What is Populism?
1.
1. A principle that the citizenry of a nation decides its government's endeavors.
2. An often noisy and/or militant mob mentality fostering anti-intellectualism, which operates from primitive emotional instincts rather than from civil, substantive disagreement.
1. As a result of the populism shown at yesterday's peaceful protests, we shall seek to come to a more bipartisan agreement on the current House bill.
2. It was pure pandemonium at the nationwide teabagging festivals last week, which included political hacks as guest speakers, conservatives who falsely claimed that liberals were "protesting with them," anarchists who don't understand why we have taxes in the first place, brainwashed individuals who don't realize they actually benefit from the stimulus bill, conspiracy theorists, libertarians who are protesting taxation WITH representation, Calvinists who think colonial Americans were "saints" just because they lived in an earlier time period even though they owned slaves and often came down with syphilis, and attention whores who like to think they're just like these colonial revolutionaries of the 1700s.
In other words, there was much populism.
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2.
A simplistic ideology that focuses on grievance and often implies there is an easy solution but often lacks concrete proposals.
Knee-jerk hostility to trade and immigration are tenets of populism
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