December 5, 2016 --

Jill Lepore, in The New Yorker, November 21, wrote that “ [Donald J. ]Trump was elected because he got something right, about the suffering of Americans, and about the arrogance of politicians, of academics, and of the press”. Earlier in her November 21 piece, Ms. Lepore noted, “Many Americans having lost faith in a government that has failed to address widening equality, and in the policy-makers and academics and journalists who have barely noticed it, see Trump as their deliverer.”

Ms.Lepore apparently rules out the possibility that the leftist policies Washington, D.C. has been implementing have resulted in the “political, cultural, and economic polarization that,” she agrees,” have been widening, not narrowing for decades.” LPR is not confident that Ms. Lepore would acknowledge Federalist 57 offers insight in the present politics of polarization, that this polarization has been executed by what Federalist No. 57 calls “that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few.”

How is such aggrandizement put into effect? By application of crony capitalism, of course. For example, another president-elect might now be making plans for the creation of a company to halt climate change. After January 20, this company, the Widget Climate Change Co. (WCCC), would be given a federal grant of, say, $10 billion. The executives of WCCC would be a) politically-connected and b) very well paid. The media , of course, would be expected to promote positive articles about WCCC, reality notwithstanding. Is this an exaggertation? Google just one word: Solyndra.

Salena Zito, writing in the New York Post, November 22, noted that Donald J. Trump’s supporters see him as standing with them when he defends himself against attack from elitists. Federalist No. 57 suggests that officials must hold “communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments” with the people, “without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” No. 57 also cites “the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America—a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.”

What was the election of November 8 all about. It was about a free people, declaring their ongoing dedication to freedom, and their resolve to defend freedom against those who would drag a free people into the pit of tyranny. The American people did not, as leftists contend, elect an “autocrat” who will “ignore the Constitution.” Donald J. Trump is president-elect because he is a democrat who will defend the Constitution.