Another election is over (not counting the N.C. governor’s race). Thomas Sowell‘s latest column at National Review Online ponders the post-election future.
The good news is that we dodged a bullet in this election. The bad news is that we don’t know how many other bullets are coming, or from what direction.
A Hillary Clinton victory would have meant a third consecutive administration dedicated to dismantling the institutions that have kept America free, and imposing instead the social vision of the smug elites. That could have been the ultimate catastrophe — not just for our time, but for generations yet unborn.
In one sense, Donald Trump’s victory was a unique American event. But, in a larger sense, it represents the biggest backlash among many elsewhere, against smug elites in Western nations, where increasing numbers of ordinary people are showing their anger at where those elites are leading their countries.
There, as here, mindlessly flinging the doors open to peoples from societies whose fundamental values clash with those of the countries they enter has been a hallmark of arrogant blindness and disregard of negative consequences suffered by ordinary people — consequences from which the elites themselves are insulated.
Nor is this the only issue on which the blindness of elites has set the stage for a political backlash. The anti-law-enforcement fetish among the insulated elites has even more tragically sacrificed the safety of the general public. This, too, has been common on both sides of the Atlantic. …
… Donald Trump’s unexpected victory should send a lot of people back to the drawing board to rethink their assumptions about many things. That includes not only the political Left, but also the Republican establishment. But don’t count on it.
