Silicon Valley investor and billionaire Peter Thiel has delivered a spirited defense of the Trump agenda for change, focusing in a wide-ranging speech on the failures of leadership and the future of the Republic.

Mr. Thiel says he is "voting for Trump because other politicians are 'just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.'" Thiel contends that Trumpism is a bad dream for the political establishment:

… To the people who are used to influencing our choice of leaders, to the wealthy people who give money and the commentators who give reasons why, it all seems like a bad dream[.] … They just want to move on. Come November 9, they hope everyone else will go back to business as usual.

Discussing the stock market bubble and crash presided over by Bill Clinton and the housing bubble and crash presided over by George W. Bush, Thiel observes:

Voters are tired of being lied to[.] … It was both insane and somehow inevitable that DC insiders expected this election to be a rerun between the two political dynasties who led us through the two most gigantic financial bubbles of our time. That's how long the same people have been pursuing the same disastrous policies.

Thiel would have preferred to see a "race between Trump and Sanders" since both in their different ways "viscerally feel the decline of America."

Thiel further notes that government once did the Manhattan Project and the moon landing:

Voters are tired of hearing conservative politicians say that government never works[.] … They know the government wasn't always this broken.

Rush Limbaugh quoted from Mr. Thiel's speech:

Just as much as it's about making America great, Trump's agenda is about making America a normal country. A normal country doesn't have a half trillion dollar trade deficit. A normal country doesn't fight five simultaneous undeclared wars. In a normal country, the government actual does its job.

Following World War I, presidential candidate Warren G. Harding campaigned on a "return to normalcy," meaning at the time a break from war and President Wilson's idealistic notions.

In today's context, a "normal" country might include government that serves the people, following constitutional rules and defending constitutional rights.

Does a normal country allow its borders to be overrun by illegal aliens and nefarious actors?

Does a normal country allow its military to become depleted to levels not seen since before World War II?

Does a normal country send its young people to lose life and limb in foreign lands and then abandon the fight for political expediency?

Does a normal country allow its military veterans to die awaiting medical treatment and to live without homes?

Does a normal country ship out its jobs in the name of globalism and international order?

Does a normal country turn its already problematic health care system upside-down in pursuit of political utopia?

Does a normal country indoctrinate its children with anti-American notions and call it education?

Does a normal country demand political correctness while glorifying cultural rot?

Does a normal country foment resentment of its most productive citizens?

Does a normal country embrace the status quo of corruption and decline, when, as Peter Thiel notes, "we're on the Titanic, and it's about to sink"?

Does a normal country live through a national disgrace of a presidential couple as crooked as the day is long and then nominate them for yet another term?

Mr. Thiel considers Hillary Clinton "much more dangerous than Trump" in one more respect:

The kind place where I worry about the most on a policy level is, do we get into more wars or not? … I'm not sure if that's more of a temperament or more a matter of world view, but certainly I would worry much more in that with Hillary getting us into wars.

While Thiel focuses on the need for new leadership in a declining America, a National Review piece by Deroy Murdock warns of the devastating effects of the armies of statists a President Hillary Clinton would appoint at all levels of government, from judicial and cabinet to agency and staff:

A President Hillary Clinton would nominate hundreds of people to top positions that require Senate approval. She would hire hundreds of thousands of others and unleash them to perpetrate Hillaryism – a toxic blend of lies, elitist nannyism, secretive paranoia, and snarling contempt for the law. These people would enjoy police powers, fat salaries, mouth-watering benefits, and bullet-proof job security – at taxpayer expense. … [S]he would hire smart, focused, far-left lawyers, economists, inspectors, and administrators to enter the bureaucracy, burrow like termites, and slowly nibble away at what remains of this beautiful country. Thousands of young Rodhamites could infest America's federal agencies and cause incalculable damage until they retire – 30 or 40 years hence.

Mr. Murdock to his credit presents the "flip side of this threat" that Mr. Trump would bring to the presidency, even suggesting a potential cabinet list:

In contrast to that frightful picture, visualize the conservative, free-market constitutionalists whom Donald J. Trump would place in those positions. Think carefully. Vote accordingly.

Hillaryism piled on Obamaism is a very bad dream for America.

A new return to normalcy in America starts with a break from the toxic mix of liberalism and corruption.