LAWRENCE HUNTER: Trump’s move to take Greenland echoes Thomas Jefferson

President Donald Trump has begun his presidency with a variety of bold gambits to acquire new territories for the United States, specifically Greenland, parts or all of Canada and the Panama Canal Zone (Greenland alone is slightly larger than the Louisiana Purchase acquired from France in 1803 by President Thomas Jefferson—836,330 square miles and 828,868 square miles, respectively). Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede says he is ready to talk with Trump as he navigates his country along the path toward dissolving the ties that currently bind Greenland and Denmark.

Properly conceived and implemented, these territorial acquisitions would serve a dual purpose. Not only would they enlarge the size of America geographically and thereby increase security, both economically and militarily; but more importantly, territorial expansion 21^st-century style holds the promise of making possible a great leap back to the future of American federalism and constitutional government as they originally were conceived by the Founding Fathers.

Think of using the new territories not only as security platforms and a means to free up commerce but also as real laboratories of democracy—with leverage—to entice existing states to seek for themselves any kind of tax and regulatory benefits that might be bestowed on the new territories. Rather than viewing the competitive advantages accruing to the new territories—such as an exclusion from federal income tax and a prohibition against adopting a territorial income tax—as 'unfair' and a reason to oppose them, states should instead seize the opportunity to free their own residents from this destructive federal tax by pushing for its repeal.