Jun 11, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Iowa is the 15th state to reject the proposed Article V Convention of States thus far this year. Going off the established process of constitutional change is too radical for most. They remain comfortable with both houses of Congress proposing one amendment at a time followed by its ratification by three fourths of the states.
But Article V does allow a second method should Congress refuse to make needed change. “On the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.” This is thought to be necessary primarily because Congress will not authorize an amendment to force itself to balance its budget and failure to do so allows destructive unrestricted spending by both political parties. Congress has not proposed a constitutional change since the 27th Amendment in May 1992.
But instead of states using Article V to force an amendment to balance the budget activists from both the right and the left say, in effect, we have a number of other issues that also need amendment power. But this creates the problem of multiple amendments to consider simultaneously without sufficient venting of each.
Constitutionalists say lets continue to propose just one change at a time so that it gets a full review and we do not open the floodgates of unintended consequences for what we do not want. The 14th Amendment is criticized today because it allowed multiple issues in one amendment, which opened the door to the most vague interpretations and thus law never intended by its founders. Constitutionalists welcome a balanced budget amendment by itself but that is not now what Conventionalists are proposing.
Once the Convention of States is formed, and amendments to the constitution are proposed, these changes are ratified by state power alone—the federal government may propose but it is excluded from the process of enlarging or reducing its power. Ratification requires three-fourths of either state legislatures or state conventions (a process that opens participation to the public) “as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.” Congress selects the mode presumably common for all states.
But a convention of states method was only tried at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. To make it open ended is risky. Whatever happens creates legal precedent for the future and thus the danger. Many see the convention process as returning to what the Founders did when they were commissioned to repair the then existing Constitution. Once together they chose to instead dump The Articles of Confederation creating a different constitution, what they had not been commissioned to do. Congress, after receiving their report, simply forwarded it to the states and in that act legitimized it.
Common knowledge that the existing constitution was not repairable, the Federalist Papers explaining the new constitution’s natural law and human nature base, and belief that God was assisting, made success possible. Today I cannot name 55 (the number signing the Constitution) persons in all of government, federal or state that I would trust to design a better Constitution than now exists.
Convention enthusiasts, mostly Republicans, believe that they can hold at bay the proposals of opposing parties or that Congress can somehow control the proposals and their specificity, but Congress has nothing to say once gathered, any more than it did in 1787. Even had Congress such power, enthusiasts have too much faith in Congress doing the right thing. The call for a Convention of States is based upon their long history of NOT following the Constitution as written. Were Congress to return to the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 there would exist no need for another convention.
Enthusiasts also have too much faith in states having management power over convention delegates before and during the proposal convention or delegate removal power should a delegate go rogue. But what if they all go rogue as in 1787? The states also have a long history of NOT following the Constitution as written. The Constitution itemizes the powers of Congress as noted above. All unlisted powers remain with the states as per Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights which reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Were the states to uphold this one amendment they could force the federal government to uphold the Constitution ending the need for another convention.
Somehow convention enthusiasts believe that if they get delegates and office holders pledged by oath to uphold new amendments the changes will follow but all federal, state, county and city officials are already so pledged and such is ignored. Article IV, Section II reads: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” If these already violate their oaths on a regular basis what evidence exits that they will not violate the new oath? The call for a new Convention of States is based upon the fact that they dishonored their oath to uphold the Constitution.
No wonder Iowa and 14 sister states rejected this dangerous and unpredictable method of constitutional change.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 5, 2018 | Constitution, Healthcare, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease
Put bluntly Democrats vastly support extermination of their unwanted preborn and Republican support is less likely. Two recent issues have forced a wider gulf on abortion than ever: science has shown a fetal heartbeat at six weeks of pregnancy and many taxpayers oppose funding extermination clinics. If we followed the Constitution abortion would not be government approved in all states and the practice would not be federally funded.
Republican Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, just signed a law banning abortions when a heartbeat can be detected, normally about six weeks of pregnancy. The new law, set to begin July 1, will replace a 20-week law passed last year. Exceptions to the law include some cases of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life, otherwise it is pretty firm. Acknowledging that the law may be litigated she said: “This is bigger than just a law, this is about life, and I’m not going to back down.” Mississippi already has a similar law banning extermination after 15 weeks.
Opposed by Democrats and supported by Republicans, a string of other states are poised to legislate it in. When the term to justify extinction was “viability” of the fetus (even full-term deliveries are not viable without human intervention) elimination appeared “reasonable” to some until science showed the existence of a heartbeat at 16 weeks, then it seemed more like a human baby—like killing humankind. Especially when most physicians believe fetus pain is present.
The other issue, funding primarily extermination centers like Planned Parenthood, with forced taxpayer dollars through Title X seemed wrong and unjust to those who view abortion as killing their own. For years those for abortion have gotten away with terminology suggesting that what existed in the womb was a mere glob of cells or just tissue, the result, conditioned public insensitivity. Forgive my intended bluntness to shock even the most insensitive into understanding the issue.
Many who work in Planned Parenthood centers admit that perhaps 80% of what they do is exterminate underdeveloped humans. This is not family planning; it is instead the destruction of the family. Nor are such centers primarily for women’s health unless you can argue that pregnant women are unhealthy because they are pregnant. Abortion is not healthcare.
If women’s health were the real issue, redistributing the annual $260 million in Title X grants, now given to Planned Parenthood, to instead hundreds of genuine comprehensive women’s health clinics would better serve vastly more women. But funding extermination centers remains the primary purpose of Planned Parenthood.
Since Roe Vs. Wade we have aborted 60,449,039 in the U.S (http://www.numberofabortions.com/). A review of abortion pictures on the Internet often show tiny human body parts separated from the whole body when a scalpel was used to cut up the body making it easier to expel.
Sadly abortion would not be a federal issue if both political parties followed the listed limits of federal power in the Constitution as designed. The word abortion is not found in the Constitution, nor inferred, and no new amendment to the Constitution has been added moving it from a state power (where all powers not specifically identified in the Constitution as federal reside) to a federal prerogative. Instead, from its inception, the Constitution housed the philosophy of federalism, (shared government), the federal government to manage foreign, and the states domestic, policy.
Without constitutional perversion to original intent the Supreme Court cannot rule, as it did in Roe Vs. Wade in 1973, in such a way as to create new law in an area where no federal law first existed or was subsequently added by way of a constitutional amendment. That we have traveled some 45 years from the Constitution in this particular area is not authority to extend that travel.
Article 1, Section 8 lists federal powers. This clause divides all federal power into the four following areas: to tax, pay debt, provide for the general welfare and common defense. So as to restrict the federal government from enlarging its power, which is its natural tendency to do, the last two grants of power of the four each had an additional eight clauses giving clarity to what was meant by general welfare (clauses 2-9) and common defense (clauses 10-17). Outside these qualifiers the federal government has no power to tax, spend, legislate, administrate or adjudicate.
Even with the clarification of the list, states fearing that the federal government might still like to grow at their expense, refused to ratify the Constitution without additional restrictions harnessing it more fully to the enumerated powers, hence the Bill of Rights. These end with the handcuffs of Amendment 10: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The problem with the federal government going off the list and funding or assuming powers clearly not on it is that each time it does so, even once, the stronger the inclination to do so again. One minor departure begets another until one notices that what the federal government does has little or no relationship to the list. The result, in this case, is that mothers, encouraged by their federal government, exterminated over 60 million of their own; about ten times the number of Jews killed in the Nazi holocaust death camps, universally condemned.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
May 28, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Most people ignorantly refer to our political system as a democracy although this word is not in the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, or any document given to us by our Founding Fathers. Our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag identifies our form of government as a republic.
Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1759, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” A republic has seven major components each specifically designed to keep it from becoming a democracy as democracy eventually destroys liberty.
First, the importance of majority rules is recognized but limited. Is the majority always right? No! Mother made this point when her teenager asked to smoke marijuana on the basis that everyone was smoking it. “If everyone jumped off a bridge would you?”
Second, minority rights (less than 50%) are protected from the majority. In Franklin’s analogy the lamb had the right to exist even if the majority, the wolves, said differently. A lynch mob is a democracy, everyone votes but the one being lynched. Even if caught in the act of a crime the defendant is entitled to the protection of law, a judge, jury, witnesses for his defense, and a lawyer to argue his innocence; all necessary but expensive. Then, if found guilty, hanged. Because democracy only considers majority rules it is much less expensive. A rope tossed over a tree limb will do.
Third, a republic is based upon natural inalienable rights first acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence. This document asserted to the world that we acknowledge that humans have rights from a source higher than mere man. A reference to deity is mentioned five times. If there is no God there can be no inalienable rights coming from him and we are left with man as God. What man is good enough?
Fourth, a republic emphasizes individual differences rather than absolute equality, as democracy does. We are not equal, even from the womb, and never will be if equality means sameness. One baby with a cleft pallet needs three surgeries to look normal. Some come out of the womb with a laptop, others with a basketball, and the real tough deliveries are those bringing their golf clubs. One of my first great insights in life was that everyone was better at everything than I. The second was that life is not fair and never will be. Free men are not equal and equal men are not free. Genetics makes one fat, another bald, and gives yet another terminal cancer in his youth.
Even economically it is not possible to be equal. Should I give each student a million dollars in exchange for everything they now own, shave their heads, and give them identical uniforms, to approximate sameness as much as possible, with the only requirement that they return in five years with some ledger of net worth. Would they be the same in what was left of the million? No! Why does government try so hard to do what is impossible? A republic, unlike a democracy, looks upon our differences as assets.
Fifth, limited government is also a major aspect of a republic. Centralized government is good so long as it remembers that when it oversteps its bounds it becomes the greatest obstacle to liberty as it pulls decision-making power away from the individual. Excessive government, as the cause of the American Revolution, is never forgotten. The Constitution as created handcuffed the government from dominating our lives by listing the powers of the federal government (Article I, Section 8). The Founders understood that the more government at the top the less at the bottom and that was the opposite of freedom.
Sixth, a republic has frequent elections with options. Frequent elections happen in some socialist countries, so this alone does not ensure liberty. In fact, it may be somewhat deceiving as it fosters the notion that we choose, thus deserve, our elected officers. It also assumes that the people are correctly informed, which assumes a free press and equal access to all information. The part of the phrase “with options” is the part that ensures liberty. Elections under socialism provide choices but often no options when all participants are from the same party.
Seventh, there is a healthy fear of the emotion of the masses and of its potential to destabilize natural law upon which real freedom is based, as for example the notion that some one else’s wealth belongs to them. Such destroys freedom as it had in Athens and Rome. We need a caring, sensitive, compassionate government but emotion must not be allowed to overwhelm reason and time-tested natural law constants. Aristotle taught that the poor will always envy the rich and the rich will always have contempt for the poor. A republic will not allow the poor to destroy the rich in their quest for the wealth of the rich, but does incentivize the poor to increase their wealth thus becoming the middle class, which in time become the largest body.
As explained, democracy does not protect liberty. In Ben Franklin’s analogy it would have allowed the wolves to have eaten the lamb simply because the lamb had been outvoted. No wonder our Founders rejected democracy in favor of a republic.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
May 15, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease
In electoral contests today almost everyone, in both major political parties, advocate democracy but our Founding Fathers ran from the word as fast as they could advocating instead a republic. We need to do the same if we really understand liberty. Those using the term “democracy” either intentionally use the term to undermine individual liberty or show themselves as ignorant of the basics of our government. In either case, we are wise to reject them in preference to candidates rejecting democracy.
Given our continual drift from a republic to a democracy, it might be well to review what historical philosophies most favored democracy as a form of government. The Founding Fathers and the socialists were total opposites on the word democracy, one distained; the other loved.
Of those who favored democracy: the most blunt was Karl Marx, the father of communism (the most violent form of socialism). He wrote, “Democracy is the road to socialism,” implying that one cannot have socialism without first having democracy.
Vladimir Lenin, the socialist revolutionary bringing it to Russia, agreed. In his 1905 work, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, he saw democracy as a strategy leading to his desired socialist revolution. “Social-Democracy, however, wants, … to develop the class struggle of the proletariat to the point where the latter will take the leading part in the popular Russian revolution, i.e., will lead this revolution to the democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.” In a letter to Inessa Armand in 1916, he added, “We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not ‘in the name of capitalism,’ but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.” Class conflict and the philosophy “share the wealth” were, and remain, central to the empowerment of communism.
Those who abhorred democracy: as far as we are able to ascertain, included all the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1759, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” Years later, when Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention, a woman inquired of him, “What form of government have you left us?” the brilliant Franklin answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” The phrase expressed some doubt as to whether man could understand the value of a republic enough to protect it from becoming a democracy.
So, once again, what is wrong with democracy? James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, in his Federalist Paper, No. 10, wrote, “In a pure democracy, there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” Thomas Jefferson agreed but was more blunt; “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” On another occasion he reasoned that the Republic would “cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson’s supposed political archrival, saw it similarly. “We are now forming a republican form of government. Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship.”
Now we understand why the word democracy is not found in any of our original founding documents, not even in our Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Our system, a republic, protects us from the less informed masses, which is always the majority. This is why, until the perversion of the Constitution by the 17th Amendment, the state legislature selected their two U.S. Senators—not the people. This is why the Electoral College selects the president and why the people have no voice in the selection of Supreme Court members.
If one calls this undemocratic the Founders would agree. Their review of history showed them that democracy in Athens and Rome led to tyranny by the majority that then destroyed liberty in both places.
Recent census reports show about half of our adult population pay no federal income tax. When that number exceeds 50% we will join the fallen republics of Athens and Rome with their “bread and circuses” as examples of the majority voting to feed their wants from those who produce. When the “rich” are destroyed by socialism, as in the former USSR, and cannot provide the customary free stuff any more, the majority, who came to believe that it was owed them, take to the streets in anger. The majority will then vote for whatever tyrant promises them security. This historical record is clear.
This is why socialists and communists loved democracy and the Founders decidedly did not!! Alexis de Tocqueville, a visiting French philosopher in 1840, is alleged to have told us when our republic would fall. “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the ‘publics’ money.” We are unable to document the quote so, if not actually said by him, I now say it and am happy to be quoted hereafter. That day is today. Both parties must return to the Constitution, which preserves the republic, or we will lose both the republic and the Constitution. A good start is to avoid political candidates advocating democracy.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
May 7, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Dr. Harold Pease
With election signs everywhere it is well to note that it is unrealistic to expect national candidates to follow the Constitution when we did not insist that they did so in local and state elections. After all, many simply move up to higher office. Some may even view the Constitution as irrelevant at these levels.
Several years ago at a public debate for county supervisor in California the public was invited to offer written questions. I did so and watched the debate monitor, with a puzzled look on his face, sideline my question in preference to others. I presumed it was because it raised a constitutional concern, which unfortunately, is considered by many an irrelevant topic at the city, county, or even state levels. You are supposed to ask what “goodies” from taxpayer funding are you going to give me and is it more than your opponent?
So what does the Constitution have to do with local or state issues? Everything!! First, it is the only document that every elected public servant swears by oath to uphold. So the Founders must have thought it relevant at lower levels.
Second, candidates at lower levels successfully rise to higher levels because of the name recognition obtained at lower levels and eventually become members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, often without ever having read the Constitution they are specifically under oath to protect. When I worked as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate years ago, I was certain at least 50% had never read it at any level of government. Today I would be surprised if those who had read it exceeded 10%. No one asks candidates while campaigning when they last read it.
So again, why does this matter? Historically, the two major enemies of freedom are: 1) it is the nature of all governments to pull decision making power upward to the seat of government and, 2) the more apathetic and indifferent the population becomes the greater the tendency of the people to push decision making power upwards to the seat of government. When these two forces work together it always leads to the central government eventually having most of the power. The Constitution is full of “handcuffs” to keep decision-making power from getting to the top thus maximizing it with the individual. The Founders overriding philosophy of government, if it could be penned into one sentence, was, “never elevate to a higher level that which can be resolved at a lesser level.”
Even a casual look at the Constitution reveals the separation of powers on the federal level into three distinct branches the legislative, executive, and judicial—each with a specific list. For Congress it was a list of the four types of law they could make (Art. I, Sec. 8), for the president it was the types of executive functions he could execute (Art. II, Sec. 2-3), and for the Supreme Court the types of cases it could adjudicate (Art. III, Sec. 2). The lists exist to both restrict them and to prohibit the concentration of power into one branch. The only type of federal government authorized by the Founders was decidedly a limited one. States, counties, and cities have all the powers not listed, as per Amendment 10.
When these limitations are not understood and protected at lower levels of government, the federal government is constantly tempted to steal authority from the states or counties as per its confiscating, environmental, health, and education issues, which are constitutionally 100% non-federal government issues. States, counties, and cities should use the Tenth Amendment to tell the federal government to “butt out.” “You have no constitutional authority.” When Congress passed, and the President signed into law, the National Defense Authorization Act, December 31, 2012, both states and counties should have written Congress and the President. “You may not void Amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8, of The Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus for our citizens.”
Sixty years ago it may not have made much difference if a county supervisor/commissioner, or city councilman, swore allegiance to a Constitution that he had not fully studied, or worse, even read. The federal government had not yet absorbed his area of jurisdiction. Now it has! There is hardly an area where the federal government does not have its tentacles embedded, from school lunches to cross gender bathrooms. Over thirty years ago a city councilman complained to me that a third of what he voted on was already mandated because sometime in the past the council had accepted the “free money” which now obligated him. School districts are notorious for having done the same thing.
City, county, and state leaders, you are our buffer from the federal government taking from you your areas of jurisdiction. They have done so for many years because you were complacent, or ignorant of the Constitution. Consequently you have lost a large portion of our liberty. Today your understanding of the document must be known BEFORE we place you in power.
This election let us find leaders with constitutional fire in their bellies to undo the precedents that their predecessors created. All issues on the city and county levels are directly or indirectly constitutional issues. We now expect leaders to know, and abide by, the document that they swear to uphold.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Apr 23, 2018 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Syrian civilians were reportedly gassed in April 2017, killing 80, and again April 2018, killing 70. President Trump responded to the first with 60 Tomahawk missiles on one location and to the second bombing three separate locations said to have been development or storage sites. In neither are we indisputably certain that Assad did the gassing.
Protecting our “national security interests” (wordage not found in the Constitution) is the phrase most used to justify both US attacks. Side-stepped entirely is the fact that only Congress, under Article I, Section 8, has the constitutional authority to “declare War” but globalists argue that these bombings are not “real war,” only limited war, which the president possesses under Article II as “commander and chief.” But bombing a sovereign nation twice without provocation to us is an act of war. No such argument could be made were Moscow or Beijing bombed. So, an act of war is now constitutional if the victim country is too weak to defend itself.
Unfortunately this interpretation can only come from intentionally misrepresenting Article II: “The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States,” but only Congress has the power to call the military into actual service.
Other than conducting the war once declared, all military powers are housed as common defense under the legislative branch of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clauses 9-17). These include all power to declare and finance war, raise armies, “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces,” and even determine the land that the military may use for training purposes. Nothing was omitted.
Under the Constitution there can never be an unpopular war as the peoples’ representative (The House of Representatives) has total power over raising and funding the army. They must consent to the war by declaration (because they provide blood and brawn for it) and they alone authorize the treasure for it. “All bills for raising revenue shall originate” with them (Art. 1, Sec. 7, Cla. 1).
Moreover, Congress was to monitor the war at two-year intervals through its power of the purse just described. “But no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cla. 12). If Congress is not happy with the progress of the war it can require the generals and the president to account for why total victory has not yet been obtained and reduce or enlarge funding, with time restraints, to keep them on a short lease with respect to the war declared.
Why did the president get none of these powers? Because he “had the most propensity for war,” James Madison argued in the Constitutional Convention. Kings traditionally had sole war power. Not so under the Constitution. One man would never have such power. A declaration of war gave clarity to a wars beginning and victory or defeat its only ending. It could never be a casual thing as it has become.
Both major architects of the Constitution, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, were clear on this subject. Madison wrote Hamilton, “the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” Hamilton wrote in The Federalist #69 that the president’s powers are confined to “the direction of war when authorized or begun.”
Constitutionally the military functions under Congress, not the president. The president’s power to make war (outside immediate self-defense as in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) can only follow the legislature’s power to authorize war. Congress declared war on Japan the following day.
World War II was the last declared war so how did we lose such constitutional clarity allowing us to denigrate from invasion to justify war to “national interests,” which could be almost anything. They did so incrementally. It is the old adage one perversion justifies another. Both the Korean and Vietnam wars were United Nation’s Wars wherein the globalists argued we needed no declarations, being a part of a higher authority, the UN.
When the UN was not the major justification for war, globalists next favored working through coalition forces, which inferred that agreement among participating nations that a country was deserving of punishment justified acts of war. Requiring congressional approval for limited war would stifle flexibility. This could be made constitutional in public perception provided they enlarged the concept of “commander and chief” well beyond original intent, while simultaneously excluding constitutional wordage “when called into the actual service” and dismissing entirely all the war powers listed for Congress. Who really reads the Constitution anyway, the few who do could be “drummed” out by the ill-informed majority?
Coalition forces were employed in Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf Wars, then ISSIS, but coalition countries too eventually grew tired of perpetual war and began declining participating to the point that only Great Britain and France were willing to provide warplanes against Syria. War technology also advanced sufficient to administer punishment without boots on the ground. Such was the case with Syria last weekend. None of this changes the fact that there exists no constitutional authority for the president to bomb another country without congressional approval.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
