Trump’s Mandate: Restore National Sovereignty By Casey Wheatland
https://tomklingenstein.com/trumps-mandate-restore-national-sovereignty/
Donald J. Trump’s 2024 electoral victory was so decisive that, for the first time since 1988, congressional Democrats did not challenge the certification of a Republican presidential victory. Trump won the popular vote, swept the swing states, and ran ahead of down ballot Republicans. Unquestionably, he has a mandate to govern. That mandate belongs to the MAGA agenda, not to conventional Republican priorities.
President Trump best defined his political mission in his 2016 address at the Republican National Convention: “The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect.” In his second inaugural address this week, as he echoed these same themes, the 47th president’s first promise to the American people was simple: “Our sovereignty will be reclaimed.”
Trump’s goal, in 2024 as much as in 2016, is to reorient politics and policy towards America’s national wellbeing through common sense reforms. (Again in the second inaugural, he promised a “revolution of common sense.”) These reforms include protecting American workers and balancing foreign trade, revitalizing manufacturing, securing energy independence, ending foreign wars and drawing down military commitments abroad, mass deportation of illegal aliens, limiting legal immigration to maintain wage stability and cultural unity, and nurturing patriotism and civic confidence.
Far from an eclectic mix of policies, the MAGA agenda is unified by a central principle: the restoration of the political, cultural, economic, and military foundations of national sovereignty that have been piddled away by our ruling class. A sovereign nation is one that can secure its own territory, conduct its affairs without undue pressure from foreign governments, enforce its own laws, amass sufficient arms and wealth to quell internal and external threats, and prioritize its own citizens over all others.
President Trump and his allies can look to the American Founding for inspiration and precedent for the reforms ahead. Trump’s nationalist agenda has the potential to revive in a real, tangible way the statecraft and politics of the founding fathers.
In the years leading up to the War of Independence, the founding fathers increasingly recognized that imperial mismanagement was the issue of the day — and it could only be overcome with regime-level transformations. Empires tend to subordinate the good of their people to external ambitions. The British Empire, like the American government today, centralized authority in the imperial capital in order to project power abroad. Britain’s imperial ambitions came at a price for her subjects in the colonies. Pioneers on the frontier were left vulnerable to Indian attacks. New taxes burdened and angered the colonists. Military authorities supplanted the rule of civilian officials. Attempts to reform the empire to secure colonial interests failed. Ben Franklin’s 1754 Albany Plan of Union would have given the American colonies greater representation in the empire and sufficient authority to defend themselves and raise revenue, but it was never adopted.
By 1776, American statesmen recognized that no reform to the imperial government would suffice. National sovereignty was necessary to resolve their grievances. The Declaration of Independence begins and ends with the need for national sovereignty. The opening paragraph speaks of a necessity “for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.” National sovereignty is a right by nature, one that must be asserted for the protection of the citizens’ natural rights. At the end of the Declaration, the “united colonies” are declared “free and independent states” with “the full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” A nation or government that cannot do these things is not truly sovereign; it cannot protect its people.
The founders recognized that the mere declaration of sovereignty did not make it a reality. To be truly independent, the new nation needed sound policies to cultivate and preserve its ability to promote the interests of its citizens. First, citizens need a shared national identity. Without this, they would have no reason to promote the common good or to view the nation as anything more than a commercial enterprise. The founders recognized that patriotism was both natural and good. As John Jay noted in Federalist 2 and President Washington reiterated in his Farewell Address, the American people were united by shared language, ancestry, laws, customs, and principles of government. Founders such as Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and Thomas Jefferson cemented this shared identity by promoting patriotic education.
The founders further understood that mass immigration was a powerful threat to their newfound national sovereignty and identity. The citizen body had the right to dictate the terms of entry into the country and the conditions for naturalizing new members. Gouverneur Morris explained at the Constitutional Convention that “every Society from a great nation down to a club had the right of declaring the conditions on which new members should be admitted.” The Founders feared that mass immigration, legal or illegal, could lead to the formation of ethnic enclaves and factions within the country. Alexander Hamilton warned that the imprudence of mass immigration was “as much a received axiom as anything in the science of politics” and that “hardly anything contributed more to the downfall of Rome.” A nation cannot long maintain its sovereignty if it imports an endless stream of people unaccustomed to its way of life.
Yet cultural homogeneity is not enough for a nation to be truly sovereign. It must also be self-sufficient in the most important economic sectors. Otherwise, it is forced to rely on its rivals for vital goods. The second law passed by the first Congress after the ratification of the Constitution was a protective tariff. President Washington encouraged the development of domestic manufacturing and commercial shipping in his first and second annual message to Congress in order to achieve economic independence. President Washington and the first Congress recognized that overreliance on goods from abroad threatens national independence by giving foreign governments and businessmen leverage over American policy.
Maintaining national sovereignty further requires a military strong enough to deter or repel foreign threats. However, an overly powerful military establishment can also pose a threat to the constitutional order and undermine popular sovereignty. In Federalist 8, Hamilton warned against what President Dwight Eisenhower would later call the “military-industrial complex.” Large military establishments can become “engines of despotism” that usurp the authority of the civilian government. The framers’ solution was to avoid wars of choice, maintain neutrality and diplomacy with foreign nations that do not threaten our sovereignty, and to keep the military budget limited and its leadership under strict civilian control.
The grievances the colonists held against the Crown are not unlike the problems Americans suffer today. Some have taken to calling our government the Globalist American Empire because it treats its own people as second-class citizens while propping up (and queering) client states abroad. Like the British Empire before it, our ruling class sacrifices national interests for the sake of its global ambitions. It actively undermines the sovereignty of the nation and popular rule. Open borders invite crime and violence—every city is now a potential frontier town. Granting amnesty to illegal aliens or conferring citizenship on their children destroys national sovereignty by destroying the nation. Who needs to secure the consent of citizens if new voters can by imported to replace those prickly natives? American tax dollars are wasted overseas on ideological projects that have no discernible relation to our wellbeing. Intelligence and military officials run roughshod over civilian authorities and constitutional rights. The Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row.
It is, in fact, good news that our situation today is so similar to the political crisis that gave birth to our nation. We have the blueprint for solving our most fundamental problems. We need only the political will and prudence to implement it.
To accomplish the mission of restoring national sovereignty, President Trump should listen to his instincts, imitate the examples of our first statesmen, and use his coalitional power to reshape the priorities of the new Republican Congress.
Mass deportations of illegal aliens and stricter caps on legal immigration will promote the cultural unity required by a sovereign nation-state. Revitalizing manufacturing, raising protective tariffs, busting corporate monopolies, and promoting food and energy independence will improve the economic wellbeing of average citizens and ween us off dependence on hostile nations. President Trump can revive the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education and can further reinvigorate America’s sense of national identity through cultural initiatives. The upcoming semiquincentennial celebration of American independence will be a unique opportunity to restore the unapologetic celebration of American greatness. The task of restoring the nation cannot be accomplished with a demoralized and demonized citizenry.
After he successfully implements his agenda, President Trump will amass tremendous goodwill with American voters. He should then use that political capital to tackle the final stumbling block to national sovereignty: foreign influence. President Trump should create a new task force to apprehend foreign spies and agents of influence that have infiltrated sensitive government, military, and university positions. He should also lean on his congressional allies to repeal the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) and pass a blanket ban on foreign lobbying. Foreign governments should not have the option to pay American citizens, think tanks, and media outlets to influence public opinion or policy for their own interests. Trump will make many enemies from those on the foreign dole, but American voters will reward his coalition for restoring their authority over their own government.
If President Trump can fulfill his mandate, he will have transformed a sclerotic, mismanaged empire into a sovereign nation that promotes the rights and interests of its own citizens — just like the founders before him.
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