Donald Trump’s election could be a magnificent opportunity for the country. Despite his character defects and less than stellar adherence to anything remotely approaching a conservative philosophy, Trump will have a Republican-controlled Congress as his co-equal — and will need their cooperation to undo a bevy of nasty Obama policies. Trump’s victory could usher in an era of a conservative renewal.
It could also mainstream a despicable fringe of Trump supporters known as the alt-right. Trump’s most ardent fan base in the primaries and the general election sprang from the alt-right. Its adherents don’t believe in constitutional conservatism, since, according to them, that philosophy fails to account for racial and ethnic differences in intelligence and aggression, among other purportedly biological features. They disdain the ideology of the Founders. As Richard Spencer, who publishes the website AlternativeRight, states: “Our dream is a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans. It would be a new society based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration of Independence.”
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