I have on several occasions referred to Never-Trumpers as yap-and-scribble do-nothings who think of politics as a grand debate gentlemanly conducted and endlessly protracted and who think of themselves as doing something worthwhile whether or not their learned discussions in well-appointed venues achieve anything at all in slowing the leftist juggernaut. It now occurs to me that Juan Donoso Cortés(1809-1853) had their number long ago. This is a theme worth exploring.
As we speak, Mr. Amazon is delivering the book on the left to my humble abode, but I have yet to receive it, and I confess to not yet having read the man himself. So for now I merely pull a couple of quotations from Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, tr. George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1985:
According to Donoso Cortés, it was characteristic of bourgeois liberalism not to decide in this battle but to begin a discussion. He straightforwardly defined the bourgeoisie as a “discussing class,” una clasa discutidora. It has thus been sentenced. This definition contains the class characteristic of wanting to evade the decision. A class that shifts all political activity onto the plane of conversation in the press and in parliament is no match for social conflict. (59)
Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve metaphysical truth in a discussion. The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. (63)
To understand the Trump phenomenon we will have to study Carl Schmitt. Trump is a man who knows how to make decisions and move from talk to action. He is not one of the bow-tie boys who belongs to the club and is content to chatter. He knows how to fight. He knows that civility and refined manners count for nothing in a confrontation with leftist thugs from Chicago brought up on Alinsky. You hit them, and you hit them so hard that they reel in shock.
I know what some will say. Schmitt was a Nazi. By invoking Schmitt am I not acquiescing in the view that Trump is Hitler-like? But consider this: would Hitler have recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Would Hitler have the support of the NRA?
The Trump = Hitler identity theory is clear proof of the poverty of leftist 'thought.'
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