The strongest case against this administration does not need liberal arguments. It comes from conservative ones: the Constitution, institutional restraint, and the rule of law, the values I swore to uphold when I served. Measured by those, this is not conservative governance. It is institutional decay.
Rule of Law covers the Justice Department and the pardons. Four more failures should trouble any conservative.
The first is civilian control of an apolitical military. Six Democratic lawmakers, all veterans or former security officials, reminded troops that they can refuse illegal orders. The president answered “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and the Pentagon moved to punish Senator Mark Kelly.
A federal judge blocked the censure on First Amendment grounds. Refusing an illegal order is not sedition. It is the oath.
The second is free speech. In September 2025 ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission had just warned broadcasters they could do this “the easy way or the hard way.” Satire is a pressure valve of a free society. Silencing it is insecurity dressed up as power.
The third is honest numbers and free trade. The president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a weak jobs report. The New York Fed found that Americans paid most of his tariffs. Both used to be conservative principles.
The fourth is the war power. The Constitution gives it to Congress. Yet Congress never authorized the strikes on alleged drug boats or the January 2026 raid on Caracas that seized Nicolás Maduro. The war on Iran began on February 28, 2026, and Congress has never voted to authorize that either. In polls since it began, most Americans have opposed it.
Even former loyalists broke ranks: Marjorie Taylor Greene opposed it, and Joe Kent resigned as the nation’s counterterrorism chief over it. A war most citizens oppose and their representatives never approved is exactly the unchecked power conservatives used to warn against.
These trends corrode the habits and restraints that make self-government possible.