Loss of Traditions of Freedom has Happened at Other Times and Places and Could Happen Here

Richard Upchurch

by Richard Upchurch, Facebook, March 15, 2026 -The intricacies and varieties of human motivation---"what makes people tick"--- are always fascinating and especially so when we try to think about public participation and leadership. Pres. Trump has made himself, by means of aptitude and ambition, in our time of vastly enhanced news coverage and public discourse, a powerful and consequential leader on the vast stage of world history, and thereby exemplifies this biographical complexity very well. 

Who can deny what is always and everywhere a part of our human nature---a certain primal urge for dominance in both style and substance that he himself seems to feel no need to deny. He quite openly covets personal power, and succeeds spectacularly in obtaining it, and in every possible way, always obvious and unashamed in enhancing his status and public image as a member of new class of world plutocrats---men who have mastered the new environments of world-wide business and technology to acquire immense amounts of personal wealth, power and in some instances fame and prestige. 

Simply, without skipping a beat, Pres. Trump openly challenges our constitutional order whenever, by doing so, he thinks he can keep and enhance the extraordinary prerogatives he has succeeded in grasping, while at the same time very skillfully presenting himself as firmly on the side of a conservative social agenda with all the trappings and shows of traditional patriotism. 

While at least sometimes seeming to work to gain recognition as a peacemaker and proponent of free institutions, whenever the devotion he covets seems to be waning, or whenever his party and his agenda seem to be losing, he quite openly challenges institutions most basic and most fundamental in our constitution, such as state and local control of election procedures and standards. And, incredibly, a large number of our fellow citizens seem ready to follow him, to respond to his very great oratorical skills, and seem to want to enhance rather than limit his growing power.  

Things similar have happened in societies that seemed advanced and enlightened and seemed to value their constitutional norms but abandoned them to follow a strong leader into dictatorship---most notably in Germany and Italy, in early and mid 20th Century. I think I've read that ours is now the world's oldest democratic republic with a written constitution. Whether Pres. Trump is the originator or the creature of the dangerous urge of so many to follow and yield and to surrender to his ambition (and I believe he is both) our constitution could possibly be set aside in favor of "a strong leader." 

There seem to be some signs that a loyal opposition is having some small hopeful successes, but now is the time for us to be reminded, and reminded again and again, that loss of traditions of freedom has happened at other times and places and could happen here.

Richard Upchurch is a scholar and a philosopher who lives in Nashville.

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