If you believe in Janan Ganesh’s latest Financial Times column, America may be doomed. The subtitle of the column encapsulates the arguments. “Rebellion” [Trump] It’s not a HGE, it’s not a constitutional constitution. “In other words, America’s large and decisive proports do not believe in constitutional principles that constrain the state (“does not comfort us from the backlash of America’s Trump,” May 7, 2025).
Constitutional political and economics, derivatives of economics, particularly public choice theory, study social rules and institutional choice. If we accept the “critical normative premise” that a place of value is exclusive to the individual, then the basic rules and institutions of political society – the “constitution” – must be formal or informal – and we must be able to obtain unanimous consent of the individual, as in a social contract. This excludes control of sub-individuals by Thue, who controls the state. You might say that constitutional political economy analyses the economics of constitutionalism, the rule of law, and state constraints. (See Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s The Rease of Rules and my Econlib review.)
An interview with President Donald Trump by NBC’s Kristen Welker includes subjects sold for the constitutional rule of the nation and the rule of law.
Kristen Welker:
But even if you’re given the numbers you’re talking about [the “million or 2 million or 3 million trials” that would be required before deportation]Do we need to support the US Constitution as president?
press. Donald Trump:
I don’t know. I have to answer again by saying that there are great lawyers who work for me, and they are clearly going to follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They must interpret differently.
At the time of his appointment, Trump pledged the oath provided for in Articles 1, 1 and 8 of the Constitution. He said Liarra:
I, Donald John Trump, swears strictly that I will faithfully enforce the US Presidential Office. So please help me.
Why not include “maintaining, protecting, and defending”? Trump didn’t add after sworn that he “I don’t know” or “I rely on what a brilliant lawyer says.” Populists today do not usually assert personal responsibility and integrity, but they emphasize on the experts who need to include lawyers (particularly their own lawyers and courtiers).
Or can events be reorganized according to the interests of the interpreter, or are there alternative realities? We have observed many instances of this approach. In Springfield, Ohio, Haitians ate Good American pets. The Trump administration has already saved more than a third of America’s lives (as Attorney General Pat Bondy said when he didn’t say three-quarters). The US government was unable to bring home prisoners who felt illegally foreign, and paid them to the government to incarcerate them. And so on.
To put the question from a larger perspective, does the constitution mean that, as Jasai’s Anthony argued, cannot “security-only government and individual sovereignty”? Or does it mean that the “end of truth” foreshadowed by Friedrich Hayek under socialism has arrived in America? The decline in respect for constitutional principles has been honeeded by Ganesh. It’s worrying to say the least.
The Trump administration’s total goals may be related to the defense of individual freedoms, but they are rare and compromised by the use of authoritarian measures that are very likely to promote Leviathan’s progress. The promotion of individual loyalty to principles, the replacement of courtiers for advisors, the attacks on independent judicial systems and legitimate processes, and the embarrassment of truth became a continuing spectacle.
Political tribalism is one of the hypotheses evoked by Ganesh to explain why many voters do not respond.
For total voters, political tribes provide a sense of belonging that 11 religious affiliations had before church members declined in the United States. Just as worshippers do not have the words to be said about the pastor’s obvious low life, the emotions, structures of their peers are so important that they neglect all ethical anxiety. The left isn’t that different.
You may also remember Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of “creative destruction” fame, wrote about politics (capitalism, socialism, democracy, 3rd edition, p. 262).
The typical citizen falls to a lower level of mental performance when he quickly invades the political field. I argue and analyze in a way that he was readily used as a toddler within his own realm of interest. I’m primitive again.
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Politicians and his voters as primitives
