We can’t pretend there is anything normal about this moment in our nation’s history. Washington, D.C.—the capital of the world’s oldest continuous democracy—is occupied by an armed military force. The president says it is to fight violent crime. But violent crime has always been with us. Never before has it been used as a pretext to put soldiers in the streets of our capital.
The Framers would have recognized this for what it is: an inversion of liberty. They lived under King George III’s standing armies. In the Declaration of Independence, they condemned him: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” They knew that soldiers in civilian life were not protectors of freedom but the instruments of tyranny.
Jefferson warned us. Washington warned us. Hamilton warned us. Madison warned us. Jefferson called standing armies “dangerous to liberty.” Washington, the general who led a revolution, cautioned that “overgrown military establishments” are “particularly hostile to republican liberty.” Hamilton said that constant militarization “degrades the condition of the citizen.” And Madison was blunt: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
The Constitution reflected that fear. Congress came first, in Article I, with the broadest powers because it was closest to the people. Madison called it the “true voice of the people.” Article II gave the president limited powers, meant to be energetic but restrained. Article III created a judiciary Hamilton called the “least dangerous branch,” with “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”
For much of our history, Congress lived up to its role. But not always. After Lincoln’s assassination, Congress hesitated to rein in Andrew Johnson, who gutted Reconstruction and betrayed Black citizens. During the Red Scare, lawmakers enabled McCarthy’s witch hunts until the Senate finally found the courage to censure him. In 1964, Congress gave Lyndon Johnson a blank check in Vietnam. In 2002, it authorized the Iraq War on faulty intelligence. Each time, abdication fed disaster.
But Congress has also shown courage. In the 1970s, Democrats and Republicans stood together during Watergate. They forced Nixon to resign and proved that even a president must answer to the law. That was Congress as the Framers intended it—the people’s branch checking the executive.
That courage is gone. Today, Congress cowers. The Democratic Party, bewildered and divided, cannot mount a serious opposition. And the president gathers power as if it were his birthright.
Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock to protect Black children. Kennedy sent troops to Oxford to enforce civil rights. This president sends troops to Washington to project fear and power. He threatens to “take over” American cities, an assault on federalism itself. He declares national emergencies not to confront crises but to bypass Congress. He launches trade wars by fiat, twisting national security powers into political leverage.
He has turned the Department of Justice into a shield for his allies and a weapon against his opponents. He sneers at congressional subpoenas, though oversight has been the legislature’s duty since 1792. He conducts foreign policy by impulse and by tweet, abandoning allies and shaking global commitments without consultation. He wields immigration enforcement not as law but as terror—separating families, raiding workplaces, using cruelty as political theater. And he vilifies the free press as “the enemy of the people,” echoing the darkest days of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
Each act is alarming. Together, they are a revolution against our constitutional order. The branch that was meant to be the strongest—Congress—is now the weakest. The branch that was meant to be the weakest—the executive—swells with power, unchecked and unashamed.
The consequences are not theoretical. They are felt in crops rotting in fields because immigration raids have driven workers away. They are felt in reckless trade wars that destabilize markets and threaten jobs. And they are felt here in Alabama, where women are stripped of control over their own bodies, where families face government intrusion into their most private decisions, where educators are silenced, and where voting rights—the cornerstone of self-government—are dismantled brick by brick. Washington’s failures don’t stay in Washington. They echo here at home.
History teaches a hard truth: when Congress abdicates, liberty erodes. When it asserts itself, democracy is strengthened. Paine called the Revolution “times that try men’s souls.” Lincoln warned that a house divided cannot stand. Roosevelt reminded us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Each spoke in a moment when liberty trembled and tyranny pressed close.
This is such a moment. Normalcy will not return on its own. Hope and resistance must come from our renewed commitment to liberty, justice and fairness—values that have carried this republic through its darkest hours. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It survives only when citizens demand that their representatives act as the Framers intended: not as courtiers to the executive, but as the people’s strongest defense.
These are indeed times that try the souls of those who treasure freedom. But they can also be the times that prove our resolve. If Congress will not defend us, then we must defend ourselves—at the ballot box, in the public square, in every community from Washington to Montgomery. Liberty endures only when we make it endure.
