Rudy Barnes, Jr., March 8, 2025
Before Trump’s Republicans took charge of American politics, I believed the church could be a moral steward of promoting the common good and political legitimacy. I was wrong. Now that Trump and his “Christian” charlatans have corrupted the political legitimacy of America’s politics, it will take more than the church to save America from ourselves.
David French has emphasized the priority of the Constitution as the foundation of law in America, but after the vast majority of Christians voted twice to make Trump their President, the church has lost its moral compass, being more concerned with its popularity than with challenging a corrupt Trump regime and restoring political legitimacy in America.
The altruistic moral teachings of Jesus are summarized in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves. Its moral imperative is to provide for the common good, but that has been lost in America’s polarized politics. It will take an emphasis on supporting and defending the Constitution to promote the common good in America’s politics.
Holding the President accountable to support and defend the Constitution has become a legal priority in America, with Vance and Musk castigating President Zolensky during his visit to the White House. It was an egregious example of Trump seeking to reshape the Constitution to increase the power of the executive branch at the expense of Congress.
Trump, Vance and Musk have already begun dismantling the federal workforce and terminating ongoing federal domestic and foreign programs with no Constitutional authority or Congressional mandate. There is no moral or legal precedent for their irresponsible behavior; and so far the courts have not stopped Trump’s wreckage of the Constitutional order.
It’s a supreme test for the viability of America’s Constitutional democracy, and Trump’s Republicans in Congress have been marching lock-step with him. With the American church silent on this existential moral and political disaster, David French has said, “As Trump destroys institutions, he destroys trust. And trust, once destroyed, is the most difficult thing to restore.”
David French reminds us, “As we experience the consequences of Trump’s actions, we’re learning exactly why the /founders did not want the president to reign supreme. We’re reminded once again that they possessed keen insight into the perils of governing a large fractious nation by executive fiat.”
Like other demagogues, Trump has often threatened to use military force to maintain order on his terms as he dismantles the Constitution and expands his power. Ironically, Trump, or his successor, may have to consider mobilizing the military to support and defend the Constitution in America. If so, Zolensky would appreciate the irony.
Notes:
“President Trump is doing damage to America that could take a generation or more to repair. The next election cannot fix what Trump is breaking. Neither can the one after that. To understand the gravity of the harm Trump has inflicted on the United States in the first month and a half of his presidency, a comparison with the Cold War is helpful. Republicans and Democrats often had sharp differences in their approach to the Soviet Union. At no point did Americans go to the polls and choose between one candidate committed to NATO and another candidate sympathetic to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The very idea would have been fantastical. American elections could reset our national security strategy, but they did not change our bedrock alliances. They did not change our fundamental identity.
Until now. Consider what happened in the Oval Office on Friday February 29. Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on live television. Vance accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful,” and Trump attacked him directly: You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III and what you’re doing to this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should. Trump has taught our most important strategic partners a lesson they will not soon forget: America can — and will — change sides. As we experience the consequences of Trump’s actions, we’re learning exactly why the founders did not want the president to reign supreme. We’re reminded once again that they possessed keen insight into the perils of governing a large, fractious nation by executive fiat. By challenging the constitutional order, Trump is challenging the stability of the American system itself.” On Trump doing real damage to America, see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/opinion/trump-ukraine-zelensky-usaid.html.
WSJ Editorial Board Veiled Warning, Trump’s Old World Order, May 2, 2025
It seems clear that Mr. Trump wants to wash his hands of Ukraine. “You’re either going to make a deal, or we’re out,” Mr. Trump ordered Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. This will embolden Vladimir Putin to insist on even harsher terms for a cease-fire deal. Mr. Trump is hammering traditional U.S. friends. He plans 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, in violation of his own USMCA trade deal, and his defense secretary has threatened to invade Mexico to pursue drug cartels. He wants to hit Western Europe with heavy tariffs on its autos, and slap reciprocal tariffs on the rest of the trading world. Meanwhile in the Americas, Mr. Trump has demanded control over the Panama Canal, which the U.S. ceded by treaty in 1999. And he wants Denmark to sell Greenland to the U.S. These moves taken together hint at a worldview that has long been the goal of American isolationists: Let China dominate the Pacific, Russia dominate Europe, and the U.S. the Americas. All of this would amount to an epochal return to the world of great power competition and balance of power that prevailed before World War II. It’s less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one. Mr. Trump hasn’t articulated this, but some of the intellectuals surrounding him have. Elbridge Colby has argued that the U.S. must leave Europe and the Middle East to their own devices to focus on the Asia-Pacific. But he has also said that South Korea might have to fend for itself, and he said in a letter to us last year that “Taiwan isn’t itself of existential importance to America.” Mr. Trump has an obligation to tell Americans what new order he thinks he is building. Then we can have a debate about his intentions and their consequences.
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