“Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.”

— Gore Vidal

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992)
1990s

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Gore Vidal 163

American writer 1925–2012

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The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

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