I used to live in Jersey City, N.J., close to the Statue of Liberty, and its charm never wore off. When I visited the Iwo Jima memorial in Washington, D.C., showing those Marines lifting the flag on Mt. Suribachi, I had the same feeling. And someday, I’m going to Berlin to see the remains of that infamous wall.

All of it makes me so damn proud to be an American. We saved millions of history’s most desperate people, the huddled masses, including my own starving Irish ancestors. We beat the fascists when their march seemed unstoppable. We stood guard to protect democracy during Europe’s darkest hours.

So, what is happening now? How did we get from where we were, to where we are today, with a blustering president vowing to take Greenland from Denmark, seize the Panama Canal and make Canada a 51st state — whether they like it or not?

How did we go from FDR locking arms with Winston Churchill in the White House and promising to help him fight Hitler to the death, to Donald Trump bullying Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and calling him an ungrateful dictator? Why did we side with China and Iran to block a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion? Why is Trump picking a giant fight with Canada, a loyal friend, and childishly dissing its prime minister by calling him Governor Trudeau? Why did he announce that he won’t enforce the laws barring bribery of foreign leaders? Why is he cutting food and medical assistance for the world’s poorest people, leaving needed supplies locked in warehouses or rotting on docks?

Every day seems to bring fresh evidence that America has suddenly lost its moral compass, that we’re no longer the champion of democracy in the world, that we’re ready to betray our oldest friends for a few silver coins. All this turns my stomach. Trump is taking something precious from us, a national identity that we have good reason to hold with pride.

And this lurch into the moral abyss is not limited to foreign policy. Even within our borders, Trump is working to help the bad guys as best he can.

Why did he pardon the January 6 rioters who used baseball bats and metal wrenches to beat down police officers, leaving at least 15 hospitalized? Why is he saving his deepest cuts at the Internal Revenue Service for the branch that investigates tax dodges at large corporations? Why does he hand so many powerful jobs to men who have been accused of sexual misconduct, after he himself was found liable for sexual abuse, according to a unanimous New York jury?

Why did he fire the career prosecutors whose only offense was to investigating Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, as ordered? Why does he sit down to dinner with white supremacists, and describe KKK marchers as “fine people?”

It is a never-ending barrage of bad. And there is no ideology behind it, no set of beliefs that goes beyond the law of the jungle. The guiding principle, as David Brooks put it on PBS Newshour, to “make the world safe for gangers.”

Yes, our history has plenty of horrors baked into it. We were born with the sins of genocide and slavery. We took over half of Mexico’s territory by brute force a decade before the Civil War. We pounded Vietnam and its neighbors with the most ferocious bombing campaign in history. And we justified our ruinous invasion of Iraq with lies.

Still, this feels different. In the last century, we’ve made mistakes out of ignorance and pride and paranoia. But Trump is bringing something wholly different. It’s an abandonment of values.

So far, America hasn’t paid a price for this. And yes, the schoolyard bully gets his share of lunch money. Mexico is going after its drug cartels, as Trump demanded. Canada backed off its plan to tax energy exports to America when he raised his club and threatened 50 percent tariffs that would wreck its economy. Colombia agreed to take in planeloads of deportees, a humiliating retreat for its president. Trump’s team counts those as big wins.

But the bully soon loses his friends and galvanizes opposition. Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard University, coined the term “soft power” to describe what has long been a great American advantage. If hard power describes the military and economic might that a nation can use to impose its will, soft power is about hearts and minds, the ability to inspire others to join its cause willingly. France and Germany are NATO allies because they shared our values, and our determination to stop Russian aggression, not because we pressured them into joining.

Canadians are revolting against Trump’s bullying, boycotting American whiskey, cancelling plans to vacation in America, and insisting that their leaders stand up and push back in the tariff fight. How does it serve our interests to provoke that resentment by calling Trudeau the governor of our 51st state? It’s flushing soft power down the toilet. And European opinion is headed in the same direction.

But this goes beyond tactics. This is about our national identity. Do we want to be the world’s bully?

When Trump and Vice President JD Vance browbeat Zelensky in the Oval Office, a bust of Churchill stared down at them. Try to imagine FDR blaming Churchill for starting World War II, calling him a dictator because he postponed elections, telling him he had to make peace with Hitler, and that he must pay us back for all the aid we provided by giving us control of British coal reserves. It’s impossible.

The irony is that Trump had that bust moved back into the Oval Office. Churchill, after all, was a powerful man. And for Trump, that’s enough.

Moran is a national political columnist for Advance Local and the former editorial page editor/columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be emailed at [email protected].