Executive Orders and a Potential American Dictatorship

Ralph Nader, in his excellent article "Scooping Up Government Benefits" [November 23], is right on the money. Corporate welfare and greed have completely destroyed the average blue collar worker in this country. The politicians have been giving away the store through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the big multinational corporations, who control the majority of Washington politicians through campaign donations. This is unquestionably a serious danger to our republic.

Another serious danger to our republic are presidential executive orders. Despite the fact that executive orders have a long history of contravening the public will, no substantive move has ever been made to neutralize this path into dictatorship. There is minimal awareness throughout the country of just what part executive orders (EO) play in the political arena. Let us just lift the cover of the Federal Register and see what EOs are doing.

There is an extensive set of EOs known as the emergency orders (EEOs), which date back to Franklin Roosevelt. Jack Kennedy padded Roosevelt's list of EEOs, and put his own imprimatur on them. They have been routinely upgraded by the successors of those two paragons of political savvy, until now they contain the blueprint for an American dictatorship far beyond the dreams of Lenin, Hitler, et al. For they had to build their dictatorship from ground-zero, while the American dictatorship is already formed, just waiting to be put in place. Activated, those emergency orders would instantly obliterate the American republic.

So how did the chief executive of this country obtain such power? It was really very simple.

Not generally known is the fact that, while executive orders have been an accepted tool of the executive office from the beginning of the republic, until 1931 they held no such capability as they do today. Until that fateful year, executive orders had been merely a means for sending internal directives to the various executive departments. They carried no authority on any other area of the political body—not on Congress, nor on the States nor the local political bodies, and certainly none on the general public. They are not laws; therefore, they held no threat to the general welfare.

But in 1931, Herbert Hoover added a section to the budget bill, which created a new and ominous capability for executive orders.

That rider provided that, in the future, such orders would have the full force of law unless Congress vetoed them within 30 days of their being published in the Federal Register. Hoover called this ploy "putting inertia on the side of change." It could not be stated any more succinctly. This is the secret behind the burgeoning use of EOs during the recent past. With this power, the executive can now legislate any "hot potatoes" Congress would not dare to touch. Anything that cannot stand the light of public scrutiny can be quietly put in place through the use of EOs.

The way Congress operates, anyone can see that the members are not going to make reading presidential proclamations a priority item on their agenda. Heavens to Betsy—if they do not even read the legitimate bills they voted on, why should we expect them to plow through presidential proclamations looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack?

Nowhere in the Constitution is there a justification for executive orders. In fact, EOs are diametrically opposed to the intent and purpose of the Constitution, which was to have a nation ruled by laws, and not arbitrarily by men. Thomas Jefferson wisely said to have no trust in men, but to bind them down with the chains of the Constitution. The concept put forth in the Constitution is clearly a division of powers among the legislative, executive and judiciary branches of the federal government—Articles 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

In no way was it ever meant to give power to one man to create any laws he desires with virtually no opposition or awareness of such made to the American public. The founders fully understood the corrupt nature of man and the propensity of the unscrupulous to acquire as much power as possible when unrestrained. History teaches this lesson more clearly than anything else.

Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution states that "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." It cannot be found to say that "The President can write any law he desires—no matter how dictatorial—slip it into the Federal Register's some 70,000 pages per year, and have it become the law of the land thirty days later." EOs are clearly unconstitutional and illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court long ago ruled that laws made in opposition to the Constitution are null and void and carry no force of law.

These EO "laws" are acts of injustice and should be ignored by the courts, law enforcement, and military. However, it remains to be seen what will happen in the enforcement area when a president one day decides to implement the EOs that will eliminate the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and all the freedoms they represent—probably under the pretense of some phony "national emergency," which can be anything a president deems it to be. Will the Congress and military refuse to obey these dictates? We must pray that this will be the case; otherwise, a second Revolutionary War may very well be perpetrated if our freedoms and Constitution are taken away by an executive order.