What I hope for in the Trump presidency is exactly the cultural battle that he already seems to have engaged. Even before taking office he has put himself at odds with America’s entrenched cultural and institutional liberalism, and brought deep insecurity to its standard-bearers.

My greatest hope for the Trump administration is that it find a way to sidle up to this concept, this way of life, called individual responsibility. In today’s liberalism that phrase is nuclear when spoken in connection to any formerly victimized group. FDR asked Americans to work harder, and he asked without compunction. He saw that agency—the power to change things—resided in the ordinary. Will Mr. Trump be immune enough to all of today’s idealisms to say that responsibility is the single most important component of social uplift—and therefore of equality?

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