If, per America's founders, a republic presupposes virtue; whatever it is we are now presupposes a lack of it.

Mark Steyn:

But Boris [Johnson] in a certain sense is taking Trump to the next level - that, as the bounds of acceptable politics have become ever narrower and more constrained, only a certain size of personality can bust through them, and thus in such a world a low moral character is not faute de mieux but vital and necessary - at least if you're serious about screwing over the EU commissars. If, per America's founders, a republic presupposes virtue; whatever it is we are now presupposes a lack of it.

...

Trump is president and Boris is within grasp of Downing Street because regular life-sized conventional politics has failed. The "Trump Derangement Syndrome" types are missing the point: he's their creation. Enough of the electorate has concluded that a choice between Woke-fevered Democrats and Koch-funded Republicans is insufficient...


If respectable politicians are forbidden to raise certain subjects, the voters will turn to unrespectable ones. The people are telling their rulers something important here. The longer the ruling class - in Washington, London, Paris and elsewhere - refuse to listen, the worse it is going to be...

Trump - and Boris Johnson - are where they are because they are outsize characters who will not be bound by the Lilliputian bastards on the Left who have so angered normal people that they are willing, eager even, to find a way of kicking the Left Wing Fascists in the nuts.