The key founders of the United States of America – Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine – were philosophers from the generation loosely labeled as the Enlightenment. That movement was not as secular as often reputed. God gave humans the power of reason so as solve our own problems.
Enlightenment stuck as a label in part due to Immanuel Kant’s essay defining the term. It was about growing up by breaking religious and political constraints. A mature nation should be able to use reason and solve its problems.
Efforts at solutions got some pushback: Christian conservatives opposed Franklin’s invention of a lightening rod because it was interfering with the will of God, until they realized that steeples could benefit from its protection. Jenner’s vaccination against smallpox encountered resistance from those concerned about overpopulation, the ethics of injecting material from a cow into one’s body, and again, interference with God’s will.
Arbitrary governance was prominent among the problems in need of rational solutions. Kings would treat their countries as personal property. Some were more, well, enlightened than others, but they did not have to be. It was their personal business if they preferred to be despotic, loot their realms, and redefine truth and justice according to their whims like some villain out of a Plato dialogue.
Jefferson derived his argument in the Declaration of Independence from John Locke: government is legitimate to the extent that it is even-handed in carrying out justice. Trump’s corruption of the Department of Justice has eroded that very basic feature.
Trump and those enabling him are systematically demolishing the capacity to solve problems. This includes American soft power, involvement in international organizations, and the bureaucracy for fending off epidemics.
This election is about restoring the Enlightenment vision of the founders of the US.