by Lew Rockwell, Lew Rockwell:
America is faced with serious problems that require immediate action. Illegal immigrants are committing horrible crimes. “Woke” programs are entrenched in our schools, from elementary schools through universities. Judges are abusing their powers in order to block President Trump from cutting the budget and firing federal employees. Some people respond to this dire situation by demanding more power for the president. We must have government by executive order, they say. Is dictatorship such a terrible word? Not if it is for the right cause.
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This talk is dangerous nonsense and goes against sound Rothbardian doctrine. The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.
The presidency—by which I mean the executive State—is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I’ll go further. The US presidency is the world’s leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged were denied essential food and medicine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government.
As the presidency assumes ever more power unto itself, it becomes less and less accountable and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say the federal government, what we really mean is the presidency. When we say national priorities, we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say national culture, we mean what the presidency funds and imposes.
The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau’s general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world’s biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.
And let me be clear: I’m not talking about any particular inhabitant of the White House. I’m talking about the institution itself, and the millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are its acolytes. Look through the US government manual, which breaks down the federal establishment into its three branches. What you actually see is the presidential trunk, its Supreme Court stick, and its congressional twig. Practically everything we think of as federal—save the Library of Congress—operates under the aegis of the executive.
The libraries are filled with shelf after shelf of treatises on the American presidency. Save yourself some time, and don’t bother with them. Virtually all tell the same hagiographic story. Whether written by liberals or conservatives, they serve up the identical Whiggish pap: the history of the presidency is the story of a great and glorious institution. It was opposed early on, and viciously so, by the anti-federalists, and later, even more viciously, by Southern Confederates. But it has been heroically championed by every respectable person since the beginning of the republic.
The office of the presidency, the conventional wisdom continues, has changed not at all in substance, but has grown in stature, responsibility, and importance, to fulfill its unique mission on earth. As the duties of the office have grown, so has the greatness of the men who inhabit it. Each stands on the shoulders of his forerunners, and, inspired by their vision and decisiveness, goes on to make his own contribution to the ever-expanding magisterium of presidential laws, executive orders, and national security findings.
