Letter of the Week: War Powers by John Danforth

John Danforth responds to “A Republic, if You Can Keep It…”:

The Constitution of the United States of America has become just a decoration in some museum in Washington DC. Its words are platitudes, phrases to be used whenever the ACLU wants to sound scholarly. The populace has been government schooled in studious avoidance of the subject; ignorance of the constitution is fashionable, and this extends to members of congress.

I saw a snippet of an interview with our President the other day. I saw him say that he didn’t question the patriotism of those who opposed this latest bill, but he just sees things differently. He said, in his view, that we are at war, and they don’t see it that way.

This is where the equivocation comes in. We are at war, but not really. Just like other “Wars” we have been in, but weren’t really. I can dredge up from my rusty memory that the constitution explicitly says that congress has the power to declare war, and that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. Although newer laws and bills have been passed, whereby congress gave assent to the use of force, still, we are NOT at war (at least not legally).

If we are not in a state of war, the U.S. government has no business trying to assert war-time emergency powers (which ought to be limited as well.) The Founding Fathers knew of the dangers of perpetual mini-wars. I believe that is why they tried to prevent them with the wording in our constitution. The threat of real war is intended to be something that our enemies and our citizenry will consider very seriously and very cautiously.

Just as with the commerce clause and amendments to the constitution, if the distinctions drawn by the authors of it can be fuzzed out of our ‘six-pack and ball game’ consciousness, then the fact that we are ‘sort of’ at war can allow the government to ‘sort of’ erode the foundations of our rights, and then only the ACLU will ‘sort of’ argue against the portions of a bill that don’t fit with their socialist agenda.

The attack on rational epistemology that started so long ago and has resulted in the United States adopting many of the planks of the Communist Manifesto–has now begun to bear real rotten fruit. We can justify the constitutionality of virtually anything, especially if the Supreme Court says so.

Pass me the laughing gas, I need another hit. I’m feeling like I don’t fit in around here.

—John Danforth

The Logic of La-Raza Libertarians

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, The State

“Utopian libertarians are especially fond of claiming the welfare state is the sole reason illegal immigrants cost much more ($26.3 billion) than they contribute ($16 billion). Were it not for its provisions, they say, these unskilled, uneducated, non-English speakers would become a boon—not a burden—to the communities they infiltrate. In its determinism, the thinking of the love-in-at-the-border libertarian is indistinguishable from that of the left-liberal. Both see the social environment as the single most important determinant of behavior.
However, what of this cohort’s cultivated militant distinctiveness? What about crime and disease? Will these dissipate with the unlikely dissolution of the welfare state? I suggest the hippies have confused the causal sequence. The point of departure is the quality of immigrants entering the U.S, post the 1965 Immigration Act. For the kind of immigrant given preference under current policy, welfare is more of a magnet. Also ignored by La-Raza libertarians is the evidence of the rapid acculturation among post-1965 immigrants to U.S. largess: the longer these immigrants reside in the country, the likelier they are to receive welfare…”

More non sequiturs from open-border fetishists in my new WND column, “The Logic of La-Raza Libertarians.”

And Then There Were Three: David Yeagley Interviews Peter Brimelow

America, Ann Coulter, Ilana Mercer, The Zeitgeist

I was the first to be interviewed by Dr. David Yeagley, who has “invited several nationally known conservative and independent writers to offer their perspective on American Indians.”

It was both an honor and an interesting experience. (I also gained a friend.) Now none other than Ann Coulter has given David an interview. Congratulations, David!

You can read the Coulter interview here. The Mercer interview, “Patriotism, Nationhood, and the American Indian,” is here (and here, if you prefer to read it on David’s site).

Updated: Peter Brimelow has given Yeagley “An English Assessment.” Read it here.

A Republic, if You Can Keep It

America, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Law, Natural Law

Yesterday Bush signed “The Military Commissions Act of 2006.” I went in search for a libertarian analysis, but found only a few splenetic screeds. While perfectly understandable, these execrations do nothing to dissect the implications of the Bill for Americans. As I read them, I knew I ought to be furious about torture. However, too little was being said about the erosion of due process, constitutional protections and the accretion of executive power.

Libertarians need to cite chapter and verse in the actual Bill and then logically and calmly explain its implications for Americans. (It is very possible that, because of his visceral contempt for the Constitution as a so-called statist document, the anarchist can’t rise to the occasion. However, he may want to bear in mind that to the extent the Constitution comports with natural law, it’s both laudable and legitimate.)

In any case, right or wrong, to security-crazed Americans, the constant squealing about torture is a signal to switch off, as it conjures the namby-pamby liberal whose concerns are, overwhelmingly, with the “evil doers.” Readers are likelier to be swayed by arguments that address the possibility of detention without trial of US citizens and the sundering of habeas corpus and the separation of powers.

Finally, I found this, which does just that. This piece from Reason offers a gist of the administration’s impetus vis-a-vis the Bill. This next piece, however, is unhelpful. Libertarians will get its Bastiatian thrust, but, bar some left-liberals, the rest will find it smarmy and juvenile. You don’t have to agree with everything Jonathan Turley says to find him inspiring. (I certainly don’t. Contra Turley, America is a republic, not a democracy, and hence not meant to manufacture “majoritarian” outcomes. And France’s centralized system is the truly ugly system.) There’s a precis of a talk he gave here. Or you can listen to him here.