Why do I say this? Apart from his maniacal devotion to tariffs (more on that below), he is simply the most libertarian president, bar none, we have ever had. Consider the following magnificent contributions to a civilized order he has already made.
He is making valiant efforts to rid us of the scourge of DEI (for the cognoscenti, this stands for "Didn't Earn It"). Do we want to cure cancer, heart disease, and other deadly illnesses or not? Do we want colonies on the moon and Mars or not? Do we want to stop seeing our airplanes falling out of the sky and killing people, or not? If so, we need the best people in these jobs and laboratories. Skin color is entirely irrelevant. We should be entirely color blind. If the most skilled scientists, pilots, and air traffic controllers have green skin with pink polka dots, those are the ones we need.
As well, the 47th president of our country is making great leaps forward in reducing the size of our overwhelming, overarching, overreaching government. He is firing bureaucrats by the thousands; my favorite is the IRS. Not only are they non-productive, but worse, their edicts reduce the productivity of most of us. Don't we want to radically reduce poverty? The last best hope for this goal is to cut down our omnipresent government which retards economic growth. Ronald Reagan talked a better free enterprise philosophy than Donald Trump, but under the former, the US budget and debt rose. Not in the administration of the latter!
What about stultifying overregulation? In his first term in office, the only president we now have had a mantra: for every new regulation introduced, we must eliminate two. Nowadays, he has upped his game: for every new regulation enacted, we must eliminate ten of them!
Nor must we ever forget that he pardoned Ross Ulbricht for the non-violent, victimless crime of attempting to bring drugs to consenting adults. Kamala Harris would not have done any such thing in a million years.
How is he doing in foreign policy? Marvelously, once again. President Trump has cut great swathes out of so-called foreign aid. Much of it is wasted on the three M's. First, Monuments for the foreign dictators who receive this US taxpayer largesse. Sometimes this takes the form of a large statue of the president for life of the recipient country. All too often, it constitutes building a steel mill that produces this product at five times the price available on world markets. Second, there are Mercedes, which the tyrant can drive around and pad his Swiss bank account. Third, we must not forget Machine guns; we all know what they are used for. Our friends on the left complain that this means less money for the present devastation in Myanmar. US citizens are free to donate their own funds in such rare, deserving cases. Charity should be on a voluntary basis, not coerced through mandatory taxation.
The Donald is also trying to free up navigation. Not since the Barbary Pirates has anyone been interfering so substantially with peaceful shipping as the Houthis of Yemen in the Red Sea. Thanks to Mr. Trump, these terrorists have already been taken down a peg or two or three, with more such treatment in the offing.
As to the Middle East, he is making a valiant attempt to bring peace between the contending forces. His plan is to disperse the Gazans who have long been making unjustified war against Israel. Genocidal Hamas has not only long been murdering women and children and other Israeli civilians, but it has also used its people as shields, placing armaments in hospitals and schools. A new Riviera on the Mediterranean is just what is needed to settle these terrorists' hash.
Nor has his promotion of a justified peace been limited to that corner of the world. Mr. Trump is now in the process of trying to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He has long been attempting to personally befriend the leaders of China and North Korea so as to head off World War III. The man is a mensch.
My thought is that the 4-year hiatus he suffered from being cheated out of the presidency in 2020 has given him time to realize who his true enemies are. Many are in the judiciary. Many are in academia. Would he have had the chutzpah to threaten Columbia with the loss of almost half a billion dollars to get them to quell vicious anti-Semitism if he were previously in office? A case can be made that he needed this time out to better focus on what is essential.
There is, however, a fly in the ointment: his monomaniacal love for tariffs. The most beautiful word in the English language? Are other countries cheating us by selling us more than we buy from them? My balance of payments with McDonald's and Walmart is horrid. I buy stuff from them, then never reciprocate. On the other hand, I have a very substantial positive trade balance with my employer, Loyola University New Orleans. They pay me a decent salary, and I only buy a few lunches from them and rent a parking space. This is silly. Donald ought to enroll in a course in economics 101, and fire his present dismal science advisors, who really should have had their PhD degrees rescinded.
His instincts are in a libertarian direction. However, Mr. Trump is far from being fully committed to this, which is the one true political economic philosophy. If he were, in addition to many of his good works, he would seek to eliminate rent control, the minimum wage law, the Fed, and privatize social security and Medicare. A thorough cleansing of the Augean stables of Washington, DC is what is needed. Donald Trump is no Ron Paul.
