The next president, whoever they may be, will almost
certainly be a tyrant, or become one once in office. The reason for this is not
so much the person—although power does give occasion for anyone’s sin nature to
gain ascendancy—but the system. There is a machine of tyranny in place far
beyond most people’s imagination. When people speak of “getting back to the Constitution,” they have no
idea how drastically it would turn the nation upside down to do so, and what
major sacrifices it would impose on the lives of most Americans.
Even most “good” candidates, once in office, are immediately
pulling the levers of the machine to accomplish their goals, and defending the
necessity of the parts of the machine they would have railed against on the
campaign trail. Worse, most of their “get back to the Constitution” supporters
will be fine with such behavior as long as they see the executive orders and
regulations being forced in their favor, or for causes they support. Thus is
life in the land of the free. And here’s a big reason why:
A brief section from Restoring America One County at a Time:
Emergency and War Powers
We observed earlier in the chapter on war how the Warfare
State and Welfare State have a symbiotic relationship. In modern American
history, the “tie that binds” these unholy partners until death do them part
has been “emergency powers.” Assumedly an extreme measure for war-time only,
modern presidents have increasingly relied on declarations of emergency in
order to exercise vast powers domestically and during peacetime.
You
probably don’t realize it, but you have lived probably the entirety of your
life under national emergency. You almost certainly have if you were born after
1933……..
(Full text at link below)
While there is certainly no limit to the tyranny of an
Executive who has both the ambition and opportunity, there is enough here to
show how a once freer America has been subdued. This has come primarily through
three key Executive powers: the Treaty-making power in this country, the abuse
of executive orders, and the ascendancy of government-by-emergency. We have
seen how the latter of these has been the main catalyst for executive tyranny,
especially in more recent times, and also as it unleashes the greater potential
for the abuse of executive orders.
The greatest irony of all here is probably that, of all
tyrannies and abuses, Americans are most complacent with this one being abused.
This may not be true considering the allure of public schooling and welfare
checks, but consider for a moment how broadly these Executive excesses have
been indulged by both Republican and Democrat administrations in recent times.
And in either instance, the partisans of either party praise the abuses of their
party and condemn those of the opponents. The message is clear: “we will
tolerate Executive tyranny as long as our guy gets to stick it to the other
guys.” Understandably, the two major political parties in this nation have
become merely two expressions of big government Executive tyranny. The one says
give us protections for social welfare programs, the other says give us
protections for corporate banks and big business. In short, there seems to be
no escape from this game of big spending and massive debts: it only seems to be
a matter of who gets to profit on the front end.
But
there is an alternative worldview. While change in the executive functions of
our governments—especially at the federal level—is definitely a long way off
barring some major collapse and catastrophe, there are still some goals at
which to aim. We will discuss these in the next section.
