Cause for Alarm

It should alarm us that Americans are more offended by Donald Trump’s violations of law than by his violations of the Constitution.

Law is derivative. The Constitution is foundational. When constitutional violations provoke less concern than statutory ones, the Constitution has already been demoted—from supreme law to background commentary.

The instinct to reframe constitutional breaches as ordinary legal violations reveals how constitutional thinking has collapsed. We no longer treat the Constitution as binding by virtue of the Oath. We treat it as relevant only if a prosecutor can charge it or a court can enforce it.

But the Constitution does not wait for enforcement to be violated. Its authority is not conferred by indictment. When constitutional violations must be translated into crimes before they are taken seriously, constitutional government has already failed—civically, not just institutionally.

The troubling question is no longer whether Donald Trump violated the Constitution.It is whether we still recognize one.