On October 13, the fall 2016 Acton Lecture Series continued with a timely address from Benjamin Domenech, publisher of The Federalist and host of The Federalist Radio Hour, who spoke on the rise of American populism.
Domenech looks at the history of populism in America, from Andrew Jackson to William Jennings Bryan, and traces that strain in American politics straight through to the rise of Donald Trump. According to Domenech, the roots of the current populist uprising in America can be traced to the failure of elite institutions to address or even acknowledge the problems and needs of average citizens:
Today, big government and its partner big banks, business, labor, ag, and their armies of lobbyists represent a common enemy to both communities and individuals. Organic communitarianism depends on individual agency and autonomy in the market and in civil society. The breakdown of the ability of our neighborhoods to self govern is collateral damage brought about by the left’s war on individual liberty and the rise of an illiberal technocratic left, those who seek to absorb, marginalize, or extinguish institutions of civil society which compete with them and the state.
Domenech’s address can be viewed in full below.
