Peggy Noonan, a conservative columnist, wrote an op ed essay in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month expressing her concern about the Trump administration. She worries that some of Trump's most controversial actions have destabilized the republican principles that are the foundation of American democracy.
"Are we maintaining our republic?" she writes. "Is our equilibrium holding?"
Noonan focused on three of President Trump's initiatives: sending the military to quell urban crime and violence, directing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, and ordering a major remodel of the east wing of the White House.
I respect Peggy Noonan as one of the most reasoned and insightful political commentators on the national scene, but I disagree with her concerns.
Sending the National Guard into the District of Columbia and Los Angeles was a dramatic move, but the federal government has called out troops before. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock in 1957 to desegregate the public schools. President Johnson dispatched the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the District of Columbia during the 1968 riots sparked by the assassinbation of Martin Luther King.
Indeed, federal troops and state militias have been called up to curb civil disturbances since George Washington's administration. Washington led federal troops into western Pennsylvania to break up the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Fifty years later, the Pennsylvania state militia entered Philadelphia to quell the so-called Bible riots of 1844.
I also believe that the people who abused the legal process to undermine Trump's administration should be prosecuted. It is wrong to describe the prosecution of James Comey and Letitia James as political vengeance. Trump's political enemies misused the criminal courts and should be called to account. I would not be sorry to see Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith prosecuted as well.
Finally, Ms. Noonan finds the President's White House Ballroom project disturbing, and again, I disagree. As the New York Times observed, Presidents have remodeled the White House from time to time since the administration of Thomas Jefferson.
I don't agree with all of President Trump's policies, but he is trying to put America's house in order after four years of Joe Biden's cynicism, venality, and corruption. Surely Ms. Noonan agrees that our country must have secure borders. Surely she agrees that it's insane to allow boys in girls' locker rooms. And everyone of good faith surely understands that the United States is better off under President Trump than it was when a senile grifter and his cackling, airheaded sidekick ran the country.