What We've Lost Since 9/11: Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:


What We've Lost Since 9/11
Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

By Peter Van Buren


America has entered its third great era: the post-constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power.

In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king’s abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas -- enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.

Deeper, darker waters lie ahead and we seem drawn down into them. For here there be monsters.

The Powers of a Police State Denied

America in its pre-constitutional days may seem eerily familiar even to casual readers of current events. We lived then under the control of a king. (Think now: the imperial presidency.) That king was a powerful, unitary executive who ruled at a distance. His goal was simple: to use his power over “his” American colonies to draw the maximum financial gain while suppressing any dissent that might endanger his control. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175856/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_rip%2C_the_bill_of_rights/#more

[Igel]

1. The writer really doesn't get "unitary executive."

It's simple. All executive authority is vested in the President. There is, in essence, a unitary executive branch under a single source of authority. ("Unitary executive" refers to the branch of government, not the President. If somebody wants to redefine the term in their own speech, that's their business; they don't get to redefine it a posteriori for everybody else. That's far too totalitarian for my taste.)

Somehow the idea has gotten around that "unitary executive" must mean "all government under one person." The controversy was over having the legislature retain oversight and partial control over a bit of government that is executive and must be under the executive branch--something like the CIA or Soc. Security Administration. These aren't legislative functions but purely executive.

That bit of the Constitution has no enforcement mechanism but the good will of Congress and the willingess of the President to trigger constitutional crises. Since the presidents in recent decades have been willing to write law (as has the judiciary), it only makes sense that they haven't wanted a constitutional crisis--the authority each covets and has gotten is worth the price paid in authority lost.