Our republic is sick. The Machiavelli of Mar-a-Lago has the cure.



A progressive friend said something insightful weeks ago: “Trump doesn’t feel like he’s in power unless someone is getting hurt.”

His observation came during the public “breakup” of Elon Musk and President Trump over Musk's criticism of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — but before Trump sent U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to help quell riots over immigration enforcement. And before Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear targets. And before the right splintered over America’s role in Israel’s war.

Tucker Carlson’s ‘peace first’ politics will keep the moral high ground, but Trump’s exercise of power affirms his political legitimacy.

As a political science major, our friend owes some of his prescience to his undergraduate study of Niccolo Machiavelli.

In both “The Prince” and “Discourses,” Machiavelli grounded his theory of politics in his understanding of human nature. Because people are motivated by a capricious self-interest, he believed, people will fight with one another to realize their goals.

“This is to be asserted in general of men,” Machiavelli wrote, “that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous,” and compete incessantly for power, resources, and more. The regime whose primary goal is to placate rivals, whether internal dissidents or foreign enemies, will descend into chaos, Machiavelli believed. To prevent collapse, the strong leader must exert force — force that suppresses, punishes, or destroys the weak, force that he uses not occasionally or whenever a problem materializes, but constantly.

This is Machiavelli’s central paradigm: Politics is battle — not a battle between good and evil or right and wrong. Just a battle, ongoing and continuous, to defend the principles on which the regime operates, if not the ones upon which it was built. In “Machiavelli on Modern Leadership,” the late historian Michael Ledeen wrote that according to Machiavelli, a leader “has no other objective or thought or takes anything for his craft, except war.” Democratic and Republican presidents alike abide by this rule, both internationally and domestically. President Lyndon Johnson waged a war on poverty. Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Joe Biden spoke of the war on COVID-19.

Trump uses force because conflict — not consensus-building, cooperation, or governance for the common good — is the nature of political leadership.

This is a reality that pundits and commentators passionately decry, especially when their preferred party isn’t in power. It is a notion that shocks progressives still in thrall to the mellifluous voice of President Barack Obama, who promised that politics was not a battle but a journey toward a more perfect union. His musings about “bringing a gun to a knife fight” are all but forgotten. Obama the pacifist is the living memory.

“I did not set out to be a politician, but a community organizer,” he wrote in “A Promised Land.” “And what I learned in those years, and what I still believe, is that politics, at its best, is a pilgrimage — a steady, sometimes halting, often frustrating march toward greater justice and equality.” His rhetoric called for solidarity. His tone was messianic. He promised that our shared moral striving would lead to a drastically improved future, that the long pilgrimage of America would arrive someday at a profound and sacred destination.

Ironically, that destination was Trump.

From the very beginning of his campaign for president, Trump openly embraced the battle metaphors that embarrassed Obama. We are fighting against the corrupt establishment, he would say. We are fighting to win the battle against illegal immigration. We are in a battle for the soul of our country.

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” Trump said on January 6, 2021. In the game of politics, Trump embraced conflict and was determined to win on all counts — for himself and for the country.

His foreign policy supports this point.

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Speaking after the military strike on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late 2019, Trump was unequivocal in his statement of victory. “Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world,” Trump said. “He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a safer place. God bless America.”

Both hawks and doves celebrated the win. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called it a “game-changer.” Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson counted Baghdadi’s death a “victory for civilization itself.” A few months later, a fault line appeared on the right when a drone fired missiles at Qasem Soleimani, killing the Iranian Quds Force commander. Carlson criticized Trump for goading Iran into a military conflict that would weaken America.

“There are an awful lot of bad people in this world,” Carlson said on his television program in early 2020. “You can’t kill them all.”

This month, the fault line widened. As Trump prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, Carlson cried out for more public decision-making. He spoke about the “real divide” on the right, a line that separates people like Carlson and Steve Bannon from the interventionists and neoconservatives in the modern conservative movement. “The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers,” Carlson posted on X.

Carlson warned against foreign entanglements as distractions from the problems at home, but the violence itself seemed to offend him. In one conversation with Bannon, Carlson paraphrased a story found in all four Gospels, where the apostle Peter draws his sword against the arresting party in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus scolds Peter, saying: "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Carlson interpreted that passage as meaning people who espouse violence will suffer in the end.

But one biblical reference always calls to mind another.

In the Gospel of Luke, a passage about the Last Supper contains a comment from Jesus to the disciples that “the one who has no sword [should] sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36). Looking about, the disciples take an inventory and tell him, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” Jesus offers a cryptic response: “It is enough” (Luke 22:38). Perhaps Jesus is chiding them for taking him too literally, as if to say, “That’s enough of this talk.” But equally possible is that Jesus was saying that two swords are enough, that physical conflict is necessary but should serve the interests of defense rather than conquest.

Though the U.S. strikes on Iran resulted in a ceasefire and perhaps negotiation of a peace deal, this outcome will not be permanent on the larger international scene. There will be more attacks, more violence, more opportunities for political leaders to practice their craft with strength and foresight. Carlson’s “peace first” politics will keep the moral high ground, but Trump’s exercise of power affirms his political legitimacy.

As Machiavelli famously wrote: “It is better to be feared than loved.”

Right now, Donald Trump is both.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearWorld and made available via RealClearWire.

All aboard! Trump should greenlight the Freedom Train



America has long celebrated its greatest moments by train.

In 1915, a steam locomotive carried the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia to San Francisco and back, drawing enormous crowds. In 1947, the Freedom Train crisscrossed the country with priceless artifacts of American history. Then came the biggest triumph: the Bicentennial American Freedom Train of 1976, which drew more than 50,000 people at each of its 138 stops.

The train would take the quarter-millennial celebration directly to the people — right where it belongs.

On the cusp of the nation’s 250th birthday, it’s time to bring that tradition back. The red, white, and blue steam train should roll again — celebrating America’s founding and bringing history to Main Streets across the land.

The original idea came from John Wayne. That alone might have been enough for Kamala Harris to oppose it, had she been elected president. Add in the train’s cinematic clouds of smoke, its role in commemorating the westward settlement, and its unapologetic embrace of American greatness, and it’s hard to imagine today’s progressive leaders welcoming it.

But President Trump would. He’s restoring the spirit Wayne loved: American strength, love of country, masculine virtue. Trump has already pledged to include a statue of the Duke in his proposed National Garden of American Heroes. If he also allows the new train to display the federal artifacts its predecessors carried — the original Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase document, Lincoln’s hat, Ruth’s bat — then the American Freedom Train can run again in 2026.

The artifacts are key. If the administration releases them, the biggest remaining challenge will be time.

In 1976, the train took 15 months to organize. Today, in a country where builders are building again, that timeline can be compressed. But it will take at least a year to prepare the train — to build display cars, ready the steam engine, transport and secure the artifacts, and tackle the logistics of a 48-state journey.

The clock is ticking. A decision now could kick off the celebration by next July 4.

The Bicentennial Freedom Train didn’t just appear for a few fireworks in early July. It helped stretch the nation’s celebration over nearly two years — from the April 1975 anniversary of Lexington and Concord to a final stop in Miami on New Year’s Eve 1976.

A Quarter-Millennial Freedom Train would do the same. It would extend the celebration beyond Independence Day and tie together local and national events like nothing else. That was exactly the intention in 1976. John Warner, head of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, called the train “the most visible” element of the celebration — one that helped “sew together” diverse festivities across the country.

Once again, the train would showcase cherished artifacts: Paul Revere’s saddlebags, Washington’s personal copy of the Constitution, JFK’s handwritten inaugural address, even lunar rocks and Olympic memorabilia from the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.”

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Private citizens would lead the effort, just as they did before. The American Freedom Train Foundation includes veterans of the original Bicentennial train. They know how to plan and execute a coast-to-coast expedition. They just need modest federal support — and access to the artifacts — to bring it to life.

Army veteran and Nashville artist Tim Maggart sings that the Freedom Train is “as American as a line drive.” And that’s exactly what it would be: a rolling, photogenic, crowd-pleasing tribute to our nation. Day after day, the locomotive would thunder past landmarks, through cities and farmlands, beneath America’s spacious skies. And at every stop, Americans would cheer.

The train would symbolize both American power and American pride. It would carry our founding history from coast to coast, just as it once did. And it would take the quarter-millennial celebration directly to the people — right where it belongs.

Stop trying to segregate the American founding



Race relations in the United States have unraveled in recent years, not only because of genuine disagreement, but because many Americans now grow up believing the nation is fundamentally unjust — racist to the core, perhaps even irredeemable.

This idea, once fringe, now enjoys institutional backing. Critical race theory and DEI ideology assert that the U.S. was founded on slavery and white supremacy. And they dominate schools, corporations, and government agencies alike.

Don’t displace the Fourth of July. Don’t divide what should unite us.

As a result, America has seen a quiet comeback of sanctioned segregation. Colleges increasingly host race-based graduation ceremonies. Society encourages people to define themselves first by racial identity, not shared citizenship. That should alarm anyone who once marched for equal rights in the 1950s and ’60s.

When Americans stop thinking of each other as fellow citizens, the glue that holds the republic together dissolves.

Juneteenth and the new segregation

Consider one example of this trend: the push for a separate “independence day” for black Americans.

On June 17, 2021, Joe Biden signed Senate Bill 475 into law, establishing a new federal holiday: “Juneteenth National Independence Day.” The bill commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Texas and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that slaves in the state had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation — two years after it was signed.

Former slaves in Texas celebrated, and in the years that followed, Juneteenth spread across the South. But it never held central importance in the broader civil rights movement.

Juneteenth did not abolish slavery. It merely marked the day slaves in one state learned they had been legally freed. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, applied only to states in rebellion — excluding Union-supporting border states like Kentucky and Delaware, where slavery remained legal until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

A false independence narrative

Some activists now argue that Juneteenth should serve as “Black Independence Day.” That’s a mistake.

This view implies that African Americans have no rightful claim to the Fourth of July or to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. But those ideas belong to all Americans — not just the descendants of the signers.

It’s true that many historical figures sought to exclude black Americans from the promise of the Declaration. Chief Justice Roger Taney made that argument explicit in the Dred Scott decision. Confederates like Alexander Stephens and John C. Calhoun claimed that “all men are created equal” never applied to African Americans.

They were wrong.

What Frederick Douglass really believed

Some cite Frederick Douglass’ famous 1852 speech — “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” — to support the idea that black Americans should reject the founding. But they ignore the full context.

Douglass, speaking two years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, condemned the hypocrisy of a country that declared liberty while tolerating bondage. “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” he asked. “A day that reveals to him ... the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

But unlike Taney, Stephens, and Calhoun, Douglass didn’t reject the Declaration. He upheld it.

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Douglass took hope from the principles it proclaimed and called on America to live up to them. He dismissed the Garrisonian claim that the Constitution was pro-slavery. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” he said, “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”

He believed America’s founding held the moral resources to defeat slavery — and it did.

The universal promise of 1776

America’s founders didn’t invent slavery; they merely inherited it. At the time of the Revolution, slavery was a global institution, practiced on every continent and defended by every empire. Slavery, including African slavery, was a manifestation of the argument of the Athenians at Melos as recounted by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War: “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Even Africans sold fellow Africans into slavery.

The Declaration of Independence marked a sharp break from that past. It asserted that all human beings possess natural rights — and that no one may rule another without consent.

Thomas Jefferson famously observed that humanity had long been divided into those born "booted and spurred” and those “born with saddles on their backs.” The founders rejected that model. They established a republic based on equality before the law, not the interests of the stronger over the weaker.

They also knew slavery contradicted those ideals. Many believed the institution would die out — an Enlightenment relic destined for extinction. Still, the political compromises they made to preserve the Union allowed slavery to persist, and it took a war to end it.

Why the founding still matters

The Civil War was not a rejection of the founding. It was a fulfillment of it.

As Harry Jaffa wrote, “It is not wonderful that a nation of slaveholders, upon achieving independence, failed to abolish slavery. What is wonderful ... is that a nation of slaveholders founded a new nation on the proposition that ‘all men are created equal,’ making the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity.”

The Declaration of Independence lit the fuse that ultimately destroyed slavery.

So let Americans celebrate Juneteenth — gratefully, joyfully, and historically. Let the holiday recall the biblical jubilee it was meant to evoke.

But don’t displace the Fourth of July. Don’t segment America’s founding. Don’t divide what should unite us.

As Douglass said: “I would not even in words do violence to the grand events, and thrilling associations, that gloriously cluster around the birth of our national independence.”

He went on: “No people ever entered upon the pathway of nations, with higher and grander ideas of justice, liberty and humanity than ourselves.”

Douglass understood something too many have forgotten: The genius of the American founding lies not in who it excluded but in the promise that, one day, it would include everyone.

Progressive castoffs don’t get to define the right



When woke mobs began chasing off guest speakers from college campuses and elite institutions started investigating scientists over minor infractions against gender orthodoxy, a certain class of moderate progressives realized its reign was ending. Figures like Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shermer weren’t conservatives by any stretch. In the George W. Bush or Barack Obama years, they would have qualified as mainstream progressives. But they couldn’t keep pace with the radical left.

These disaffected progressives needed a new label. But they couldn’t bring themselves to align with the “backward” conservatives they’d spent careers ridiculing. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein coined the term “Intellectual Dark Web,” which Weiss attempted to popularize in the New York Times. But most settled on “classical liberal” to describe their stance. The problem? They had spent years rejecting classical liberalism.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right.

“Classical liberal” serves as the ideal label for repackaging Obama-era liberalism in a way that reassures Republicans while keeping a safe distance from the woke left. It sounds moderate compared to identity politics. It evokes America’s founders — Washington, Jefferson, Adams. If you want to appear reasonable to conservatives while shielding yourself from attacks on your right flank, aligning with the founders is a smart move.

Whether the branding strategy was intentional remains debatable. What’s not in question is how badly this self-description distorted classical liberalism.

Some members of the Intellectual Dark Web drifted right. Most did not. They held tightly to progressive instincts. Many were atheists. Some had built careers in the New Atheist movement, penning books mocking Christianity and debating apologists for sport. Several were openly gay, and most championed same-sex marriage. These were not defenders of tradition — they spent decades undermining it.

They didn’t oppose the revolution. They led it — until the mob turned on the parts they still cherished, like feminism or science.

Toleration of all ... except atheists

When the Intellectual Dark Web embraced the “classical liberal” label, it did so to defend free speech. Most of these disillusioned progressives had been canceled — for “misgendering” someone, for not parroting the latest racial orthodoxies, or for refusing to bow to ideological litmus tests. They longed for an earlier version of progressivism, one where they still held the reins, and radical activists didn’t dictate the terms of debate.

This shared frustration became the rallying point between conservatives and anti-woke liberals. Free speech offered common ground, so both sides leaned into it. But classical liberalism involves far more than vague nods to open dialogue.

Some trace liberalism’s roots to Machiavelli or Hobbes. But in the American tradition, it begins with John Locke. Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson channeling Locke — right down to the line about “life, liberty, and property,” slightly rewritten as “the pursuit of happiness.”

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Locke argued for religious toleration among Christian sects. He even entertained the idea of tolerating Catholics — if they renounced allegiance to the pope. But Locke drew a hard line at one group: atheists.

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God,” Locke wrote. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist ... [they] undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”

For Locke, atheism was social acid. It dissolved the moral glue holding a nation together. A silent unbeliever who kept to himself might avoid trouble — but even then, Locke saw no reason to trust such a man with power. Atheism, in Locke’s view, posed a civilizational threat.

Indispensable religion

Now, consider the irony. Many of today’s self-declared “classical liberals” rose to prominence attacking religion. They led the New Atheist crusade. They mocked believers, ridiculed Christianity, and wrote bestsellers deriding faith as delusion. These weren’t defenders of liberal order. They launched a secular jihad against the very moral foundation that made liberalism possible.

Their adoption of the “classical liberal” label isn’t just unserious. It’s either historically illiterate or deliberately deceptive.

It’s a mistake to treat America’s founders as a monolith. They disagreed — often sharply — and those disagreements animate much of the "Federalist Papers." But one point remains clear: Their understanding of free speech and religious liberty diverged sharply from modern secular assumptions.

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Even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, several states retained official churches. Courts regularly upheld blasphemy laws well into the 20th century. Some state supreme courts continued defending them into the 1970s. Blue laws, which restrict commerce on Sundays to preserve the Sabbath, remain on the books in several states.

John Adams put it plainly: The Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The founders, and the citizens they represented, expected America to function as an explicitly Christian nation. Free speech and religious liberty existed within that framework — not apart from it.

Skin suit liberalism

So when non-woke liberals claim that “classical liberalism” demands a secular or religiously neutral government, they misrepresent history. That idea would have struck the founders as absurd. The Constitution was not written for New Atheists. Adams said so himself.

Faced with these historical facts, critics usually pivot. They argue that America has morally advanced beyond its founding values. Today, we tolerate non-Christian religions, recognize women’s rights, and legalize same-sex marriage. These changes, they claim, bring us closer to “true” American principles like freedom and equality.

Classical liberalism was a real political tradition — one that helped shape the American founding. It deserves serious treatment. Watching it get paraded around by people who reject its core values is exhausting. If Locke or Adams saw progressive atheists wearing classical liberalism like a skin suit, they’d spin in their graves.

The secular liberalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is not classical liberalism. It isn’t even an ally of conservatism. The non-woke left served as useful co-belligerents against the radical fringe, but they were never true allies — and they should never be allowed to lead the conservative movement.

Some have earned respect. Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson, and others have taken real steps to the right, even toward Christianity. That deserves credit. But let’s not kid ourselves. Many who still fly the “classical liberal” banner don’t believe in the values it represents. They reject its religious foundation. They rewrite its history. They co-opt its label while advancing a worldview its founders would have rejected outright.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right. And they certainly don’t get to lead it.

This isn’t just baseball — it’s a rebellion in cowhide



May 31, 1997. I was 9 years old and had just hit my first home run for Tampa Bay Little League. After the game, a parent handed me the ball, and I wrote the date on it. Today, that ball still rests on a shelf in my den — a small monument to childhood and a boyhood milestone.

Last week, my 7-year-old son earned the game ball after his own baseball game. He plays in the same league and on the same field where I hit that home run. Naturally, I placed his ball right next to mine.

After our last game, my fellow coaches and I said what we all knew to be true: We’re not just teaching a sport. We’re raising boys into men — through baseball.

As I set his ball on the shelf, I picked mine up. The handwriting made me laugh — so innocent, with a crossed-out word where I had misspelled something. Suddenly, the memories came rushing back: the smell of the concession stand, the taste of my glove laces from chewing them in the outfield, and the voice of that one dad in the bleachers who never liked an umpire.

Then, something else caught my attention. The two baseballs, separated by 32 years, looked exactly the same. Same color. Same stitching. Same weight. Indistinguishable.

For a few minutes, I just stood there, staring at the two baseballs. In that quiet moment, something struck me: In a world where nearly everything feels up for grabs — values, definitions, identities, expectations, even truth — a baseball almost feels like an act of rebellion.

In a culture obsessed with chasing the next big thing, those two identical balls offered a much-needed reminder: Not everything needs to be reinvented or improved. Some things are worth preserving.

If you’re familiar with my work, you know I take pride in celebrating the things that never go out of style — faith, family, and freedom. I cast shade on what’s trendy and shine a bright light on what’s true, good, and beautiful. When the world wobbles, these values steady the ground beneath us. They hold together not just our personal lives but the country itself.

And let’s be honest. The world feels very wobbly right now.

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  Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images

Our institutions keep demanding that we reconsider basic truths: that men can become women, that state ideology trumps parental authority, that patriotism poses a threat, that faith offends, and that masculinity is somehow toxic.

Every tradition gets questioned. Every boundary, blurred. Every norm, up for debate.

And yet — there sits the baseball. Quiet. Unchanged. Still exactly where I left it.

That’s not an accident. It points to something deeper, something God has written into the human heart: a longing for the eternal. For stability. For order. For truth that doesn’t shift with the culture.

When I coach my son on the same diamond I played on as a boy, I don’t think about preparing him for the chaos of the world. My job is to anchor him in the things that aren’t chaotic. After our last game, my fellow coaches and I said what we all knew to be true: We’re not just teaching a sport. We’re raising boys into men — through baseball.

We’re teaching them that manhood isn’t a moving target. That marriage is a covenant, not a contract. That freedom comes with responsibility.

Tradition isn’t something to escape. It’s something to inherit, to steward, and to pass on. That’s what fatherhood demands. It’s what citizenship requires. It’s what faith commands.

Despite what modern culture preaches, tradition isn’t about control — it’s about continuity. It’s the through line that links generations, so we don’t get swept away by every cultural trend. Headlines change. They don’t define you.

You’re defined by how you love your family; how you serve your neighbors; how you show up when it’s inconvenient; how you choose courage when convenience would be easier; how you pray when no one’s watching; how you toss the ball around with your kid in the backyard.

The stitching on that baseball never changed; neither did the role of a father; neither did the moral clarity of the gospel; neither did the beauty of a shared meal or the dignity of honest work.

It’s time we return to those things.

In a culture obsessed with change, maybe the wiser path is to focus on what doesn’t. Maybe the real challenge isn’t keeping up with the world — it’s keeping faith with the people and principles that mattered before the world got so loud.

In 1776, North Carolina’s constitution echoed that truth. American founder George Mason wrote, “A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessing of liberty.”

That baseball on the shelf hasn’t changed — neither have the things that matter most.

And I’m holding on tight.

Trump’s trade tactics echo founding-era common sense



Prominent voices on the left and within movement conservatism have argued that President Trump’s approach to foreign trade is strange, unorthodox, and even un-American. This is not surprising. After all, doctrinaire commitment to free trade — and doctrinaire distaste for protecting American industry — has been the dominant view among elites of both major political parties for at least a generation.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Trump’s actions on trade appear as a wholly irrational disruption of a system that, according to our political elites, does not need to be discarded.

Hamilton would find it perfectly sensible of Trump to hold that other nations should give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market.

This view of the matter, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of the American political tradition. Trump’s approach to trade policy has deep roots in American history, as we can see if we cast our gaze further back than we are accustomed to doing. It does not go too far to say that America’s founders would find Trump’s approach to international commerce perfectly intelligible and respectable.

The most obvious way to link President Trump to the founders is to invoke the justly celebrated name of Alexander Hamilton. The “Report on Manufactures,” Hamilton’s most famous state paper during his tenure as George Washington’s treasury secretary, laid out policy objectives that are essentially the same as those being defended by Trump and the members of his Cabinet who are responsible for trade policy.

It was necessary, Hamilton contended, to exert the government’s authority to promote American manufacturing to counteract the “artificial policy” of other nations that sought to exclude or disadvantage American goods. The ultimate aim of such a policy, he explained, was not the “vain project of selling everything and buying nothing” — it was instead to secure America’s vital national interests.

Hamilton argued that national “independence and security” are the “great objects” of all governments, thus requiring each country to “possess within itself all the essentials of national supply,” especially “the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense.” Having such goods available within one’s own country, he continued, “is necessary to the perfection of the body politic, to the safety as well as the welfare of the society.”

No strange departure

It is hard to see much daylight between Hamiltonian trade principles and President Trump’s desire to have the products necessary to American security and prosperity built in the United States.

The nationalist character of Hamilton’s thinking about trade policy, moreover, did not emerge after the founding as some strange departure from its essential principles. Rather, such nationalism was evident earlier, especially in the prominent part Hamilton played in the debates over the ratification of the Constitution.

Writing in "The Federalist Papers," Hamilton observed that one of the great advantages of a union of states under one government was the power it would confer on the nation to “oblige foreign countries to bid against each other for the privileges of our markets.” Elsewhere in “The Federalist Papers,” Hamilton suggested that the restrictive trade policies nations sometimes pursue are not properly viewed as “injuries” but simply as “justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest.”

Hamilton, then, would find it perfectly sensible of President Trump to hold that other nations should be willing to give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market. His arguments similarly anticipated Trump’s frequent remarks that while other nations will inevitably act in their own interest, they likewise must understand that we intend to act in our own interest as well.

The preceding argument is enough to show that Trump’s thinking about trade policy has venerable roots in the American political tradition. After all, who is more American than Alexander Hamilton?

We can go further, however. Trump’s approach broadly represents not just the Hamiltonian strain of American economic nationalism but the common sense of the founding-era generation itself. Indeed (and as I have observed elsewhere at greater length) the authority to regulate trade with foreign nations was included in the Constitution precisely for the purposes for which the Trump administration is now wielding it.

Regulating commerce was uncontroversial

In his massive and highly regarded "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” Joseph Story — John Marshall’s great colleague on the early Supreme Court — observed that the power to regulate foreign commerce was so obviously necessary in a complete and effective government that it was hardly even a matter of controversy at the Constitutional Convention.

Commerce, Story suggested, is important to “the prosperity of nations.” Nevertheless, the prosperity of American commerce had been thwarted by the restrictive policies of other nations during the time America was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which conferred on the government no authority to regulate America’s foreign trade.

On Story’s telling, before the Constitution was adopted, American commerce “was regulated by foreign nations with a single view to their own interests; and our disunited efforts to counteract their restrictions were rendered impotent by a want of combination.” Under the Constitution, however, the government of the United States has the power to control access to the entire American market and hence has the ability to retaliate against the excessively self-regarding trade policies of other nations.

The Trump administration is simply using this constitutional power in an attempt to secure an arrangement that is more mutually beneficial for the United States and our trading partners.

Just as the founders anticipated

Story’s understanding of these matters was by no means idiosyncratic or partisan. On the contrary, essentially the same views were expressed by James Madison, the “father of the Constitution.”

Writing to James Monroe in 1785, Madison expressed his personal wish that “no regulations of trade, that is to say, no restrictions or imposts whatever, were necessary.” “A perfect freedom” of trade, he continued, “is the system which would be my choice.” Nevertheless, he immediately added, for such a system to be “attainable, all other nations must concur in it.” And if any other nation imposed restrictions on American trade, Madison continued, it would be appropriate for America to “retort the distinction” — in other words, to impose retaliatory restrictions of its own. Indeed, Madison held that to question the propriety of such economic retaliation would be “an affront to every citizen who loves his country.”

Similarly, in the preface to his notes on the Constitutional Convention, Madison observed that the lack of a commerce power under the Articles of Confederation had “produced in foreign nations ... a monopolizing policy injurious to the trade of the U.S.” and further suggested that the appropriate response would be a “countervailing policy on the part of the U. States.” Such a policy became possible because the new Constitution included a power to regulate trade with foreign nations — the power the Trump administration is wielding to secure more advantageous trade relations for America, just as the founders anticipated.

None of this is to say that the founders would have approved of the specific steps the Trump administration has taken in the last several weeks. No one can pretend to know how they would apply their principles to the changed circumstances of the present. Nor is it to say that the founders would approve the extent to which the Congress has delegated its foreign commerce power to the president. It is to say, however, that Trump’s aims, and the kind of tools he is using to achieve them, would be unobjectionable to those who founded our nation and established our form of government.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Telling America’s story is too important to leave to radicals



Every nation has a story. Recently, the Washington Post described the Smithsonian Institution, with its 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers, as “the official keeper of the American Story.” What kind of story have the Smithsonian museums been telling about our country?

On March 27, President Trump issued an executive order arguing that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” A White House fact sheet calls for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will lead the administration’s efforts.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity).

Critics of the executive order responded quickly. They maintain that the Trump administration wants to “whitewash the past and suppress discussion of systemic racism.” The Smithsonian, the critics contend, is led by nonpartisan professionals whose aim is to be truthful and inclusive and tell the whole story of America, including groups that have been neglected in the past. Professor David W. Blight of Yale, president of the Organization of American Historians, complained that the executive order is a “laughable thing until you realize what their intent actually is and what they’re doing is trying to erode and then obliterate what we have been writing for a century.”

Is there a divisive ideology being taught, as the Trump administration maintains, and if so, what is it? What have university professors been writing about America, if not “for a century,” for at least the past decade? Professor Blight’s OAH revealed its ideology by embracing the New York Times’ 1619 Project, declaring:

The 1619 Project’s approach to understanding the American past and connecting it to newly urgent movements for racial justice and systemic reform point to … the ways in which slavery and racial injustice have and continue to profoundly shape our nation. Critical race theory provides a lens through which we can examine and understand systemic racism and its many consequences.

What do we call the ideology that, as the OAH explains, “acknowledges and interrogates systems of oppression — racial, ethnic, gender, class — and openly addresses the myriad injustices that these systems have perpetuated through the past and into the present”?

As most are aware, the ideology expressed by the OAH is dominant in universities today. It views American history negatively through the lens of “oppressors” (white males) versus “oppressed” and “marginalized groups.” This ideology has been variously called political correctness, identity politics, social justice, and wokeness. We could use Wesley Yang’s term “successor ideology,” meaning it is the new, radical, left-wing ideological successor to the old patriotic liberalism of politicians like Walter Mondale and historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Not surprisingly, given its pre-eminence in America’s universities, this divisive “successor ideology” is at the heart of the worldview propounded by the leaders of the Smithsonian.

Something rotten in the Smithsonian

The current secretary of the Smithsonian is Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is adept at dealing with donors, stakeholders, and Republican congressional appropriators. His language is mostly measured and reasonable. He talks in terms of truth, nuance, complexity, and nonpartisanship. But in reality, Bunch is a partisan progressive, a skilled cultural warrior, and a promoter of the leftist “successor ideology.”

Bunch partnered with and promoted the biased 1619 Project, which asserts that slavery is the alpha and omega of the American story and that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation for some American colonists who joined the revolutionary cause. The architect of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, bragged that it “decenters whiteness,” and she denounced her liberal academic critics as “old white male historians.”

Nevertheless, Bunch proclaimed, “I want the Smithsonian to legitimize important issues, whether it's 1619 or climate change.” Of the Smithsonian’s participation in the 1619 Project, he declared, “I was very pleased with it.” Bunch proudly noted that people “saw that the Smithsonian had fingerprints on [the 1619 Project]. And that to me was a great victory.”

Bunch pictures America as a nation in which systemic racism is pervasive. During the George Floyd riots, Bunch told the Atlantic, "It is really about systemic racism throughout, not just the police department, but many parts of the American system.”

Further, he made excuses for the violence in the summer of 2020, which resulted in more than a dozen Americans killed and between $1 and $2 billion worth of property damage:

How dare they loot. Well, that kind of protest is really one of the few ways the voiceless feel they have power. And while I am opposed to violent protests personally, I understand that frustration sometimes pushes you over the edge. I think what’s important for us to recognize is, let us not turn attention towards looting in a way that takes away what is the power of these protests.

Three years ago, the Smithsonian assisted in the creation of a new College Board AP course on African American Studies. Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar Stanley Kurtz has revealed how APAAS is a radical neo-Marxist, anti-American project that calls for the socialist transformation of the United States. APAAS is soaked in the tenets of critical race theory, flirts with supporting violence, and implicitly advocates dismantling the American way of life, including free-market capitalism. It is a curriculum where students learn from Frantz Fanon that America is a “monster” and from Aimé Césaire that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a model society. Nevertheless, the APAAS curriculum is promoted on the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab.

Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida legislature passed the Stop Woke Act that bars APAAS from the state’s K-12 schools because it promotes the divisive concepts manifest in CRT. Lonnie Bunch and his close ideological ally Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, falsely accused DeSantis of ignoring African-American history. On the contrary, DeSantis created a new black history curriculum based on serious and accurate scholarship. In response to DeSantis’ opposition to APAAS, Bunch complained to Alexander:

I am upset because you know we were involved in helping [APAAS] and the notion that somehow simply having a course that forces us to understand complexity, nuance, and ambiguity is a problem, that’s a problem for all of America.

In truth, there is very little “complexity” and “nuance” in the Smithsonian-promoted APAAS. It is one-sided, partisan propaganda. Kurtz notes that APAAS is not in fact inclusive, ignoring the work of black conservatives “like Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, or Robert Woodson” or even “liberal black intellectuals, like Randall Kennedy or John McWhorter.”

Bunch often talks in terms of “nonpartisanship” and promoting the best of historical and cultural scholarship. But at the same time, he promotes the progressive left agenda, stating that the “job” of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is “really to create new generations of activists,” and “for me it really is about how … museums play a social justice role.”

Our story

To use one of Lonnie Bunch’s favorite terms, what is the “context” in which President Trump issued his executive order? It recognizes that a left-progressive cultural revolution (the “successor ideology”) has marched through our universities, schools, foundations, and museums, transforming the story of America into a tale of oppression and exploitation. The woke revolutionaries aim to “fundamentally transform the United States” from a nation based on a natural rights concept of the equality of citizenship to “equity,” a system of racial-ethnic-gender group quotas and group consciousness.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity). If the cultural revolutionaries are “transformationist,” in the sense that they aim to deconstruct the American way of life, the position articulated by Trump’s executive order is “Americanist,” in the sense that it represents a cultural counterrevolution that affirms America’s past and principles.

Are the Organization of American Historians and the current leadership of the Smithsonian right that America is a nation built on “slavery, exploitation, and exclusion”? Or is the American story what British writer Paul Johnson described as one of “human achievement without parallel,” the story “of difficulties overcome by skill, faith, and strength of purpose, and courage and persistence”? Was Johnson right when he wrote, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures” and that Americans “thrown together by fate in that swirling maelstrom of history” are “the most remarkable people the world has ever seen”?

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Deliverance requires memory — and America is forgetting



Passover has just ended — a central story for Jews and Christians alike but also a defining narrative for America.

America’s founders drew heavily from the Exodus and the Hebrew prophets. They studied Hebrew. Some even proposed it as the official language of the United States. Benjamin Franklin, for his part, suggested that the national seal feature Moses crossing the parted Red Sea. The reverence for this story runs deep in our national DNA. It’s no accident that Hollywood — the most American of art forms — has returned again and again to retell it.

We rightly see Pharaoh as the villain of Exodus — but how many of us stop to honor the quiet heroism of Pharaoh’s daughter?

And yet, as a nation, we’ve let some of our oldest traditions fade. But that’s nothing new. God always finds a way to remind us.

Today, many Americans have begun to realize we needed the pain of 2020 and the years that followed. Without that nightmare, President Trump wouldn’t have returned with the mandate to truly save America. Without those four bitter years, the country might never have awakened to remember who we are.

This moment echoes the Exodus. Just as we needed four years of national affliction to witness Trump’s political deliverance, the Israelites needed to see God’s hand to remember His power. That’s why scripture says God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” Not only to punish Egypt — but to remind His people of His unmatched might. To declare, for all to see, “that there is none like unto the Lord our God.”

And yet, even after 10 plagues and a miraculous escape, the Israelites faltered. Jewish tradition teaches that only one in five left Egypt; the rest chose the false comfort of slavery. Many who did leave lost faith before stepping into the Red Sea. Others bowed before the golden calf while Moses ascended Sinai.

Even in the face of miracles, it was easier for some to forget God than to trust Him.

Americans had forgotten even before 2020 — and God gave us a hard reminder.

So ask yourself: If we forgot who we are, what else have we forgotten?

Look again to the story of Passover. The book of Exodus begins with a chilling line: “There arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”

It wasn’t just that Pharaoh forgot Joseph. He chose not to know him. Acknowledging Joseph would have meant acknowledging the Israelites and all they had done for Egypt. Joseph saved the Egyptians from famine. His descendants helped build up the nation. So Pharaoh erased them. He enslaved them. He ordered their sons drowned in the Nile.

But not everyone forgot. Pharaoh’s own daughter remembered. She rescued Moses — the one who would lead the Israelites out of Egypt, receive the Ten Commandments at Sinai, and pass down a faith that would eventually give birth to Christianity.

That’s something worth remembering. We rightly see Pharaoh as the villain of Exodus — but how many of us stop to honor the quiet heroism of Pharaoh’s daughter?

She saved Moses when it was unpopular, even dangerous, to do so. She defied her father’s command, choosing righteousness over convenience. Her courage made everything that followed possible.

Christians have long understood the wisdom of Romans: “If the root is holy, so are the branches.” Like that olive tree, we must guard the roots to grow strong branches. We must remember.

So let us remember who we are. Americans are a people who remember God. Like Pharaoh’s daughter, we remember Joseph — even when the world forgets. Like the Israelites, we walk away from slavery and into the unknown, trusting the God who delivers.

We are that people.

I just pray we don’t forget.

Can Queen Esther’s story save modern America?



In mid-March, Jews and many Christians alike will celebrate Purim, commemorating the events in Jewish history when Queen Esther put her life on the line to save her people from certain death.

The story, found in the Old Testament book of Esther, is about an exalted adviser to King Xerxes of Persia named Haman, who devised a plot to exterminate all the Jews in the kingdom. Esther, secretly a Jew, had a cousin named Mordecai, who caught wind of the scheme and advised Esther to approach King Xerxes and beg for the life of their people. But Esther was well aware of the law: A person could not approach the king unsummoned. If the king did not find favor with a royal subject, that person could immediately be dragged out and executed.

Whether we use our life, the gifts God has given us, and the time he has given us to honor our Creator is entirely up to us.

Queen Esther asked her cousin to gather all the Jews and have them fast, repent of their sins, and pray for three days before she made her risky approach into the king's chambers. At the end of the three days of fervently seeking the Lord, Esther felt confident approaching the king. Through a series of wise and timely actions that followed, Esther was able to turn the tables on Haman. Not only had Haman planned to exterminate the Jewish people, but he had also constructed gallows from which to hang Mordecai for refusing to bow before him.

Because Mordecai had previously saved the king’s life by exposing an assassination plot, Xerxes felt compelled to honor him. And Haman was assigned to dress Mordecai in royal robes and parade him on the king's own horse through the kingdom's streets so that everyone could cheer and honor him!

Well, the story ends with Haman himself being hanged from the very gallows he had built for Mordecai — and all of his wealth and power were given to Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai.

Does any of this story have significance for us today in America? Could the example of Queen Esther be used by those of us in the church to benefit our nation?

For Christians around the world, the Lenten season began on Ash Wednesday. During these 40 days, believers are encouraged to humble themselves, fast and pray, and focus on personally drawing closer to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This period of reflection and repentance can lead to a renewed spirit and focus on what God desires from our lives. And with lives that are changed and attuned correctly on the things of God, the lives of others, even an entire nation, can be affected for the good.

One of the key verses and ideas that comes from Queen Esther's heroic life is a word of encouragement spoken to her by her cousin Mordecai: “Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

God did not make a mistake in Esther’s life, nor in the words spoken to her by her cousin, her wise adviser.

From this story, we must all be assured that every one of us was born for such a time as ours. Why? Because we know that God does not make mistakes, and we, in our time, are not an exception. God does not look down on a person and say, “Oops! Bill has not used his life properly. I should have had him born in the mid-1800s in America, and he could have stopped Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated! Ugh! My bad!”

Whether we use our life, the gifts God has given us, and the time he has given us to honor our Creator is entirely up to us.

And what a time and place in which we find ourselves today!

A window of opportunity allows each of us to help move America from its state of "fundamental transformation" over the past 16 years and participate — in great and small ways — to “foundationally restore” it to the vision of our Founding Fathers.

Pastor Jonathan Cahn recently delivered a powerful, prophetic message at the National Prayer Breakfast attended by members of Congress in Washington, D.C. In that message, he challenged Christians to use this window of opportunity to heed the plea of 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV):

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Many scriptures encourage us in this journey to restoration. For example, in Galatians 5, St. Paul provides two verses that work together to help point the way: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

He goes on: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

And when it comes to dealing with “the sin that so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1), Paul says in 1 Corinthians:

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

The Christian rock group Casting Crowns has a powerful song that reminds Christians of life's true purpose and focus. The group's song “Only Jesus” includes these lyrics:

And I, I don’t want to leave a legacy
I don’t care if they remember me
Only Jesus
And I, I’ve only got one life to live
I’ll let every second point to Him
Only Jesus

(The entire song is terrific and worth a listen, and the rest of the lyrics can be read here.)

Dovetailing with this, the popular daily devotional “My Utmost for His Highest,” from the February 24 entry, exhorts us with these words: “Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve.”

When our personal goals align with those of the Almighty who created us “for such a time as this,” we, like Queen Esther, can participate in what God is doing in our own “kingdom” today, with an eye on the one to come.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the Christian Post.

Liberals Are Ashamed Of Hamilton For Being Pro-America, So The Right Should Claim It

The musical sensation honors the American founders and upholds traditional values, and enjoying it for those reasons would drive leftists crazy.