SOVEREIGNTY
SIMON BARBER: Trump speech harks back to world of disunited nations
Donald Trump, hypernationalist, loves the word "sovereignty". With and without the suffix "ty", he deployed it 21 times in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Andrew Jackson, his favourite US president (other than himself), was also a fan, using it to justify all manner of unconscionable behaviour. Jackson, first elected in 1828, held that in the US, "the people" were sovereign (not quite what the founders had in mind). He saw himself as the people’s instrument, entitled to act for them — in disregard of Congress and the courts — whenever the need arose. Trump said on Tuesday: "In America … the people are sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American people, where it belongs." Jackson’s "people"— the "we" endowed with inalienable rights by their creator and the declaration of independence — did not include the millions of involuntary immigrants from Africa then resident in the US, free or unfree, or the native population, or women of any...
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