There will be some difficult assessments in the next years. The government has shut down the economy, relying on no obvious designated powers anyone knows. The presidential opponent substitutes dimness for Trump's brashness so it is doubtful it will be a source of much debate. There are no apparent Constitutional questions being raised about the shutdown so, presumably, it will serve as a precedent for future such actions.
These are truly grim times.
The Tyranny of Good Ideas
An element integral to the Western democracies is their inherent good heart. Perhaps it derives from the democracy's concern for the individual and the minority. Many have it to a lesser degree, many have not fully recognized it, but some sense of responsibility, some feeling of wanting to help, beats in all of them to a greater or lesser degree and is expressed in various individual national personalities. One could easily counter that the German government that succeded the Weimar Republic was democratically elected but that just proves the point: Democracies are structured to have baseline foundations to protect the citizens from the Tyranny of Good Ideas. Those basic structures, in the United States in the Constitution, limit the damage the government can do in its overconfident enthusiasms.
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