Today, for the first time in a long time, I read the entire Declaration of Independence. It just felt like something I needed to do. Some people feel like fleeing the country, but I’d be ashamed to give up the fight. And where could one go where the fight against fascism isn’t the number one issue. Certainly not Europe, where it is aggressively on the march, as seen by the first round of France’s parliamentary elections this past weekend. Is the fight any less urgent in Australia or Canada? Are they not just as connected to the free world as we are?
The Declaration tells us that to pursue Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. What do we do when we are no longer asked for our consent?
Our country is founded on the idea that whenever “any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” But also with the acknowledgment that “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”
Why, oh why, did the Supreme Court change our form of government for so light and transient a cause as keeping Donald Trump out of prison? This is the most dramatic and irredeemable result of Trump’s influence yet. To affect one presidential election, the Supreme Court has placed an unending succession of kings above us.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in his ruling on Donald J. Trump v. United States, gives the president of the United States immunity to commit any crime provided that it can be argued to involve the office’s executive powers. Because the Constitution vests the president with the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” he or she is in charge of federal law enforcement. But because the president is no longer expected to obey the law, he or she is free to use law enforcement for illegal purposes. The only possible remaining remedy is impeachment, but impeachment is reserved for bribery, high crimes, and misdemeanors. If it’s impossible for the president to commit a crime in the exercise of his power, that presents a problem even for impeachment.
Consider the issue of bribery. The Constitution gives the president the power to issue pardons. If the president takes a bribe in return for a pardon, he’s now immune because he’s exercising an official act authorized by the Constitution. Presumably, this would be one crime still clearly covered by the impeachment clause, but pardons are often done when presidents are leaving office on their own accord. There’s simply no way to disincentivize taking bribes for pardons in those cases.
Then there’s the provision of the Constitution that makes the president the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. There are obviously laws of war, but universally they no longer apply to the president. There are restrictions on how the military may be used, especially domestically, but they now only apply to those serving in the military, not their commander. The president may order the military into the streets or order assassinations, including of U.S. citizens, and we now have to rely on those orders being disobeyed as illegal. But are they still illegal?
We are supposed to consent to being governed so that we can protect our lives, liberty and happiness, but we can now be targeted by the president using both the military and law enforcement. None of us consented to this, nor would we under almost any conceivable circumstance. But what are we supposed to do about it?
The Declaration sagely notes “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” In other words, we most likely won’t do a damn thing until we personally suffer from these evils to an intolerable degree. Maybe we’ll just flee the country and leave it to others to fight for their lives and liberty.
Addressing the nation from the White House after the ruling, President Joe Biden expressed appropriate outrage, warning “For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do,” and urging people to render a verdict on Trump’s criminal coup attempt that no jury can now provide before Election Day, if ever. But he said nothing about fixing the problem created by the Court.
And it is the Court that created a new Form of Government that is destructive of the ends of safeguarding our lives, liberty and happiness. Biden should immediately demand that new Justices be added to the Court. Without this, there is no peaceful remedy. No one wants violence, but the Declaration informs us that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [us] under absolute Despotism,” that we have the “duty” to “throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
I’m in my mid-fifties. I’m supposed to be too old for throwing off despotism. But I can tell you that winning an election doesn’t solve this. Thanks to the Supreme Court, even Joe Biden is now a despot with, as he says, “virtually no limits” on what he can do. It’s not Biden that needs to be thrown off, but the six robed fascists who made him a despot against his will.
I do not consent to this. I will not consent to Trump’s or any other president’s Justice Department or military if they come after me, or you. This won’t be fixed until it’s fixed. The Supreme Court is for now the enemy of the people. When the British king did this, appeals “for Redress in the most humble terms” were to no avail, and they will be to no avail now. Repeated Petitions will be answered only by repeated injury.
As for Trump, for whom this ruling was written, the Declaration tells us, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” It goes without saying that he must not win the election. That would leave us no peaceful solution at all.
