Jeffrey Tucker of the Foundation for Economic Education hits the heart of why good people are falling for the Trump bait in his take down of Trump’s new socialist economic policy proposals, the plan that only Bernie Sanders could love.
Trump has fashioned himself as anti-establishment, a classic populist. You might think that has something to do with being anti-government, but you would be terribly wrong. For him, “anti-establishment” has always simply meant that the wrong people are in charge.
He has been disdainful of political correctness, made the right noises on guns and global warming, and so on. He opposes the left, which the naive observer might misinterpret as opposing government overreach.
Surely we should know better. The twentieth century, during which time fascism wreaked havoc on liberty, and did so in the name of opposing the communist threat, was not that long ago. In any case, illustrious minds like F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises bore witness to this and tried to tell the world about the dangers of rightest authoritarians.