Napoleon once said, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Two centuries later, another world leader echoed those exact words nearly verbatim. Those aren’t the words of a constitutional conservative—they’re the logic every autocrat uses to dismantle democracy. So why is half the country cheering instead of recognizing the pattern? Because MAGA has convinced itself the republic already fell to a deep state coup, which justifies any measure—even unconstitutional ones—as restoration rather than violation. But you can’t save a Republic from a coup that never happened. And scholars of democratic erosion will tell you we’re following the exact playbook that killed democracies in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I was permanently banned from r/Republican for warning that the precedents conservatives celebrate today become the powers they’ll face tomorrow. Not for opposing Republican values—for defending them. Not for abandoning conservative principles—for taking them seriously. My crime? Making a constitutional argument about executive overreach and institutional constraints from an explicitly conservative framework. Apparently that makes me “anti-Republican.” If raising concerns about abandoning the checks and balances our oaths require us to defend is now grounds for expulsion, then “Republican” no longer means what I spent my life thinking it meant. And that should trouble Republicans far more than it troubles me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In January 1994, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. As far as I’m aware that oath has no expiration date. I’ve voted Republican my entire life. But I’m now watching conservatives make a catastrophic strategic error: dismantling constitutional constraints to empower Trump, without realizing these same tools—deportation infrastructure, normalized defiance of courts, purged oversight—will inevitably transfer to a Democratic president they’ll despise. MAGA isn’t building durable conservative power; they’re eliminating the very safeguards that protect our values when power changes hands. The machinery they’re cheering today can be repurposed against us tomorrow. So I’m asking you—one veteran to another, one conservative to another, one American to another: Stop celebrating and start thinking. Think about the system you’re building. Think about who inherits it. Think about whether you’d accept these same powers in the hands of a President you despise. Because that’s coming. Not maybe. Guaranteed. Our oath is being tested right now, in real-time. The question is will we honor it?

In March 2025, the V-Dem Institute warned the U.S. was “on track to lose its democracy status in six months.” It’s October 2025. We’re there. I’ve been tracking what I thought were three separate crises for months: constitutional collapse, genocide infrastructure, and unchecked executive power. I was wrong. They’re not separate—they’re components of a single, integrated authoritarian mechanism where each requires the others. This isn’t partisan catastrophizing. It’s pattern recognition backed by international democracy monitors, genocide scholars, and constitutional experts. The window for prevention is closing. I’m a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong Republican-voter, and I’m sounding the alarm—before it’s too late.

Someone on Twitter said #NoKings is just grandstanding from people who lost, that Trump’s power grab doesn’t approach monarchy—but they’re historically illiterate. Most kings throughout history had less power than Trump claims: they couldn’t fire every official, ignore parliaments, or eliminate institutions that constrained them because financial dependency, nobles with armies, and customary law weren’t ideals but survival mechanisms. Trump claims authority to purge agencies, ignore Congress, override courts, and centralize all executive power personally through “unitary executive theory”—control most monarchs never possessed. The Founders fought a revolution against exactly this, built an entire constitutional system to prevent it, and traitors in America are dismantling it voluntarily while calling themselves patriots.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​