Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Unitary all powerful chief executive above the law -- I have a question

I have a question for Bill Barr which no one seems to have asked yet. Barr's legal, judicial and constitutional philosophy is one of a strong all powerful chief executive.  The nation has long debated that ideological question.  For decades it has been the subject in the formulation of our Constitutional republic, through the institution of slavery, to the 20th century's Great Depression and beyond.  I, too, when formulating my political opinions wrestled with the concept of a strong chief executive. I did so because those on the right were decrying, for example, FDR's New Deal and John Kennedy's actions on behalf of civil rights, as well as Lyndon Johnson's advocacy for human rights.  The right wing for years thought it was a breach of the balance of power the Founders created for the president to stray into areas which either belong to other branches of Congress or more properly reside in the states.  Many viewed FDR's New Deal as tyrannical. 

What is the role of the Chief Executive when working to ameliorate the effects of a Great Depression, waging war, or even providing health insurance?  Up until FDR the president thought his powers were limited and that there was nothing more that could be done during the Great Depression by Herbert Hoover except to let the economy adjust on its own.   Meanwhile millions were starving and millions were sick.  Later persons of color who served the nation in war were not let into all white colleges and universities or drink from water fountains labeled "white."  These mammoth injustices which since FDR called out for strong executive power.  I advocated for a strong executive when justice had to prevail or when the existential life of the nation was in question.

Since Trump the trajectory of that power for which I once advocated can be seen through his plethora of executive orders that come down heavy not for the least of these but against those who have the least.  He has relegated those seeking protection from tyranny to mandating a new Trumpian tyranny.  He has relegated children vying for safety in this nation to cages, he has signed Muslim bans, he has cozied up to the worst of world dictators, celebrated with Russian ambassadors over a firing of an FBI director, encroached through eminent domain on private property for his wall to keep desperate immigrants out, imposed economically destructive tariffs, advocated for the attorney general to lower sentencing on a convicted felon in a case where the defendant was his friend.  This has never happened before.  He has nominated judges who do not meet even the standards of the American Bar Association. He has sent federally empowered ICE into states which have sanctuary cities to arrest those who have been given state protection.  He lowered pollution standards in streams and waterways that provide drinking water.  He eliminated standards for fossil fuel drilling and for the extraction of dirty coal.  He cancelled the nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran which was working, and he denies the scientific certainty of climate change while our nation drowns in floods and suffers along with other nations many other catastrophic weather related disasters.  Ask Australians if they believe in climate change.

Much of the power which the president thinks he has and Mr. Barr thinks lives within his presidential right to wield is dedicated to undoing the justice of many decades of injustice.  Trumpian power is inhumane, cruel, vicious and is dedicated to inflate his bank accounts and maintaining power while he existentially destroys our nation.

I therefore ask Bill Barr if he believes in a strong chief executive does he do so if the the president were a Democrat?  Does he think a unitary strong executive should prevail only if the president is Republican advocating for the richest in the nation and above the law our Founders feared?

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