The terms conservative and Republican are already underwater, the tradition of American patriotism is facing an onslaught of defamation, and now Barr goes in front of the Federalist Society and paints constitutionalism as chiefly interested in the power and authority of the executive.

I knew there were going to be scars from the Trump era that would take a long time to heal, but I never expected the assault on the founding ideals to be so systemic.

And you know what, Trump alone could have never accomplished this kind of change in the philosophical foundations of conservatism.

While this phenomenon will be remembered in history as Trumpism, it is the enablers of Trump who will be chiefly responsible for the most long-lasting damage.

Donald Trump is a second-rate reality tv star who stumbled into a sense of rage on the American right and rode that rage into the White House as its avatar.

If Republican politicians, conservative media, and the voters who had once been serious about their convictions had treated Trump as the “lesser of two evils” they claimed to view him as in 2016, this whole thing would have been little more than a hiccup.

But no, they embraced him, they defended him unequivocally, they made excuses for him, and little-by-little they re-painted and re-branded the very notion of conservatism until it has become something different altogether.

In the end, all the conservative movement’s high-minded notions about limited government principles caved to the desire for power and the primal craving to “own the libs”.

My daily prayer is that in the wake of Trump, the conservative remnant can find a way to resurrect the principles of the founding from the ashes of this nightmare before the rising generations complete Wilson’s founding of a progressive democracy.

My greatest fear is that Trump & his enablers have set the stage for a final loud, boisterous but resounding end to the fight to preserve the republic. I fear my children growing up in a nation embarking on a progressive utopian project, instead of a free constitutional republic.

No matter what happens, I will not go quietly into the night.

#TruthFromTheAshes #TheRemnant

Justin Stapley is the owner and editor of The Liberty Hawk. As a political writer, his principles and ideas are grounded in the ideas of ordered liberty as expressed in the traditions of classical liberalism, federalism, and modern conservatism. You can follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

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