What do you call a political system in which one person can 1) declare an emergency, 2) take exclusive control of any and all actions and activities that may conceivably affect or be affected by said emergency, 3) suspend all laws otherwise in place that touch on said emergency, 4) control the lives, movement, livelihood, and association of everyone under his jurisdiction, 5) ignore and threaten to punish any citizen, other duly elected official or political jurisdiction that deviates from his edicts, and 6) renew his self-ordained authority at his will?
In high school civics, I learned to call such a political system a dictatorship. In college, teachers got fancy and called it the “Führer principle,” in honor of its most despised practitioner. It was, supposedly, so despicable a political system that we were justified in sacrificing thousands of lives to stop it in the 1940’s.
But it’s back. And we’ve adopted it as our own modus operandi. The Washington Post claims President Trump follows this principle. But he was obviously a weak proponent – he allowed, at least somewhat, for the principle of federalism (to Dr. Fauci”s consternation.) So, Governors to the rescue! Several governors made a name for themselves showing how such constraints are only words on paper.
I was also taught that, as an American, I live under law, not whim. First, under the law given by God – the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights were further enumerated by a Bill of Rights, and a constitution that guaranteed political and legal procedures would sustain them. These rights would be safeguarded by a legal system comprised of two different levels of courts, so if the state level wouldn’t support those rights, the federal would.
Obviously, someplace between 1776 and 2020, those rights were lost. Oh, the form is still there, but the content has evaporated into the rarefied air of Marxist political theory. The form of the court system is now used to rubber-stamp [explain and justify] the actions of the Fuhrer.
I do not deny the Fuhrer principle operates under more constraint here than many other places. But it was also evident that the only real restraint on the governor’s actions was what little sense of decency he had left. But a soft-spoken, compassionate-sounding tyrant is still a ruler that should not be.
Askance Eye Miniblog 