On Aug. 2, 1923, Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, died in San Francisco due to cardiac arrest. Vice President Calvin Coolidge succeeded him. Coolidge served out the remainder of Harding’s term and was then elected to a full four-year term in 1924, being sworn into office on March 4, 1925.

Coolidge famously once said, “The chief business of the American people is business.” He cut taxes, limited government spending and stacked regulatory commissions with people sympathetic to business.

He also rejected U.S. membership in the League of Nations and set high tariffs on imported goods to protect American industry.

That was 1925 ... a century ago.

One must wonder if the whiz kids at the Heritage Foundation dipped into silent Cal’s playbook to plagiarize policies that now populate their Project 2025 manifesto. Nine hundred pages (more or less) with no awareness whatsoever that many of Coolidge’s actions — or inactions — helped push the U.S. into the Great Depression. Or that Coolidge’s isolationism signaled a free hand to rising autocrats.

More, excerpted from a Dec. 5, 2023, interview of Trump with Fox host Sean Hannity:

Hannity: “You are not going to be a dictator, are you?”

Trump: “No, no, no, other than Day 1. We are closing the border, and we are drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I am not a dictator, OK?" [Side note: we’re well past Day 1]

Excerpted from George Orwell’s dystopian novel "1984," published on June 8, 1949:

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power… We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists … never had the courage to recognize their own motives. … We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

That was 1949 ... a smidge less than 75 years ago.

Yet more, excerpted from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: “In Federalist No. 47, James Madison warned that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Square this with Trump’s frequent quoting of Napoleon [that paragon of democracy]: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Excerpted directly from Federalist No. 10, also authored by James Madison, but either ignorantly or intentionally left out of the Project 2025 screed: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” 

Trump was elected, true, but he is neither enlightened nor a stateman. To this day, he needs guidance from those better than him. Heritage (and its MAGA minions) are all too happy to oblige. 

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly disavowed the Project 2025 manifesto. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on his social media website Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal …”

Setting aside the internal conflict there (how can one "know nothing" and then "disagree with some" of what lies within?), the puppeteers at the Heritage Foundation nevertheless got their man. They know Trump is malleable, just so long as they proceed by leading with flattery, always.

Even though Project 2025 rarely makes the news these days, it still bears scrutiny as it represents a modern-day "Mein Kampf" (which, BTW, was published on July 18, 1925, three months after Calvin Coolidge’s inaugural.) It’s the 21st-century handbook of power, arrogance and fascism. 

Sadly, elected Republicans generally act like they keep it in their top desk drawer. 

Where do you keep yours, Congressman Huizenga? 

— Community Columnist Richard Wolfe is a resident of Park Township. Contact him at wolf86681346@gmail.com.