The A Yeoman Farmer Series Part IV:

The author makes it appear that “fundamental change” is required without saying

what is a fundamental change. He hits at something deeper, something larger,

something longer lasting, something permanent, but he dares not address it. If

Trump is the fundamental change, we must wonder what was Franklin Roosevelt or

Lyndon Johnson? Were they the continuity candidates? We can believe that America

needs changes and there are areas of great or even urgent attention and we can

also know that the 2016 election is nowhere as important or requiring a “fundamental

change” as say the 1932 election or the 1968 election.

Leaving aside the hyperbole, which is quite difficult since the piece and its thinking

are infused with it, we face the fundamental question that is still unasked. The author

assumes that the policy prescriptions he has described, or the “right stances” on

policy issues, are what needs to change. If this is the radical change, the

“fundamental change”, then we have to ask: “How is this different from just another

series of policy proposals?” Within the essay, we do not find a fundamental or *the*

fundamental question, which would indicate a crisis of the magnitude exists, has

been asked.

End Part IV

Endnotes

6. When Professor Kesler used to make similar glib statements in his graduate seminars, some

students would ask afterwards about a particular statements and he would often grin and prevaricate

demonstrating his superior rhetorical skills and thus provided the more advanced students a second

seminar in the art of sophistry or the challenge of trying to differentiate the philosopher and the

sophist. One student, a veritable ubermensch, would often buy him a beer to congratulate him for

being particularly skilled in dodging that day’s questions. In the academic arena such games are

educative. In the public domain, they prove problematic because they display a desire to flatter and

dissemble to promote a man singularly unqualified to be president as the public cannot discern their

educative effect and only their political effect. If an academic is to dabble in politics, the least they can

be is responsible, but history has shown academics, particularly German ones have been less than

responsible when getting involved in politics.

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