Politics & Power Quote by Don Nickles

Nickles isn’t making an argument so much as building a trap door: accept his opening premise and you’re already falling. By framing “the fundamental purpose of our government” as providing “the common defense,” he narrows the Constitution’s sprawling mandate into a single, morally loaded job description. “Common defense” sounds nonpartisan, almost elemental; it conjures threats, uniforms, and the solemn duty to protect. Once that phrase is centered, everything else - social programs, regulation, diplomacy, even civil liberties when inconvenient - becomes secondary, optional, or suspect.

The absolutism is the tell. “No other position is possible” is less persuasion than excommunication. It casts dissent not as a reasonable alternative priority but as a failure to understand government itself. That’s a classic Washington move: convert a policy preference into an axiom, then treat compromise as heresy. The rhetorical appeal is especially potent in moments when fear is ambient and political incentives reward hawkish clarity over messy tradeoffs.

Nickles, a Republican senator shaped by late Cold War politics and the GOP’s post-1970s emphasis on military strength, is speaking into a long-running debate about what “general welfare” should mean in practice. His line tries to settle that debate by declaring it illegitimate. The subtext: if you’re serious, you fund defense first, you expand state power in the name of security, and you stop pretending other priorities deserve equal constitutional dignity. It works because it converts a complicated budget and values fight into a test of loyalty.