No matter your political alignment, the methods of President Donald Trump’s administration should give you some angst – executive orders abrogating laws passed by Congress, court orders flouted, judges attacked, longtime allies disparaged, masked ICE agents ambushing non-violent legal immigrants, DOGE firing then unfiring thousands, reckless security breaches….

 

And, so far, the Republican controlled Congress simply kowtows, raising the specter of a despotic presidency.

 

In 1838 Abraham Lincoln spoke of “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois: “There is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts.”

 

Perhaps nothing exemplifies more what Trump and his cohorts are doing than this proclamation by Tom Homan, his border czar: “They’re not gonna stop us,” Homan declared on Fox News. “We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think, I don’t care what the left thinks, we’re coming.”

 

Lincoln warned that the leadership norm of constrained ambition essential to self-government would not always constrain an emerging tyrant from the “family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle” who “thirsts and burns for distinction.”

 

Alienated Republican columnist David Brooks said on PBS, “Donald Trump does everything he can to destroy things that would restrain his power.”

 

Another alienated Republican columnist George Will wrote, “The Constitution’s Article II says the president ‘shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ Trump says, ‘I have an Article II, where I have a right to do whatever I want as president.’”

 

Lincoln said that when one with such unrestrained ambition arises, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”

 

After some Trump allies in the House introduced resolutions to impeach several judges hindering Trump’s orders, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, took notice. He issued this statement: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

 

Sixty-one years before Lincoln, founding father Ben Franklin told the constitutional convention, “This Constitution…can only end in despotism…when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

 

As Congress acquiesces to Trump’s despotic impulses, remember Franklin also counseled “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

 

Aptly, one of Trump’s sycophants in the House introduced a bill to put Trump in place Franklin on the $100 bill.

 

Crawford is the author of “A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.”