On January 18, 2026, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. This is not a gaffe or a joke; it is a declaration of how Trump understands power. It reads:

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

This letter is sheer madness.

A sitting President openly declares that his commitment to peace depends on whether he personally receives a prize—petulant narcissism elevated to state doctrine. Peace, under constitutional government, is not a favor a ruler grants when he feels appreciated. It is a legal and moral obligation grounded in the rights of individuals and nations. Trump, in contrast, treats it as a mood.

Worse, the letter rejects sovereignty itself. Questioning Denmark’s ownership of Greenland because “boats landed there” is pre-modern barbarism. By that logic, no country owns anything—only whoever has the power to seize it. It is the same logic used by every conqueror in history, from ancient empires to modern dictators.

The phrase “Complete and Total Control” is the tell. It is an explicit claim that world security requires American domination of foreign territory. No advocate of liberty, no defender of objective law, and no serious supporter of the American constitutional order can accept that premise.

All of this is wrapped in a protection-racket view of alliances. The United States is NATO’s fulcrum, and properly so. NATO exists so rights-respecting states can coordinate mutual self-defense under law. Trump does not dispute that structure; he exploits it to reduce an alliance of free nations to something contingent on his moods, his resentments, and his need to be indulged. What remains, if we continue to allow it, is Trump’s weakness on the march—performative, erratic, and profoundly dangerous.

This is not merely “undiplomatic” or “unpresidential.” It is a worldview that treats the United States as Trump’s personal property, international laws that prohibit aggression as optional, and force as the final arbiter of right. Such a worldview is incompatible with liberty. It is incompatible with objective law. And it is incompatible with the moral foundations of the American republic.

Anyone still defending this man and his movement is not defending America. They are defending the ravings of a would-be king, stripped of reason, law, and moral restraint. And they should be ashamed.

To start the holiday, I re-read Ayn Rand's classic 1963 essay, "Racism." It is the most thorough diagnosis of why some individuals become racists -- and the best prescription for what to do about racism -- that I have ever read.

There is no substitute for reading the whole thing, but the following passage struck me as quite prophetic, given today's political climate:

The "civil rights" bill, now under consideration in Congress, is another example of a gross infringement of individual rights. It is proper to forbid all discrimination in government-owned facilities and establishments: the government has no right to discriminate against any citizens. And by the very same principle, the government has no right to discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others. It has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments.

No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man. A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine -- but doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a communist's freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue -- and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.

Needless to say, if that "civil rights" bill is passed, it will be the worst breach of property rights in the sorry record of American history in respect to that subject.*

It is an ironic demonstration of the philosophical insanity and the consequently suicidal trend of our age, that the men who need the protection of individual rights most urgently -- the Negroes -- are now in the vanguard of the destruction of these rights.

A word of warning: do not become victims of the same racists by succumbing to racism; do not hold against all Negroes the disgraceful irrationality of some of their leaders. No group has any proper intellectual leadership today or any proper representation.

I'll confine myself to a local phenomenon I was recently disturbed to learn about: Mississippi, where I was born and raised, doesn't just commemorate Robert E. Lee's birthday. It does so on the same day as the federal Martin Lurther King holiday.

In 2026.

It strikes me as possible that this may well be the case in part from the kind of reaction Rand describes above in the last paragraph -- and which journalists might sloppily call a "backlash." The pervasiveness of the neo-Confederate "Lost Cause" myth in the culture is at least equally responsible. Both threaten the high degree of progress towards King's dream that has occurred there, largely during in my lifetime.

The fight for individual freedom never ends, and fortunately, we have a powerful ally in that fight.

-- CAV