Under Trump Regime America Is Abandoning Its Founding Principles

By Bob Topper

Photos: Wikimedia Commons

As a college student in Washington D.C. I visited our nation’s great museums and monuments – the White House, and the Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln Memorials. Seeing the Lincoln Memorial after midnight, when the lights were dimmed, was especially moving. Then, Lincoln’s face came alive, somber, and compassionate, yet determined. 

In the 1960’s one could drive up to the Lincoln Memorial at any time of day and park in front of the Reflecting Pool. Washington is not so open and inviting today. Access to our monuments is restricted and with the changes Trump is making and planning, it will no longer be the city I knew. Gold gilded statues, a Hitlerian arch, and an opulent ballroom towering over the White house, will not reflect the dignity and reserved strength of 1960 America. 

Washington is becoming a city that mirrors the vanities of an egocentric president whose vision for America aligns with the fascist dictators of a hundred years ago–Germany’s Hitler, Italy’s Mussolini, and Spain’s Franco. They also relied on monumental architecture and self-indulgent monuments to project power and lay claim to legacies of past greatness and to impose their political ideology on the urban landscape.

Strong presidents like Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Kennedy, were confident in themselves and their achievements. They left the monument building to future generations. 

Trumps infatuation with fascism is shared by his Christian nationalist followers who claim a special right to patriotism through blood and soil. Their claim is rooted in the mistaken belief that our nation was built by white Christian Europeans and founded on Christian principles. 

If anyone has a right to lay claim to blood and soil, it can only be Native Americans. Our nation has always been multi-cultural. And the true vision of America, the dream of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, was a nation founded on Enlightenment principles, not Christian. They were proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator [nature’s God] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Dedication to these Enlightenment ideals, equality, liberty and democracy, made America a great nation. Blood and soil were irrelevant. 

 Today, that legacy is dishonored by a solipsistic President and his fascist followers. Under the Trump regime, America has largely abandoned its defining principles. 

Equality

America has a remarkable ability to improve itself. The institution of slavery marred our founding but an 89-year struggle, concluding with the loss of 700,000 lives during the Civil War, affirmed a first measure of racial equality. And fifty-five years later the 13^th amendment affirmed equal voting rights for women.

Yet inequalities persisted. Economic gaps remained between men and women and between white and Black Americans, while unequal access to personal liberties continued. Institutional segregation endured as well, reinforced by disparities in local school funding. Bias against LGBTQ Americans added another dimension to the unfinished struggle for equality.

Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives attempted to reconcile these disparities. But the Trump administration argued that such efforts obstruct individual meritocracy and has worked aggressively to dismantle DEI programs in our government, military, and educational institutions.

Meritocracy presumes an equal process where rewards are based only on talent and effort. But an equal process, a level playing field, has never truly existed in American Society. From the beginning white men have enjoyed fundamental advantages in wealth, education, and personal freedoms. 

The aim of DEI initiatives is not to undermine meritocracy but to attain equal opportunity, to establish a level playing field. 

What is more, the Trump administration has significantly reduced staff and eliminated regional offices responsible for civil rights enforcement across the Departments of Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has also advanced a series judicial rulings that have reduced protections for LGBTQ people. 

Liberty

For the first and only time in U.S. history, the Supreme Court explicitly revoked a personal liberty that had been established and protected for decades. The Dobbs Decision, written by conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito, overturned Roe v Wade. He concluded irrationally that a woman’s right to control her own body should be left to the states and decided by popular vote. 

But decisions of this nature must be based on reason and evidence, which is exactly how Roe was decided. Abraham Lincoln would never have accepted Alito’s thinking for that would have left slavery to a popular vote

The Administration has also assaulted our liberties. It has conducted a comprehensive program to rollback civil and human rights, especially free speech, due process, and protections for the LGBTQ community.

Democracy

Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his refusal to peacefully transfer power, and his encouragement of the January 6 insurrection are appalling violations of our democratic norms. He is the only defeated President ever to have shown such distain for our Constitution. And his second term pardon of the insurrectionists, who had been fairly tried and sentenced by our impartial judicial  system, added insult to that injury. 

At the beginning of his first term Trump lost the popular vote but claimed to have won by a landslide. He said that immigrants had voted illegally for Clinton. Since then, he has charged that American democracy is flawed, that our elections are fraught with illegal votes by non-citizens and rigged by foreign governments using cyber-attacks on our electronic voting systems. He has not produced even a modicum of evidence, but his relentless whining has indoctrinated most Republicans, and his propaganda is fully endorsed by House Republicans. 

Their objective is to sow doubt about our election process, which is, in fact, exceptionally secure and fair. According to the American Bar Association, the effect of voter fraud is infinitesimal.

Finally, Trump and his advisors work to undermine the mid-term elections by gerrymandering voting districts, and interfering with state election commissions, though constitutionally they are not under federal control. Moreover, he demands access to confidential state voter records and attempts to manipulate mail-in ballots.

 And we can expect another J6-like event on 4 January 2027 when a Democrat majority is expected to be seated in the House. Judge Michael J. Luttig, a rare non-MAGA Republican has issued a chilling warning about what the Administration and his sycophantic Republican controlled House are planning. Read Luttig’s “Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

The Cost of Abandoning America’s Founding Principles

The Trump-MAGA movement’s abandonment of America’s founding principles threatens the survival of our democracy. Yet a majority of the American people chose to return Donald Trump to power, making this crisis not only a failure of leadership but also a failure of civic judgment.

Restoring trust will take generations. Americans who still believe in the founders’ dream of equality, liberty, and democracy will need time to regain confidence in their fellow citizens. America’s allies, who share that democratic vision, will also need time before they can fully trust the American people again.

 And we have yet to reach bottom.

Bob Topper, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a retired engineer.