Some have said that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer got his just deserts after working so hard to enforce "victimless crime" laws in New York, only to be brought down by the same laws. Spitzer apparently thought he was a very powerful man, but others behind the curtains were more powerful.
The amount of power wielded by Spitzer over the people and economy of New York was extraordinary, when compared with the power exercised by President George Washington. The entire population of America was about 3 million in Washington's day, rivalled by any of the five boroughs of New York City, and vastly surpassed in economic power by any one of them. General Washington could issue an order and be delighted for the order to be received three days later. Spitzer, armed with cell phones and instant internet messaging, can move mountains in minutes. The entire economic output of FOREIGN SUPER-POWER Russia ($979 Billion GDP in 2007) totals less than the state Spitzer governed ($1.02 Trillion). Dictator Vladamir Putin doubtless envied the power of Eliot Spitzer.
Many of Spitzer's decisions were already made for him by the federal government, despite the Tenth Amendment and Madison's description of its limitation on federal power.
And of course George Bush, presiding over a "unitary executive," has committed the American people to paying $3 trillion -- a total three times greater than the entire combined annual economic output of the Soviet Union -- expecting no resistance from either House of Congress -- in an effort to replace the formerly U.S.-subsidized secular administration of Saddam Hussein with an Islamic theocracy, at a human cost of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. This "war on terror" has moved Americans significantly closer to an East German-style police state, where "Your papers, please" is a daily experience, as it already is for millions who travel by air.
Further, the entire foundational theory of the Bush-Clinton regime and modern political science has been ably summarized by William Norman Grigg:
• Constitutional rights are a government artifact, "created" primarily by the courts.
• Since "rights" are creations of the State, they can be summoned into existence, summarily abolished, or modified as the government sees fit, in order to serve the State's "compelling interests."
• The fact that certain freedoms have been historically exercised by Americans – such as the right to seek alternative treatments for life-threatening conditions, a right exercised by Americans without qualification for most of our nation's history (from the colonial period until 1962) – is of no consequence when the State decides to expand its own regulatory mandate.
• If, in defiance of the foregoing assumptions, terminally ill patients are permitted to exercise ownership over their health by seeking treatments not approved by government, then the entire rationale for the "administrative" State will be fatally undermined. It is better that we let a few innocent people die in agony, than to permit the State's regulatory powers to be undermined in any way.
These facts and credible opinions would leave America's Founding Fathers staggering at first, then outraged. They would, as I've asserted before, immediately take steps to abolish the present government, as they did in 1776 against a government far more Christian and libertarian than our present government.
Simply compare the power exercised by Spitzer and Bush with Alexander Hamilton's discussion of the Presidency in Federalist Paper No. 69. Hamilton urged farmers and mechanics in upstate New York to support the ratification of the Constitution on the grounds that the office of the President of the United States created by the proposed Constitution -- far from being a clone of the dreaded British Monarch -- would be no more powerful than the governor of New York. Here's Hamilton's concluding summation of his argument:
Hence it appears that, except as to the concurrent authority of the President in the article of treaties, it would be difficult to determine whether that magistrate would, in the aggregate, possess more or less power than the Governor of New York. And it appears yet more unequivocally, that there is no pretense for the parallel which has been attempted between him and the king of Great Britain. But to render the contrast in this respect still more striking, it may be of use to throw the principal circumstances of dissimilitude into a closer group.
• The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary prince.
• The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable.
• The one would have a qualified negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an absolute negative.
• The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of declaring war, and of raising and regulating fleets and armies by his own authority.
• The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the sole possessor of the power of making treaties.
• The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments.
• The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies.
• The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin.
• The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church!
What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.
Hamilton was no Jeffersonian libertarian. But both agreed that the President should be a very weak office compared with the People's representatives in Congress. Even Hamilton, were he alive today, would conclude that the United States is in fact "an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism" (and in the case of the Bush family, an hereditary monarchy), and is not in any meaningful sense being governed by the Constitution, respectful of the original intent of its Framers. In the name of that Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the present government should be abolished.
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