Leges sine moribus vanae

Mark Zuckerberg returned to address this year’s Harvard grads, Oprah enlightened the diplomates at Smith, and Poor Elijah is again, for lack of invitations, delivering his commencement remarks on my porch.

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, there’s iced coffee on the table.

••• In their quest for classical status, America’s Ivy League adopted Latin mottos, from Harvard’s Veritas, meaning truth, to Yale’s embellished Lux et Veritas, which adds light to Harvard’s truth. Most pertinent, however, for us today is the maxim Ben Franklin embraced for his University of Pennsylvania: Leges sine moribus vanae — Laws without morals are useless. By useless, old Ben meant vain and powerless.

President Trump should recognize this axiom. It appears on his college diploma. Regarding his diploma, he boasted to The New York Times in 1973 that he’d graduated first in his class, which he indisputably did not. In fact, he graduated without any honors.

This is the same Donald Trump who repeatedly questioned whether President Obama had even attended Columbia and Harvard, let alone distinguished himself academically, all of which he indisputably did. That was after Mr. Obama was born here, another indisputable bit of reality Mr. Trump saw fit to deny.

Many Americans are likewise in the reality denial business. Prior to the election, half the country’s Republicans believed Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, despite his published birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii, which has been a United States possession since 1898.

Roughly the same share of Americans believed Mrs. Clinton was in the pedophile business, a delusion for which the ground was prepared by Mr. Trump’s full-throated assertion that she was “the devil.” In the same way, Mr. Obama was allegedly the literal “founder of ISIS.”

There’s no need to recount all the boasts and lies. The forty-fifth President has documented them himself.

He’s not an articulate man. For example, he said the U.N. has “such tremendous potential,” but “it’s not living up to its potential,” to which he immediately added that “it has such tremendous potential, but it’s not living up.” Of healthcare he said “the end result is going to be wonderful.” Kim Jong Un and North Korea are “acting very, very badly” and “behaving very badly,” respectively. As for Germany, “we’re going to do fantastically well,” despite the fact that “the Germans are bad, very bad.”

Superlatives and mindless repetition are neither policy nor wisdom.

I teach history and English, and I want to avoid oversimplifying facts and rhetorical excess. But I see troubling parallels between our current politics and specters from the past. I see Napoleon placing the crown on his own head. I see the way Mussolini stuck out his chin and his lip and played to the mob. And yes, I see the Third Reich and its cult of personality. I see sycophants tripping over each other to praise the leader.

I see a leader who doesn’t know, doesn’t know he doesn’t know, and doesn’t care he doesn’t know. I see a megalomaniac, addicted to lies, in thrall to paranoia and his own delusions of grandeur.

But this is not ultimately about Mr. Trump. It’s about what I see in us.

I see otherwise responsible, decent politicians and business leaders stifling their consciences and gulling themselves like the plutocrats who thought they could manage Hitler. I see public officials prompted both by misguided principle and stubborn opportunism, who in their myopic arrogance equate their own advancement with the public good. I see the best among them excusing the current administration as merely an “unconventional Presidency.”

I see voters like the German people who thought the Fuhrer had their interests at heart, despite the lies and every indication that he didn’t. I see press secretaries morphing into propaganda ministers. I see facts and the truth deposed by deceit and innuendo.

Thomas Jefferson observed that “if any nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.” That warning extends to nations that allow themselves to despise facts and shun reason, and consequently descend voluntarily into ignorance.

I tell my students that our Constitution is a work of genius. And since Mr. Trump’s ascent, many in our government, in our public places, and around our kitchen tables have asserted their confidence in that founding document to safeguard our freedom in the face of enemies, foreign and domestic.

I’m not so sure. First, it seems the Constitution is often playing second fiddle to a bad reality script. But even more, no law on paper has power if it doesn’t reside in human hearts.

As long as we wink at Mr. Trump’s transgressions, as long as we accept conduct in the White House that I wouldn’t accept in my classroom, we will diminish ourselves. It isn’t that he’s loutish. The problem is too many of us glory in his loutishness. That’s a fault in us, not him. I fear Mr. Trump is correct. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing voters.

Leges sine moribus vanae. Laws without morals are powerless.

We each as citizens have a limited voice in making our nation’s laws. But our sovereignty over our own moral character is limitless.

You are no longer children.

Your future turns on the righteous exercise of that moral sovereignty. Seek right, and do right. Godspeed.

We each as citizens have a limited voice in making our nation’s laws. But our sovereignty over our own moral character is limitless.