“Have they forgotten that people who turn their backs on friends often lose what they cherish most for themselves?”Ronald Reagan April 5, 1982 The president of the United States and the people around him have never understood American history or our constitutional republic’s special place in the world. Because they don’t know that history, they have twisted the meaning of Western civilization from the elevation of individual rights over ruling monarchs and autocrats to political battles over a handful of trans athletes.

Western civilization is not about culture wars or campaigns of conquest. It is defined by the advancement of freedom, science, reason, and discovery.

It is the belief that every individual has dignity, that people find the truth by freely asking questions, and that even the powerful must always answer to the law.

One of the best definitions comes from Winston Churchill in July 1938, as Hitler

threatened Czechoslovakia: “It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization — and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture.”

The West’s birth cry came at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. Against all odds, Athenian citizen-soldiers drove back the mighty Persian Empire. The March of the Ten Thousand 90 years later found Greek soldiers stranded in Persia after their generals were murdered.

Instead of surrendering as armies of the East would do, these mercenaries elected their own leaders and fought their way home — electrifying the rising West. Free men who governed themselves suddenly mattered more than generals or kings.

In 1215, English barons forced King John to accept that even a king must abide by the law.

Donald Trump would do well to read the Magna Carta.

Joan of Arc showed how even a young peasant girl could make a difference by rallying a broken France and lifting the siege of Orléans.

Churchill refused to bargain with Hitler, a small group of pilots in the Royal Air Force saved a nation, and the British people defended Western civilization until the New World, in all its might, arrived to join the cause.

On June 6, 1944, Americans and their allies stormed Normandy to free a continent, not conquer it. In 1989, ordinary people tore down the Berlin Wall with hammers and bare hands, as the West’s twilight battle against Soviet aggression ended in victory. In 1989, the front line of freedom ran through Berlin.

In the 1990s, it moved east to Poland and the Baltics. Today it runs through the heart of Ukraine — and the American president has sided with the invader against Western freedom. In appeasing Vladimir Putin Donald Trump is betraying more than Volodymyr Zelenskyy He is betraying more than the Ukrainian fighters protecting their wives, children, and homes. He is betraying more than our allies in Poland, the Baltics, and across the East.

He is betraying the very idea of Western civilization.

That idea born at Marathon, written into the Magna Carta, defended in the skies over London, won back at Normandy, and set free at the Berlin Wall. The West has never been about who plays on girls’ softball teams.

It has always been about whether free nations stand together when tyrants and despots invade free countries and start redrawing their borders with tanks. Donald Trump’s betrayal of Western democracy will forever darken his legacy in shame unless he starts defending freedom soon.

I am not optimistic. CHARTS OF THE DAY Source: New York Times/Siena poll of 3,494 voters conducted Oct. 16-19, 2026.

Margin of error: +/- 1.9 percentage points ON THIS DATE On Oct. 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced in a televised address that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba and that the United States would impose a naval quarantine on offensive weapons bound for the island.

WHAT THEY SAID Katty Kay on Trump 2.0“The story of this administration is one of incompetence — they just aren’t very good at what they’re trying to do. They have the ideology, but they’re there because they’re loyal to President Trump, not because they have expertise in what they’re doing. People around the country are exhausted and frustrated: This is not a well-run government, and a government that’s not well run doesn’t produce good results for its voters.”

David French on corruption and the cost of living“Every two days, there’s a new story about the Trump family enriching itself or about people using money to influence the pardon process. While people are struggling with their paychecks, there’s a French-aristocracy feel from this incredibly gilded White House. The combination of economic headwinds and corruption is really fanning the political flames.

Jonathan Lemire on the president’s squandered capital“Trump completed arguably the greatest political comeback in U.S. history in 2024, and then proceeded in 2025 to enact his agenda. Now the administration has blown almost all of that political capital on hard-line deportation and the war in Iran. They’re underwater on every issue, including ones that used to be strengths.”

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