Donald Trump and the Problem of Force

In our age of delicate sensibilities, reforms must be pursued through proxies and abstraction.

Conservatism has two modes: peacetime and wartime. When the social order is stable and healthy, conservatives seek to cultivate and maintain institutions. In times of chaos, a different kind of conservatism emerges, focused not on preservation but reform.

Donald Trump is a wartime conservative. Since his first presidential campaign, he has argued that Am…