The "unitiary executive" theory

Have you heard of the very sinister "unitary executive" theory yet? It's explained by Robert Freeman in his article, "Should the President be King? Reflections from the deep origins of America". Here's how the article gets started:

When he wrote the Constitution in 1789, James Madison had a specific goal in mind: to create a system of government that would constrain the tyrannous behavior of an unaccountable executive. Only in this way, Madison knew, would the "blessings of liberty" be able to flourish and grow in the new United States.

The essential features of the government he envisioned to carry out this aim included representation of the people, separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law, and protection of the citizenry from unwarranted intrusion by the government.

But many of those ideals are at risk today in President Bush's breathtaking assertion that he is accountable to no one in his determination to spy on American citizens. Indeed, according to the theory of the "unitary executive" espoused by Samuel Alito, there are literally no limits to presidential actions so long as they are couched as part of the "war on terror."

Yet claims of unchallengeable authority rooted in the Constitution are belied in a straightforward understanding of what Madison intended to create. The founders had just fought the Revolutionary War to free themselves from the tyranny of an unbridled King - one who would not even deign to obey his own laws. And before that, in the 1600s, the English people had fought a Civil War to prevent their own subjugation to a series of despotic monarchs.

The article then traces the development of parliamentary democracy in Britain and explains how the rights of the citizen were established. Freeman later writes:

The most dangerous of George Bush's formulations surrounding the issue of unwarranted wiretapping is that his own usurpations must continue so long as the country is at "war." Bush's "war on terror" is effectively endless because it is inherently self-catalyzing, spawning more terror than it is capable of eradicating.

Before Bush's invasion, Iraq was not a source of terrorism. Today, it is the world's pre-eminent trainer and exporter of terror. Major incidents of international terrorism have tripled since the invasion in 2003. Perhaps it is this auto-inflammatory dynamic that Dick Cheney referred to when he claimed we were facing a war, "that will not end in our lifetimes." Tellingly, Madison wrote, "No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

The confluence of these two startling facts, the claim for unlimited power based on war, and the endless nature of the war itself, poses grave threats to the American Constitutional order. And the threat is made all the more dire in the realization that the war had been planned since the first days of the Bush administration and that it was sold to the American people through a vigorous, sustained campaign of Executive deceit.

Shorn of all distractions, the "unitary executive" and Bush's claim to legitimacy in spying amount to this: that one man can lie the country into war and then, on the basis of that war, declare himself above the law - essentially suspending the Constitution. It is a legal prescription for the self-destruction of democratic government.

I keep waiting for Bush to crown himself like Napoleon. What's really sad is that I don't think it's all that far-fetched. May his Waterloo come soon - soon!