Government in a Box

Today's American Thinker has a thoughtful article entitled The Rising Fever of Despotism by Lee DeCovnick, that captures several of the themes I have been writing about in three and a half years this blog has been in existence. First, that we have been heading towards an ever more tyrannical government for years, but this regime has pressed the throttle to the floor, and is already a fascist regime. Second, that a lot of the blame can be placed at the feet of Congress, who should be writing the laws, not the executive agencies.

Going back to first principles, DeCovnick writes:

Two hundred and thirty-six years after it's signing, the Declaration of Independence shines forth as one of mankind's greatest intellectual achievements. Radical then as now, the Declaration upended the relationship between a monarchial government and the people. So profound are the principles and moral beliefs laid out by Jefferson in 1776, that they still continue to enrage our 21st century's dictators and despots.

How radical is the Declaration of Independence? Here are the epochal ideas that Jefferson postulated. The Creator endows men, not governments, with certain unalienable rights: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. These rights exist independent of government. So even when a government fails to uphold these rights, the rights endure because they are preexistent to the government.

Here is the heart of the matter. Our rights, as human beings, come from God (or if you don't believe in God, from our humanity. Certainly, human nature can be taken as axiomatic by an observation of history.) Therefore, governments do not "grant" anything. Instead, they exist at the sufferance of the individual. To give to one, governments must take from another, an act which would be called theft if you or I did it. The entire "entitlement" state and its "social safety net" is built on theft, and is therefore illegitimate. ObamaCare is, of course, another theft by government.

I could detail the ways in which our government has become destructive of our rights as individuals. Some recent examples include portions of the Patriot Act, the creation of the TSA, the NDAA, ObamaCare...need I go on? Older examples include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...again, need I go on?

Then there are the so called "Czars" running around the Executive branch. These advisers to the President have powers to make things happen, yet are not vetted by the Senate in its roll of providing advise and consent. They often work in secret, behind the scenes, so that nobody knows who is influencing these people and what policies they are promulgating. What is the source of their funding?  Can not Congress defund them since they offend the Constitution?  At one time, Glenn Beck listed 32 czars, but admitted that we don't know for sure the real number. The title, Czar, comes to us from Russia, where it was the title of the Imperial Crown head of State, and is a corruption of the Roman name Caesar. Julius Caesar was the first Roman dictator, and his name became synonymous with all the dictators that followed.

We can largely thank Congress for giving up power to the Executive over time. Whether it is out of laziness, partisan fervor, or that they someday hope to wield some of that power as President, the Congress has given up powers to the President, to the point that they are in danger of being seen as irrelevant.    Perhaps the Congress feels they just don't have time to write every law.  But here again, Congress has taken on far more than it has the power to do.  DeCovnick, again:

Nowhere in the Constitution do we find that Executive branch appointees, such as those comfortably ensconced at HHS, EPA, or Treasury may write laws that the people are expected to obey. Congress and her law-writing committees were once responsible for actually writing all the Federal laws and regulations, down to the smallest detail. Now Congress passes two thousand pages of overview legislation that specifically permits the unelected, unappointed, and unconfirmed bureaucrats to add cauldrons full of the devil brew to the details of new legislation. The Founders of this country would be aghast at the powers so easily forfeited by Congress and hoarded by the Executive branch.

It is not just that the Executive gets to write the regulations, then interpret what they wrote. In certain instances, they also get to pass sentence through their Administrative law judges. Clearly, the Executive branch of government has become too powerful. It used to be that the only contact a person typically had with the Federal government was when the mailman came around. Today, one must be on constant guard lest one find oneself breaking some rule or other that one doesn't know about. For instance, you would think that raising a few rabbits for sale would be a good thing, a harmless way to teach the kids about entrepreneurship. You would be wrong.

We can strike at two objectives at the same time.  If Congress takes back its legislative powers, then a huge number of bureaucrats are no longer needed.  If the Courts take back their powers, we can pare that down even more.  At that point, we will have a more balanced government, and we will save billions of dollars every year.  Our liberties are at stake, and the only way we will retain them is to put government back in the box designed for it.