President Trump–Autocrat

At the bottom of the body of ideas that shaped Liberal internationalism, now in process of destruction by assertions of new forms of nationalism, is belief in the idea of progress.

That secular religious belief inspired formation of a League of Nations, a United Nations and a flurry of international organizations where an educated New Class could aspire to improve the world by doing good through international organizations such as the ones on this list:

• Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
• European Central Bank (ECB)
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• International Labour Organization (ILO)
• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
• Paris 21 (P21)
• Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT)
• United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
• United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
• United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
• United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
• United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC)
• United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA)
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)
• United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
• United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD)
• World Bank (WB)
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
• World Trade Organization (WTO)

There were always evil naysayers, autocrats, authoritarians and totalitarians who disagreed, but the disastrous results of their policies further enhanced the idea that, if the international order of the world could be made safe for democracy, only good would be the result. And Christian fundamentalists added the belief that the Second Coming of the Savior, the son of God, Jesus Christ, was enhanced by survival of a democratic State of Israel.

Donald Trump’s theme, Make America Great, is contrary to the aspirations of this New Class. In the Fall issue of The Public Interest in 1978, a perceptive Irving Kristol described this New Class as follows:

This “new class” consists of scientists, lawyers, city planners, social workers, educators, criminologists, sociologists, public health doctors, etc. a substantial number of whom find their careers in the expanding public sector rather than the private. The public sector, indeed, is where they prefer to be. They are, as one says, “idealistic” i.e., far less interested in individual financial rewards than in the corporate power of their class. Though they continue to speak the language of “Progressive-reform,” in actuality they are acting upon a hidden agenda: to propel the nation from that modified version of capitalism we call “the welfare state” toward an economic system so stringently regulated in detail as to fulfill many of the traditional ant capitalist aspirations of the Left.

Anti-entrepreneurial, disinterested in freedom of enterprise, Democrat in Party affiliation, not Republican, the New Class taken as a whole wants us to shut up and do as they say.

Much of what they claim is based in Science writ large, as if the scientific method was preferable to common sense, the search for truth based in nous, ratio, or reason that, as St. Thomas discovered, could be traced to Aristotle’s concept of natural law (what Aristotle called right by nature.)

If you are disposed not to want to give power to scientists, lawyers, city planners, social workers, educators, criminologists, sociologists, public health doctors, then you are branded as an autocrat.

Does that sound familiar?