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Governments described as populist are now in power in Poland, Hungary, Mexico, and Turkey. Italy and Greece are governed by multiparty populist coalitions, while populists of the left or right are partners in coalition governments in seven other European Union countries. Venezuela is in free fall thanks to the confiscationist policies of a populist government. Brazil has an outspoken populist president. And the ongoing Trumpist takeover of the Republican Party isn't just a populist spectacle in itself; it has also helped fuel a surge of left-wing populism among the Democrats. Those movements espouse a variety of programs across a wide range of political landscapes. What do they have in common?Historians and political scientists have argued for decades about what exactly populism is, and they haven't always come to the same conclusions. The political theorist Isaiah Berlin warned in 1967 that "a single formula to cover all populisms everywhere will not be very helpful. The more embracing the formula, the less descriptive. The more richly descriptive the formula, the more it will exclude." Nonetheless, Berlin identified a core populist idea: the notion that an authentic "true people" have been "damaged by an elite, whether economic, political, or racial, some kind of secret or open enemy."The exact nature of that enemy—"foreign or native, ethnic or social"—doesn't matter, Berlin adds. What fuels populist politics is that concept of the people battling the elite . . .. . . The policies promoted by those governments vary, but they reject two related ideas. One is pluralism, the idea that people are variegated, with different interests and values that need to be negotiated through democratic political processes. The other is liberalism—not in the narrow American sense of the political center-left, but the broader belief that individuals have rights and the state's power should be limited to protect those rights.Populists can be "of the left," but they need not be motivated by Marxian ideas of class conflict or central planning. They can be "of the right," but they are distinctly different from old-school reactionaries who yearn for a lost world of ordered hierarchies; if anything, they tend to dissolve old-fashioned classes and social orders into the undifferentiated mass of The People. Or they can reject the left/right spectrum altogether . . .
Hyper ethnic change is profoundly unsettling to many people, and it is helping to drive populist political responses....The Libertarian Response.... A functioning and efficient guest worker program—one that allows people to easily take temporary jobs in the United States and then return home to their families with the wealth they've rightfully acquired—could help calm the worries of American citizens who balk at the idea that throngs of foreigners are forcing their way across the border....Thinking about the world in terms of friends vs. enemies channels energy into collectivism and demagoguery. To stop authoritarian populism, it's important not to promote the mentality of enmity that enables it.
I've looked at the article a few ways, it really is correct in its recommendations towards the end, I'll excerpt a little: I get his drift, I'd agree with it.
A lot of Briefers consider themselves "libertarian," and Reason is a libertarian publication. I don't always agree with Reason, but it's always a worthwhile read. I used to take in on my Kindle, and am considering re-upping it.
