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Title: "Donald Trump Has Broken the Progressive Ratchet"
Source:
National Review
URL Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2025 ... roken-the-progressive-ratchet/
Published: Oct 27, 2025
Author: Rich Lowry
Post Date: 2025-10-27 10:35:39 by Mudboy Slim
Keywords: None
Views: 69
Comments: 2
His changes will be difficult to reverse. It’s axiomatic in Washington, D.C., that changes that are undertaken by administrative action alone are easy to reverse. There’s no doubt that if a Democratic president wins next time, he or she will undo much of what Trump has done through executive action, but will he or she be able to take it all the way back to where it was before? I don’t think so. It will certainly be goodbye to the Gulf of America and the Department of War, and ICE raids will stop immediately. But Trump has struck blows against long-standing progressive priorities that were pursued in a piecemeal fashion, meant to build up and become irreversible over time. On these, it will be hard for the left to recover — in other words, Trump has broken the progressive ratchet. How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we’d been assured would never happen is entrenched reality. It is the work of decades, and it depends on no one ever pushing things back in the other direction (that would be reactionary) and everyone’s accepting the endpoint as a fait accompli. To wit: First, women flying in combat roles. Then, women in ground combat roles, with the proviso that training and standards will stay the same. Then, gender-normed physical fitness tests and lower standards for everyone. First, race-neutral civil rights laws, then temporary affirmative action, then permanent quotas and set-asides, then a widespread corporate and educational architecture devoted to promoting racialist practices and ideology. First, respect and rights for gay people, then respect and rights for trans people, then everyone in America having to designate their pronouns, people getting shamed and fired for “misgendering” trans people, “gender-affirming” surgeries for minors, males competing in female sports, and the active encouragement of nonconforming sexual identities in the schools. Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it’s not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante. It took so long to get there in the first place that snapping back to politicized training standards, pervasive DEI, or the most outlandish forms of the trans agenda will be very difficult. Also, the sense of inevitability that the ratchet created, and the sense of helplessness on the part of opponents, has now been shattered. Finally, there’s the problem that plausible deniability has been lost. The ratchet allowed for radical social change to be sheathed in incrementalism and in the righteousness of the starting point — DEI was on a continuum with civil rights; watered-down physical standards on a continuum with the inclusion of women in combat roles who needed no special accommodation. Now, a revanchist Democratic administration would have to proceed directly to the most controversial and unpopular parts of the left’s agenda. The goals here might be so passionately held that any considerations of prudence will be thrown to the wind — Trump’s example of hasty and heedless action on all fronts may encourage a Democratic successor in this course. But getting the buy-in of all the corporate and educational players that were necessary to the left’s initial successes on DEI and the trans issue will be very hard, while the military establishment — which was acclimated to the new politically correct reality on fitness over time — might not be so compliant a second time around. At the very least, thanks to Trump, the ratchet is inoperative for now. It could occasionally pause and still function, but moving in the wrong direction is against the nature and point of the tool. In short, Trump’s wrench — pulled as mightily as possible — has called into question the future utility of the progressive ratchet. 
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These ratchets can work in BOTH directions...the Federal Leviathan is already $38 Trillion in debt and- -despite Trump's silly promises of a Tariff Dividend to all voters-- WeThePeople must balance the budget before you can pay down debt. Total Fed Spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product should be our North Star, with our ultimate goal being a steady annual regression of that number. Devolving Power from the Central Authority benefits States, Localities, and Individuals with ever-increasing liberty and the resulting Productivity and Wealth. RATchet Power Outta DeeCee...MUD
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