–What Lincoln’s Precedent Reveals About the President’s Duty When the Nation Is at War Within

For decades, America has been under a silent assault not of bombs but of infiltration. This essay defines that assault—unrestricted warfare—as war itself; exposes how foreign and domestic powers have turned America’s institutions against her; recalls the constitutional precedent for emergency action; and calls the nation to spiritual awakening before it is too late.

I. THE VISIBLE SYMPTOMS OF A NATION IN PARALYSIS

America is already at war. Not a war of tanks or missiles, but a war that has entered every institution, every channel of communication, and every human heart. And yet, most Americans still believe they live in peace.

In recent weeks, three separate reports have laid bare the depth of the nation’s internal decay—one describing unpaid troops during the shutdown, another warning of nationwide flight disruptions, and a third revealing how even the Supreme Court was forced to intervene in a funding dispute over federal food assistance.

First, Congress has twice refused to pass a bill that would pay active-duty troops and law-enforcement officers during the ongoing government shutdown. For more than a month, men and women who protect the Republic have served without pay while most lawmakers—the very people who send them into danger still collect their paycheck—have voted against authorizing salaries for our service men and women.

Second, the same deadlock has pushed the country’s air-traffic system to the edge of collapse. Air-traffic controllers, TSA agents, and other essential personnel warn of mass delays and safety risks. Airlines plead for relief.

Third, even the judiciary is now drawn into the paralysis. A federal court recently attempted to compel the executive branch to spend money Congress had withheld, forcing the Supreme Court to intervene and restore the constitutional boundary.

When judges begin ordering the government to act without lawful appropriations, it is no longer governance—it is fracture. Such collisions between branches are not random—they are the designed outcomes of infiltration that turns separation of powers into a battlefield.

At first glance, this might appear to be another episode of partisan dysfunction. But that illusion itself is part of the sickness. What we are witnessing is not a coincidence of politics—it is the symptom of a nation under siege from within.

II. WHY THE GOVERNMENT CAN NO LONGER GOVERN

The inability of Congress to pass even the most basic legislation—to pay its troops, to sustain its own infrastructure—is not a procedural accident. It is a weapon.

For years, the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) and its network of global collaborators have waged what they openly call unrestricted warfare: a form of total conflict fought with money, information, law, culture, and influence instead of missiles.

When enough lawmakers, executives, and opinion-shapers become beholden to foreign money and ideology, the government itself begins to malfunction by design.

The very mechanisms once designed to keep government accountable have been turned against the nation itself. Under the banner of “principle” and “procedure,” many in the Democratic Party and a minority within the Republican Party now serves powers not their own—foreign and domestic interests that thrive on division and paralysis.

They have weaponized deadlock, using shutdowns and procedural warfare not to defend law, but to manipulate it. What was meant to preserve the Republic has been inverted to strangle it.

When the enemy can make your leaders work against your own defense, he no longer needs to fire a single shot. That is why America’s paralysis is not merely political; it is strategic warfare carried out inside her own institutions.

III. DEFINING UNRESTRICTED WARFARE AS WAR

Before any remedy can be found, one truth must be declared beyond dispute: America is at war—and has been for decades.

This war has no formal declaration, but its fronts are everywhere—in our media, universities, corporations, courts, and even our pulpits.

The “brilliance” of this new form of warfare lies in its disguise. It hides behind treaties, philanthropy, and technology. It whispers through entertainment and commerce. Like the serpent in Eden, it does not arrive with a sword but with a question: “Did God really say…?”

This has not been weeks or years of sudden hostility—it is the result of decades of deliberate preparation and infiltration, culminating in a fully developed campaign in the early twenty-first century, when the CCP turned global systems into instruments of control and coercion.

To refuse to call this a war is to choose national suicide. A nation that cannot name its enemy has already surrendered half its defense. Recognition is the first act of survival.

Everything that follows—constitutional authority, presidential duty, national renewal—depends on seeing clearly what this truly is: a war for the life of the Republic.

IV. THE MOST LETHAL CONSEQUENCE OF UNRESTRICTED WARFARE: AMERICA BOUND TO ITS ENEMY’S SUPPLY CHAIN

In conventional warfare, decoupling from an enemy is the first signal of recognition. But when the enemy has already turned commerce and logistics into a battlefield, tariffs and economic resistance become the first and necessary counterstrike.

It is true that in ordinary times, cutting economic ties is the natural proof of recognizing an adversary. No one denies this. If America were facing a normal foe, decoupling would be immediate and absolute.

But this is the very trap the CCP has built over decades: to make total separation impossible without collapse. Through trade, technology, and debt, the CCP fused its system with ours so tightly that an instant rupture would shake the Republic itself.

Therefore, tariffs and trade restrictions are not signs of confusion or half-measures; they are deliberate acts of resistance—the sound of America striking back with the weapons available in this invisible war.

Tariffs, investment bans, supply-chain realignment: these are not policy debates. They are acts of national defense. They are the first clear sounds of a nation that finally understands it has been attacked.

V. CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY IN A STATE OF WAR

Now that the nature of the battle is defined, the question arises: What does the Constitution say about a nation at war?

When the enemy is not at the gate but within the gates, what powers and duties does the President possess to preserve the Union?

The answer lies not in invention but in precedent—specifically, in Abraham Lincoln’s conduct during the Civil War.

Lincoln faced a divided nation, a paralyzed Congress, and a Constitution stretched to its breaking point. Yet he understood a truth too many have since forgotten: the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Its purpose is to preserve the nation, not to enable its destruction.

When Congress could not convene fast enough to raise an army, Lincoln acted. When courts refused to recognize rebellion as war, he declared it anyway. He suspended habeas corpus not to abolish liberty but to prevent liberty’s annihilation. His guiding principle was clear: to break the law when necessary to save the law, because the higher law—the survival of the Republic—was at stake.

Lincoln’s moment of crisis was visible: cannon fire at Fort Sumter, battlefields drenched in blood, the Union torn in half.

Today’s crisis is unseen: subversion in the halls of power, lies in the channels of information, infiltration within the hearts of men. The artillery has changed form, but the war is the same.

Then, the Union was attacked from without; now, it is attacked from within.

Then, the President faced open rebellion; now, he faces concealed betrayal.

In both, the question is identical: Will the Republic be defended, or allowed to perish by procedure?

The evidence of collapse is already before us. The reports of unpaid soldiers, grounded flights, and courts forced to overreach are not isolated failures—they are symptoms of a nation entering paralysis.

Just as Lincoln watched states fall away one by one, we now watch the very systems of government grind to a halt, not from secession but from infiltration.

The war that once split the nation by geography now divides it by truth and deception.

Lincoln’s precedent reveals the enduring core of constitutional duty. When the nation’s existence is threatened, the President’s foremost obligation is not to the text of procedure but to the spirit of preservation.

That authority flows not from ambition but from necessity—and necessity, in the American order, is bounded by moral restraint.

Today, America stands in a crisis no less grave, though infinitely more deceptive. The weapons are invisible, the soldiers ununiformed, the battlefields intangible. But the war is real. And if the government remains paralyzed while the enemy advances through every system, the President has both the constitutional and moral obligation to act—to defend the Republic by every lawful means, and to restore the balance that infiltration has destroyed.

VI. THE SPIRITUAL ROOT OF NATIONAL WARFARE

Beneath every political collapse lies a moral collapse, and beneath every moral collapse lies a spiritual one. America’s enemies could not have succeeded in infiltrating her institutions if her people had not first surrendered their vigilance of the heart.

Unrestricted warfare begins in the unseen realm long before it manifests in the visible. The true battlefield is the soul of a people—their capacity for truth, faith, humility, and courage.

The corruption of truth leads to the worship of power. The rejection of repentance leads to the acceptance of bondage. The substitution of comfort for conviction leads to decay masked as progress.

Thus, America’s war is not only geopolitical; it is spiritual. The nation’s restoration cannot come through politics alone. It must come through the cleansing of hearts, the renewal of moral sight, and the return of fear and reverence for God.

VII. THE CALL TO REPENTANCE AND RENEWAL

If America is to survive, she must first awaken. Recognition must lead to repentance, and repentance must lead to action. The Republic cannot be restored by force of will alone, but by the return of truth to the heart of her people.

This awakening begins not in Washington but in every conscience. It begins when men and women reject the comfort of blindness and choose to see evil for what it is. It begins when citizens remember that liberty is a gift from God, not a license from government. It begins when leaders fear God more than they fear losing elections.

The hour is late, but it is not lost. The same God who preserved the Republic through civil war and world war remains sovereign now. The same truth that once forged liberty can still revive it. But the choice belongs to us—to either stand in faith and courage, or fall in silence and denial.

America is already at war. The question is not whether she will fight, but whether she will remember who she is—and who she was meant to be.

Author’s Note:

America’s hope will never come from parties or power, but from a return to the truth that gave her birth—one nation under God.

The time has come for her to remember that freedom without righteousness is only another form of bondage, and that only a nation restored to its divine foundation can move forward again.