Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney.
“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” so declared Senator Daniel Webster in ending his famous 1830 reply in the U.S. Senate to South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne’s angry defense of slavery and of a state’s right to nullify federal law.
Leading up to the Civil War in 1861, Southerners loved an America that they believed included a God-given right to enslave others. To question their way of life was to question everything about them. They hated it.
Not happy with the outcome of the 1860 presidential election of Abraham Lincoln as president, the South rejected the Constitution, rebelled and seceded from the Union to protect their way of life. Lincoln and the North saw secession as dooming our democratic republic and its revolutionary ideals if states unhappy with an election outcome could simply leave the Union.
The South’s beliefs were pernicious. The new vice-president of the Confederacy promptly announced: “ Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from all are created equal]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. ”.
Earlier this year there was again talk of secession if its proponents cannot have their way. The Florida Governor even essentially proposed to nullify the Constitution’s Article IV requirement to extradite the former president to New York.
Have they not learned that the South suffered a devastating military defeat?
Speaking in reply to President Biden’s State of the Union Address, Arkansas Governor Sarah Hukabee Sanders said: “Today, our freedom is under attack. The America we love is in danger.” What America is she referring to?
No one, whether on the left or right, can claim that their way is the only American way of life. The Constitution and its Amendments reflect decisions of “We the People” that the ways of all Americans, whatever their color, religion, or culture, are American ways of life as long as they respect the rights of others under the Constitution and the law.
Something is desperately wrong with American education if large portions of the country, on the right or left, do not understand this.
Each generation holds a great trust for succeeding generations to preserve and build upon the nation’s evolving foundation. The decades-long neglect of American history and civics in our schools has violated that great trust and led to political violence.
State universities can begin to correct this neglect by requiring for admission more history and civics courses in high school. High schools generally require only a few American history and civics courses because that is all that state universities require for admission.
Overemphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has depleted history teachers at all levels. More high school civics and history courses should also cause universities to have and train more teachers of these subjects.
Governor Sanders adds: “our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country.” Where this statement may be true, the teaching is wrong, but nothing should be glossed over in the good and bad of our history and civics. Fear that frank discussion of racism in America might cause hatred of white students is unwarranted and prevents progress in dealing with the ongoing consequences of past racism.
Youth need to know what happened, even if some ancestors’ acts were monumentally atrocious (such as participating in savage lynchings). They must also be taught that while they are not responsible for the wrongs of ancestors, they are responsible to know the ongoing effects of what ancestors did and to deal maturely with one another in addressing those effects.
Also, long-delayed before Congress is the proposed Civics Secures Democracy Act, which aims to improve civics and history education. It is fully discussed here. Concerned Americans should contact their senators and representatives to urge them to adopt the Act.
“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.