Two Cheers for Trumpism: R.R. Reno's 'Return of the Strong Gods'
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(REVIEW) R.R. Reno is the editor of First Things, a conservative Christian journal founded by Father Richard John Neuhaus in 1990, when George H. W. Bush was in the White House. Father Neuhaus, who died in 2009, was a tireless defender of neo-conservative perspectives on culture, economics, and foreign policy.
R.R Reno’s provocative new book, Return of the Strong Gods, begins with a startling polemic against the squeaky clean conservative hero, George H.W. Bush. In President Bush’s 1990 address to the United Nations, he promised to fight for “a new and different world” in which dictators would not be permitted to control the future.
The president raised his eyes to envision a bright new future: “I see a world of open borders, open trade, and, most importantly, open minds.” Reno summarizes the Bush doctrine: “The animal spirits of the economy need to be freed from oppressive regulations; borders should be porous and open to commerce; and cultures need to expand their imaginative boundaries to welcome the contributions of new peoples.”
According to Reno, the costs to America of this Bush doctrine have been very steep indeed. Bush’s messianism, which was shared by our 42nd, 43rd, and 44th presidents, put an end to any post-1989 peace dividend that the United States might have enjoyed. It ushered in decades of indeterminate wars to set up caricature democracies in exotic places. In President Obama’s final year of office, Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on seven different countries. Even though President Trump has surrounded himself with dogmatic neo-conservative foreign policy advisers, Reno seems to think that Trump is exercising a more restrained foreign policy than his predecessors.
According to Reno, “open borders, open markets, and open minds” have wreaked havoc on blue-collar America. Between 2001 and 2015, 65,000 factories closed and five million jobs disappeared. From 1965 to 2015, the number of working class Americans outside the workforce rose from ten percent to 22 percent. At present, one in six of American men aged 25 to 54 are without work. Mortality rates for middle-aged whites increased from 1999 onward, the only demographic for whom this was true. Cirrhosis of the liver rose by 50 percent; suicide rose by 78 percent; alcohol or drug poisoning rose by 323 percent. These suffering souls are among the six million Americans who voted for Obama in 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016.
Reno writes, “Think what you want of Trump, ill or well, but think clearly. He contradicts the postwar governing consensus, as do many populist figures in Europe. He is the anti-George H. W. Bush: strong borders, not open ones; advantageous trade, not open trade; loyalty and patriotism, not open minds.” Trump is helping to draw Americans away from the 20th century’s “postwar consensus” that binds us “culturally and even spiritually” to “anti-fascist and anti-nationalist” narratives. These narratives commit us to worshiping “weak gods” —openness, diversity, multiculturalism — to protect us from the strong gods of blood and soil that wreaked such havoc on Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Italian public intellectual Gianni Vattimo represents for Reno all that is wrongheaded in the postwar consensus. Vattimo applauds trends in contemporary intellectual culture that contribute to a “destiny of weakening.” Weakening of traditions promotes tolerance, peace, and freedom. If there are no strong truths, nobody will judge others or limit their freedom. If nothing is worth fighting for, nobody will fight. Vattimo looks forward to a disenchanted world that encourages us to adopt a “moderate and generous” approach to life. The great commandment is not to love our neighbor as we love ourself. Instead, it is to go easy on our neighbors as we go easy on ourselves.
The post-war consensus once made sense, Reno admits, but in our time, free trade, mass migration, multiculturalism, gender bending, drug addiction, and abortion have subverted the ties that once bound us together. Whereas establishment liberals and conservatives dismiss populist politics as racist and fascist, Reno sees populism as a legitimate expression of our deep need for solidarity. Reno concedes that “Victor Orban and Donald Trump are no choirboys or immaculate liberals,” but Reno believes that they are far less threatening to the West than our fanatical cultural elites, whose “hyper-moralistic sense of mission — either us or Hitler — prevents us from addressing our economic, demographic, cultural, or political problems.”
Reno writes that the strong gods of love of the divine, love of truth, love of country, love of family alone can unite societies because they are “objects of [our] love and devotion.” It is time for the weak gods of openness, diversity, and multiculturalism to exit the stage. It is time for the “return of the strong gods.” Donald Trump is the unlikely vehicle for this re-moralization of American society.
A problem with Reno’s analysis is that it neglects the classical truth that the moral tone that a leader sets is crucial for the health of a culture. In the end, the character of our leaders and the culture of our governance matter as much as any policy decisions.
The contrast between Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump is instructive in this regard. At the age of 20, George H. W. Bush was shot down over the Pacific after flying 58 combat missions. Donald Trump evaded his duty to serve, and he casually demeans military heroes such as the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Bush married his high school girlfriend at the age 20 and stayed married to her for 73 years. Trump’s three “marriages” have been peppered with scandals, debaucheries, and adulteries. Trump’s record as a businessman is marred by Chapter 11 bankruptcies, cheating small contractors, and abusing immigrant labor. To clear the site for the gold-domed Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, Trump hired 200 undocumented Polish workers to tear down the Bonwit Teller department store amidst clouds of asbestos, only to have the workers’ wages withheld by subcontractors. As president, George H. W. Bush strengthened the traditional cultural norms that Trump now flouts. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens writes that if George H. W. Bush is America’s Hadrian, then Donald Trump is our Caligula.
Another problem with Reno’s analysis is that he conflates American populism and European populism. Europe is largely composed of nation-states with identities rooted in blood and soil. Americans are bound together not by blood and soil but by a common creed. Europe has an immigrant sending heritage and does a dismal job of immigrant incorporation. America has an immigrant receiving heritage and has created a culture where immigrants thrive.
Whereas immigrants in Europe are often ghettoized, alienated and unemployed, American’s legal and illegal immigrants model what is best in America. They are energetic, entrepreneurial, law-abiding, and risk-taking. Immigrants are more church going than native-born Americans, and they are less likely to have kids out of wedlock. Eighty three percent of illegal immigrants in America identify as Christians, whereas 70 percent of Americans identify as Christians. Immigrants are far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes. In most cities in America, there is a direct correlation between increased immigration and declining crime rates. American immigrants start businesses at twice the rate of non-immigrants. In 2016, American immigrants started half of America’s billion dollar startups, creating 33,000 jobs.
Immigrants are not diseases to be warded off, as populists would have us believe. Rather, immigrants have always been the most effective resources for the renewal and revitalization of America. America’s newcomers are the Americans who are most eager to participate in the American dream. They have suffered oppression and tyranny, and they know the value of liberty and opportunity. It is from the immigrants living among us that we native-born Americans can learn to recover the strong gods that can renew our corrupt republic.
Robert Carle is a professor of theology at The King’s College in Manhattan. Dr. Carle has contributed to The American Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Religion Unplugged, Society, Human Rights Review, The Public Discourse, Reason, and Academic Questions.