For all the hand-wringing about the threat to liberty and constitutional government posed by the major party presidential candidates, there is little discussion of how this threat is due to the political class’s long history of supporting expanded presidential power. There is also little talk of how the imperial presidency is just as much a creation of Congress as it is of power-hungry presidents.
Since war is the health of the state, it is not surprising that presidential power expanded in tandem with the expansion of the warfare state. Perhaps the best, and most terrifying, example of how “national security” has been used to justify giving the president dictatorial powers is the Defense Production Act.
This law, which is regularly renewed with large bipartisan congressional majorities, grants the president broad powers over the economy. For example, it explicitly authorizes the president to tell manufacturers what products to make, impose wage and price controls, “manage” labor relations, control the use of natural resources, and even allocate credit. All the president need do to exercise these powers is declare a national emergency.
The Defense Production Act is hardly the only example of congress’s complicity in the growth of presidential power. For example, Congress rarely, if ever, insists that the president seek a formal declaration of war before commencing military action. When I attempted to force Congress to vote on a declaration of war against Iraq, a prominent member of Congress, who was considered a constitutional scholar, told me that the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war was an “anachronism.”
Many neoconservatives claim that the president’s status as commander in chief gives him the inherent authority to take whatever actions he deems necessary for national security. This turns a limited grant of power intended to preserve civilian control of the military into an unlimited authorization for military control of civilians.
Presidents have hardly limited their abuse to foreign policy. Ironically, many conservatives who (correctly) oppose abuses of presidential authority in the domestic sphere support giving the president unlimited authority over “national security.” These conservatives fail to realize unfettered presidential discretion in foreign policy will inevitably lead to presidential usurpation of Congress’s authority in domestic matters.
Modern presidents routinely use executive orders to create new laws or rewrite existing statutes. President George W. Bush regularly usurped congressional authority via signing statements listing the parts of congressionally-passed legislation he would refuse to enforce.
In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama actually bragged about his intention to use his “pen and phone” to go around Congress via executive orders and regulations. Some members of Congress do criticize presidential usurpation of congressional authority. However, few members of Congress raise concerns about presidential overreach when the White House is occupied by a member of their political party. This suggests that most legislators are more concerned with partisanship than with protecting their constitutional authority.
As long as people expect the president to provide economic and personal security, the presidency will be a threat to liberty regardless of who holds the office. Therefore, instead of obsessing over whether demagogue A is less dangerous than demagogue B, we must focus on spreading the ideas of liberty. Only when a critical mass of the people demand it will we return to limited constitutional government. The growth of the liberty movement gives me hope that we will soon see a day when our peace, prosperity, and liberty is not threatened by the results of the presidential, or any other, election.
Thanks, Ron Paul. Your check is in the mail.
Poor old Ron. We will always have a place in our hearts for him. He is a decent fellow and had the guts to stand up to the Elites when nobody else would. He will have a place of honor in New America.
The train has passed him by. He missed it. While he was fumbling with his watch and complaining about the cushions on the waiting room benches it roared off into the night.
We are on the verge of losing our country to a corrupt, alien, profoundly un-American gang of Marxists in Progressive clothing, oligarchs, foreigners and the mindless boobs who can’t see them for what they are. Ron Paul has some good ideas (auditing and getting rid of the FED is a great one; it should be replaced by an institution answerable only to the U.S. people, if at all) but he is completely out of touch with what needs to be done to force these lizards back into their holes. His grasp on the ugly realities of the world is weak. As much as many of us would like to we can’t simply fold our tent and slink off the world stage.
So, thanks for the memories, Ron. But we can’t stay with you any longer. We have a desperate fight ahead of us and it seems that your gentle nature, as much as we admire it, won’t be of much help to the rest of us. Keep in touch!
I was trying to explain libertarian thinking to a bunch of hillbillies (okay… my cousins) around here and they said it is only right and fair that those who have more should be willing to help those with less. They don’t GET IT that it should be up to the person who worked hard to have MORE to whom and when they offer that help. They think government redistribution is great.
Of course, their millions are buried in these hills and the government doesn’t know about it.
That’s Democracy. The two wolves deciding who gets to consume the sheep they are voting to slaughter while their own freezers are stocked with prime rib.
Confucius says “He who fails to clean up the shit soon ends up eating it.”
Bumbling Ron Paul takes a break from his gold coin infomercials to chastise the little children once again.
“Therefore, instead of obsessing over whether demagogue A is less dangerous than demagogue B, we must focus on spreading the ideas of liberty. Only when a critical mass of the people demand it will we return to limited constitutional government.”
Yes, we’ve tried that. It hasn’t worked. People are not going to wake up en masse. It didn’t work in ’08 or in ’12 when you got shellacked in two Republican primaries. Now, with the importation of tens of millions of “refugees” with no historical legacy of constitutionalism or intellectualism, the chances of a mass wakeup are precisely zero. The norms in this country are staring at the destruction of their way of life in the eyes. And all we have from the bumbler are more platitudes about how we need more edumahcation about the con-stitution.
“The growth of the liberty movement gives me hope that we will soon see a day when our peace, prosperity, and liberty is not threatened by the results of the presidential, or any other, election.”
The “growth” of the liberty movement was only accomplished by accepting big think tank money from Koch Brothers and others in return for turning the movement into controlled opposition. In return for a handful of votes, libertarians became cucktarians and pandered to the dregs of society even the Democrats won’t touch. Drug addicts, hippies, nudists, pedophiles, polyamorists, unemployables, malcontents, street people — these are the new constituents of the once stalwart Libertarian Party. Gary Johnson, the ideological bastard child of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the “movement.” If that is the growth that “gives you hope,” you are either a naive dupe or a willing accomplice.