Dear Reader,
“Are we heading toward a constitutional crisis?,” asks CBS News.
“Is the US government facing a constitutional crisis?,” wonders USA Today.
The Atlantic claims it knows the answer — and it ranges beyond all questioning:
‘“Constitutional crisis’ is an understatement.”
The president’s critics argue his blizzard of executive edicts has the constitutional order in siege.
These include, as argues the New York Times:
- Revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views.
Maybe We Need a Constitutional Crisis
I confess that I did foresee a constitutional crisis. Yet I confess that I am largely for it.
That is because I believe a constitutional crisis is precisely what the nation requires.
That is because I believe the United States Constitution is but a husk. It is no longer what it was.
And I believe the nation should determine what the United States Constitution is — and what it is not.
This past weekend I consulted my team of constitutional authorities.
They have ransacked the historical documents concerning presidential authority.
They informed me that the weight of evidence leans substantially in the president’s direction.
In the president’s authority vests the entire executive authority, they say. This encompasses the federal bureaucracy.
And they argue the president can boss this vast bureaucracy as he deems fit. The federal courts, in contrast, embrace an alternative understanding.
They believe they can rope in a president’s executive authority — and at their discretion. Who should win the argument?
The Old Constitution vs. the New Constitution
I believe the choice reduces to a choice between the old Constitution — and the new Constitution. In this contest, the new Constitution predominates:
The legislative authority claims mastership of the executive authority, the executive authority claims mastership of the legislative authority, the judicial authority claims mastership of both — though such mastership appears nowhere within the United States Constitution.
Thus the original constitutional anatomy is scarcely recognizable.
The nine members of the Supreme Court have been deemed the high priests and priestesses of the New Testament Constitution.
They believe it is they — and they alone — who can interpret constitutional scripture.
For example:
The “penumbras and emanations” glowing from the constitutional text are visible only to these sages.
They are invisible to the old constitutionalists of yore… those lacking discernment.
That is, the old constitutionalists proved incapable of distinguishing Article I from Article II.
Separating Article I From Article II
They proved incapable of distinguishing “shall” from “shall not.”
That is, they were disqualified from service upon the Supreme Court of the United States.
The original United States Constitution blessed future updating — but only through the amendment process.
Yet the last amendment to the Constitution — the 27th Amendment — was stenciled in nearly 30 years ago.
That is because the amendment process is arduous. It is lengthy. And many lack the patience to wait… or trust the people to push things through.
And so the political class has effectively turned the business over to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In these pages I often argue against the alleged virtues of democracy.
That is, I often argue against the theory that two wolves and one sheep should vote upon this evening’s dining options.
In theory, then, I am for the courts.
Yet I am against the courts. Why?
Freedom Is Freedom
The answer is because I believe — profoundly — in the theory that the American people should be permitted to make jackasses of themselves… in whichever manner they choose.
In particular, through democracy.
Yet only in democratic freedom — the freedom to make jackasses of themselves — can the American people make geniuses of themselves.
The courts should not deny it them.
Freedom, after all, is freedom.
Perhaps in the constitutional crisis unfolding presently… can the genius of the American people attain the constitutional freedom the nation’s founders envisioned.
I hazard those founders would be against the courts as presently structured — and for the American people.
Thus a former real estate magnate and reality television star may prove truer to the Constitution than the courts sworn to uphold the very same Constitution.
Who could have possibly imagined it?
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
