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In none of these cases were McKinley’s, Wilson’s, Roosevelt’s, Johnson’s, or Bush’s actions morally, legally, or constitutionally justified. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the “President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” Nowhere does the Constitution state the “President may willfully and intentionally fool the people into war.”

Land of the Free? Barely

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

—JAMES MADISON

Now that we have seen that throughout our history the state has used warfare merely as a means of expanding its power and control, we must next ask, In what way do wars encroach upon our own freedoms and thus violate the Natural Law? While war is being fought in the name of “freedom” abroad, war is bringing the opposite effect to Americans back home; we are less free because of war. While this statement may seem contradictory, the irony becomes clearer as we helplessly witness losses of liberty brought on by our power-hungry government in the form of higher taxes, greater government debt, increased government intrusion in markets, more pervasive government surveillance, manipulation, and control of the public.13 Every single one of these reactions to war restricts our freedoms and fundamental liberties as human beings. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled.

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The most tried and true way of limiting Americans’ freedom during times of war is the draft. Whatever happened to the inalienable right “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? President Wilson drafted almost 2.8 million men during World War I.14 This involuntary servitude (violating all natural rights) was found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court at the time, a prime example of how crisis allows people to pull off unconstitutional measures. Draft supporters will argue that conscription fundamentally “unifies the country,” “levels the classes,” and offers the opportunity to “share in our national fate.”15 This rationale, however, is empty and completely counters the individual freedom our Founding Fathers had in mind for their new, burgeoning, and free nation. The Founders’ thoughts are relevant in every age and at every encounter between the government and any individual: Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government?

Repressive and freedom-limiting actions by the government continued during World War I in the form of jailed draft objectors. Resisting conscription led to the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of Americans throughout the Great War. Of the 450 conscientious objectors found guilty of evading the draft at military hearings, 17 were sentenced to death, 142 received life sentences, and 73 received twenty-year prison terms!16 Similarly in World War II, more than 10 million men were drafted to fight. Those who chose to stand up to the government and refuse to fight due to their religious affiliations were jailed just as they were in World War I (the government just does not seem to learn). The state locked up 6,000 of these conscientious objectors, most of whom were Jehovah’s Witnesses.17

But the most shocking and dehumanizing restrictions during World War II took the form of concentration camps for Japanese Americans. In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast of the United States.18 This executive order took away civil liberties on a whole new level. It singled out a group of people based upon their race, accused the group of sabotage and espionage without consideration of the presumption of innocence or due process of law, and then locked them all up as a “security measure.”

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Born in California, Fred Korematsu was an American citizen of Japanese heritage. As we have seen in an earlier chapter,