No Hereditary Kings in America
“The government appears to argue here that. . .because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of Congress, but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself.
We must note that the office of the Chief Executive itself has been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary kings in America, and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers� must derive from that Constitution.�
--Hon. Anna Diggs Taylor
When we as a society are immersed in immediate self-gratification, and all our wishes are anticipated, controlled, marketed and fulfilled, it is often difficult to remember why the men who set up this country went to a lot of trouble to create a thing called the Constitution. And why the President must swear to “preserve, protect and defend� it before he is given the power of office.
At the time Jefferson, Madison and Adams were born, there were no “rights� for citizens. People could be and were hung for theft, for sedition, or for virtually anything the king wanted to hang them for. If the king wanted to take over another country, build a new palace, ensure that his son took over after him, or reward his lackeys, he could do so. Anyone who stood in his way was crushed like a bug: he was exercising his divine right. Slavery was legal, owners could rape, beat or kill them whenever they felt like it, and the peasantry was only slightly better off at the hands of the nobility. The ruling class could do pretty much what it wanted to anyone, and those contesting this right, as Jefferson, Madison and Adams did as adults, could be hung. And/or drawn and quartered. And their heads displayed on pikes around the city.
While watching the Superbowl on plasma screen TV, grooving to our Ipod, or shopping at Walmart, we tend to forget these things.
But as we allow our rulers to lie, steal, lay waste to entire countries and torture their people, all to bring greater riches to members of their class, there are those among us who are aware that the ability to think, believe, speak and read as we choose can be suspended at any time. Any of us is subject to being taken from our country, imprisoned indefinitely and tortured.
The Cheney administration was dealt a small setback in the destruction of the rights of Americans by District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who found that the President does not have the right to do whatever he feels because we are at war, and he is Commander In Chief. Taylor ruled, most emphatically, that the Administration does NOT have the powers over its people King George had.
But we must never forget that, if it weren’t for Judge Taylor, the New York Times (which seditiously broke the story of NSA spying), and the much-maligned ACLU (which brought the suit), we would all be subject to hanging and torture at the whim of our rulers.
In the closing line of her opinion, Judge Taylor quotes Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren:
“Implicit in the term “national defense� is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . .It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the Nation worthwhile.�
The same Constitution Bush and Cheney had to swear to defend before they could wield power is the document they have been prevented, for the moment, from trampling in the dust.