Trump Turns Progressive Narrative Upside Down

Self-governing citizens should trust one another and view with suspicion those in positions of government power, not the other way around.

Let’s take a trip back in time: The United States was founded with a strong faith that citizens can and will govern themselves. The Founding Fathers understood that mutual civic trust among citizens is the bedrock of a self-governing republic—a safeguard against tyranny.

Liberty thrives when citizens trust one another and unite in opposition to demagogues who try to turn citizens against each other while usurping powers never delegated by We The People.

In my own speeches and writings, I have often described the American Revolution and subsequent Founding as a freedom trust among virtuous, self-governing citizens.

The Founders were wise enough to understand that government is like fire: both necessary and extremely dangerous.

Yes, government exists to protect individual rights, but history shows that any government can use its monopoly on legalized force to violate the very rights it is supposed to protect. To counter this tendency, our wise Founders crafted a constitutional system of limited, enumerated, and separated powers—a framework designed to keep those in power just, accountable, and on their toes.

Turning Our Founding Upside Down

By the late 19^th and early 20th centuries, this premise of the Founding was challenged, even attacked. Progressive leaders like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt flipped the script 180 degrees. Their narrative? Fellow citizens—particularly successful business owners—are the true threats to the American Dream.

For over a century, progressives have preached a consistent message: Don’t trust your neighbors; trust the government.

FDR’s New Deal was a grand, failed experiment in economic central planning, featuring price and wage controls imposed by unelected government bureaucrats, all of which was justified as allegedly protecting the American people from free markets and business owners.

Specifically, trust unelected bureaucrats—supposedly altruistic and without any personal or political interests—to rescue us from the predation of the wealthy and productive. From Wilson to Roosevelt, Johnson to Carter, Clinton to Obama to Biden, Democratic progressives have echoed this mantra: Trust the government, not each other.

In their telling, elected officials and unelected bureaucrats become caped crusaders, swooping in to protect ordinary Americans from each another (while enriching themselves, along the way, with our money). This narrative has become progressive orthodoxy: Every “solution” expands state power, curtails individual freedom, and shifts capital and control into the hands of the political class.

Trump Turns Narrative Right-Side Up

Enter Donald Trump.

Within barely more than a month of his presidency, he has upended the progressive playbook. Suddenly, the Overton Window of public discourse has shifted back toward the Founders’ way of thinking and speaking: a society where citizens trust one another to run their own businesses, use their own property, invest their own capital, raise their own children, and live freely as they please, while scrutinizing government elites, both elected and unelected, with healthy and unrelenting skepticism.

In mere weeks, the Trump administration has spotlighted only some of the corruption, waste, and fraud endemic to Washington. It has urged Americans to challenge politicians and bureaucrats rather than defer to them blindly. For citizens weary of a century of top-down progressive political paternalism—for citizens tired of being treated as children—Trump’s message is resonating deeply, resoundingly.

Trump is striking chords of civic renewal long muted: mutual civic trust among fellow citizens, not mutual suspicion and distrust. Trump is openly championing civic collaboration over regulation, censorship, and control—neighbors and friends over nanny-state gatekeepers.

There are moments when Trump echoes the Founders’ wisdom: Trust ordinary citizens, question those who control the legalized force and violence of government, and remember that government should protect the equal rights of each and every individual citizen—not use us as lab rats in disastrous progressive experiments in social engineering, economic central planning, and cultural nihilism.

Swansong for Progressivism?

To critics who disagree with Trump, I say: Let them cling to their fanatical religion of government power and control. Let them insist that ordinary Americans are too irresponsible, too venal, to be trusted. Let them preach that salvation requires blind faith in political elites.

Let them amplify the progressive dirge: Citizens are the problem; bureaucrats are the solution.

Meanwhile, Trump, in his unusual way, is reminding us that liberty is not passive submission to government planning, but active participation in self-governance. For decades, ordinary Americans have been cast as villains—greedy businessmen, corporate schemers—while politicians pose as white knights.

That facade is crumbling. With Trump comes a long-needed national reckoning: Who truly has our backs?

The challenge now is to rebuild a political community that honors both individual rights and constitutional government at the same time. The answer lies in reviving the spirit of the American Founding: Trust ordinary fellow citizens—neighbors, friends, entrepreneurs, those trying to create wealth for themselves by producing value for others—while dismantling the bloated federal and state bureaucracies that are constitutionally and morally illegitimate.

Let progressives sing their swansong. The future belongs to those who believe in America’s original promise: A self-governing constitutional republic of freedom held together by virtuous citizens who trust one another—and are trustworthy—not a progressive regime of regulation and control fueled by mutual civic suspicion, distrust, envy, jealously, and tribal hatred.