Reactions to Trump are mostly over-blown and unhelpful

Foreign policy is the one area where a US President has fairly wide latitude. We must hope that the generals and diplomats on Mr Trump's staff will, when they are finally in place, provide a restraining hand.

So far, however, domestic policies have been at the fore and their greatest impact has arguably been in shaking up the sense of entitlement which seems to have gripped many liberal voters in the US and abroad.

The liberal wing of international politics is now making the same mistake that conservatives made in the 1980s. They have talked themselves into believing that their approach is the only sane one and that the wisdom of the collective will accept this as a done deal.

Let's also bear in mind that the last US election saw the American people presented with what looked like a fairly poor choice.

When asked for my thoughts by journalists before and during the US election, I mused about how little I envied American voters.

On the one hand, they were presented with a political novice who often seems to say the first thing that pops into his head. On the other, in Hillary Clinton they were offered a candidate who seemed ready and willing to shift her core positions on important policies according to the winds of political expediency. Mrs. Clinton clearly did this on her economics agenda, as she attempted to negotiate storm Saunders.

Though I do not as yet advocate for or against Mr. Trump, I admire America and sincerely hope that its president confounds early expectations. Other presidents have done so before him. (Still others have, on at least some fronts, fallen short of ridiculously high expectations, former President Obama perhaps being a case in point.)

Finally, much has been written in recent years about the so-called "Wisdom of Crowds". This is the idea that digital communications technology makes it easier to reach large groups of people and involve them in decision-making. Choices made this way, so the theory goes, will be wiser because more people have been engaged.

However, even a cursory glance at history reveals that crowds don't always get things right. In fact, crowds often get things disastrously wrong. Group-think often becomes gloop-think; setting up regimes of thought and emotion that once entrenched are had to dislodge, yet which ultimately prove to be unhealthy and even disastrous.

For some, the first impulse will be to take to the barricades in response to whatever the new president does. This will make for a headline or two, but it won't lend itself to the discovery of wisdom and may delude us into thinking that drawing a crowd in and of itself justifies our position.

There's no point demonstrating against the very idea of a President Trump. It's time for people on all sides to engage as proactively as possible, not naively but in recognition that Americans have demanded change, as is their right.

It's time for leftists to accept that their agenda is not being a free pass and for conservatives to understand that with power comes huge responsibility - not just for executing an agenda but for keeping debate alive and pursuing the common good.