The 21st Century has not produced a Great Man of History until now
[originally published 18 November 2024]
... I cannot think of a single politician in my lifetime, other than Trump, that I have felt any positive emotion toward at all...
Historical figures are another matter - or used to be. We were once allowed a certain reverence for the founders: Jefferson’s fierce independence, Washington’s selflessness, Franklin’s eccentric genius. These men were as near to demi-gods as a Christian nation will allow...
But would any of us say this about their modern counterparts? About either of the Clintons? The Bushes? Romney? McCain? Kerry? It’s laughable...
If it is true what John F. Kennedy said that “a nation reveals itself by the men it honors, the men it remembers,”... then what does it say about us if we no longer have the capacity to honor anyone?...
This all changes at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the evening of July 13, 2024...
History indeed makes a choice, and in sparing him, confers upon him a new role, one of strange consequence that is not so easily explained, but rather felt...
In the case of Trump, the near-death experience acts as a hinge on which the entire structure of his legacy turns, shifting him from a symbol of our period’s decadence and tragi-comic death-march, to a potential, even inevitable catalyst for its rebirth...
Trump has come to subsume and symbolize a moment in history - a confluence of forces that transcends any single person’s talents or intentions...
If there is anything I can say with certainty about Trump it is that he loves America and the American people. It is his primary quality, and is as authentic and apparent as anything about him...
I have never felt even close to this level of positive potential for America in my adult life...
Related
We, the People Affirm American Greatness - Courage trumped fear in 2024 as the American people reaffirmed their belief that greatness lies not in government but in themselves, by Thaddeus G. McCotter, American Greatness, 4 January 2025:
... The Harris campaign and her “progressive” supporters peddled a dire message that their loss would spell the end of “our democracy.”...
Thus, it should have proven no surprise that the Democrat presidential campaign was tantamount to a demand to perpetuate their empowerment of an unelected, unaccountable, bureaucratic elite (a.k.a., the “Administrative State”) to rule the nation with minimal interference from the citizenry...
Once, the conservative philosopher Russell Kirk asked the question: “Is it conceivable that American civilization, and in general what we call ‘Western civilization,’ may recover from the Time of Troubles that commenced in 1914…and in the twenty-first century enter upon an Augustan age of peace and restored order?”
Despite the momentous difficulties besetting our free people in this dangerous age, they have answered with a resounding “Yes!”..
It is to the eternal credit of the sovereign citizens of our bastion of liberty, equality, and pluralism that they have embraced his challenge to perpetuate and improve our nation’s revolutionary experiment in self-government...
Donald J. Trump: The Long Road to the White House (1980-2017):