The Former President's Approach Present a Danger to Civilized Society.
His domestic and foreign policies – from the effort to overturn the election five years ago to recent actions and warnings – weaken not only domestic and international legal frameworks. The implications are broader.
These actions endanger the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.
The moral purpose of civilized society is to stop the more powerful from preying upon and using the vulnerable. Without this, we would be trapped in a conflict of all against all where might makes right could survive.
This principle is central of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the core of the modern framework of international relations championed by the America, which stresses collective action, democratic governance, human rights, and the legal authority.
However, it is a fragile construct, often broken by those who seek to abuse their authority. Preserving it demands that the powerful have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that society hold them accountable should they falter.
Unfettered might does not equal right. It leads to instability, chaos, and conflict.
Every time entities that are richer and more powerful target and use those that are not, the framework of our shared norms unravels. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.
We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than ever before. This encourages the powerful to leverage their position against the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of omnipotent.
The resources of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace covers much of the globe. AI is poised to further concentrate resources and influence further. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is unmatched in recorded history.
Enabled by complicit legislators and an accommodating judicial body, the executive office has been made into the most dominant and unchecked instrument of government in history.
Consider this confluence and you perceive the looming crisis.
An unbroken thread links previous transgressions to current provocations. Both were premised on the hubris of omnipotence.
One observes much the same in the actions of other powers: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.
Yet, unfettered might does not create right. It makes for uncertainty, upheaval, and armed conflict.
Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to constrain the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches in time cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for international catastrophe.
Such disregard for rules will cast a long shadow over America and the global community – and indeed civilization – for the foreseeable future.