major democracies electing far-right populist governments
Robinson Meyer
@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
45.2K followers 1.1K following 3.6K posts
I’m the founding executive editor of Heatmap News, a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times, and the cohost of the Shift Key podcast. 📍NYC
![Either Burgum will now see the resemblance and desist from Trump’s corrupt attack on liberty, democracy, and the principle of self-government itself — either he will block it, delay it, never defend it in public or in private, and never joke about the wicked betrayal of an ally again — either he will review and revise the resignation letter in his desk drawer — either he will, in other words, act as a free man, or he should stop lying to Americans about his love of freedom and admit that he now believes instead that might makes right — that Donald Trump’s word is law, or close enough to it — and clarify for us, at last, that he has already become one of the president’s moral degenerates.
“Ronald Reagan famously told us, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,’” an earlier version of Doug Burgum once told us. It was 2024, and he was running for president, addressing Republicans in Florida. His political prospects had never looked better.
Burgum paused for a second. He wanted the audience to think about the quote — to stick with Reagan’s words.
“Sometimes people remember that [line],” he said, “but they forget the second part of the quote, and I think it’s the most important: ‘Freedom must be fought for and protected, or we’ll spend our later years telling our grandchildren what it was like when America was free.’”
To fight and protect freedom — what would such an act demand of Doug Burgum in this moment, when a president is threatening America’s neighbors and trying to impose the very definition of unfreedom on its friends? Burgum was a thoughtful politician once: an independent and heterodox leader who loved liberty and wanted to see Americans flourish. Will he now do his duty to America and the world? Or will he push the country and its imperial subjects — no longer free citizens — into an unfreedom that will aggrieve and impoverish us well into our grandchildren’s lives. The choice is his. He has his freedom, now let him use it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wv5oyzuuatuizbqifq6xcdcg/bafkreicp5z7obiecsu2wprozwokvd2n2s3t2xo5lhmll3a4tf6en7agk4a)
![Burgum didn’t win the 2024 nomination, and he wasn’t — as some hoped — picked for vice president on the ticket, either. But he won control of Trump’s energy agenda. Today, Burgum not only runs the Interior Department, but also chairs the National Energy Dominance Council, an ad hoc body that oversees energy and environment policy.
He’s kept talking about freedom in his new role — and he connects liberty to the eternal human struggle to flourish. “Human flourishing in this world has always been dependent on affordable and reliable energy,” he told Stanford students last year.
Which is why I was astounded to see this post last week:
[a tweet from Burgum consisting of a map describing flight times between Anchorage, Washington DC, and Greenland's capital Nuuk, labeled "The New Interior"]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wv5oyzuuatuizbqifq6xcdcg/bafkreic6nkfsysqa5uy3aw6t3h6fyknjrxksofotg2harvncpn7t7llite)
![He should. Less than two years ago, Burgum praised the Constitution and “the historic and aspirational vision presented by our Founding Fathers.” That cohort’s insight — the reason we remember its members now, despite their flaws — was that the most fundamental political freedom is political self-determination. “All men are, by nature, equal and free,” wrote James Wilson, one of only six men to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution. “No one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it.”
Yet Burgum would help establish Trump’s authority over more than 55,000 Greenlanders without their consent and over their objections — a government that would reek of illegality from its birthpangs. And Burgum would be its midwife. The Office of Insular Affairs, which he oversees as part of the Interior Department, manages America’s territories and freely associated states, such as Puerto Rico and Palau. Greenland could soon fall under its purview, too. Burgum could easily become Greenland’s colonial governor, its federal subjugator.
All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it. I have been to Greenland. It is an austere and beautiful country, home to a population of independent and freedom-loving people who want to prosper, raise their families, farm, hunt, thrive, and flourish. It should sound familiar: Greenlanders are not so far from Burgum’s old North Dakota constituents.
[quote continues, should be visible to OCR]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wv5oyzuuatuizbqifq6xcdcg/bafkreifsvns2ytxhsvykhhqkj6ytwxza5drkgzg7uhurhhpndb7dk2cc6m)
