteousness of their cause and insulated themselves against external criticism, there is no real limit on where the Movement might end up:

“For my purpose herein is to shew, that when the minds of men are once erroneously persuaded that it is the will of God to have those things done which they fancy, their opinions are as thorns in their sides, never suffering them to take rest till they have brought their speculations into practice. The lets and impediments of which practice their restless desire and study to remove leadeth them every day forth by the hand into other more dangerous opinions, sometimes quite and clean contrary to their first pretended meanings: so as what will grow out of such errors as go masked under the cloak of divine authority, impossible it is that ever the wit of man should imagine, till time have brought forth the fruits of them: for which cause it behoveth wisdom to fear the sequels thereof, even beyond all apparent cause of fear.” (Pref.8.12)

A Radical Right?

The root of all this, we have suggested, is the false quest for certainty in the midst of an intrinsically uncertain world, for simplicity in the midst of irreducible complexity, for purity instead of the necessity to compromise. Why, to get back to our original question, should this tendency have taken such hold on the contemporary American Right? To be sure, it is not unique to the Right, but is, as Voegelin recognized, a perennial temptation in mass democracy. Yet it seems today to be most vividly on display in the contemporary American Right. And after all, the Right of all places, if by that we mean “conservatism,” ought to be inoculated most of all against this kind of Jacobin radicalism, ought most of all to be comfortable with the kind of principled pragmatism that Hooker and Burke after him championed, ought most of all to recognize that there is no perfect system, there is no once-for-all solution, there are only trade-offs and slow incremental improvements. In the past, it was more often left-wing movements that would fit the profile Hooker sketches.

I would suggest tentatively that the answer might lie in the rapid intensification and expansion of pluralism in the modern West. Within the last few decades, we have witnessed a fairly sudden collapse of broadly-accepted values and conceptions of human nature, the common good, the nature of the family, the place of the individual within society, and indeed the whole cosmic order within which society finds its place. In place of these we have the conviction that convictions are passe, the certainty that all is uncertain, the shared premise that there should be no shared premises, merely each individual’s freedom to remake him- or her-self as he or she sees fit. With this collapse of certainty has come also the collapse of community, since a community must be defined by common objects of love and the fissiparous logic of the market demands that there can be no such thing, no longer at any rate than is needed to generate a transient fad.

The Left has, by and large, made its peace with these developments. Social liberals have come to accept, even to embrace, the new gospel of radical individualism, and the relativism that goes along with it. Truth is a fluid and elusive concept, and that’s OK. Perhaps we can learn to get along without it, groping our way pragmatically through social bonds of our own forging and renegotiating them as necessary. On the Right, however, where social conservatives still cling to outmoded concepts like objective order, community, hierarchy, truth, and certainty, they cannot cling to them in the same way their ancestors did. Theirs must be a fierce and desperate grip, clinging to these as to a sword-hilt, knowing that they are now a shrinking minority, an island in the midst of a rising sea of uncertainty. The old traditions and institutions that once bolstered both certainty and community have withered away, and if these are to maintained, it must be through strength of will and conviction. New ersatz communities must be forged on the basis of such convictions, communities bound together by ideology and a certain xenophobia, and must be fiercely defended against the corrosive relativism and lukewarmness of the broader society. Such is the logic, I would submit, whereby good old-fashioned religious and social conservatives, champions of the common man and his common loves, can morph into something like Trumpism. And it is worth noting that this narrative is perhaps not all that different from the one accounting for the rise of presbyterian radicalism in Hooker’s own day—a breakdown of social, ecclesiastical, and political institutions once taken for granted, the loss of respected sources of certainty and the threat of profound value pluralism, all of which created a demand for a new source of certainty that could find institutional expression at the national level.
Given that I would identify as a social and religious conservative, committed to those good old-fashioned ideals like objective order, community, truth, certainty, and even hierarchy, what should we make of these recent trends? Is there a way to resist the tide of relativism without falling into the arms of radicalism? In a subsequent post, I plan to adapt material from ch. 12 of my new book on Hooker to suggest some a better way forward.