NYT: "Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?"

President Trump: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me, and that's very good."

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that gave voice to the discontent of a nation struggling to free itself from a tyrannical ruler who believed power flowed from his own will rather than the consent of the governed.

Paine's warning was not theoretical.

Two hundred and fifty years later, we find ourselves confronting the same dilemma—this time from inside the White House: can a people remain free if they place their faith in the virtue (or vice) of one man?

When asked by the New York Times what might restrain his power grabs, Donald Trump did not point to the Constitution, the courts, Congress, or the rule of law—as his oath of office and our constitutional republic require. He pointed to himself.

According to Trump, the only thing standing between America and unchecked power is his own morality.

Now America's founders believed in faith and morality. As John Adams warned in 1798, "Avarice, Ambition and Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."