The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — EDMUND BURKE - Charlie Kirk

It’s not that everything America does in the name of defense is evil or imperialist, but this is a system that has taken on a life of its own. If Making America Great Again means asking whether government spending is benefiting our nation, even the military defense of that nation must be open to critical scrutiny. At some point, waste becomes as toxic as hostile outside forces, and potentially provocative in itself. Military excursions that ought to make us think twice seem deceptively simple if the war planners have a trillion dollars to blow and the lives ended are not their own.

It is unconscionable that for decades we’ve expected heroes maimed by American involvement in unresolved conflicts overseas, and the families of those killed in those fights, to accept “We tried” as the best assessment of what was achieved by the fighting. Surveys now show most American soldiers think our recent wars have been unproductive. Maybe they, away from the spin machines of the Washington policy establishment, know what they’re talking about.

Trump’s battle, then, is not just a squabble with a few well-meaning, present-day liberal critics. He represents a centuries-long struggle within Western civilization between the hope of freedom and self-rule by the common people and the continual assertion of aristocratic privilege by those who think they know better and thus should have power. As long as Trump opposes those deeply entrenched forces, who not so secretly view America’s Founding Fathers with almost as much suspicion and contempt as they view Trump, it will not matter how impressive his practical achievements in the economic or foreign policy realms are: They will still be denigrated and cast in a bad light because he is a threat to their own rule.