War is the most horrific series of events upon which any government can engage. It is systematic, industrialized, indiscriminate killing. It kills innocent adults and little girls. It often ruins the post-war lives of the killers. It is young men violently fighting old men's power games. It is the health of the state.

The war President Donald Trump is waging against the people and the government of Iran is immoral, unconstitutional and unlawful. Yet, because Congress is not doing its job, there appears to be no relief in sight until Trump finds a face-saving way to erase his grave mistake from the public's long memory.

An act of a person or a government is moral when it conforms to a universal set of principles designed to induce good over evil and justice over injustice. These principles are discoverable by all unimpaired adults exercising reason. Adults should comply with them. Children often know them.

To address this, we start with the primacy of the individual over the state. The individual is morally superior to the state because all persons have natural rights, consciences and free wills; and because in the U.S., "We the people" created the state. We are, of course, free to obey our consciences or to violate them; free to respect the natural rights of others or to transgress them.

When we transgress the natural rights of others, our behavior — whether lawful or unlawful — is immoral. When laws enforce natural rights, laws are valid and moral. When laws themselves transgress natural rights — by, for example, punishing speech or seizing property or restraining free movement or invading personal privacy — the laws themselves are immoral.