“Which brings me to another virtue of Trump dispensing with constitutional niceties and attacking the rule of law head-on—namely, moral clarity. If Americans are going to sit by while the liberal order is dismantled, I’d prefer that they not be allowed to hide behind the excuse that, ackshually, what’s happening is technically legal and therefore supposedly would make George Washington beam with pride until his false teeth fell out. As a moral matter, Trump’s voters should be forced to reckon honestly with what they’re condoning.”

“David [French] pondered the irony. “Every [illiberal] dysfunction you’ve seen on the far left has emerged on the far right, and the far right hasn’t been repudiated; it’s been empowered,” he wrote. Under our new president, he warned, “dissenting Americans should brace themselves for an assault on free speech, extreme intolerance and a vicious form of cancel culture that includes an avalanche of threats and intimidation.”’