By Mark Antonio Wright
Saturday, February 15, 2025
There’s no need to overreact to the fact that the
president of these United States casually tweeted out on a Saturday morning the
statement, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
No — it’s sobering enough that the Chief Magistrate of
our Republic would favorably repeat the words of Napoleon Bonaparte (the quote
is perhaps apocryphal) on this subject and his excuses for the reality that he
deformed his own republic into an empire, with himself as its monarch. Indeed,
it should be sobering enough that such a statement from this president is no
shocking event in our politics.
Napoleon, of course, was a genius in several respects. He
was a Great Man, in the sense that he changed history and left his enduring
mark on it. He was a general of unrivaled brilliance. He could display physical
courage. His charisma and personal magnetism had the power to draw men unto
himself, to inspire them. And that he did some “good things,” there is no
doubt: He reformed France’s system of education, he built canals, he arguably
contributed to the founding of the discipline of Egyptology, among other
things. But Napoleon was no republican — his 25-year career was one that almost
continually served to warp France, and its laws, for the singular purpose of
making himself more powerful.
In certain similar ways to the French emperor, Donald
Trump is a Great Man too. He has changed history, and he may very well leave an
enduring mark on it. And, I’m sure, he may do some good things while in office.
But after everything we have seen of Trump these last ten years, no American
ought be surprised by the fact that our duly elected president cares nothing at
all for our Constitution, its Madisonian vision of separation of powers and
check and balances, or his oath to protect it and defend it.
What Trump has declared is, indeed, antithetical to a
republican form of government per se. As John Adams, our second president, once
wrote, “A republic is the best form of government, a government of laws, not
arbitrary rule.”
“The very definition of a Republic, is ‘an Empire of
Laws, and not of Men.’”
What Trump has said today doesn’t necessarily make him
immoral or obscene. In the long course of history, there have after all been
good and just kings.
But what Trump has declared is most certainly un-republican,
and therefore un-American. There is no legitimate argument otherwise. To
defend it is the road to serfdom.
While a president is cloaked in numerous awesome powers,
he is in no sense above the law; he has no legitimate power to abrogate it.
Indeed, his very office is a creation of law, of the Constitution. No matter
the circumstances, no American — certainly no president — is above the law as
such. No, not even to “save it.”
Any statement otherwise would have been anathema to
George Washington and the Founders of our country. I now shudder to think of my
fellow citizens averting their eyes, or defending, what Trump said, as many
will no doubt do.
“A Republic, if you can keep it,” Ben Franklin told us.
Yes, indeed — if.
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