The reasoning behind the government scheme of the American Republic was extensively debated during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and in the Federalist Papers, authored by James Madison (who also authored the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The framers designed a bicameral legislature and a distinct executive to balance representation, protect minority interests, and prevent tyranny. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected directly by the people to represent local districts. Senators, originally chosen by state legislatures to represent the states as sovereign entities, would provide a check on purely popular passions and preserve federalism (Senators are now popularly elected by the people of the respective states). The President, elected by the entire nation through the Electoral College, would represent the country as a whole, balancing regional interests while serving as a single, accountable executive.
The truth Democrats don’t want Americans to know is that President Donald Trump is fully exercising his Article II powers under the US Constitution as a single accountable executive elected by the whole of the people (at least those who choose to participate in democracy, but an outcome that binds us all). As I have shown in essays on this platform, the President is the Chief Executive Officer, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and Chief Magistrate (top law enforcement officer). He did not claim these powers for himself. His office was bequeathed these powers by the Founders of the American Republic. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. And it is this law that prevents the emergence of a king or tyrant. (See Our Constitution and the Federal Authority to Quell Rebellion; Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them)
Therefore, the claim that Donald Trump is an “authoritarian,” “fascist,” or “king” follows from this argument: the Founders of the American Republic established an authoritarian government or a monarchy. It’s not Trump who is a tyrant, but the American Republic that’s tyrannical; and it is only not so when the President defers to the administrative apparatus and corporate state built up over decades by progressives and financial and industrial power. In other words, not exercising the full authority of the office and allowing technocratic government to proceed unimpeded is the progressive definition of democracy.
Yet the Founders replaced the Articles of Confederation with a constitution to create a Unitary Executive vested with these awesome powers to protect and defend the nation and advance its interests internationally, not to empower bureaucrats and corporations (see For the Record: The President is Also the Chief Magistrate). Moreover, the main problem that brought the delegates from the various states to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the persistent problem of insurrection and rebellion against civil rule—the problem of the mob. The Founders envisioned a President capable and willing to use the Armed Forces to bring order and stability to the Republic and to protect its borders and internal security. Is it any wonder, then, that Democrats oppose Trump’s deployment of the Armed Forces to bring order and stability to America?
Democrats won’t admit this, but it is obvious in their myriad beliefs—and the fact that they decry a President effectively wielding the authority of his office—that they do not believe the American Republic is a legitimate entity. They wish it to be a dead letter. To be sure, they will cite the Constitution when they need an appeal to authority, but in truth, they loathe the document. You see this in their suppression of First Amendment rights, or in the partisan selectivity in their appeals to its clauses. You see it in the unrelenting diatribe about the United States as “founded in slavery” and “rooted in white supremacy”—this in the face of the historical and present-day fact that it is Democrats who were and are the party of race privileging. It was the Democrats who, in the nineteenth century, rejected the Constitution and broke away from the Union, founding their own government, the Confederate States of America (CSA), based on slavery. It is the Democrats who are now raising the specter of the CSA by defying the federal government using the language of neo-Confederacy. “Don’t tell us what to do with our blacks and immigrants!” is the effective cry of their resistance to federal authority. The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just explicitly compared illegal immigrants to slaves.
Almost every week, the Democratic Party spins out a new hysteria in its war against the federal government. The failure of the “No Kings” protests of last Saturday and the planned third attempt to reach Chenoweth and Stepham’s 3.5 percent mark necessary for political change (I will explain Chenoweth and Stepham thesis in Tuesday’s essay on Freedom and Reason), has Party propagandists out with a new angle: Republican Party reference to “Divine Providence” signals their desire for a king. Boogeyman Steve Bannon, who frequently refers to Divine Providence, has become a particular target of progressive vitriol on this ground. Reporters are asking the Trump Administration if it is in contact with Bannon, as if there were something untoward ahout talking to a political genius.
You may recall that, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Democrat Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, criticized the idea that human rights come from God rather than government, calling it a “very, very troubling” notion. He compared this belief to the theocratic system in Iran, arguing that such a view aligns more with religious authoritarianism than with democratic principles. (How ironic that Kaine’s party is about to elect an Islamist as New York mayor.) Kaine contended that rights are given to man by the government. This is not ignorance about the founding ideas of the American Republic; Kaine does not believe in universal human rights. He believes in big government, and he wants to use government to achieve the ends of his party’s globalist ambitions—even if it means running roughshod over the God-given rights of American citizens. As I wrote in Tim Kaine and the Enemies of Liberty and Rights, this is a totalitarian impulse.
Party propagandists are following Kaine’s lead. The talk from patriotic Americans about Divine Providence signals their desire to elevate Trump to monarch. That’s the way the way supporters of monarchies talk, we’re told. No, that’s the way the Founders of the American Republic talked. The Declaration of Independence (we celebrate its 250th anniversary next year) concludes by describing the authority of “Free and Independent States,” which comprises “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,” before finishing with this flourish: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
The Father of the Constitution, James Madison, the man who authored the First Amendment and its Conscience Clause, often credited in public messages “the smiles of Heaven” and “Divine Providence” for the nation’s blessings. In the First Inaugural Address of the nation in 1789, George Washington explicitly thanked “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe” for his providence in guiding the Revolution and the founding of the nation: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States,” he wrote. Was Washington declaring himself a king? Of course not. Washington was the first President of an enlightened secular republic.
Benjamin Franklin, not known for his religious devotion, often spoke of Providence as a guiding and moral force. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he famously urged those assembled to pray, saying: “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men.” Famously, Thomas Jefferson, who in private, like Franklin, tended toward deism—believing in a Creator yet skeptical of divine intervention, nevertheless wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia (penned between 1781-1782): “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, the man who defeated the Democrat insurrectionists on the battlefield (and who was assassinated by a Democrat terrorist for his troubles), spoke about Providence in deeply reflective terms—observing divine will in the Civil War’s suffering. “The Almighty has His own purposes,” he said in his Second Inaugural Address in 1865. Lincoln referred to Providence as a way of acknowledging moral order without presuming to know God’s intentions. Decades later, another Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, often invoked Providence as a moral guide for national purpose and duty. “In the long run,” Roosevelt wrote, “only those are happy who have sought and found how to serve the Lord and their fellow-men under the guidance of Providence.”
Even Democrats have referred to Divine Providence. Franklin Roosevelt, in wartime exhortations and prayers, asked for “the blessing of Almighty God” and “the favor of His Providence” upon the nation. Harry Truman often sought “the guidance of Almighty Providence.” John Kennedy, in his inaugural address, said, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” Even Barack Obama (although one rightly questions his sincerity) referred to Providence in historical context. “Providence has a way of reminding us that we are not the masters of our fate,” he once said.
So what is Providence? Providence refers to God’s active care, governance, or guidance in human affairs. It implies that events in the world are not random but occur under the direction or supervision of a divine power. Crucially, Providence in the mouths of the Founders served as a deistic and neutral term for God—the “Creator,” “Nature’s God,” the “Laws of Nature”—acknowledging divine oversight without invoking specific doctrines or miracles. To say something happened “by Providence” means it occurred through God’s power, will, or wisdom.
For the record, I write all this as an atheist. That “filthy little atheist” (as Edmund Burke called him) Thomas Paine referred to Divine Providence—and that’s good enough for me. In Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), he invoked Divine Providence to inspire Americans during the Revolutionary War, suggesting that a higher moral order guided the struggle for liberty. In The American Crisis, he famously begins with “These are the times that try men’s souls,” and frames the fight for independence as aligned with a providential purpose, implying that God—or the moral order of the universe—supports the cause of freedom.
But did not monarchies also appeal to Divine Providence? Yes, but the progressive propagandist leaves out a crucial distinction. The divine right of kings was a political and religious doctrine that held that monarchs derived their authority directly from God rather than from the consent of the people. According to this belief, the king was God’s appointed ruler on Earth and therefore answerable only to God, not to any church (an advance in that regard), parliament, or subjects. This idea was used to justify absolute monarchy, especially in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to discourage rebellion by portraying resistance to the king as disobedience to divine will. The key distinction between absolutism and republicanism lies in the source of authority: unlike kings, whose power is said to come directly from God, Presidents derive their authority from the consent of the governed. In the American Republic, Divine Providence is experienced not via concentrated power in a single ruler, but by empowering the people to ensure their representatives act responsibly in carrying out their duties, achieving this through regular elections, or under extraordinary circumstances, removal from office, reflecting a collective stewardship under the guidance of higher principles.
Democrats seek something very different, and they have, over many decades, managed to walk the nation substantially down their desired path. In the arrangements they seek, the state functions less as a forum for collective self-determination than as a network of administrative apparatuses—agencies, ostensibly neutral offices, and regulatory bodies—that execute the directives of concentrated corporate interests. While the trappings of a constitutional republic remain—elections, judicial review (a process that has become corrupt with the rise of the rogue judiciary)—they operate primarily as mechanisms of legitimation, giving citizens the sense of influence while substantive decisions are determined by technocratic elites in league with transnational capital. National sovereignty is subordinated to the logic of globalized markets, and policy is calibrated to optimize corporate and international financial priorities rather than the public good.
In the language of political theory, this is an inversion of classical democratic norms: power is exercised not openly and directly but through complex, diffuse, and opaque administrative channels, creating what Sheldon Wolin terms “inverted totalitarianism,” that is, a managed democracy in which consent is manufactured, and governance is depoliticized in favor of corporate and globalist agendas. (See No Gods. No kings. No elites. The People; Celebrating the End of Chevron: How to See the New Fascism; Totalitarian Monopoly Capitalism: Fascism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Can Fascism Happen in America? Has it Already?; )
When Steve Bannon hammers on about “deconstructing the administrative state,” this is what he means. The populist-nationalism of Trump and MAGA movement is this: to turn back America from the road to technocracy to return to the constitutional foundation of the American Republic—to reclaim the American System designed by Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, and abandon the doctrine of free trade championed by the Democratic Party that has, in practice, put America on the path to decline (see Tariffs, Trade, and the Future of the American Worker; With Reciprocal Tariffs, Trump Triggers the Globalists; Why the Globalists Don’t Want Tariffs. Why the American Worker Needs Them; Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism; Rejecting Crisis Capitalism). This is why progressives loathe Trump. It’s why they project onto him the authoritarianism that lurks at the core of progressive ideology and practice.
freedom and reason 