Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (14 page)

Most of the conflict between atheists and believers comes up because of public schools. This issue doesn’t exist in private settings such as homes, homeschools, private schools, churches, and art studios, to name a few. In the private sector, every point of view can find a place and these ideas are not a threat to others. As Thomas Jefferson said: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” In a public school setting, however, it’s a major hot-button issue because the school curriculum and all standards of behavior are dictated by the federal government, the Department of Education, and the federal courts.

Though the Constitution in no way prohibits religious expression in public places, the modern interpretation of the Constitution, pushed by the evangelical atheists, demands strict prohibition of public expressions of faith. Athletes can’t even say a prayer before a sporting event according to current court rulings. It’s hard to understand the great danger in a voluntary prayer while it’s considered no threat whatsoever for a minority to use a government power to impose its views on others.

A broad-based tolerance in all directions would go a long way toward eliminating many of the problems, but public schools and public places will continue to exist. In a private setting, the “owners” set the rules and participants come with an understanding of the rules regarding prayer and religious expression and what one wants to hear about evolution.

This still leaves some problems with the possibility that
local schools will overstep the bounds of etiquette or will use some textbooks considered to be offensive to one group or another. In this case, the closest one can come to having the “owner” decide would be for the local school board to make the decision and be subject to public challenge at the polls. The Supreme Court handing down edicts that apply to every single circumstance around the country is not a solution.

This will seem to be less than perfect. But it’s a far better solution than having the Supreme Court or the Congress dictate proper decorum with regards to religious expression or picking the books our children will be using in the classroom. Universalization of educational standards and curriculum is exactly the goal of those who seek tyranny over liberty. And if they can use an issue such as prayer in the schools or teaching evolution, they’ll not hesitate to do it.

There is one argument against evolution that deserves consideration. If man is evolving and progressing, why is man’s involvement in mass killings of one another getting worse and the struggle for peace more difficult? Government wars and exterminations in the twentieth century reached 262 million people killed by their own governments and 44 million people killed in wars. I fear that doesn’t say much for the evolutionary process.

Larson, Edward J. 2007.
The Creation-Evolution Debate: Historical Perspectives
. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

A
dictator enjoys unrestrained power over the people. The legislative and judicial branches voluntarily cede this power or it’s taken by force. Most of the time, it’s given up easily, out of fear in time of war and civil disturbances, and with support from the people, although the dictator will also accumulate more power with the use of force. Rarely does an elected leader truly resist the temptation to exert power over the people.

History shows the lust for power to be a human trait, and Jefferson’s argument for “binding our leaders down with the chains of the Constitution” was his answer to this temptation. The Constitution was an effort to do just that. But when the mood changes and the people become fearful, they allow the eager leaders, tempted by power, to grab as much as they can, seeing themselves as the only ones who can rescue the people.

Because the Founders understood this, they made an earnest attempt to write a constitution in which the various powers were separate and designed to place checks and balances on all the activities of the government in order to strictly limit
the powers of the President and the executive branch. They did not want a dictator to evolve out of the constitutional republic they were designing. Article I, Section 8, defines the limited area over which the Congress, and therefore the whole federal government, was granted authority.

Without a clear limitation on the powers of the federal government, the Constitution would never have been ratified. To further emphasize the limits of Article I, Section 8, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were added. The debates and the language of the Constitution never suggested that “the general welfare” clause and the “interstate commerce clause” could even hint at justifying a federal welfare-warfare state.

Yet over the years, especially since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a “modern” interpretation was forced on us by our courts and taught in our schools. This meant that the Constitution could be changed at will by the three branches and without proper amendments, since anything called interstate commerce could be regulated without limit, and even martial law could be justified according to the demands of the general welfare. George Bush used his power in near dictatorial ways, passing the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive in 2007 that gave him near dictatorial powers in the event of emergency. Obviously, the Constitution is a dead letter under these conditions.

The welfare clause in the Preamble became a license for specific benefits for one group at the expense of another. The interstate commerce clause became a justification for hindering and regulating everything considered interstate commerce. This has been especially the case since the radical ruling in the
National Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation
decision in 1937 (concerning the Wagner Act), which permitted the government to regulate every aspect of American labor contracts. Another case,
United States v. Darby Lumber
in 1941, radically undermined the interstate commerce clause with the court justifying their ruling by declaring the Tenth Amendment “is but a truism” and did not limit federal powers.

In the past ten years the separation of powers between the state and the federal government has virtually disappeared and the federal government has won. Today there is a healthy debate and resistance to this takeover, due to the complete failure of everything the federal government touches.

The shift of power away from Congress to the executive branch is every bit as serious a problem as the sovereignty being taken away from the states. Clearly, the Constitution made the Congress the most important of the three branches. Today, it’s the weakest. Congress was to decide the issues of war, money, international and domestic trade, laws, spending, taxes, and foreign relations. Today, these issues are the responsibility of the President—essentially without congressional input.

For the most part, Congress gave up its prerogatives without a fight. Too many members of Congress in the past century had been taught that for our survival we had to have a strong executive. This is unfortunate, since it can only be achieved at the expense of the people’s liberty. Excessive, dictatorial executive powers are the enemy of the liberties that were to be protected by the Constitution in our republic. Indeed, our system of education has brainwashed generations of Americans that our truly great presidents had to be wartime presidents. George W. Bush understood this and welcomed his role in a war he manufactured.

To get a more sensible and different perspective on what makes a truly great president one ought to read Ivan Eland’s book
Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty
. He shows why the so-called weak presidents should be considered great and the so-called great ones should be called the enemies of peace, prosperity, and liberty. Since human nature is such, the Founders understood that presidents would tend to accumulate power. Even though the framers provided protection from this by placing maximum authority in the legislative branch, the extent to which Congress has relinquished power to the executive is startling.

We now have an executive that decides on war and the Congress acquiesces. After Vietnam, many people demanded restraint on a president pursuing war without congressional approval and declaration. Passage of the War Powers Resolution of 1972 was intended to help, but as so often occurs, a problem to be solved only offers opportunity to those who created the problem to gain even more power. Instead of restraining the President, the War Powers Resolution actually gave him authority to pursue war for ninety days without congressional approval. The only problem is that a war of ninety days is virtually impossible to stop. The war promoters scream that to do so is unpatriotic, un-American, and not supporting the troops.

Since World War II, all our wars have been fought without a congressional declaration of war. It’s the President who decides and the Congress that submits by appropriating the funds demanded. This presidential authority was never intended by the Constitution.

Today, trade policy has been taken over by the executive
branch, and Congress graciously cedes this power. Transferring authority under fast-track legislation defies the intent of the Constitution. Trade treaties are not entered into, since senatorial approval by two-thirds would be required and more difficult to pass. This has led to international trade agreements such as WTO, NAFTA, and CAFTA that sacrifice national sovereignty to international government organizations. These agreements can supersede state laws as well. The Constitution assigns to the Congress the responsibility of regulating foreign trade. If the people and the Congress preferred that the President and international government entities control trade, the Constitution should have been amended. Ignoring the Constitution on these issues or any issue serves to undermine constitutional legitimacy.

The executive branch, whether headed by a Republican or a Democrat, never hesitates to use the various tools granted or allowed by the neglectful Congress. Executive orders today represent far more than the narrow understanding by our early presidents. Writing an executive order to carry out a constitutional duty is a far cry from using executive orders for the sole purpose of writing laws while circumventing the Congress. During the impasse over abortion during the medical care reform debate in 2009, President Obama “solved” the problem by writing an executive order and ignoring Congress.

Paul Begala’s cocky statement regarding executive orders says it all: “Stroke of the pen, law of the land, kinda cool.” Though executive orders shouldn’t be the law of the land, let there be no doubt that law enforcement agencies and the regulating arm of the bureaucracy treat them as such.

Statements signed by presidents clarify, or put all Americans on notice, as to exactly how they intend to carry out Congress’s rules. Executive orders have been around for quite a while and used by both Democrats and Republicans. They have been used much more extensively since the George W. Bush administration in the legislation following 9/11.

Agencies under control of the executive branch have been writing regulations for decades. Congress prompts the process and ignores the constitutional directive for its responsibility to write the laws. Not only does the executive usurp this congressional prerogative, the agencies become both the policeman and the judge in a monstrous system of administrative justice. In this system the citizen is considered guilty until proven innocent. Usually the average citizen is unable to afford legal council to defend himself. Citizens just grin and bear it and pay the penalty as the government bureaucrats swell their ranks with constant pay raises and job security.

The war powers assumed by presidents during periods of conflict may well be the most dangerous assumption of power by the executive branch. Once our president gets us into a “war,” even those undeclared, the routine expansion of emergency judicial powers follows. Though this has happened in all our wars, for the most part, when declared wars ended with the defeat of the enemy, the violation of civil liberties by overenergetic presidents tended to return to prewar conditions with an improvement in the protection of civil liberties.

Economic controls are much more easily imposed under a declared emergency. Roosevelt, Truman, and Nixon all ordered wage and price controls. Nixon did it by executive order due to
price inflation of the 1970s, which was a consequence of the guns-and-butter philosophy of the 1960s.

With aggressive use and a distorted view of wartime presidential powers after 9/11, George W. Bush established a new precedent for arbitrarily increasing presidential powers. Though the war was not a declared war and terrorism is but a tactic used by desperate people for a variety of reasons, it became necessary to talk incessantly about the “war on terror,” claiming that the “war” justified the powers he assumed. There’s been no sign that the Obama administration is reversing this dangerous trend. And there’s no sign that the Congress will restrain this usurpation of powers by our presidents.