Preserving American Values

TIn a recent televised address, Justice Thomas said that the values enshrined in the 1776 Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor” among Americans — a trend perpetrated, he argued, by “intellectuals” and the nation’s colleges and universities. Specifically he said that many people no longer believe “all men are created equal” and deserving of “unalienable rights” protected by a limited government.  

What a perfect example of MAGA’s chutzpa, nerve, audacity … whatever!

While I would certainly agree that many Americans seem to no longer believe—if they ever did—that all men are created equal and that all have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that government secures, the Americans who no longer hold those values are mostly Trump supporters, and the reason is because Trump and MAGA have in their actions shown contempt for those values.

Whether it’s Trump’s fulminations against Muslim and other immigrants, or his banning DEI programs from the government and all government-funded organizations, or the actions of ICE, or MAGA only talking about their rights and having no concern about how the exercise of their rights impinges on the rights of others, thereby vitiating them—these and countless other actions have shown America and his supporters that Trump does not believe that all men are created equal nor that they have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To lay this regrettable fact at the feet of intellectuals and universities is beyond hypocrisy. As is the implication that it is Liberals and Democrats who no longer hold these beliefs, rather than Trump supporters.  

The truth is just the opposite.  It is “intellectuals” and universities that have continued to press the importance of our founding principles, and Liberals and Democrats that continue to believe that these principles are important in improving the lives of all American citizens. 

And contrary to MAGA’s belief that only they have rights, Democrats believe that everyone has rights and that no one in the exercise of his right can impinge on someone else’s exercise of his rights. That principle is the basis of the criminal law, most property law, and government regulation of business. 

For example, if a business pollutes ground water or air because that is their right, they are interfering with the public’s right to safe drinking water and clean air to breathe.  And for that reason, government legitimately regulates such business activity. But Trump has changed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from an agency with a mission to protect the public, to an agency that removes such regulations that interfere with the operation of business.

Trump and his MAGA allies, including Supreme Court justices such as Thomas, are destroying the very foundations on which the United States was founded and has, for the most part, continued to grow and prosper for the past 250 years. They are, ironically, destroying what made America great.