What Makes America Great

In an appearance on Derek Thompson’s Plain English, Ken Burns makes the bold claim that the American Revolution is “the most important event since the birth of Christ”. His reasoning is that everybody in the world before July 4, 1776 was a subject under authoritarian rule. Afterwards, people (increasingly so) were not, and that’s hugely important and good.

In my opinion, Trump will go down in history as at least one of the 3 worst presidents we’ve had, when we consider his economic policy, foreign policy, destruction of Presidential norms, disregard for the Constitution, etc. (It still blows my mind that this country elected him twice.) It’s difficult to choose what’s the worst part of his presidency. But if you ask me, the primary issue is that as much as he talks about making America great again, he fundamentally misunderstands the core principle that makes America great. And that is a distrust of authority and tyranny. A separation of powers. Democracy. Things that mark what Burns thinks of as America’s greatest gift to the world. Trump has no regard for any of those things in pursuit of.. what I don’t exactly know, he’s not exactly philosophically principled. But whatever that end is, using authoritarian means destroys what made America great from the beginning.

It’s actually fascinating to read the Declaration of Independence. Obviously the complaints apply specifically to King George III. But the spirit of many of the complaints apply today. A disregard for laws. Erecting new offices to harass the people. Using military force in times of peace without the consent of legislature. Deploying military forces among the citizenry. (Interestingly, there’s one complaint about preventing the naturalization of foreigners and discouraging migration, but I recognize that the context of that is different from today.) Things happening now are exactly why the United States was formed.

David Brooks is fairly pessimistic and believes that Trump’s authoritarian tendencies will only increase: “History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate. On the contrary, the normal course of the disease is toward ever-accelerating deterioration and debauchery.” He also notes that that concern was exactly what the founding fathers were worried about.

America can’t be great, can’t even be American, with an authoritarian leader.