Opinion: President Trump 2.0

November 5th made me a happy camper.  Setting aside slogans, there is much I hope the Trump administration will accomplish.  The five key areas are: prices, administrative reform, education, energy, and foreign policy, in no particular order, since I believe all can be pursued simultaneously.
Education reform is the most important.  Over the past three or four generations education in America has morphed from education to indoctrination.  The history of why this is so is long and complex.  It started with John Dewey in the late nineteenth century introducing professionalism into education predicated on a Prussian structural model and an atheist philosophical foundation.  He’s been dead since 1952, but looking down on the harvest which he sowed (looking up is far more likely), he must be immensely pleased.  As this election made clear, college educated voters — and especially those with graduate degrees, voted substantially for Harris, and those without voted substantially for Trump.  Given that education in this nation is controlled by the political left from kindergarten to graduate school, this should surprise no one.
Changing this condition will take a very long time — after all, it’s been building for nearly 150 years — a real Augean stable!  The recent behaviors in some of our most “prestigious” schools make a mockery of what should be a university.  K-12 is almost everywhere a disaster — an extremely expensive disaster.  A tsar of education is called for, and if President Trump wishes to give me a call, I’m available.
High prices of practically everything have wreaked havoc with many middle and lower income individuals.  High income individuals are mostly unaffected, except the cost of mansions has gone up as well.  Energy enters into this in a big way — everything we buy has an energy cost in it somewhere.  This intertwines with why prices have shot up over the past few years: regulatory excess.
The other day I was chatting with the owner of a lumber mill discussing the price of housing.  His opinion was regulations cost fifteen percent of the cost of a house — or perhaps more, depending on the jurisdiction.  Some regulations make it impossible to build at all, and thus the “housing shortage” bidding up the price of what is available.  Econ 101: supply and demand.
The solutions here are quite simple:  deregulate, stop wasting billions on “green” energy, and drill baby drill.  Start on day one.
Administrative reform, as education reform, is deeply challenging.  The managerial state has been growing since Theodore Roosevelt.  The reason is starkly plain: the upper income and highly educated elites believe quite simply they know better how to run your life than you do.  Zealots of all stripes are attracted to regulatory jobs as flies to meadow muffins.  The pay is good, you get to tell other people what to do, and you get to live out your various substitute religions, such as environmentalism.  President Trump will have his hands full here.  These people hate him, did everything they could to sabotage his first administration, and absolutely will try to do so again.
Already the media is decrying Trump’s appointment of “loyalists” to high office.  Good.  That’s a start.  Now when he can substitute thousands of loyalists for thousands of enemies, we might actually get some regulatory relief.  Better yet, shutter as much as possible, then we won’t have to worry about who’s running the show.
That leaves foreign policy.  As I have opined several times in the past, America has no choice but to be the policeman to the world.  We didn’t ask for it, but that’s the way the last century or so has worked out.  From the little town I live in to the world, any place without police is a dangerous place indeed.  With police it’s bad enough.  Consider Chicago.
Once again Trump will face keen opposition.  To be credible, a police force has to have teeth, and our commanding generals have been far more concerned with cultural issues than fighting wars.  D.E.I. and C.R.T. are not about to strike terror into our adversaries.  Wokeism stands in stark contrast to the warrior ethos. 
 A number of woke generals will have to go.  One hopes peaceably.
— Charles Milliken is a professor emeritus after 22 years of teaching economics and related subjects at Siena Heights University. He can be reached at [email protected].