The federal government will screen foreigners applying for permanent residence to weed out those who “endorsed, promoted, supported or otherwise espoused anti-American, terrorist or antisemitic views.”

According to immigration spokesman Matthew Tragesser, “America’s benefits should not be given to those who despise the country and promote anti-American ideologies. Immigration benefits – including to live and work in the United States – remain a privilege, not a right,” CNN pointed out that there was no indication as to “what constitutes anti-Americanism and it isn’t clear how and when the directive would be applied.” The Associated Press reported that there are concerns that the policy “will allow for more subjective views of what is considered anti-American and allow an officer’s personal bias to cloud his or her judgment.” Jane Lilly Lopez, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, told the AP that “they are opening the door for stereotypes and prejudice and implicit bias to take the wheel in these decisions.”

Such concern is understandable. However, any administration has the right – in fact the duty – to ensure that those allowed to settle in the country are worthy of the chance to do so, though why that has been made an issue now has not been explained. One answer is that it fits an immigration policy to keep out people from non-European countries. New York Times reporter Greg Grandin noted that the directive fits the view of known nativist Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, that “America is for Americans only.”

It is safe to assume that most wouldbe immigrants will want to become Americans at some point and that their reason for relocating is a desire to pursue a better life than their native countries can offer. Not all will, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, amass fabulous fortunes; for them, being given a chance to pursue the American dream is riches enough. They are highly unlikely to do anything to jeopardize that opportunity.

And it is not only foreigners who run the risk of being deemed anti-American. During his first term, the President accused three Congresswomen – all non-European Americans – of hating America, whereas they had in fact criticized him. He suggested they should go back to their own country. However, three of them were born in the U.S. – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Puerto Rico, Ayanna Pressley in Ohio and Rashida Tlaib in Detroit. The fourth, Ilhan Omar, is a naturalized citizen. Talib is of Palestinian parentage and Omar is a Somali refugee who was granted asylum.

Six years later, the president’s attitude towards critics has not changed. He still describes those who oppose him as anti-American and he is using presidential power to try to punish them in one way or other. Also, for him, being a loyal citizen requires obeisance to the “truth,” as he sees it, of America. He has signed an executive order setting the stage for what the White House said will be “restoring truth and sanity to American history by revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.”

The order states, “The prior administration pushed a divisive ideology that reconstrued America’s promotion of liberty as fundamentally flawed, infecting revered institutions like the Smithsonian and national parks with false narratives.”

HuffPost reported that it is “aimed at undoing many of the changes made during the racial reckoning movement, including the restoration of monuments, and the removal of so-called ‘anti-American ideology’ from national museums and other federal properties.”

Jill Lepore, writing in The New Yorker, said that the White House informed the Smithsonian Institution that it will conduct an extensive review of all of its plans for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration next year. “The Administration, deploying the same strategy that it has used in menacing and extorting universities, did not specify in the letter how it intends to review these materials, or what standards it will apply,” Lepore wrote.

“It did say that the purpose is to ‘ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,’ with ‘historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage’ and especially of ‘Americanism–the people, principles, and progress that define our nation,”’ Lepore wrote. “That the President of the United States doesn’t get to decide what is true and what is not is apparently no longer among those principles.”

From the president’s perspective, Peter Baker wrote in The Times, the four congresswomen and their supporters “do not share core American values because they are critical of the system and advocate or flirt with socialism.” But, Baker added, Trump’s critics “say it’s the other way around and that he does not subscribe to the core national beliefs in free speech, immigration and the rule of law. At stake is who gets to define what constitutes Americanism.”

Trump’s claim that the Smithsonian museums belittle the nation’s history is widely shared by conservatives. Breccan F. Theis, writing in the rightwing Federalist publication, complained that “museum halls are adorned with gay ‘pride’ flags and exhibits are filled with pseudo-history or history that is framed dishonestly — seemingly in an attempt to degrade the American experience.” Such topics “raise concerns about the broader left-wing project to force Americans to hate their history and their country.”

Trump himself was a sharp critic of the U.S. prior to being elected in 2016 promising that he would “make America great again.” But he no longer focuses on what he had seen as faults.

“As president, he now sees America as an avatar for himself — it must be great because he’s great,” Nicole Hemmer, a scholar of conservatism at Columbia told The Times. “From this perspective, to allow that America has faults would be to allow that Trump himself has them, something he has never been willing to do.”

As part of his campaign to impose his idea of what constitutes Americanism, the president is also embarked on a makeover of other institutions that help shape the national identity. Lepore reported that he fired the head of the National Archives, the Librarian of Congress and the board of the Kennedy Center. He tried to dismiss the director of the National Portrait Gallery, even though he does not have that authority; she resigned anyhow. They will be replaced by his own appointees. He also ended funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and for thousands of state and local programs supporting arts and music education for children. He cut the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

The president has also directed the U.S. Attorney General to “vigorously prosecute those who violate our laws in ways that involve desecrating the American Flag” which he described as “a special symbol of our national life that should unite and represent all Americans of every background and walk of life. Desecrating it is uniquely offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation – the clearest possible expression of opposition to the political union that preserves our rights, liberty and security.”

The president acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled – twice – that burning the flag is protected by the Constitution but he noted that the ruling did not address situations when it is “conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words.’” His order is therefore based on the premise that burning the flag “may incite violence and riot” and, if that happens, it would be grounds for prosecution.

All of that, in addition to using his authority to end government and even private sector initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, deeming them divisive, which they are not.

Perhaps it is time to reflect on the section of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in which Cassius tells his friend Butus, “You love me not.”

Brutus: “I do not like your faults.”

Cassius: “A friendly eye could never see such faults.”

Brutus: “A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear as huge as high Olympus.”