The test of whether you believe in the Constitution is not whether you defend it for your friends.

It is whether you defend it for your enemies.

Follow along with me.

If your goal is simply to defeat the people you dislike, then none of this matters.

But if your goal is a government that functions under law, then it should concern you that more than 10,000 federal lawyers have left in roughly a year.

Not because lawyers are saints.

Because institutions run on people willing to tell powerful leaders "no."

The conservative movement used to understand this.

The argument wasn't that government should become a weapon for the right.

The argument was that concentrated power is dangerous no matter who controls it.

Now many people seem willing to tolerate almost any expansion of executive power as long as it is aimed at the "correct" targets.

That's a dangerous trade.

Because power never stays pointed in one direction.

The same legal guardrails that protect activists, immigrants, journalists, political opponents, and people you disagree with are the guardrails that eventually protect you.

The same due process that frustrates your desire for immediate punishment is what prevents someone else's desire for immediate punishment from being used against you.

A government that struggles to retain experienced lawyers isn't just losing employees.

It is losing institutional memory, legal expertise, and people whose job is often to say:

"Actually, the law doesn't allow that."

Some people hear that and think:

"Good. Those people were getting in the way."

But that is precisely the moment to be careful.

Because when every obstacle to power starts looking like an enemy, the obstacle that disappears next is usually the rule of law itself.

Conservatives once worried about the size of government.

Today many seem willing to stop worrying about power itself and focus only on who holds it.

History suggests that is a mistake.

The Constitution was never written for the people you like.

It was written for the people you don't.