Populism: The ‘Extremist’ Vision of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Reagan

[endicom]

American Greatness
Steven J. Allen
Aug. 8, 2018

At the heart of the current conflict in American politics is the belief among privileged elites that grassroots members of the pro-Trump movement—the “populists”—are ignorant low-lifes, “deplorables” who should stay in their trailer parks and be barred from the halls of power. That perception justifies in their minds actions ranging from boycotts and blacklisting to window-smashing protests and illegal spying on political adversaries.

Consider Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA who recently likened President Trump to Hitler. A man responsible for literally billions of violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, Hayden heads an institute in his name at George Mason University outside Washington, D.C. One of the Hayden Center’s programs is dedicated to “examining the ongoing assault on evidence-based institutions, like intelligence, the media, the law, and academia, in a post-truth world darkened by the rise of populism and autocracy.”

The tin-foil-hat language, from the organization of a person who has held immense power, takes your breath away. Consider the suggestion that our world is being “darkened” by populism.

More... https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/08/populism-the-extremist-vision-of-jefferson-lincoln-and-reagan/

[Right_in_Virginia]

Ronald Reagan, running for president in 1976, campaigned against the “Washington buddy system,” and a Reagan brochure that year proclaimed his opposition to “the forces that have brought us our problems—the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor. If America is to survive and go forward, this must change. And it will change only when the American people vote for a leadership that is not part of the entrenched Washington establishment, leaders who will not be fettered by old commitments and friendships . . . ”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/08/populism-the-extremist-vision-of-jefferson-lincoln-and-reagan/

[endicom]

Ronald Reagan, running for president in 1976, campaigned against the “Washington buddy system,” and a Reagan brochure that year proclaimed his opposition to “the forces that have brought us our problems—the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor. If America is to survive and go forward, this must change. And it will change only when the American people vote for a leadership that is not part of the entrenched Washington establishment, leaders who will not be fettered by old commitments and friendships . . . ”

Yup. Using populist as pejorative is left-witted nonsense.