Constitution

The United States of America is a rarity among nations in that we do not have rulers who serve at their pleasure. Political office is not inherited, and is not (supposedly) a lifetime sinecure. Instead, our founding fathers gave us a republic in which we are to periodically designate certain people to represent us in the halls of government, people who serve at our pleasure. As Abraham Lincoln so succinctly put it, our government is “Of the People, By the People, For the People”.

Although things often appear otherwise whenever Congress is in session, no authority in our government structure, from our local City Councilmen right on up to the President of the United States, have the legal power to indiscriminately order us do anything we do not wish to do. They can coax, they can cajole, they can suggest, they can lead, but they cannot order us to do anything without our permission! The thirteen colonies denied the divine right of kings, and the derived authority of government figures, in 1776. They proclaimed the authority of “The People”, a hitherto unknown concept that was adopted by the French revolution a few years later. We, in case anyone has forgotten, are the people, and all government authority in this nation devolves from us, the governed. Our authority is intended to be expressed by our elected representatives, whom we select and send to congress to speak in our behalf. The operative phrase here is “to speak in our behalf”, and not on behalf of a particular ideology, or for special interests.

We have a set of laws, our Constitution, that quite clearly specify the powers and the duties of the three branches of our federal government. That constitution (in the Tenth Amendment) also clearly states that all other powers are reserved to the individual states, or to the people. An addendum to the constitution specifically states that we have certain rights that the government may not interfere with. That particular section we call the Bill of Rights… However, it would appear of late that our government, without our permission, has decided that much of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have no real meaning, and can safely be ignored at will.

A slew of recent books about the current administration's wars at home and abroad might leave you wondering if President Bush and Vice President Cheney are the new Axis of Evil. In excruciating detail, these books tell tales of torture, warrantless wiretaps, of arrest and imprisonment without trial. They show a relentless grab for presidential power and distain for what were thought to be solid constitutional limitations. The picture that emerges is so bleak that even serious journalists and scholars sometimes lean toward conspiracy theories. The administration's defenders, meanwhile, grow strident, claiming that the Bush administration is up against "a domestic insurgency" led by "journalistic devotees of the Vietnam syndrome," isolationists, "liberal internationalists" and (heaven forbid) "realists." The Bush and Cheney who emerge from these pages cherish secrecy, they deplore constraint and they sneer at dissent, so nothing and nobody can dissuade them from their chosen course. Reality checks are not allowed.

The views on presidential power held by the present administration will create many a problem for future presidents. Cheney and Bush will leave presidential powers enhanced at the expense of Congress and the courts, to the detriment of the checks and balances essential to our constitutional system. There's already some concern among Republicans fearful that Hillary Clinton will reap the benefits. After all, no president will want to see his or her imperial authority eroded. The expansive powers presently claimed and exercised by President Bush are now an immutable part of American history, not controversies, but facts. The worldwide war with terrorists that is so important to expanded presidential power will go on as well. What might have seemed farfetched political and military fantasies several years ago are inescapable realities today.

Nobody will argue that many of the domestic actions taken by the federal government since 9/11 are in direct violation of our constitutional rights. For all intents and purposes the so called “Patriot Act” effectively suspends the Constitution of the United States, establishes a police state, and allows the US President to pretty well do whatever he pleases irreguardless of the law. However, unlike many on the left (and more than a few on the right as well), I have a lot of trouble believing that all our problems are the result of a vast “Bush-Cheney Conspiracy”. Rather I submit that what we see happening today is the result of the current administration doing nothing more than taking advantage of several decades of congressional malfeasance! Congress has through the years handed over to the executive much of their constitutional authority, apparently as it interfered with their constant struggle to be reelected. Add to that, the judicial branch has been so busy with social and environmental activism that they have ignored their constitutional duty to see that the federal “balance of power” remained on an even keel.

Jack Goldsmith, who briefly served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, a conservative academic and generally a supporter of a strong executive, argues in his book "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration" that much of what was done in the early days after 9/11 is perfectly understandable. Threats seemed to be everywhere. A second wave of attacks appeared imminent and all but inevitable. "The President had to do what he had to do to protect the country," writes Goldsmith. "And the lawyers had to find some way to make what he did legal." However, unlike previous war presidents (Lincoln and FDR) who severely bent the Constitution in order to save it, and took responsibility for doing so, the Bush administration has hidden behind a wall of secrecy, as if public ignorance were the best way to give the president the powers he needed

In fact, the present situation is far from the civil war some writers would have us believe will soon be here, and certainly not the “shooting war” so popular in fiction. After all, with the steady errosion of our second ammendment rights, just what are we supposed to shoot with? Hunting rifles against tanks? Shotguns against attack helicopters? I don’t think so! But this is a good moment to take stock of the more subtle parts of these books: stories of score-settling at home, a new kind of enemy abroad, war profiteering and corruption, righteous intentions, grand visions, and bad information. If there is a recurrent theme, it's that the present administration set out to create its own reality, whether approaching the Bill of Rights like a little understood document, or readying itself for war in Iraq (and Iran?) with a steady diet of dubious intelligence.

Remember that every totalitarian state in recorded history has required three things to exist. They require extensive government secrecy, they require a foreign enemy to threaten the population, and they require a domestic enemy (usually imaginary) to justify a widespread internal security apparatus.