As FedSoc co-founder Steven Calabresi’s embrace of the stolen-election lie shows, if you are a conservative in 2024, you can be a critic of Trump, or you can be relevant. But you cannot be both.
The Trump fanatics in the Federalist Society might gain some important insights from actually reading The Federalist Papers. In The Federalist No. 9, for example, Alexander Hamilton criticized "the advocates of despotism" who "have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exultation over its friends and partisans."
In The Federalist No. 1, Hamilton could have been responding directly to Calabresi's criticism of Trump's trials for the crimes he has committed:
“An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.” But “a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
The Trump fanatics in the Federalist Society might gain some important insights from actually reading The Federalist Papers. In The Federalist No. 9, for example, Alexander Hamilton criticized "the advocates of despotism" who "have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exultation over its friends and partisans."
In The Federalist No. 1, Hamilton could have been responding directly to Calabresi's criticism of Trump's trials for the crimes he has committed:
“An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.” But “a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”