ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Symptomatic of the regressive left, anti-Trump protesters have stormed forth from their parents’ basements to decry both President-elect Trump and the public who just made him the world’s most powerful servant.

During their exercise in political infantilism, the left’s chants direly predict a Trump presidency will ineluctably result in domestic oppression and international conflict. Fortunately, the left’s paranoid animadversions and predictions are mistaken.

As is its wont, the party of big government cannot fathom its fellow Americans who want what the Founders promised and delivered: a limited government. Indeed, to the governmental and financial elites the message of Trump voters — and many who voted for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — was “Stop!” Akin to the populist uprising against the Washington elites at the end of “The Era of Good Feeling,” sovereign citizens were disgusted and tired with a political system that was systematically stacked against them, despite the fact it was constitutionally created and designed to serve them.

Thus, the crucial irony: Trump voters supported a limited, accountable federal government that will never have the arbitrary and capricious power required to impose domestic oppression upon Americans. Contrarily, the left demands big government, one that will, in unwitting fact, be powerful enough to impose the very horrors they protest. For, in the end, big government does not stop chaos — it is chaos.

Exacerbating their shock at the election’s outcome, the left is ideologically blind to the fact that the communication revolution has fossilized big government. With every Facebook post, tweet or complaint on Yelp that goes viral and makes a multinational corporation wobble, people are being empowered to extents undreamt to make their own decisions and control their own destinies (as they post a few selfies).

This 24/7 revolution in personal empowerment has rendered the vertically integrated, highly centralized bureaucratic state not only obsolete but an obstruction to people’s pursuit of happiness — i.e., in today’s world, big government is inherently oppressive. Again, the irony is lost upon the anti-Trump protesters who apparently desire an omnipotent federal government choosing their doctor and their iPod mix.

For the anti-Trump left, who haven’t exactly been beating the streets protesting the Obama administration’s unparalleled use of military force, the ironies are no less rife in foreign affairs. As President-elect Trump has made clear, he is not an advocate of the shortsighted strategic alliances, impetuous interventions or nation-building we have recently seen from both Democratic and Republican administrations.

In fact, as all rational people abhor war, the incoming Trump administration will doubtless heed President Kennedy’s sage counsel: “And if there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.” This explains, in part, why Mr. Trump rejects Mr. Obama’s “leading from behind” strategy of blame America and hope for the best, which has resulted in rewarding and emboldening our nation’s enemies and alienating her allies. (Surely, the anti-Trump protesters denouncing the havoc he may wreak can spare a moment to decry the carnage in Syria the present administration has wrought? No?)

Eschewing martial means and Machiavellian alliances of convenience, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy vision is premised upon the traditional beauty and duty of our free republic: namely, as together we strive to perfect our union, the greatest benefit we bequeath to humanity is to show what a free people can achieve.

This, then, is the fundamental disagreement between the left and Mr. Trump. The left’s antiquated ideology stubbornly claims the solution to America’s problems are big government and global bureaucrats. Mr. Trump understands the solution to America’s challenges of peace and prosperity remain her people.

Thus, an overarching irony: Last Tuesday the American people didn’t seek to solve their problems by voting to elect Mr. Trump; the American people sought to solve their problems by voting to empower themselves. As always, the public is wise; and, thus, it is the public — not Mr. Trump — the protesters are actually denouncing.

In the spirit of charity and national healing, let us be clear that this is not an attempt to bait anti-Trump protesters into pitching a fit and a pup tent on every Trump supporter’s lawn. They may try. It is a challenge for the left and its anti-Trump protesters to explain — in rhyme or otherwise — why, during an unprecedented epoch of personal empowerment, they do not trust the American people to make their own decisions and direct the destiny of our nation.

• Thaddeus G. McCotter served four years as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee.

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