If Trump admits that the United States is a far better nation than Russia or China, with a heritage of liberty and democracy that imposes unique responsibilities on America as the leader of the free world, then he would have to do something. He’d have to take the hard path of working with a national-security team to forge policies that are in the long-term interests of the United States rather than the short-term interests of Donald Trump. Five years ago, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast taping that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” By that time, the idea that people in the West are too concerned with the pain of others to adequately advocate for their own best interests was already a well-established conservative idea.
Author: Tom Nichols
Published at: 2025-06-30 21:52:00
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