Is the USA No Longer a Constitutional Republic?
The fate of the citizenry seems increasingly determined by competing oligarchs.
By JOHN LEAKE
For the last 49 years of the Roman Republic, the fate of the citizenry was determined not by laws and institutions, but by the decisions and actions of competing, ambitious men. First Julius Caesar challenged the authority of the Senate by leading his army across the Rubicon River and into the Italian peninsula, which inaugurated twenty years of civil war. This period of strife ended when Octavian—the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar—defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Three years later, the Senate gave Octavian the titles Augustus and Princeps, along with greatly augmented powers, thereby ending the Republic and inaugurating rule by Emperors with direct authority over the army (the final instrument of power over unruly human beings).
Since President George W. Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses in 2003, the United States of America has increasingly resembled the last twenty years of the Roman Republic. We, the People, seem increasingly at the whim of competing oligarchs and their friends in the Administrative State. The Bushes, Clintons, Trumps, and Bidens resemble the powerful Roman families of the 1st Century BC—sometimes quarreling, sometimes uniting, always primarily serving their own interests and those of their friends. In recent years, the FBI has come to resemble the Roman Praetorian Guard during the waning days of the Republic, whose loyalty to a particular man was more a matter of preference and perceived promise of gain than law.
The success of America’s baleful, competing oligarchs depends on how well they co-opt financial, industrial, media, and institutional actors. Their relationship with the citizenry is mostly a matter of propaganda, manipulation, virtue signaling, and flattery by pretending to endorse the (faddish) ideological preferences of their constituencies.
Thankfully there is one enormous difference between the United States now and the final decades of the Roman Republic—namely, the use of U.S. military units on American soil still seems to be off limits. To be sure, the Department of Defense has played a strong role in developing, manufacturing, and distributing the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. We are now seeing increasing evidence that the DOD holds final authority over the entire program.
The above reflections have been percolating through my mind for some time, causing me to wonder if we are no longer a Republic in which all of us—including our august billionaires, political dynasties, federal police and intelligence agencies—are governed by our United States Constitution. This morning I saw that Victor Davis Hanson—Senior Fellow in Classics at the Hoover Institution—has been having similar thoughts.
His essay, The Coup We Never Knew, is well worth reading.
The use of military units on American soil, against civilians, is not off-limits.
It's authorized by statute and by public and secret Presidential executive orders and directives.
2006/10/17 - Congress and President Bush passed NDAA/John Warner Defense Authorization Act for FY2007 - PL 109-364, 120 Stat. 2095. Section 1076 amended 1807 Insurrection Act, (10 USC 333, renumbered as 10 USC 253), providing exemptions to 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, to expand the authority of federal government to deploy US military on American soil against American citizens during “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States.” Repealed in NDAA for FY2008. Passed again in NDAA for FY2012.
2008/01/28 - Congress and President Bush passed National Defense Authorization Act for FY2008. PL 110-181, 122 Stat. 325. Section 1068 repealed 2007 amendments to Insurrection Act which had expanded exemptions to 1878 Posse Comitatus Act limits on US Presidents’ power to deploy the military domestically. Amendments passed again in NDAA for FY2012, again giving President power to deploy military domestically.
2011/12/31 - Congress and President Obama passed National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012 - PL 112-81, 125 Stat. 1298. Section 1021 codified authority for US President to order military arrest and indefinite detention of American civilians without charge or trial under 10 USC 801 et seq. (Uniform Code of Military Justice), to the extent the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed under the 1973 War Powers Act, (50 U.S. Code § 1541) is construed as putting the United States in a permanent state of war (Global War on Terror) and the national emergency first declared by President Bush in 2001 is extended. It has been extended, every year since.
2016/12/23 - Congress and President Obama passed National Defense Authorization Act for FY2017. PL 114-328, 130 Stat. 2509. Established DOD Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) and Director of DSCA, with authority to coordinate and synchronize US military with foreign military forces, and conduct domestic military campaigns in violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. Codified at [10 USC 382].
2017/01/23 - Department of Homeland Security published Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans. At p. 70, stated that 10 USC 382 “permits Department of Defense to provide support to the Department of Justice under certain circumstances in emergency situations involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, including biological weapons and materials.”
Presidential Executive Orders on globalized, militarized public health/population control frameworks, bioweapons development, Artificial Intelligence and Presidential authorization for foreign troops to control American civilians on US soil:
13674 (Obama, 2014); 13732 (Obama, 2016); 13747 (Obama, 2016); 13859 (Trump, 2019); 13887 (Trump, 2019); and 13961 (Trump, 2020).
This is the logical result of the Progressive ideology. Their goal for the last 100+ years has been to separate administration and politics. Now we have an unelected 4th branch of government in the bureaucracy and functions as legislator (making regulations), executive (enforcing regulations), and judiciary (fining violators). We haven’t had a constitutional republic for several decades.