Rejecting The Constitution To Join Barry’s Club
In a recent article, on a well known conservative news site, entitled Trump’s Iran Strike: A Lawful Use of War Powers, the author uses the actions of prior presidents to justify President Trump’s bombing of Iran. Even though most people in MAGA sincerely believe that their movement would leave the policies of the Uniparty behind, it is quite revealing that the author focuses on one particular individual as the most relevant justification for Trump’s 12 Day War: “Since World War II, presidents of both parties have repeatedly exercised this power without prior congressional approval. Decades of precedent affirm the executive branch’s broad authority in military matters, especially when vital U.S. interests are at stake. Presidents have long set precedent for unilateral military action to defend national security . . . The Obama administration, in particular, offers precedent relevant to Trump’s Iran strike.”[1]
Wow. Just like that, MAGA went from despising everything about Barry the “Drone Ranger”, who used a secret protocol to kill American citizens with his drones,[2] to completely embracing Barry’s evil committed on the battlefield of his undeclared wars. Yet, as propagandists are wont to do, the article didn’t stop there. It piled on more baseless justifications for the 12 Day War – “under Article II, the principle of collective self-defense, and compliance with the War Powers Resolution [WPR] as the legal basis for the strike. Officials maintain the action was necessary to protect vital U.S. interests and aligned with decades of bipartisan precedent.”[3]
We should have learned our lesson about vital interests during Bush’s WMDs war in Iraq, but apparently MAGA is all in since we’ve been admitted to Barry’s club. Since this past weekend, I’ve addressed the invalidity of the Article II and WPR arguments ad nauseum including in my most recent article entitled Direct Violence,[4] so I won’t debunk those arguments here. However, I will just add one more thing that was not mentioned in my prior article.
The Constitution is a document of delegated powers. It is not a document that grants powers or rights. This fact is preserved in the Tenth Amendment. It states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to . . . the people.”[5] Clearly, if the power is not delegated to the President, it is not there.
The argument that Article II somehow gives the President the power to drop bombs preemptively on another sovereign nation under “the principle of collective self-defense” turns the Tenth Amendment on its head. There is no such power written down in Article II, so their argument means that the President actually has all power to do whatever he wants and can only be limited in his actions by an express prohibition written in Article II thereby turning the principle of delegated powers on its head. History proves this analysis to be the case.
For example, the warmongers, who are arguing this position through articles like the one referenced above, actually admit that this activity only started after the last legal, constitutional declaration of war following World War II. Why did it start after the last declaration of war and not before? Obviously, it was due to the fact that everyone at the time knew the President could not commit acts of war with direct violence.
Obviously, the warmongers who started the practice of committing acts of war through direct violence without a Congressional declaration of war wanted to keep going because war is big business. This is not a crazy conspiracy theory since most of us have heard President Eisenhower’s warning about the “Military Industrial Complex (MIC).” He warned us, because he knew they were going to try and perpetuate endless wars without having to be restricted by our U.S. Constitution.
Next, it is easy enough to surmise that MIC became nervous that American Patriots would eventually wake up, so they knew they needed to legitimize their unconstitutional wars, which is why they passed the unconstitutional War Powers Resolution in 1973 (WPR).
The passage of this unconstitutional Act, which has been relied on as legal justification for their illegal wars since 1973, is proof positive that they knew the President could not just go off willy nilly committing acts of war without Congressional approval. Why else would they have passed it if the President already had inherent war powers in Article II? Everyone at the time knew he didn’t have inherent powers to wage war, so the warmongers had to get the public to swallow a little lie first. Unfortunately, it worked. Everyone now pretty much believes that Congress could unconstitutionally delegate warmaking powers to the President without a Congressional declaration of war. Pretty slick, but they weren’t finished.
As expected in D.C. politics, once they open the door just a little bit, they know that they can keep going until, eventually, they will be able to get the public to buy off on their narrative without any restraints. MIC’s puppets are now actually claiming that the WPR is not needed, and that it actually infringes on the President’s unwritten Article II powers. America went from everyone believing that the President must have a Congressional declaration of war to believing that the President doesn’t need a declaration of war as long as Congress authorizes use of force to finally believing the President can wage war any time he deems necessary. See how that works?
House Speaker Mike Johnson just came out yesterday to argue that the WPR is actually unconstitutional because it infringes on the President’s inherent Article II powers.[6] I bet you didn’t see that one coming. The warmongers have finally got everything they wanted. The President can go to war any time he deems necessary, and no one will be able to disagree or do anything about it. Given the fervor of support for Trump’s 12 Day War, it would seem that we’ve all been conditioned to accept this new dangerous path.
With their turning of all things constitutional upside down, the warmongers have now completely destroyed the principle of limited powers. It no longer exists. The warmaking power of the President is now without any kind of limitation, and all we needed was Barry’s warmongering as the relevant precedent to solidify it. Who would have ever believed such a thing about MAGA’s ability to switch to Barry’s side so easily given their disdain for him?
It is without a doubt that “the principle of collective self-defense” will know no bounds, and it will never successfully be challenged again by anyone, since it will be the President who decides what falls under that constitutionally non-existent standard. This, of course, means that the Imperial Presidency[7] has finally come completely out of the closet never to be pushed back in there again. Trump is now officially part of Barry’s club, which means that MAGA has fully embraced it as well and will never be able to criticize another Democrat president’s warmongering ever again. If Trump doesn’t get us into nuclear war with his collective-self defensive bombings, then the next guy most likely will, and MAGA will never be able to reach or even find, for that matter, the high moral ground upon which to stand in opposition.
This is the result that comes when we abandon the Framers and our Constitution which was given to us through the “finger of that Almighty hand” whom the Framers relied on “in the critical stages of the revolution.”[8] We will continue to decay, crumble, and eventually fall as nations always do. Even Washington foresaw this through the historical pattern of nations. Knowing that we would eventually reject his counsel and those of the Framers, he explained – “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels . . . I dare not hope . . . that they will . . . prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.”[9]
It should be obvious by now that, as a nation, we do not rely on the Almighty anymore. We’ve been trained to rely on the President with his missiles, planes, and fortifications to protect us instead of relying on our God-given Constitution and the Almighty Himself. We always clamor for more war, whenever the President tells us that there are monsters abroad, and that he must go search them out and destroy them in order to protect us. In those situations, the God-fearing are asking themselves, but how many missiles, planes, and fortifications will it take to protect a people who no longer rely on the Almighty’s methods of protection as set forth in the Constitution that He gave us?
After telling us that the Constitution should be “sacredly maintained,”[10] Washington tried to help us see that – “Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government . . . Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?”[11]
We have traded the counsel of the Framers for the lies of the warmongers, and we will pay for it as a nation in the coming wars brought about by a President exercising his ideas of “collective self-defense”.
“FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS."[12]
Madame Publius
[1] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/trumps-iran-strike-lawful-use-war-powers/
[2] See Madame Publius, The King And I, February 2013, wherein I discussed the “Obama administration's top-secret drone attack protocol” that was used as a justification “that a lethal drone attack against an American citizen is justified.” See link: https://www.facebook.com/share/15c5uJ37KX/?mibextid=wwXlfr
[3] Id.
[4] Madame Publius, Direct Violence, June 24, 2025. See link: https://madamepublius.substack.com/p/direct-violence?r=2fkpo3
[5] U.S. CONST. AMEND. X.
[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/24/johnson-war-powers-trump-iran.html
[7] A term popularized by a book of the same name written by Arthur Schlesinger and published in 1973.
[8] Madison, The Federalist Papers, Ltr. 37, ¶15
[9] Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, ¶42.
[10] Id. at ¶6
[11] Id. at ¶¶37-38
[12] Jay, The Federalist Papers, Ltr. 2, ¶14