Executive tyranny: how freedom was lost

Restoring America One County at a Time

10. Executive Tyranny

10.2 How Freedom was Lost

The understanding of how American freedom was lost in and through the Executive branch falls mainly within three categories: 1) treaty powers, 2) the abuse of executive orders, and 3) government by national emergency. The first two of these have been greatly leveraged by the abuse of the third, as we shall see.

Tyranny by Treaty

A constitutionally valid, signed international treaty can have the same force domestically as the U.S. Constitution or statute law. This issue, however, has not been settled legally and if a controversial enough treaty were passed it would undoubtedly create a constitutional crisis. Meanwhile, the ease of passing a treaty is efficient for government’s sake, but leaves the liberty of the people vulnerable. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the President “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

The President has a full monopoly on the actual negotiation the details of treaties. According to Supreme Court Justice Southerland in United States v. Curtiss–Wright Export Corp. (1936), “He alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation, the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it.”

The requirement of a two-thirds vote of the Senators present refers only to a quorum of the Senate, as per Supreme Court decision. A quorum requires only 51 Senators officially, but the Senate’s own website indicates that an even smaller number could constitute a quorum if only a voice vote is taken: “the Senate presumes that a quorum is present unless the contrary is shown by a roll call vote or quorum call.” This means that a treaty can become the law of the land with as few as 34 Senators voting in agreement.

Taken together these legal requirements indicate that an activist President could sign a radical treaty and have it pass the Senate quickly if the conditions were right. He would need the support of only a loyal minority dedicated to the agenda.

This potential Executive abuse was debated very little during the Convention. When it was debated, the main tension arose over the need for “secrecy” in treaty-making versus the need to reserve legislating power to the Congress only. James Wilson suggested that since treaties will operate like laws, “they ought to have the sanction of laws also.” Roger Sherman responded warning “whether the power could be safely trusted to the Senate,” which at the time was designed to be a voice of States’ power only, not the people at large.

Opposition did arise. One delegate, George Mason, expressed himself in some personal notes to his draft copy of the Constitution; these later became a pamphlet circulated during the ratification period. He bemoaned the exclusion of the people and Congress from the treaty-making power, and the need for “distinctions” in treaties:

By declaring all treaties supreme laws of the land, the Executive and the Senate have, in many cases, an exclusive power of legislation; which might have been avoided by proper distinctions with respect to treaties, and requiring the assent of the House of Representatives, where it could be done with safety.

James Iredell, a leading nationalist in North Carolina and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice, responded to Mason in print. His rebuttal was to reemphasize the secrecy needed for treaties by questioning the safety of trusting Congress. The new system, he assured, will be better because it will have the additional check of “a President with high personal character.” In other words, “just trust us, we’re good people.”

Mason’s point of making distinctions in treaties was echoed by others. The Federal Farmer elucidated on the distinctions between treaties of alliance, peace, and commerce, the latter of which does not require secrecy like others. Such treaties of commerce “almost always involve in them legislative powers, interfere with the laws and internal police of the country, and operate immediately on persons and property.” Yet he thought that the constitutional power of the legislature to regulate commerce with foreign nations was enough to give it “proper controul over the president and senate in settling commercial treaties.”

The most interesting exchange took place between James Madison and Patrick Henry during the ratification debates in Virginia. Henry decried the Treaty powers as excessive and dangerous:

[C]onsider the condition this country would be in if two thirds of a quorum should be empowered to make a treaty: they might relinquish and alienate territorial rights, and our most valuable commercial advantages. In short, if any thing should be left us, it would be because the President and senators were pleased to admit it. The power of making treaties, by this Constitution, ill-guarded as it is, extended farther than it did in any country in the world. Treaties were to have more force here than in any part of Christendom; for he defied any gentleman to show any thing so extensive in any strong, energetic government in Europe. Treaties rest, says he, on the laws and usages of nations. To say that they are municipal is, to me, a doctrine totally novel. To make them paramount to the Constitution and laws of the states, is unprecedented.

Madison countered by arguing that the proposed Constitution was not unprecedented among world powers in this regard, for the King of Britain himself had similar power. Henry rebutted that the English system was actually more limited than the proposed American Constitution in regard to treaties; we should be so lucky as only to have such a king. As it stood,

The constitutions of these states may be most flagrantly violated without remedy. . . . I say again that, if you consent to this power, you depend on the justice and equity of those in power. We may be told that we shall find ample refuge in the law of nations. When you yourselves have your necks so low that the President may dispose of your rights as he pleases, the law of nations cannot be applied to relieve you. Sure I am, if treaties are made infringing our liberties, it will be too late to say that our constitutional rights are violated. . . . A treaty may be made giving away your rights, and inflicting unusual punishments on its violators.

The main federal salvo against such an abuse would be the hope that the Senate would not be able to ratify the treaty. Otherwise, the whole of Congress could later essentially repeal a treaty by passing new legislation to override the unwanted effects; but the Supreme Court has warned that this could constitute an infraction of international law and would thus be possible grounds for war:

Its infraction becomes the subject of international negotiations and reclamations, so far as the injured party chooses to seek redress, which may in the end be enforced by actual war. It is obvious that with all this the judicial courts have nothing to do and can give no redress.

The number of Treaties to which Americans have been bound through this Executive power are legion. They are so many that no comprehensive publication of the texts of all current binding Treaties has ever been attempted. The State Department does publish a volume merely listing all the Treaties and international agreements in force as of 2011. Merely listing them all by name and date, organized by country, fills a volume of 484 pages. Of course, not all of these are necessarily invasive, intrusive, or otherwise necessarily bad. But the sheer volume of binding agreements in which we have little if any voice should be alarming in itself. The sheer volume greatly increases the risk, if nothing else, that abuses and intrusions will occur, and indeed they have been attempted. Here are a couple of recent examples:

Gun Control Laws

First, consider the United Nations plan of global disarmament—a goal which would impose strict gun-control measures upon its members, including the rightfully gun-loving U.S. There are at least two public efforts aimed at essentially circumventing the U.S. Second Amendment: a Treaty to regulate small arms trade between nations, and the more comprehensive International Small Arms Control Standards (ISACS) project. The first seems less innocuous, though we are unsure what exactly it will contain. The UN assures us it is merely to help fight terrorism and rogue states, but several conservative critics see that even that mild-sounding objective can have drastic consequences for gun registration, licensing, and even outright international gun control laws. In reality, it is probably related directly to this second effort:

The main UN attempt seems focused on the finalization of ISACS—a detailed outline for international small arms policy and implementation. ISACS is a product of the United Nations Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA). The latest draft of this document calls not only for regulation of international trade, but for “National controls over the access of civilians to small arms and light weapons,” “National controls over the manufacture of” small arms and light weapons, and eventually “Collection, “Stockpile management,” and “Destruction” of weapons and ammo. It is clear that the agenda here aims far beyond the control of AK-47s to terrorists. Indeed, the “Programme of Action” on the UN’s “Implementation Support System” website exhibit all of these goals in considerable detail and explicitly state that such new laws and regulations shall apply “within the State’s jurisdiction.”

The Obama administration, in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signaled already in 2009 that they were ready to begin negotiations with the UN on such a treaty. If they succeed, they will have essentially accomplished what the antifederalists and Patrick Henry warned of: the use of treaty powers to trash U.S. liberties. Indeed, this will have occurred in the worst form: the trashing of a clear constitutional Amendment. This would certainly created a constitutional crisis which the Supreme Court would likely—though not definitely—strike down. Fifty Senators have already signed a letter to Clinton saying they will not vote for any treaty which infringes on civilian arms; but remember, it only takes at least 34 if conditions are right. So those opposed must actively resist and stay vigilant lest we be taken unaware.

Global Governance in Your Town

The second example of the danger of treaty powers is the much more ambitious but caeseless attempt for international governance. This appears in such forms as the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity and its sister development, Agenda 21, which could be imposed in the U.S. via a treaty. While you may not have heard of either of these specific United Nations programs, and probably have not heard of any serious attempts to impose international governance on the U.S. in general (at least not accompanied by talk of “tinfoil hats”), such attempts sadly have been very real. One nearly succeeded were it not for last-minute efforts of four investigators providing crucially uncirculated information to a handful of Senators.

In 1992, a United Nations “Earth Summit” was held in Rio de Janeiro. Out of this conference came a book-length document titled Agenda 21 popularizing the slogan “sustainable development.” Basically, every time you hear the world “unsustainable” used in public it’s a by-product of this agenda. According to the online version of the document, Agenda 21 “is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.” What follows is nearly 300 pages of double-column, fine print providing guidelines for global Treaty controlling of every area of life—everything from all science, business, and industry down to the very air we breathe and water we drink—and calling for international revenue sources (taxes) and mechanisms to pay for it. The preliminary estimate was roughly $600 billion annually just in developing countries, which effectively means a transfer of that proportion of wealth from developed nations to third world partners. It was all couched in terms of saving the environment, and thus providing laws to promote “sustainable” living.

The liberal establishment in the U.S. drooled over the plan. Only months after the Rio Summit, Bill Clinton was sworn into office. Democrats already controlled the Senate, but they still had to walk circumspectly to some degree. Clinton spent precious political capital early pushing a universal health-care plan (which would ultimately fail), NAFTA, the Brady Bill, as well as weathering the Whitewater affair. Clinton signed the Biodiversity Treaty in June of 1993. Over the next few months, Al Gore and a coalition of environmental groups planned a strategy for ramming the Treaty through Congress. When it finally reached Congress in November, the State Department requested it be put on “fast track.” The Treaty was reviewed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until June of 1994 when the Committee approved it for vote. Grassroots knowledge was only beginning to mount opposition to the plan of which most Senators were largely oblivious. Quickly, Majority leader George Mitchell (D-ME) announced on August 3 that the Treaty vote was set for August 8. Grassroots went into overdrive leveraging a well-connected system of fax machines to get Senators’ attention. The effort paid off, landing a letter from 35 Republicans on Mitchell’s desk. He rescinded the hasty vote for the moment. This last-minute effort created room for more widespread awareness to solidify opposition as Congress recessed between August 26 and September 12.

On September 29, Mitchell announced the vote would be rescheduled for 4 P.M. the following day. Already alerted to the radical United Nations agenda behind the Treaty, opposing Senators showed up with large maps of land confiscations, property rights infringements, agricultural controls, and the overall radical environmental agenda displayed for all to see—details which were not supposed to be revealed until after the nations agreed to the treaty in general. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) led in condemning the foolishness of signing a treaty before its details were known in full. On the floor of the Senate she said,

Under the treaty, a conference of parties will meet after the treaty is in force to negotiate the details of the treaty. We need to know how the Senate, in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to concur in treaties, can review the provisions of a treaty that will not be written until the meeting of the conference of parties.

She revealed the plot:

I am especially concerned about the effect of the treaty on private property rights in my State and throughout America. Private property is constitutionally protected, yet one of the draft protocols to this treaty proposes “an increase in the area and connectivity of habitat.” It envisions buffer zones and corridors connecting habitat areas where human use will be severely limited. Are we going to agree to a treaty that will require the U.S. Government to condemn property for wildlife highways? Are we planning to pay for this property? One group, the Maine Conservation Rights Institute, has prepared maps of what this would mean. I do not know if they are accurate yet, but that is my point. Neither do the proponents of this treaty. . . .

This bio-diversity treaty could preempt the decisions of local, State, and Federal lawmakers for use of our natural resources. The details that are left for negotiation could subject every wetlands permit, building permit, waste disposal permit, and incidental taking permit to international review.

We would be subjecting property owners to international review, which would be yet another step in the already egregious bureaucratic processes, just to have the very basic permits necessary for the use of their own private property.

Along with several others, Senator Wallop (R-WY) immediately agreed:

I ask you, can the United States Senate, in good faith, give its consent to this treaty without having had an opportunity to scrutinize the completed convention? The best advice we can give President Clinton right now is to wait until the Convention on Biological Diversity has been completed before asking for our consent.

The last-minute outcry from these Senators created enough awareness and opposition to table the consideration of the Treaty indefinitely. To this day it has never been voted on.

Now ask yourself what would have happened if this small group of concerned grassroots citizens had not sniffed out a genuine conspiracy, been able to alert their fax lists, and been able to convince a few key Senators of the facts. Consider, because of the nature of the Treaty powers of the President and limited Senate, how narrowly we avoided having an international socialist tyranny completely alter the landscape of America.

But the tabled status of the Treaty in the U.S. meant it was also not definitively squelched; it could be resurrected anytime. In fact, where the Convention on Biodiversity’s own website lists the Parties to the Treaty (193 to date), the United States is still listed as a signatory waiting to ratify before becoming a full Party. They’re still waiting on us. They’re patient. (The only others refusing assent are the Vatican and the tiny mountain enclave of Andorra—both of whom also refused even to sign.) In the meantime, the UN masquerades the plan under different names and renewed efforts. The Agenda 21 website confidently states,

The full implementation of Agenda 21, the Programme for Further Implementation of Agenda 21 and the Commitments to the Rio principles, were strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August to 4 September 2002.

A toothier document appeared from the UN affiliate the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). First published in 1995, the third edition of the “Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development” arrived in 2004. It aims “to achieve environmental conservation and sustainable development by establishing integrated rights and obligations.” This is the groundwork, further detailed, for the imposition of an international legal authority that transcends American sovereignty.

Executive Orders

Like the patient internationalists, American leftists like former President Bill Clinton were undeterred in their long-term goals by the defeat of the U.N. treaty in the Senate. Clinton demonstrated another outlet by which the Executive can wield its power to advance agendas even when opposed by the people and their Legislature: the executive order.

Though Clinton could not effect the adoption of international law via treaty, he could still help the UN goal of influencing American governments. He wasted no time on this. A full year before the Treaty made it to the floor of the Senate, Clinton signed Executive Order No. 12852 establishing the “President’s Council on Sustainable Development.” This Council was to advise the President on all matters of “sustainable development” and “develop and recommend to the President a national sustainable development action strategy that will foster economic vitality.” In 1997, Clinton revised the Council’s Charter. Whereas the original aimed merely at developing strategy, the new Charter included advising on policy, disseminating educational material, and assessing progress—no doubt the very strategy it had previously devised. The Council was not only to advise on policy, but “to encourage and demonstrate implementation of sustainable development in real world settings” and “report on successes and recommend strategies to replicate those successful projects throughout the United States.” The new policy bulldog was created, funded, and maintained without any input from Congress or the voice of the people.

The Council’s influence was intended to be comprehensive in scope, including local governments. After all, Agenda 21 said greatest resistance comes at that level, and thus “the participation and cooperation of local authorities will be a determining factor in fulfilling its objectives.” Thus the new Council’s job was to encompass “national and local sustainable development plans.” The revised Charter specified the following as one of several official activities for the Council:

The Council should create and participate in projects that help forge partnerships among representatives of federal and state agencies, urban centers, suburban areas, and rural communities with the goal of solving, in a comprehensive way, local and regional sustainable development issues.”

What you’re seeing here is the leftist, one-world government, top-down control version of the very project you’re studying in my book. But instead of Restoring America One County at a Time, they are destroying America one county at a time. Instead of cutting the size of government and returning local government to local responsibility, they are increasing government, imposing yet another higher level of it (global), and coercing (or seducing) local governments to make their local citizens responsible to global agencies.

One of the grassroots activists who fought this at the time (and still does) could lament its progress already in November of 1994:

This vision of local governance leaves city councils, county commissions, soil conservation districts, regional water authorities, and state legislatures completely out of the environmental, land use, sustainable development picture. Never happen? Don’t be too sure. It is already happening.

Literally thousands of private and municipal land use decisions have been blocked by federal regulations. Land use, and therefore resource use, is no longer within the authority of local, or even state governments. Local planning commissions and local county commissions may go through the motions, but their deliberations are likely to center more on compliance with federal regulations than on what’s best for the community. When decisions are reached at the local level, they are still subject to approval or reversal by the federal government.

Local and state governments are further intimidated by the now common practice of withholding federal highway funds, or education funds, or medicare funds, or other funds – until the local government falls into line with the federal demand.

The explosion of unfunded federal mandates in recent years has further weakened the effectiveness of state and local government. By demanding that local and state governments implement federal laws and regulations, the federal government has effectively usurped local government’s authority and ability to pursue its community objectives. As the unfunded mandate trend continues, local and state governments are reduced to little more than administrative units of the federal government.

The transition to bioregional communal, if not tribal, governance, is not going to happen by declaration. Treaty proponents already fear a backlash, and they are much too smart to deliberately precipitate a rebellion. The goal is long-range and fully integrated into a comprehensive program designed to achieve the desired result. Maurice Strong has said the international framework must be in place by 2012. The biodiversity documents anticipate a transition period of 20 to 50 years.

In 1999, Clinton signed Executive Order 13112, advancing an innocuous-sounding plan for combating “invasive species.” It was a back-door ploy for advancing the sustainable development agenda throughout American government. This seemingly obscure issue of invasive species for some reason required the institution of a national “Invasive Species Council.” And while you might think such a Council would involve scientists and biological experts—perhaps it did—it included and demanded compliance from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Transportation, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency—some of the biggest and most comprehensive bureaucracies of the federal government.

Why? Ostensibly for targeting “invasive species” within their respective jurisdictions; but in reality, it was part of the Agenda 21 plan to increase federal control over every corner of American life. Sure enough, entire UN colloquies have been written on the use of “invasive species” as a means of advancing international law and Agenda 21 specifically. The trick was to find one obscure environmental issue for which the Executive could corral so many important federal agencies to focus on one agenda.

More recently, Barack Obama has implemented the same tactic only on a broader scale with Executive Order 13575, “Establishment of the White House Rural Council.” Again it touted good intentions: “enhance the Federal Government’s efforts to address the needs of rural America . . . to better coordinate Federal programs and maximize the impact of Federal investment to promote economic prosperity and quality of life in our rural communities.” But again, there was a vast consolidation of agenda throughout federal agencies, this time including a much larger list: the Departments of the Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, EPA, FCC, Office of Management and Budget, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Council of Economic Advisers, Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, Small Business Administration, Council on Environmental Quality, White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, White House Office of Cabinet Affairs—and just in case any had been left out, “other executive branch departments, agencies, and offices as the President or the Secretary of Agriculture may, from time to time, designate.”

The new Council’s scope of mission is just as broad. It shall

coordinate and increase the effectiveness of Federal engagement with rural stakeholders, including agricultural organizations, small businesses, education and training institutions, health-care providers, telecommunications services providers, research and land grant institutions, law enforcement, State, local, and tribal governments, and nongovernmental organizations regarding the needs of rural America.

In other words, the Executive branch via its own fiat now aims to have direct influence over all these areas of private life, business, law, and police at the local level. This was accomplished without legislation, without Congressional approval or scrutiny, purely by the whim of the Executive himself.

These abuses of power illustrate the problem William Symmes mentioned long ago and which we noted in the last section: without clear definitions of the power and laws which the president must take “care” to be executed, he is broadly at liberty to define his own according to his agenda, or another’s.

Keep in mind we have only touched on a tiny few executive orders here. There have been many. The total number is unknown because the government only started counting them in 1907, numbering retroactively from 1862. Still, the consecutively-numbered orders stand currently at No. 13,596, signed December 19, 2011 by Barack Obama. FDR was the king of the Executive Order, signing 3,728 of them. Only one other modern president is even over 500. But just consider the fact that presidents have signed 13,596 different interpretations or applications of their power that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution. There have been on 38 presidents in office since 1862. This means that a mere 38 men have been allowed to circumvent the constitutional legislative process 13,596 times—an average of 357.8 abuses per president. Leveraging previous Acts of Congress which were allegedly designed to prevent open-ended abuses of emergency powers, Clinton empowered himself to seize assets, block property, and prohibit trade with then-Yugoslavia. When military action was inevitable to fulfill the agenda, Clinton shot first and asked questions later. Actually, he never asked at all: he shot first and then made requisite demands later. Between March 24 and April 7, 1999, Clinton simply informed Congress multiple times that he was sending troops to the region and supporting the NATO effort. On April 13, he signed order No. 13119 declaring Yugoslavia and its airspace a “combat zone” by referencing an obscure section of IRS tax code..)) More importantly, the order retro-dated the commencement of “combatant activities” to March 24, 1999, the date NATO bombings had begun and a full three weeks prior to the order. On April 27, Clinton signed E.O. 13120, ordering reserve forces to active duty.

Congress was especially suspect while Clinton effectively steamrolled them. On April 28, the House shot down a declaration of war overwhelmingly, and then appeared to oppose war even further when it passed forbidding the use of ground troops. There is a certain amount of deceptive PR detectable in these moves: the bill which passed suspiciously neglected also to forbid the use of troops in general (only expressly mentioning “ground” troops) or aircraft, etc. Then, not even a month later, the House passed a supplemental appropriations Act giving direct approval of the war by approving billions of dollars to pay for it.

Even after the NATO air campaign was officially over (June 11–12, 1999), Clinton continued to tout the “national emergency” his E.O. declared. In fact, in the final days of his presidency Clinton move to “lift” and “modify” some of the measures taken against Yugoslavia, and yet still referred officially to “the continuing threat” and “national emergency” decreed previously. The order remained effectual until George W. Bush finally revoked it in 2003 with E.O. 13219. Yet Bush’s E.O. itself referred to yet another national emergency described in yet another E.O. from two years earlier which this new one replaced and amended, and thus continued. Bush also declared a national emergency on September 14, 2001, just after the 9–11 attacks, for obvious reasons.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It turns out that wars and national emergencies are the real powers behind Executive tyranny, and they have been used widely since at least the Civil War to allow the President to circumvent Congress.

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. In that year, President Roosevelt transformed the United States into a peacetime Executive tyranny. We have mentioned FDR’s first inaugural address on a couple of occasions, noting how the president applied the language of warfare to solving a peacetime problem. It was no mere metaphor, as he clearly said he wanted “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency.” The solution would come by “treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war.” He used the word “emergency” four times in that address to describe the American scene. It was no coincidence. He gave that speech on March 4, 1933. Five days later, he declared a national emergency which gave the Executive near total control over American life—again, in peacetime.

In 1973, Congress took temporary interest in the subject of emergency powers, long enough at least to discover their history in a Senate study, and to pass an Act purporting to limit those powers. The Act, as we shall see, has done nothing but formally codify and regularize them. That 1973 study begins saying,

Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidential proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971.

Four separate national emergencies sounds crazy, but believe it or not, those were the good ol’ days. Today it is difficult to get an accurate account of all the outstanding national emergencies. The latest revised edition (2007) of a Congressional Research Service report on “National Emergency Powers” lists 42 declared national emergencies just between 1976 and August, 2007. Only 22 of these have been rescinded, leaving 20 in effect. We know Obama added several others on top of those.

The powers given to the Executive under these declarations are broad and numerous:

Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communications; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens.

[T]here are various stand-by laws that convey special emergency powers once the President formally declares a national emergency activating them.  In 1973, a Senate special committee studying emergency powers published a compilation identifying some 470 provisions of federal law delegating to the executive extraordinary authority in time of national emergency. The vast majority of them are of the stand-by kind — dormant until activated by the President.

That 1973 report led eventually to the National Emergencies Act signed into law 1976. The following year saw sister legislation called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. These Acts placed some light checks upon the Executive power but did little more than codify the practice of Executive rule via national emergency into statute law. Thus it received legal sanction. The end result has been a vast increase in the practice rather than Congress curtailing it. After all the dangerous powers listed and exposed by the 1973 report (and a follow-up in 1974), these Acts were preposterously weak in the effect they have had. One is tempted to say they were mere smokescreens.

We do know that the achievement of these vast powers on behalf of the Presidency involved considerable “behind-closed-doors”-type work. This came on the part of government officials and non-governmental collaborators, namely the Rockefeller-funded Spellman fund. One of the main legal obstacles in the way of FDR in 1933 was a strong belief remaining in States’ rights residual in the southern and western States. Any open move on behalf of the President would have caused widespread opposition among the people and like stalled the nationalistic agenda. So the elites moved quietly and stealthily:

Remember that inaugural address on March 4, 1933. Well the immediate day after, a coordinated effort began to get every State governor essentially to effect a State-level emergency power grab in preparation for handing that power directly to FDR. A telegram was received by Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon stating:

We respectfully submit to your consideration that the dire need of the hour calls for national unity in support of our president a unity even more complete and unselfish than that necessary in war. . . . Prompt and decisive action of a national scope in several directions is necessary to prevent economic collapse throughout the land the ordinary preparations of government that prevail and are suitable in time of prosperity with normal conditions may be too slow to meet adequately this dangerous emergency and stem the danger of an economic avalanche carrying all before it. . . . We a coalition of different groups and political and religious faiths respectfully request that you join the other governors of our country in the issuance of a proclamation on Wednesday March 8th in support of the President of the United States.

The message was signed by a variety of leaders with national profiles: Richard E. Byrd (a celebrity Naval Officer and explorer), Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Nicholas Murray Butler (president of Columbia University and chair of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), H.G. Harriman (president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Walter Lippman, plus labor and farm leaders, as well as hold-outs from the Wilson War State. A national governor’s meeting was called in Washington, D.C.. Those who could not attend got the telegram. Landon responded willingly. Merely a few days later, a new telegram announced “Complete success of program of simultaneous proclamations by all governors of states. . . .Plans being made ready for reading your proclamation in every church in your state.”

Indeed it was successful. Following the proclamations, legislation was rammed through State legislatures. In Colorado, the governor made such a proclamation on August 2, 1933. Two weeks later, the legislature gave the governor all the power he asked for. This new laws so closely paralleled the Governor’s requests and the President’s designs that with such brief time, it is likely they were given pre-prepared copies from which to work.

But the power grab was unprecedented and not with opposition, however futile. In review of these measures (which apparently not legally decisive), the Colorado Supreme Court was appalled. The measures were profoundly unconstitutional:

We venture the assertion that no man, able to read and understand ordinary English, however otherwise educated or uneducated, wise or foolish, would question for a moment that this bill was a plain violation of the [state] constitutional prohibition [against contracting state debts for other than defense]. . . .

If the people’s “Thou shalt not” can be brushed aside by the simple ipso dixit of the public servants thus bound, the mandate is impotent. Such a construction, once adopted, breaks the barrier, and future legislatures, protected by precedent, might pile up mountains of debt on future generations, resulting in inevitable imporverishment or ruthless repudiation.

It mattered not. The State governors persuaded the State legislatures and the President got his “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency.” Almost immediately, the President’s “National Planning Board” began issuing circulars to the States. The fifth of these letters, on December 11, 1933, called for the creation of State planning boards. These would oversee the implementation of Federal guidelines for public works, land use planning, zoning, use of rural lands, transportation, agriculture, housing, population redistribution (yes, that’s the government telling you that you have to leave your property and move were they tell you, trail of tears style), conservation, water resources, recreation, fiscal programming, and more. The circular stated, “A full fledged state planning project will eventually include all of these items, and others as well.”

A later letter from Kansas Governor Landon to the Chancellor of the University of Kansas reveals it was not all purely political. As we have seen so many times in this study, particularly with education, banking, tariffs, money, and war, there were corporate and religious-ideological forces at work as well. Landon says in his letter, “We are of course dependent on the National Resources Board and the Spelman Fund for the continuance of effective work.” The Spelman Fund was a Rockefeller Oil endowment directed by Beardsley Ruml, who along Elihu Root is among the most influential men you’ve never heard of— a psychologist of the behaviorist school, a leader at the University of Chicago, a Macy’s executive, and after serving as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, became the Ben Bernanke of his day and chaired it. In 1942, he invented income tax withholding so that average people would not feel the pain of writing a single, large, year-end check to the government. Taxing in small increments creates less resistance and allows the government 1) to take more in the long run, and 2) to bank and to earn interest on what they collect in the mean time.

Meanwhile, the history of the Progressive era, as we saw, was one of empire and corporate growth, and Rockefeller was one of the kings, if not the king. After a coal mine strike at Colorado (involving workers from one of Rockefeller’s mines) led to a massacre of miners courtesy of the National Guard (Sherman would be proud), Rockefeller took the national lead in calling for increased employee benefits, protections, wage protections, and representation. The so-called “Colorado Plan” became something of a blueprint for centrally planned “Industrial Relations” as Rockefeller funded programs in several major universities throughout the nation. The following section from Schroder and Schechter is worth its length for its incisive summary:

Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia were heavily funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., but the political science department at the University of Chicago, under the leadership of Charles E. Merriam and Beardsley Ruml, became the headquarters for the new “science” of industrial relations. Whether the increased cost of providing for laborers’ “human weaknesses” would be offset by increased profits turns out to be immaterial. If government could provide these benefits, at no cost to the corporations, any increased productivity would be a windfall profit to the corporate owners. It was this goal that the Rockefeller interests pursued through their foundations, university funding, and government collaborations, and that they ultimately achieved in 1933. The only problem to be overcome was the peacetime constitutional limitations on government to create money and “tax and spend” at will. President Roosevelt, the Congress, and the states solved this problem on March 9, 1933, by declaring that a state of national emergency existed, thereby eliminating prior constitutional restraints. . . .

The first hundred days of the Roosevelt administration were by and large no more than an implementation of the Rockefeller “Colorado Plan” by the national government in cooperation with the state and local governments, with purported constitutional authority under a state of declared national emergency that previously had been assumed to apply only in wartime.

Indeed, one Rockefeller-funded adviser of FDR briefed him nearly a year before his presidency, stating for a fact that corporations we already in control: “65% of American industry is owned and operated by about six hundred corporations.” He would go on to praise this as an opportunity to advance toward Soviet-style socialism: “at the present rate of the trend, the American and Russian systems will look very much alike within a comparatively short period—say twenty years. . . . [For] there is no great difference between having all industry run by a committee of Commissars and by a small group of Directors.” Thus is was advised to be made part of FDR’s campaign that the Corporate-State should set up “monopolies at will” and “should include power to require uniform prices; to control security issues; and to control further consolidation.”

On the same day he declared the national emergency, the Emergency Banking Act gave FDR total control of national finance. He declared a bank holiday and forbid redemption of paper for gold. A month later he confiscated the nation’s gold coins from all private individuals at the set price of $20.67/oz. A year later he declared the price to $35/oz. which effectively inflated the money supply by 70 percent (or decreased the nation’s debt burden by that amount, depending on how you look at it). Out of this same emergency atmosphere came the Emergency National Industry Recovery Act which exempted corporations from anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, a central National Resources Board, the Home Owners’ Loan Act, the Emergency Relief Act, the Social Security Act, and the Emergency Agricultural Adjustment Act which placed national controls on farms, prices, etc.

A similar spirit has prevailed ever since. What President Clinton did in Kosovo via executive orders and declared national emergencies was already long-since the norm for advancing central planning and political agendas. Presidents today regularly use emergency powers in both war and peace to expedite agendas under the guise of “governing effectively,” “national security,” and many other justifications.

Conclusion

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 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 guys gets to stick it to the other party.” 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. Both love war. 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.

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