Donald Trump's Policies Pose a Risk to Civilized Society.

The national and international initiatives – from the challenge to the democratic process in the past to recent moves and warnings – erode not only national and global jurisprudence. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions jeopardize the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.

A moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Without this, we would be trapped in a conflict of all against all where only the fittest could survive.

This ideal lies at the center of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the heart of the postwar international order advocated by the United States, which stresses collective action, democratic governance, human rights, and the supremacy of law.

But, it is a vulnerable ideal, often broken by those who choose to misuse their power. Maintaining it demands that the influential have a sense of duty to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us demand responsibility when they fail.

Absolute power is not right. It leads to uncertainty, disruption, and hostilities.

Each instance individuals, companies, or nations that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are not, the framework of civilization weakens. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into instability and violence. It has happened before.

Today, we live in a international landscape grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This encourages the privileged to leverage their position against the less fortunate because they act with a sense of untouchable.

The wealth of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace extends over much of the globe. Artificial intelligence is poised to centralize wealth and power to a greater degree. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is without parallel in the annals of time.

Enabled by a compliant faction and a pliant supreme court, the presidency has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of government in recent memory.

Put it all together and you grasp the danger.

A clear connection ties earlier breaches of norms to ongoing menaces. Each were based on the hubris of invincibility.

There is a similar pattern in other global contexts: in territorial invasions, in expansive ambitions, and in the global depredation by massive conglomerates.

Yet, strength without restraint does not establish right. It makes for uncertainty, upended order, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to constrain the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources eventually lead to their downfall – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk international catastrophe.

Such contempt for legal order will haunt America and the global community – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for a long time.