Pritchett: It’s a dangerous time for our country

Unless we rise to the occasion, we will lose our greatest birthright as American citizens: the privilege of living in a free country where our rights as human beings are protected by our government, instead of being subjects of that government.”

Daniel Pritchett is a resident of Dover.

I wrote just before the inauguration of our 47th president that I was very worried — even fearful — about what his occupying that office might portend (“Be very afraid as presidents transition”). Since then, it is clear that my concerns were more than justified. We now have:

• A president who doesn’t like or form friendships with any of our allies but really admires totalitarian dictators like Vladimir Putin and is emulating despots like Viktor Orban
• A president who is so ignorant about economics that he thinks tariffs are paid by foreign countries instead of American importers and consumers
• A president who is so racist and misogynistic that he automatically assumes that any woman or person of color who has an important job or position must have automatically received it because of diversity, equity and inclusion policies
• A president who is so ignorant about the Constitution — which he again, on Jan. 20, swore to protect and defend — that he thinks that Article 2 means that he has “the right to do whatever I want as president”
• A president who, after summoning a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol four years ago, has now released that mob and pardoned them, thus freeing them to potentially attack police officers again and commit more violence or threats against his political opponents
• A president who, in a world that faces terrorist threats, cyberattack threats and environmental catastrophes — such as supercharged hurricanes, raging wildfires and deadly heat waves — is intent on firing federal employees who have dedicated their lives and careers to protecting and assisting the American people
• A president who, according to his former chief of staff, has expressed disdain for veterans buried in military cemeteries, calling them “suckers and losers,” and now is depicting dedicated civil servants who keep our airways safe, our water clean, our drugs safe and effective, and our food supply fit for human consumption as “deep state operatives” and a waste of taxpayers’ money
• A president who, in the face of another potential pandemic (avian flu) has attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci (and stripped him of security) and appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, in addition to withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization
• A president who has inflamed the world even more against the United States by insulting our closest friends and allies, and talking about taking over places like Greenland, the Panama Canal and Gaza, apparently so he can further enrich himself by building hotels or golf courses there
• A president who has now allowed his biggest campaign contributor, Elon Musk — who has never been elected to anything in his life — to begin a personal and illegal takeover of the inner workings of the federal government, potentially giving him the kind of power that the most diabolical villain in a James Bond novel would never have dreamed of. If what Musk and his henchmen are doing was instead being accomplished by a foreign-based cyberattack, we would consider it an act of war, for it is essentially a move to destroy the United States government as a functioning entity and thus weaken our ability to protect and defend ourselves. But, instead, we are now seeing a hostile coup perpetrated on behalf of our own president, who — I repeat — swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

In 1792, Alexander Hamilton wrote a remarkable letter to George Washington, in which he expressed worry about the potential threat from a future occupant of the presidency, who would not have the sterling character of our first: “When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

In 1838, in his first major public address, 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln asserted that the only real danger to our country, its constitutional system and its political institutions would not come from abroad but from within, from the American people themselves: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” He said that it would erupt from “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts.” He urged that “reverence for the laws” become the “political religion of the nation.”

Lincoln, whose political character was as sterling as that of Washington himself, also warned his audience about the possibility that a dangerous man “of ambition and talents” might arise and “seek the gratification of their ruling passion.” If and when that happened, Lincoln said, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”

I believe that we, the American people, are facing the greatest challenge to our constitutional system of government since the one Mr. Lincoln faced in 1861. Unless we rise to the occasion, we will lose our greatest birthright as American citizens: the privilege of living in a free country where our rights as human beings are protected by our government, instead of being subjects of that government. That was the founding principle of the United States in 1776, but as we approach the 250th anniversary of that event, we are in danger of having nothing to celebrate. As Lincoln put it in 1838, “As a nation of free men, we must live for all time or die by suicide.”

To avoid that, it will, as he said, “require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and the laws,” and firm in standing up for our republic against anyone who wants to destroy it.

Perhaps we can also recall — for inspiration — the words of another great lover of liberty, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.