Democracy and despotism in a digital age.
Our President Seizes the Moral High Ground
In his State of the Union President Trump seized the moral high ground in the on-going argument over the crisis, indeed, the national emergency, on our southern border. The key moment in his powerful speech came when the President directly addressed the border crisis by declaring:
“This is a moral issue. The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial wellbeing of all America. We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our people.”
These words are a full-throated articulation of American constitutional morality. The sacred duty of our elected officials is to ensure that the safety and well-being of Americans comes before any other considerations. In Federalist No 3, Publius stated: “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their Safety seems to be the first.”
Turning the tables on the hypocritical open-borders “moralists” in Congress and in the donor class, President Trump explains how “tolerance for illegal immigration” is “not compassionate” but “very cruel” because it hurts vulnerable American workers. In other words, it hurts the least among us. While his opponents seek to cripple our brave border patrol agents, the President asks Congress to defend America’s national border “out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and our country.” Masterful, Mr. President.
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Suggested reading
In 2010, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevilla reintroduced the notion of "the ruling class" back into American popular discourse. In 2017, he described contemporary American politics as a "cold civil war." Now he applies the "logic of revolution" to our current political scene.
Claremont Institute Senior Fellow John Marini is one of the few experts on American Government who understood the rise of Trump from the beginning of the 2016 election cycle. Now he looks to the fundamental question that Trump's presidency raises: is the legitimacy of our political system based on the authority of the American people and the American nation-state, or the authority of experts and their technical knowledge in the service of "progress"?
