Following his re-inauguration, Donald Trump will face the central moral question posed by Lord of the Rings. Generations after his death, J.R.R. Tolkien’s quandary will again confront a great leader. Over his 2024 campaign, President Trump promised to rollback Joe Biden’s so-called “equity” agenda of universal racial preferences. He also promised to rollback a century of federal overreach. The tension between those promises means the once-and-future president will immediately face Boromir’s test on returning to the White House.
Across Tolkien’s epic, fate forces four heroic characters to face the same choice. They’re not our central figures, the common folks—hobbits—who unwittingly find themselves possessing Sauron (the greatest enemy of freedom)’s greatest weapon – the “One Ring to rule them all.” Not knowing what to do with such a weapon, they seek first counsel and then aid from the wisest, strongest defenders of their freedom. Doing so presents four such grandees (Gandalf, Galadriel, Boromir, and Faramir) the chance to take and wield the Ring against Sauron as he prepares his final assault on the West. Gandalf, Galadriel, and Faramir turn down the offer in turn, concluding that using the Ring to destroy the current threat would leave them an equal threat to the free of the future. Only Boromir seeks to take and use the Ring to defend all he holds dear against the very real enemy on the march.
Across Tolkien’s epic, fate forces four heroic characters to face the same choice. They’re not our central figures, the common folks—hobbits—who unwittingly find themselves possessing Sauron (the greatest enemy of freedom)’s greatest weapon – the “One Ring to rule them all.” Not knowing what to do with such a weapon, they seek first counsel and then aid from the wisest, strongest defenders of their freedom. Doing so presents four such grandees (Gandalf, Galadriel, Boromir, and Faramir) the chance to take and wield the Ring against Sauron as he prepares his final assault on the West. Gandalf, Galadriel, and Faramir turn down the offer in turn, concluding that using the Ring to destroy the current threat would leave them an equal threat to the free of the future. Only Boromir seeks to take and use the Ring to defend all he holds dear against the very real enemy on the march.
Once re-inaugurated, Donald Trump will face the same choice.
As a candidate, he promised to reverse his predecessors’ embrace of faddish discrimination across the government, to end racial preferences, to reverse efforts to foist them across the private sector and to confront the (inter)national conspiracy against the rights of (Jewish and other) Americans which has unfolded across countless so-called “demonstrations” blocking roads, byways and college campuses over the last 15 months, even before a co-conspirator drove through New Years’ revelers on Bourbon Street.
Within the next administration, many of those best-positioned to follow through on these promises will sit in the U.S. Department of Education. But as a candidate, Donald Trump promised to close the Department of Education, a 45-year-long, failed experiment, a cautionary tale demonstrating the harms of hypothetically well-intentioned, extra-constitutional forays of feds into a policy area where they have no proper role.
Another office poses the same dilemma. The 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act finally committed America to fulfilling the promise of the post-Civil-War Amendments by securing the legal equality of all Americans and ending the (often government-forced) disparate treatment of our people because of race. Only one year later, though, President Johnson chose to use the Ring—the power of government—to combat the Ring’s prior works. LBJ issued Executive Order 11246, which—in the name of helping those previously held back by government—ordered the Labor Department to assure that all government contractors engaged in “affirmative action,” a term which promptly came to mean treating Americans of different races differently. Before the ink of the Civil Rights Act had dried, under EO 11246, America once again began allocating public contracts and public contract work based on race (and eventually other demographic factors).
When last in office, President Trump, too, reached for the Ring. He used the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) to combat the racialization of American businesses. He had it assure that federal contractors engaged in no racially abusive “antiracist” trainings or practices that subordinated the demands of equal treatment to an identitarian balancing act reallocating “privileges” between demographic groups. On the one hand, that made sense—the vehicle already existed and was perfectly positioned for the task at hand. Yet doing so preserved the office and retrenched its control over the internal decisions of American businesses. This left the OFCCP standing for his successor to repurpose it to require precisely those discriminatory actions (even while claiming it was not).
Donald Trump (as President 47) may well choose either route. Like Boromir, he may use these tools to achieve the necessary ends. Like Galadriel he may pass his test, turn down the temptation, and consign them to destruction in the fires of Mount Doom, even if that means the Office of the President will in some sense “fade” from its place of prominence in private Americans’ lives. Because Tolkien was right that both options are attractive, we will only find out later this year. But in Middle America as in Middle Earth, the best choice is to be like Gandalf.
As a candidate, he promised to reverse his predecessors’ embrace of faddish discrimination across the government, to end racial preferences, to reverse efforts to foist them across the private sector and to confront the (inter)national conspiracy against the rights of (Jewish and other) Americans which has unfolded across countless so-called “demonstrations” blocking roads, byways and college campuses over the last 15 months, even before a co-conspirator drove through New Years’ revelers on Bourbon Street.
Within the next administration, many of those best-positioned to follow through on these promises will sit in the U.S. Department of Education. But as a candidate, Donald Trump promised to close the Department of Education, a 45-year-long, failed experiment, a cautionary tale demonstrating the harms of hypothetically well-intentioned, extra-constitutional forays of feds into a policy area where they have no proper role.
Another office poses the same dilemma. The 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act finally committed America to fulfilling the promise of the post-Civil-War Amendments by securing the legal equality of all Americans and ending the (often government-forced) disparate treatment of our people because of race. Only one year later, though, President Johnson chose to use the Ring—the power of government—to combat the Ring’s prior works. LBJ issued Executive Order 11246, which—in the name of helping those previously held back by government—ordered the Labor Department to assure that all government contractors engaged in “affirmative action,” a term which promptly came to mean treating Americans of different races differently. Before the ink of the Civil Rights Act had dried, under EO 11246, America once again began allocating public contracts and public contract work based on race (and eventually other demographic factors).
When last in office, President Trump, too, reached for the Ring. He used the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) to combat the racialization of American businesses. He had it assure that federal contractors engaged in no racially abusive “antiracist” trainings or practices that subordinated the demands of equal treatment to an identitarian balancing act reallocating “privileges” between demographic groups. On the one hand, that made sense—the vehicle already existed and was perfectly positioned for the task at hand. Yet doing so preserved the office and retrenched its control over the internal decisions of American businesses. This left the OFCCP standing for his successor to repurpose it to require precisely those discriminatory actions (even while claiming it was not).
Donald Trump (as President 47) may well choose either route. Like Boromir, he may use these tools to achieve the necessary ends. Like Galadriel he may pass his test, turn down the temptation, and consign them to destruction in the fires of Mount Doom, even if that means the Office of the President will in some sense “fade” from its place of prominence in private Americans’ lives. Because Tolkien was right that both options are attractive, we will only find out later this year. But in Middle America as in Middle Earth, the best choice is to be like Gandalf.
Dan Morenoff is the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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