This year’s election should have dispelled any and every doubt as to America’s favored (even only) political movement: MAGA. The logic of this, which has been countervailed by legacy news outfits like CNN and the New York Times for years now, wanting the public to believe MAGA is “far right” or “fringe,” should have always been intuitive. Make America Great Again, put simply, is rooted in common sense. No quintessentially American movement would be anything but MAGA. This is because the movement has always represented a revival of American values; of the rule of law; of due process; of impartial and fair justice. It has been oriented around the American Dream – focusing on American business, American industry, and American prosperity. This is not anathema to our principles – it represents a wholehearted embrace of them.
No nation in history, besides one with a suicide pact, would ever prioritize the interests of the foreigner over that of the home-ground citizen. That is such a simple, self-evident truth that it needs no further explanation. Nations are like families. They require careful cultivation and attention over years, even generations, in order to bear plentiful fruits. Caring for one’s own over the foreigner or outsider is not immoral in any sense of the term, it is perfectly natural. This is not simply an American principle, either. A universal law for all nations – indeed, in order to have a nation in any meaningful sense to begin with – requires agreement on a common morality, a sense of national identity, and a healthy and vibrant culture that bonds disparate peoples together under one roof. Political reality necessitates that national identities do not work without strict borders, accompanied by a rigid vetting process to select only those peoples naturally receptive to liberty and self-governance. That is the American tradition.
Modern people far too often take for granted our constitutional birthright of liberty. In the vast scheme of history, liberty is not something that comes natural to most peoples or times. That inexorable fact is what makes America exceptional. We are a liberty-bearing and loving people and have been able to pass that down one generation after the next. We are that partly because it is considered a fundamental value enshrined in our constitutional form of government. Separately, but no less important, is the fact that in previous generations we knew the toils and labors – often firsthand – required to preserve liberty, and how precious and fleeting a republican government that entrusted its people to govern themselves by and large was. In fact, the American project was the first attempt at practicing republican government on a grand scale since ancient Rome. The reasons our Founding Fathers wrote under pen names like “Publius” and “Cincinnatus” was to pay direct homage to that ancient heritage, and to underscore how unique constitutional government was in modern times.
Today’s Americans have largely forgotten their ancient heritage – and crucially how important and rare a small-r republican form of government is. Our clownshow of a Congress, replete with abominable individuals like Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and Jamie Crockett (each one worse than the previous) who our Founding Fathers never would have dreamed occupying the halls of power, in part detracts from our sacred birthright – and disillusions those who might otherwise take interest in and preserve – that venerable heritage from taking meaningful action towards its restoration. This is why as a country we came so close to losing it all – and by the grace of God were given perhaps our last chance ever at revitalizing our constitutional way of life with Donald Trump’s resounding victory a few short weeks ago.
The mandate he received (and make no mistake about it, mandate it was) is encouraging, for it evidences that America’s dynamic spirit has not been totally vanquished. There are still remnants of a will to survive, on a civilizational level, even though we veered unnervingly close to all-out collapse. Now the work begins.
Though we should make good use of the holiday season to rest and reflect on what we have accomplished, hundreds – if not thousands – of J6 demonstrators remain political hostages to a despotic government. Many still languish behind bars, away from their families, having missed seeing their children grow up over their formative years of youth and adolescence, all because the current regime would prefer to scapegoat these people merely to consolidate their power and permanently vanquish political dissent. What has been done to the J6 political prisoners these last four years is a deep and tragically still-abiding evil. It is not enough to simply release or pardon these hostages, who have been persecuted for simply exercising an inalienable right, enshrined and guaranteed under the First Amendment, to peaceably assemble and speak out against injustice committed by a regime deeply in the throes of tyranny. These people deserve to be made whole again. That starts with a formal apology from their government but must continue with so much more. It is not an overstatement to say that the injustices committed against the J6 political hostages amount to the most egregious violation of civil rights exacted by the federal government against any discrete minority group in American history, given the unrelenting concentration of the firepower directed against them, and the outsized obsession among our political elites to punish them.
From the relentless gaslighting to demonize them by the media, to the lives destroyed through arbitrary, capricious, and bankrupting litigation, to the countless incarcerations – and complete disregard for their rights along the way – these people have been tortured nonstop by their government over the last four harrowing years. The evils committed are unspeakable and have lifelong consequences for the defendants, their families, and the institutions that persecuted them. Truly, should we ever come to our senses as a country, this age will be seen by future historians as one of the darkest in modern history, and certainly one of the most violative of human rights — and outright evil — observed in any era in American history.
One of the many aspects of our birthright that our people, and that includes most conservatives, must reclaim is a reverence for justice, in its true and original formulation, and specifically how justice ought to be administered by political institutions throughout society. Justice is an aspect of virtue and must be administered in that light. Most lawyers, including, tragically, far too many self-identified conservative attorneys and judges, fail to demonstrate a deep-rooted understanding of justice in their words and practice. This involves an appreciation of civic morality, and from there, the rightful persecution of crimes. At the same time, true justice entails proper administration of judicial procedure. This means how certain acts deemed intolerable by society ought to be prosecuted – efficient and timely (albeit fair), so as to not impugn the legitimacy of the institutions which prosecute them, nor the dignity of man.
That final precept involves a reminder, ultimately, of where man’s essential dignity comes from. That in turn requires us to keep our sights on Biblical morality. All men are made in the image and likeness of God. That is the cornerstone of justice – both its ethical structure and administration. Men are only permitted to administer justice against wrongs because they are distinct from the beasts of nature and made in the light of God’s infinite wisdom and grace. At the same time, men are not gods themselves, and thus must always remember their essential limits, downstream of which implicates the fundamentally limited nature of justice and guides its practical administration. In short, this is a roundabout way of saying that the kernel of justice is humility – and with that humility, sufficient perspective into man’s fundamental duties and inherent limits. The virtuous judge should never fear administering punitive justice when it is required, especially against those who would otherwise lay waste to justice altogether. At the same time, he must be attentive to its guardrails, unlike the judges which have administered the J6 trials, and ensure that the punishment always matches the crime – and that the crime is a legitimate one, not one based on political malice or invective.
Liberty cannot exist without justice – nor can constitutional government, at least in the American form. Donald Trump’s political mandate was a reminder that the majority of American people still cherish these things and want this next administration to save them because they recognize their indispensability to republican government. If America forfeits the administration of justice to tyrants, it will forgo its very identity – and continue down the road to not just serfdom but oblivion. That has been the standard these last four years. Now presents a wakeup call. This is an inflection point in history that requires those who have been given political authority to make good on their countrymen’s plea – so that liberty might be saved, not just for us over these next four years, but for future generations as well.
Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.