The Trumpistas don't care about American democracy

China may be a single-party Communist state that restricts freedom of speech, religion, and the press, the defining marks of democracy. Yet Beijing has delivered what makes the Chinese people proud — a superpower nation to rival the mighty United States.Chinese citizens appear willing to pay, in restricted freedoms, the price of national greatness no modern Chinese generation had ever known.The same appears true of the Russian people.After the humiliation of the Boris Yeltsin era, Russians rallied to Vladimir Putin, an autocrat 18 years in power, for having retrieved Crimea and restored Russia to a great power that can stand up to the Americans.Consider those "illiberal" democracies of Central and Eastern Europe — the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Hungary.To preserve their national character and identity, all have chosen to refuse refugees from Africa and the Middle East. And if this does not comport with the liberal democratic values of the EU, so be it.President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that if the French had voted at the time Britain did, for Brexit, France, too, might have voted to get out of the European Union.Why? One reason, and, no, it's not the economy, stupid.It is the tribe. [Pat Buchanan, via The American Conservative]

The conventional wisdom sees the party as deeply and irrevocably split between its elite Paul Ryan wing and its Trump wing, probably headed toward civil war. My argument holds that the two wings are closely related. Ryan, Grover Norquist, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Koch brothers, and other advocates of the traditional party economic agenda have given [Trump] at least muted support. Economic libertarianism contains an intrinsic fear of the majority using the ballot box to redistribute resources from the few to the many. That terror is the basis of Ayn Rand's novels, which inspired Paul Ryan's career in public life. [New York]

Trump's court evangelicals have become active participants in the moral deregulation of our political life. Never mind whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute. Some evangelicals are busy erasing bright lines and destroying moral landmarks. In the process, they are associating evangelicalism with bigotry, selfishness, and deception. They are playing a grubby political game for the highest of stakes: the reputation of their faith. [The Washington Post]