In his Inaugural Address, President Trump stated that he strongly believes that his life was saved for a reason. “I was saved by God to make America great again.” Several weeks later, on February 15, the President wrote on Truth Social: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Putting 2 and 2 together, the current President of the United States of America believes that he was saved by God to save his country and that in saving his country he does not violate any law. While it may be up for discussion whether the act of saving one’s country does or doesn’t entail a violation of any law, the President’s words give rise to the interesting question whether there may be laws that must be followed by he who wishes to save his country, more in particular by he who believes that he was saved by God to do so.
The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
The answer to this question can be found in the Declaration that led to America’s independence. In 1776, the thirteen united States of America unanimously declared: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with 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, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Presumably, these same Laws do apply when people seek to save their country if it is on its way to lose or has already lost its separate and equal station. Likewise, these are the very Laws that entitle a people to alter or abolish their country’s Government when the latter has become destructive of the ends of securing the unalienable rights endowed to Man by his Creator, Who is also known as Nature’s God.
Violating arbitrary “laws”
In other words, according to the peoples of the thirteen States that formed the beginning of that unified “separate and equal station” that the President likes to refer to as “America”, any savior of America, most certainly a savior who believes that he was saved by God to save it, is bound to obey the Laws that entitled the American peoples to assume their stations among the powers of the earth and lay the foundations of the united States of America. Of necessity, applying these Laws unavoidably leads to the “violation” of any of the discretionary and arbitrary “laws”, rules and regulations that obstruct, alter, undermine, twist, fringe upon or in any way violate the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
The natural right of lawful defense
What this means in “the course of human events” was explained in 1850 by the French writer, economist and politician Frédéric Bastiat, who defined “the Law” ‒ La Loi ‒ as “the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all.” Bastiat also explained that the Law is perverted when, “under the pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement”, it “may take from one party in order to give to another, draw from the wealth acquired by all the classes to add it to that of one class; whether that of farmers or that of manufacturers, merchants, ship owners, artists, comedians.”
The battlefield of everybody’s dreams
If the Law is turned into an instrument of power, “then certainly”, so Bastiat, “there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the Law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would rather overturn society than not obtain it.” Bastiat’s warning was clear: “… make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, industrial, literary, artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or, what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending Utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has.” Legislation will thus become a “battlefield for everybody’s dreams and everybody’s covetousness.”
Distinguishing Laws from “laws”
Whatever President Trump had in mind when he wrote “He who saves his country does not violate any Law”, in light of the unique history of his country, his personal beliefs and what he seeks to accomplish in his second term, his words become meaningful only when we make a clear distinction between the Laws that he must obey ‒ the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God ‒ and the “laws” that he must “violate” because they were crafted for the purpose of realizing utopian dreams, satisfying covetousness, and, most of all, substituting collective for individual forces and overturning society. Whether President Trump will show himself worthy of the entitlement he claims to have received from God in order to save the country that was founded in accordance with the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, is something that lies between him and his Savior.
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