History at an Accelerated Pace: Is This the America You Want?
American history is unfolding at such an accelerated pace that it is difficult for the citizenry to grasp, let alone comprehend, the enormous changes that are afoot. From ICE shootings and killings of American citizens in the streets of Minneapolis to President Donald Trump’s demands for “Complete and Total” control of Greenland, the tectonic plates of our constitutional democracy are shifting in dangerous ways. The rapid transformation of our government under President Trump, yoked, he tells us, only by his own “morality” and “mind,” embodies transcendent implications for our democracy, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and, certainly, NATO, the world order and America’s global role and posture. The dramatic philosophical changes carry real-world consequences. Citizens should take a deep breath and ask themselves, as they frequently have, a profoundly important question: Is this the America we want?
President Trump’s aggrandizement of unchecked authority in both foreign and domestic affairs, not merely in the executive branch, but in his own hands, has shredded the carefully constructed limits of Article II of the Constitution, which James Madison declared, “defines and confines” presidential power. Not under Trump, who has asserted “absolute” authority. His authoritarian view of executive power justifies, in his mind, the seizure of Greenland, “the easy way or the hard way,” despite that fact that Greenlanders have no wish to be part of the United States and are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections.
In his speech in Davos, President Trump ruled out the use of military force to seize Greenland from Denmark but threatened European allies with economic and national security consequences, if the world does not acquiesce to his demand for the territory. “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember.” Trump’s coercive demands, coupled with the insulting, demeaning tone and terms of his speech, even with the belated retreat from a military option, have caused a major rupture in relations with NATO allies, perhaps beyond repair. His disregard of the territorial sovereignty of a NATO member and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination, represents an unprecedented breach of trust of the most effective defense alliance the world has known, one that has maintained peace since the end of World War II.
Until recently, few would have taken seriously the proposition that President Trump would seize Greenland. But his decapitation of Venezuelan leadership, for purposes of seizing control of the nation’s oil supply, has raised questions about his perceived freedom to take “complete control” of Greenland. His assertion that it’s about America’s national security cannot withstand scrutiny. Under a 1951 treaty, the U.S. has carte blanche authority to build as many air bases and military installations as we wish. Greenland and Denmark have reiterated the force of that agreement. There is nothing to stop the U.S. from deploying as many military assets as it pleases. It seems more likely that Trump’s interest is part of a vanity project—the acquisition of land three times the size of Texas that, he believes, would burnish his legacy. Then, there is his personal animosity toward Norway, as reflected in his letter to the prime minister, because “your country” did not award the Nobel Prize to Trump. A committee in Norway, not the government, awards the prize and, in any case, Norway is not Denmark. This is verging on 25th Amendment territory.
Across the decades, Americans have looked in the mirror and rightly asked themselves, “is this the America I want?” They have asked it since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the start of the Revolutionary War, and certainly with the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and, again, at every transformational moment in our 250- year history, including the Civil War, two world wars and the Civil Rights Movement. To ask the question is to be a citizen, and to exercise the opportunities and responsibilities of citizenship itself, with the inherent right of Americans to maintain self-government of, by and for the people. To ask the question is part of the Social Contract, the founding ideal, that “We the People” have created government, defined and limited its powers, with the full expectation that it will obey the Constitution. Without our consent, government has no legitimacy or authority. That’s why we ask, is this the America you want?