Trump’s SOTU Was a Defiant Commitment to American Self-Rule Over Ideology
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
What is the state of the union in the 250th year of America’s independence?
Seeing the country’s strength and prosperity today, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would probably agree with President Donald Trump that this is “the golden age of America.” Their last-ditch effort to save their way of life by breaking away from the most powerful empire on earth not only succeeded, it led to the creation of a republic that would more than once save European civilization itself.
“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” the president said in his peroration last night, and his entire address served as an urgent reminder of what the revolution’s political significance really is.
For decades Americans have been taught to understand their revolution in essentially left-wing terms, as a rejection of traditional government—i.e., monarchy—and the beginning of a new, radically egalitarian morality.
Thomas Jefferson may not have known it when he wrote “all men are created equal,” but the implication of his language was that all people are so equal we can’t tell who’s a man or who’s a woman.
It’s taken us 250 years to understand that, but all American history has been the story of progressive liberalism’s germination.
Trump, in this view, is an almost unaccountable aberration. Perhaps he is an importation of “European conservatism” or fascism—he is of German immigrant roots, after all. Liberals are certain they know how history will judge Trump because history came to an end with themselves.
The future is only the enfolding of their ideas: time’s catching up to forward-thinking.
Yet when Trump spoke last night of a revolution that hasn’t ended in 250 years, he was not attempting to curry favor with his opponents. The revolution he invoked is not akin to the French Revolution nor the Bolshevik Revolution nor the many left-wing revolutions of the past two centuries and more.
On the contrary, the nation born of the American Revolution has long frustrated the ambitions of leftist revolutionary powers like 1790s France and the Soviet Union.
The American Revolution was undertaken in the defense of self-government by British subjects who had lived for generations under largely self-chosen local authorities.
If the revolution involved the rejection of the British tradition in some respects, the Americans also had a certain conservatism of their own, and their reluctance to sever their relationship with the king was one expression of it. The Declaration of Independence was a long time coming, and when it did come, it was framed not in terms of aspiring to progress but rather as an acceptance of “the necessity which constrains [the colonists] to alter their former Systems of Government.”
A staunch Tory like Samuel Johnson might accuse the colonists of Whiggish radicalism, but the Americans themselves largely rejected the radicalism of the French republic of letters. Although the French Revolution broke out a decade after our own, the battle lines of that conflagration had already been drawn by the philosophes.
And while the philosophes had their sympathizers in America, as in Britain, the American Revolution was more in keeping with …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
What is the state of the union in the 250th year of America’s independence?
Seeing the country’s strength and prosperity today, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would probably agree with President Donald Trump that this is “the golden age of America.” Their last-ditch effort to save their way of life by breaking away from the most powerful empire on earth not only succeeded, it led to the creation of a republic that would more than once save European civilization itself.
“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” the president said in his peroration last night, and his entire address served as an urgent reminder of what the revolution’s political significance really is.
For decades Americans have been taught to understand their revolution in essentially left-wing terms, as a rejection of traditional government—i.e., monarchy—and the beginning of a new, radically egalitarian morality.
Thomas Jefferson may not have known it when he wrote “all men are created equal,” but the implication of his language was that all people are so equal we can’t tell who’s a man or who’s a woman.
It’s taken us 250 years to understand that, but all American history has been the story of progressive liberalism’s germination.
Trump, in this view, is an almost unaccountable aberration. Perhaps he is an importation of “European conservatism” or fascism—he is of German immigrant roots, after all. Liberals are certain they know how history will judge Trump because history came to an end with themselves.
The future is only the enfolding of their ideas: time’s catching up to forward-thinking.
Yet when Trump spoke last night of a revolution that hasn’t ended in 250 years, he was not attempting to curry favor with his opponents. The revolution he invoked is not akin to the French Revolution nor the Bolshevik Revolution nor the many left-wing revolutions of the past two centuries and more.
On the contrary, the nation born of the American Revolution has long frustrated the ambitions of leftist revolutionary powers like 1790s France and the Soviet Union.
The American Revolution was undertaken in the defense of self-government by British subjects who had lived for generations under largely self-chosen local authorities.
If the revolution involved the rejection of the British tradition in some respects, the Americans also had a certain conservatism of their own, and their reluctance to sever their relationship with the king was one expression of it. The Declaration of Independence was a long time coming, and when it did come, it was framed not in terms of aspiring to progress but rather as an acceptance of “the necessity which constrains [the colonists] to alter their former Systems of Government.”
A staunch Tory like Samuel Johnson might accuse the colonists of Whiggish radicalism, but the Americans themselves largely rejected the radicalism of the French republic of letters. Although the French Revolution broke out a decade after our own, the battle lines of that conflagration had already been drawn by the philosophes.
And while the philosophes had their sympathizers in America, as in Britain, the American Revolution was more in keeping with …
Trump’s SOTU Was a Defiant Commitment to American Self-Rule Over Ideology
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
What is the state of the union in the 250th year of America’s independence?
Seeing the country’s strength and prosperity today, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would probably agree with President Donald Trump that this is “the golden age of America.” Their last-ditch effort to save their way of life by breaking away from the most powerful empire on earth not only succeeded, it led to the creation of a republic that would more than once save European civilization itself.
“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” the president said in his peroration last night, and his entire address served as an urgent reminder of what the revolution’s political significance really is.
For decades Americans have been taught to understand their revolution in essentially left-wing terms, as a rejection of traditional government—i.e., monarchy—and the beginning of a new, radically egalitarian morality.
Thomas Jefferson may not have known it when he wrote “all men are created equal,” but the implication of his language was that all people are so equal we can’t tell who’s a man or who’s a woman.
It’s taken us 250 years to understand that, but all American history has been the story of progressive liberalism’s germination.
Trump, in this view, is an almost unaccountable aberration. Perhaps he is an importation of “European conservatism” or fascism—he is of German immigrant roots, after all. Liberals are certain they know how history will judge Trump because history came to an end with themselves.
The future is only the enfolding of their ideas: time’s catching up to forward-thinking.
Yet when Trump spoke last night of a revolution that hasn’t ended in 250 years, he was not attempting to curry favor with his opponents. The revolution he invoked is not akin to the French Revolution nor the Bolshevik Revolution nor the many left-wing revolutions of the past two centuries and more.
On the contrary, the nation born of the American Revolution has long frustrated the ambitions of leftist revolutionary powers like 1790s France and the Soviet Union.
The American Revolution was undertaken in the defense of self-government by British subjects who had lived for generations under largely self-chosen local authorities.
If the revolution involved the rejection of the British tradition in some respects, the Americans also had a certain conservatism of their own, and their reluctance to sever their relationship with the king was one expression of it. The Declaration of Independence was a long time coming, and when it did come, it was framed not in terms of aspiring to progress but rather as an acceptance of “the necessity which constrains [the colonists] to alter their former Systems of Government.”
A staunch Tory like Samuel Johnson might accuse the colonists of Whiggish radicalism, but the Americans themselves largely rejected the radicalism of the French republic of letters. Although the French Revolution broke out a decade after our own, the battle lines of that conflagration had already been drawn by the philosophes.
And while the philosophes had their sympathizers in America, as in Britain, the American Revolution was more in keeping with …
