America at 250 has never been wealthier or more powerful. It has grown two-thirds faster than Western Europe over the past 20 years. Rival ideologies from Chinese authoritarianism to Islamism look deeply unappealing. There is a reason so many people are hammering at the republic’s borders.

Yet, at the same time, the U.S. is starting to behave like some of the tinpot autocracies from which those migrants want to escape. The best way I can describe it is as Third Worldery. The attempt to browbeat the Nobel Peace Prize Committee; the obsession with building big arches; the tariffs; the annexation threats against Canada, Denmark, and Panama; the renaming of public institutions after a living leader. Such things are the hallmark of insecure dictatorships, not of confident democracies.