INTRODUCTION

Who Is Killing America?

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

On July 6, 2017, President Donald Trump addressed the issue of the death of America in an address to the Polish people in Warsaw's Krasinski Square. There he spoke not of America but of Western civilization, a civilization arising out of "bonds of history, culture, and memory," now facing "dire threats to our security and to our way of life." At first it seemed Trump was speaking only about the terrorist threat from radical Islamists. But it soon became clear to Poles and to the world that Trump was addressing a much larger issue.

The West, Trump said, is a particular type of civilization. "We write symphonies. We pursue innovation ... We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives ... And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together."

These values, Trump said, do not uphold themselves. We must uphold them. "The fundamental question of our time," he said, "is whether the West has the will to survive." Specifically, "Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?" Even while suggesting that larger forces posed an existential threat to America and the West, Trump did not clearly enumerate what those forces were. Instead he issued a call to resistance, resoundingly concluding that "our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield — it begins with our minds, our wills, and our souls." Trump expressed confidence that in the end "our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph." This speech, encapsulating characteristic Trump themes, brought the Polish crowd to its feet in enthusiastic applause. But in America it evoked a reaction that has defined the mainstream media response to Trump since he first declared his candidacy. Vox insisted that Trump's remarks "sounded like an alt-right manifesto," a reference to an allegedly racist faction that Trump has imported into the political right and the Republican Party. The progressive website Common Dreams detected "an ominous current running beneath Trump's words" that evoked the "infamous 1935 Nazi propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will.'" The Atlantic, in an article by Peter Beinart, deplored Trump for his "racial and religious paranoia."

Let's stay with Beinart's logic on this. According to Beinart, when Trump uses the term "our civilization," he is speaking in a kind of code. "His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means." Beinart begins with a disarmingly simple question: what is the West? He argues that it cannot be merely a geographic term since "Poland is further east than Morocco. France is further east than Haiti. Australia is further east than Egypt. Yet Poland, France, and Australia are all considered part of 'the West.' Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not."

Nor can the West be an ideological term referring to democracy or industrialization, in Beinart's view. After all, "India is the world's largest democracy." Japan is fully industrialized. Yet obviously Trump does not include these nations in his definition of the West. Beinart concludes that for Trump, "The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian ... and largely white."

That's what Beinart sees Trump as defending: religious and racial exclusivity. From Beinart's perspective, Trump's main target is not an Islamic threat from abroad, but a perceived threat coming from nonwhite, non-Christian immigrants to the United States. In Beinart's words, "The 'south' and 'east' only threaten the West's 'survival' if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders. They only threaten the West's 'survival' if by 'West' you mean white, Christian hegemony."

Something very interesting is going on here and it's slightly camouflaged by Beinart's apparent hostility to every word Trump spoke. When Trump says that America faces an existential threat to its values and way of life, Beinart actually agrees. So the disagreement between Trump and Beinart is not over whether America is vitally threatened but over the nature and source of the threat.

For Beinart and many others in the progressive or leftist camp, the threat does not come from Islamic radicals or immigrants but rather from "racial and religious paranoia," and the source of the threat is Trump and his white Christian supporters — a group we may call the Trumpsters. In other words, from Beinart and the left's point of view, it is Trump's and the Trumpsters' dangerous crusade on behalf of whiteness and Christianity that is killing America.

I am going to dive into these waters more deeply, but first I want to establish that Beinart is hardly alone in considering Trump to be the serial killer of America's most cherished values and institutions, if not of the country itself. Here are some representative articles from recent months.

Also in The Atlantic, Jack Goldsmith asks, "Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?" Short answer: Yes. From Salon: "Donald Trump Is Destroying America's Standing in the World and May End Up Destroying the World." Title of a recent column in the Baltimore Sun: "Trump Is Killing American Ideals." Writing in the New York Times, Yascha Mounk declares on August 1, 2017, "The Past Week Proves That Trump Is Destroying Our Democracy." Not to be outdone, Ryu Spaeth in the New Republic offers "Donald Trump Is Killing Us: Notes from the End of the World as We Know It." And on a personal note, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wants us to know that "President Trump Is Killing Me. Really." Evidently Milbank has been suffering from fatigue, headaches, lack of sleep, even chest pain, and since his health was previously good he attributes the...