The question now is not only how America will wield its power, but how the rest of the world will respond to a superpower increasingly guided by transactional interests rather than shared norms.
The constitutional stakes are plain. The Bill of Rights protects speech, press, and the right “peaceably to assemble,” and it does not contain an immigration exception. International law says the same with sharper vocabulary.
The question for a republic is whether it can learn to look away from the dazzling, authoritarian image long enough to see -- and rebuild -- the dull, demanding, and essential foundations of a reality-based politics.
The right to live in peace is not a gift from empires. It is a demand, shouted into the barrels of their guns. It is a world, built stone by stone, in the ruins they leave behind.
