OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Greatness conjures up big, indeed huge things, high achievements, grandeur, lasting and permanent effects. It is foremost about – winning, being forever renown.
The word itself originated in the 12th century. It signified importance, fame, power, and success. Greatness, equaled preeminence. As such it spelled out a concept of superiority, of a person or a place, that was above all others, in first–top place.
In ancient Europe rulers were at times given the attribute “The Great,” such as Alexander The Great, Frederick The Great, Alfred The Great, or Catherine The Great. The same applies to the Roman use of Magnus in the days of Pompei. It survives as the root word for “magnificent.”
In the sense that we have come to use the term “greatness,” especially in 21st century American culture, folklore and politics, nothing quite compares with Donald J. Trump, who became both the 45th and then the 47th President of the United States, the second time in overwhelming electoral fashion.
It is perhaps conceivable to even now consider him, “Donald The Great,” as few other politicians have done what he has done, and no one has had such a comeback and turnaround in modern world history. Having already written the book “The Art of the Comeback”, he is changing the arc of human history and the place of America itself. He has brought the country back from the abyss and literally, put America First.
The slogan of Donald Trump’s campaigns and the MAGA movement that propelled them is of course, “Make America Great Again.” The use of “great” in that phrase has come to mean many things to many people. But the notion that America was a great nation, birthed in liberty and became a great power based on military prowess, and an economic powerhouse based on manufacturing, talent, entrepreneurship and technology, is rooted in historical fact. That America lost some large measure of its greatness and saw a managed decline over the past decades also signified the primary reason why Trump was able to gain his ascendancy and capture the presidency, twice. As Steve Jobs found out when pitching “insanely great!” as a tagline for some of the original Apple computers, American aspiration aims astrally – grand projects like getting to Mars ahead of any other earthlings are capable of bringing together every American’s definition of “great” behind common objectives.
It typically takes decades to fully describe and see the big waves in history, to capture the overriding themes of an era. The current zeitgeist is by definition fleeting, and the bigger picture only surfaces from a view on high or from a much broader perspective. But already we see over the past decade and looking into the medium term ahead a glimpse of Trump’s greatness and the synonymous renaissance of the country he commands—America, America, where God shined His grace: Donald blazes the path ahead.
A figure from the previous Golden Age of the USA, MAGA is the Trump brand – famously the slogan of the last US president to halt a declinist consensus and unleash America’s latent potential. From campaign slogan to red hats emblazoned with the letters, to the euphoric closing line of all his stump speeches, its totemic valence lost no sheen in its many decades’ existence. The Trump understanding of America’s place in the world – one more handoff in the never-ending relay race of history – and of its everyday working and fighting people, entailed in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, “We the People”, lie at the core of what motivates and inspires Trump’s office, his movement and the policies that make his sense of greatness a reality—in both the domestic realm and in foreign policy.
In his Inaugural remarks he said,” Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation.
Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.
Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth. No one comes close.
Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.
This argument is about an understanding of Greatness. It starts with the godly vision and lays out what Trump’s America is and needs to become. It spells out a notion of common-sense realism and the major tenets of its values and belief system. It goes into details about what Trump’s views and policies counteract –what they are against. It spells out across all lines what Trump’s greatness entails economically, politically, militarily, and spiritually. There is a continuity with the Republican Party of the 19th century, the one that freed the slaves, kept the Union together, Won the West and slew the Spanish Empire along with European imperialism in our hemisphere.
Greatness has its foes, and the anti-American Left opposes it in every sense. That too must be considered as must the foreign adversaries who confront it. But in the end, Trump wins. Trump is laying out the concrete reasons why and how this has come to be. Read his Executive Orders in detail if you want proof. The “Trump Doctrine” is being codified for posterity, whereby the next crop of Great Americans will be able to look to Donald’s example the same way we look today to Presidents McKinley, Cleveland and Coolidge.
Trump has defined what a new Golden Age will witness and why this is a third American revolution, an American renaissance. By implication, a revolution requires a regime it defines itself against – every renaissance must be born of a dark age that precedes it. He is rewriting the maps, going to Mars, ending wars, reestablishing borders, and leaving his mark on history.
He embodies American exceptionalism and the American Dream. It ends with a memorial to the man himself—Donald J. Trump, now referred to as Donald The Great.
Ted Roosevelt Malloch is CEO of Roosevelt Global Fiduciary LLC. He served as Research Professor for the Spiritual Capital Initiative at Yale University, Senior Fellow Said Business School, Oxford University and Professor of Governance and Leadership at Henley Business School where he co-led the Director’s Forum. His most recent books concern the nature of virtuous enterprise, the practices of practical wisdom and “virtuous business,” the pursuit of happiness, the virtue of generosity and the virtue of thrift. His latest book is Common Sense Business, co-authored with Whitney MacMillan, former Chairman and CEO of Cargill, the world’s largest privately held company. He has served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum (DAVOS); has held an ambassadorial level position at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland; worked in the US State Department and Senate; did capital markets at Salomon Brothers on Wall Street, and has sat on a number of corporate, mutual fund, and not-for-profit boards. He was very active in the Trump campaigns. Ted earned his Ph.D. in international political economy from the University of Toronto.
