The American Founders understood that nearly every war erodes freedom while redistributing both wealth and power upward.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few,” James Madison wrote in 1795.
With echoes of Madison reverberating through the crowd, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the 2024 Republican vice-presidential nominee, d …