{"id":2227469,"date":"2024-04-22T17:33:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/contempt-for-ordinary-voters-undermines-opposition-to-trump\/"},"modified":"2024-04-22T17:37:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:37:53","slug":"contempt-for-ordinary-voters-undermines-opposition-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/contempt-for-ordinary-voters-undermines-opposition-to-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Disregard for Common Voters Weakens Anti-Trump Stand"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcontempt-for-ordinary-voters-undermines-opposition-to-trump%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2227469&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The text\u2063 discusses the disconnect between American politicians and ordinary citizens,\u200c drawing parallels to historical events \u2062like the\u2063 French \u200dRevolution. It highlights \u200cthe disdain some intellectuals\u2062 have for common people and contrasts it\u2064 with the ethical approach of British and American thinkers.\u2064 The\u2063 narrative\u2062 also addresses\u2063 the demonization of Trump supporters and the \u2063shift in progressive\u2063 attitudes towards the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-football-analogy-to-explain-democrats-election-cheating\/\" title=\"A Football Analogy to Explain Democrats' Election Cheating\">working class<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>A complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/88-percent-of-black-marylanders-support-hogans-re-fund-the-police-initiative\/\" title=\"88 Percent of Black Marylanders Support Hogan\u2019s \u2018Re-Fund the Police\u2019 Initiative\">prosecute violent criminals<\/a>, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House\u2019s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.<\/p>\n<p>As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-815874574\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-136962705bdc6721dff763f3e336c66c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-136962705bdc6721dff763f3e336c66c\"><\/div>\n<p>In <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Roads-Modernity-British-American-Enlightenments\/dp\/1400077222\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments<\/a><\/em>  (2004), Gertrude Himmelfarb distinguishes, convincingly, between the French <em>philosophes<\/em>, who championed reason; the American Founding Fathers, who concentrated on liberty; and the British moral philosophers, who emphasized human nature, benevolence, and our shared, internal moral sense.<\/p>\n<p>While the English reformers showed compassion for the poor and uneducated and treated them as members of the same <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/robert-kennedy-jr-again-warns-of-the-authoritarian-surveillance-state-and-coup-to-overcome-world-democracies\/\" title=\"Robert Kennedy Jr. Again Warns of the Authoritarian Surveillance State and Coup to Overcome World Democracies\">human race<\/a>, and the American framers sought to ensure freedom for all classes, most of the French intellectuals looked down on the peasants, dismissing them as bestial and irrational, filled to the brim with the prejudices and superstitions of the Catholic Church. To the <em>philosophes<\/em>, the common people were neither honorable nor moral, but ignorant and unteachable, enthralled by religion and profoundly non-progressive. They were not citizens but the rabble. Even Rousseau, who extended some sympathy to the masses of the countryside, felt they needed to be guided by those who were enlightened to adopt the \u201cgeneral will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn his article on the <em>Encyclop\u00e9die<\/em>,\u201d Himmelfarb writes, \u201cDiderot made it clear that the common people had no part in the \u2018philosophical age\u2019 celebrated in this enterprise. \u2018The general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.\u2019 In another article, \u2018Multitude,\u2019 he was more dismissive, indeed contemptuous, of the masses. \u2018Distrust the judgment of the multitude in matters of reasoning and philosophy; its voice is that of wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice. \u2026 The multitude is ignorant and stupefied. \u2026 Distrust it in matters of morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions \u2026 heroism is practically folly in its eyes.\u2019\u201d     <\/p>\n<p>Diderot, like Rousseau, believed that the masses had to surrender their individual wills to the general will, which would define for them how far they \u201cought to be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die. It is for the general will to determine the limits of all duties.\u201d For Diderot and the <em>philosophes<\/em>, though not Rousseau, what set them above the masses was their superior grasp of reason.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-12802c970b21570726053834b8bab4b5 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-12802c970b21570726053834b8bab4b5\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe moral sense and common sense,\u201d Himmelfarb explains, \u201cthat the British attributed to all individuals gave to all people, including the common people, a common humanity and a common fund of moral and social obligations. The French idea of reason was not available to the common people and had no such moral or social component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a citizen in a representative democracy, I expect our political leaders, including Donald Trump, to be held up to public scrutiny and questioned, even investigated, when the facts warrant it. What I do not expect, and find increasingly troubling, is the widespread and ongoing demonization and character assassination of all those who support Trump and approve of his candidacy and his policies.<\/p>\n<p>I am old enough to remember how roughly the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-joe-bidens-foreign-policy-reset-will-be-a-disaster\/\" title=\"Why Joe Biden\u2019s Foreign Policy \u2018Reset\u2019 Will Be A Disaster\">political establishment<\/a> treated supporters of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, especially if they identified with a conservative branch of Christianity. Reagan and Bush supporters routinely had their concerns ridiculed, motives suspected, and intelligence doubted. Still, the dismissal of Reaganites and Bushies as boobs and rednecks pales in comparison to the viciously sanctimonious profiling of Trump supporters as authoritarian, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/opposition-to-trump-is-rooted-in-contempt-for-ordinary-voters\/\" title=\"Disapproval of Trump stems from disdain for regular voters\">narcissistic white supremacists utterly unconcerned<\/a> for the common good.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas the liberal progressives of the 1980s expressed some compassion for the needs and struggles of the working man, the woke <em>philosophes<\/em> of today express only contempt for those who work with their hands. While carrying on the oppressor\/oppressed identity politics of Karl Marx and his heirs, they have reduced America\u2019s blue-collar proletariat to a racist, sexist, transphobic rabble who must be suppressed, managed, and reeducated.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-caa7889148b0f3cfc877dcc839facc3f fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-caa7889148b0f3cfc877dcc839facc3f\"><\/div>\n<p>Convinced, as philosophes were, of the \u201cwickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice\u201d of the rabble, today\u2019s progressive philosophical, political, and social engineers have appointed themselves the task of redefining for the masses what Diderot believed the general will should define for them: what it means \u201cto be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die.\u201d<em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The ironic difference between the <em>philosophes<\/em> of the past and the progressives of the present is that the latter have jettisoned reason altogether in their anti-scientific embrace of transgenderism and other uprootings of natural law. The superiority they claim over the masses is not, like that of Diderot, based on their more refined power of reason. On the contrary, their claims of superiority rest on the dubious ground of rejecting truth, logic, and reason as the product of white, patriarchal, heterosexual, and cisgender minds.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder the majority of working men and women in America look to Trump as their advocate. He not only defends their traditional family values, common sense, and God-given humanity. His seems to be the only voice in Washington speaking up for, or even <em>understanding<\/em>, the joys and woes, hopes and fears, victories and struggles of that \u201crabble\u201d that the political establishment, on both the left and right, seems only to dismiss, disparage, and despise.<\/p>\n<p>Most of \u201cpolite\u201d society attacks Trump for his caustic tone, his cutting remarks, and the obvious glee he takes in labeling and mocking his opponents. They fail to understand that Trump\u2019s rhetoric is central to his appeal. The \u201cmasses\u201d who flock to his speeches do not go merely to be entertained. They go to witness a much-needed turning of the tables, a political topsy turvy during which the weapons of the progressive <em>philosophes<\/em> are turned against them.<\/p>\n<p>Far from the bully, Trump is the champion of those who have been bullied relentlessly and mercilessly by a self-appointed elite who holds them in contempt. In Trump, they have found a modern George Bailey \u2014 albeit a crasser and more combative one \u2014 who is willing to stand up to the Mr. Potters of the world. <\/p>\n<p>In \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life,\u201d Frank Capra, who combined in his work the American fight for liberty and the British embrace of benevolence and our shared human moral nature, raises up an unwilling hero to protect the working families of his town from a man who would manipulate and crush them to fit his vision of, and general will for, Bedford Falls.<\/p>\n<p>At one point in the film, Potter almost tempts George to come to his side and forget about the lower-middle-class homeowners he has devoted his life to defending. Then George, in a burst of insight, sees through the cold heart and colder contempt of Potter. Rejecting the offer that would have given him the rich and adventurous life he has always dreamed of, he exclaims boldly:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p><em>Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you\u2019re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn\u2019t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they\u2019re cattle. Well, in my book, he died a much richer man than you\u2019ll ever be.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>When the majority of Trump supporters listen to him speak, this is what they hear: a spirited defense of the hard-working despised and a fearless denouncing of the fashionable despisers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-7164d729e737e917194f400d7fd97e0e fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-7164d729e737e917194f400d7fd97e0e\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critics accuse modern American politicians of disconnect from and disdain towards voters. Instead of addressing public concerns, they prioritize ideologies and self-interests, neglecting the common people&#8217;s needs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":2227470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/MAGA-1024x650.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2227469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/MAGA-1024x650.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2227469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2227470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2227469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2227469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2227469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}