Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) accused Joe Biden of getting the United States embroiled in “another endless war.”
In an interview at the Turning Point Action Conference, Hawley pointed to the president’s ordering of reserve armed forces to Ukraine as evidence of Biden’s intent to make it impossible to extricate the U.S. from another European conflict.
“This will never end. I mean, unless we switch course, it will never end,” Hawley said. “We got to go to the Europeans and say, ‘Guys, this is your continent. You’ve got to step up here and take the lead of the defense of Europe.’”
Although Hawley correctly called out Biden for his commitment to conflicts that have very little to do with the United States and should be handled by the people living close to the combat zone, he could have mentioned that Biden’s assumption of the power to deploy troops overseas is unconstitutional.
No matter where you stand on the war in Ukraine, one undeniable truth stands tall: The U.S. Constitution doesn’t contain a single word that grants the president the power to embroil the United States in funding or fighting foreign conflicts. It’s crystal clear, and those who cherish our Constitution should be standing united against the billions of dollars being snatched from hardworking American families, and the American men and women being sent into harm’s way and shipped off to satisfy sketchy business dealings involving American politicians and European oligarchs.
Let’s face it — the Constitution is our guiding light, the foundation of our great union. It was crafted to protect the liberties of the American people, not to play puppeteer in foreign disputes. Americans who consider the Constitution to be the law should work to safeguard the core principles that have made America the beacon of freedom for generations. We should ensure that the hard-earned money of our citizens is invested in strengthening our homeland, not footing the bill for wars abroad or for Americans to die in foreign battlefields.
Hawley went on to point out that sending soldiers to Ukraine is not only a priority for Biden, but a mission very blind to the problems much closer to home.
“Child traffickers, sex trafficking, drugs everywhere. He’s doing it at a time when China is absolutely eating this administration’s lunch,” the plain-speaking Missouri legislator explained. “I mean, just eating their lunch, stealing our jobs, stealing our trade, and yet what’s he doing? Thousands more troops to Europe. This will never end.”
One wonders how many of these issues would be so pressing were the states to refuse to capitulate to federal orders when those orders exceed the enumerated powers granted to the general government within the four corners of the Constitution.
Hawley has made a name for himself in Congress by challenging the nearly unbound hubris of federal officials. When asked by the interviewer about the various ways the federal government is tyrannically destroying liberty, he responded:
Well, how about when this FBI treated parents who are showing up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists? Labels them as domestic terrorists, activates the counterterrorism division of the Justice Department against them. I mean, to me, when you are calling parents domestic terrorists, you know that there’s something seriously wrong.
Merrick Garland should have been gone, the attorney general. Christopher Wray, the FBI director, should have been gone over that alone. And that’s before we even get to them targeting pro-life protesters, going to their homes, using SWAT teams against them. We could go on down the list.
How about the coordination with Big Tech where you’ve got the White House and Big Tech working together to try to deplatform people? I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime.
Nothing about that response should be controversial, particularly in a country with a people educated about the Constitution, the value of freedom, and the danger of despotic government.
I’m reminded of the Reverend Richard Price’s association of education and liberty in his sermon “A Discourse on the Love of Our Country,” delivered in 1789:
Enlighten them and you will elevate them. Show them they are men, and they will act like men. Give them just ideas of civil government, and let them know that it is an expedient for gaining protection against injury and defending their rights, and it will be impossible for them to submit to governments which, like most of those now in the world, are usurpations on the rights of men, and little better than contrivances for enabling the few to oppress the many.
Not only would education about the U.S. Constitution and the principles upon which it was established empower the American people to be more vigilant in keeping an eye on their elected officials, but such education would have saved the thousands of Americans who have died in unconstitutional foreign conflicts from being sacrificed to globalism.
Near the end of his interview, Senator Hawley said that the decline of our culture and the death of Americans in one foreign conflict after another will never end “unless we switch course.”
We can switch course. We can help educate others about the powers granted to the president — and to Congress and the courts — in the Constitution. We can teach state legislators about their power and obligation to be the barricades standing between federal overreach and the people of the states. And we can teach the American people about the inestimable worth and precariousness of liberty, and how, once lost completely, it is almost never regained.
