The Power to Name
“L’etat, c’est moi.” Louis XIV
The power to name is an awful power.
Early in the Book of Genesis, even before he has created Eve, God gives Adam the power of naming “every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens.” It is an enormous power, one that elevates man above all the other animals and charges him to subdue the earth and all the creatures on it. God gave that power only to Adam, and it not something to be taken lightly. It is in many ways the equivalent of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind (and we know what happened to him).
Somehow, Donald Trump has arrogated that power to himself. We saw it on his first day in office, when he signed executive order 14172, which renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. With his signature he changed almost 400 years of map making. Despite its policy against “giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming,” Google immediately caved in, and the deal was done.
Later that day, Trump signed executive order 14168, with the impressively Orwellian name of “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It asserted that there are only two sexes – a man and a woman – and they are fixed at birth. To define human beings seems an extraordinary assertion of presidential authority, and one I was unable to find in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Not only does it give enormous power to the federal government, it also denies people their fundamental right to define themselves. It’s a power God didn’t even give to Adam, and it paved the way for executive order 14201 (“Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”).
There are many more such instances:
Although almost a quarter of Columbia’s students are Jewish, President Trump defined the university as antisemitic and is threatening to withhold $400 million in federal funds.
Having for years classified immigrants from Latin America as thugs and criminals, he recently deported three planeloads of Venezuelans without a fig leaf of due process.
Accusing South Africa of “government-sponsored race-based discrimination” against whites, he offered Afrikaners expedited refugee status in the U.S.
By upending reality and declaring (1) Ukraine the aggressor in its war and (2) President Zelensky a dictator, Trump can now make his own peace with Putin.
And woe to anyone who questions such unprecedented power. The Associated Press’ continued use of the term, Gulf of Mexico, got it banned from covering presidential events. Columbia capitulated and ceded to the Trump administration unprecedented control over university policies. I wrote recently of the torrent of retaliation Gov. Mills brought down on Maine by following current state law rather than submitting to an ex cathedra proclamation from the Oval Office. The president, however, is demanding not just Maine’s compliance, but “a full throated apology from the Governor herself, and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again, before this case can be settled.”
And there you have it. Many of these issues are neither simple nor clear cut. The ruling against transgender athletes, for example, is Trump’s most popular policy. In a democracy, however, we have traditionally debated contentious matters in public forums, from the town meeting to the halls of Congress. But the power to name – to define – bypasses that process and gives extraordinary authority to the namer. President Trump did not ask Governor Mills for her explanation; he demanded her submission. In doing so, he equated the institutional power of the office with the personal power of the man. This is not a good idea. It is also not a good omen.