A Day Without News

     Do you know what day of the year – well, of the years, actually – is most frustrating to a public-affairs commentator? Election Day.

     The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
     He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
     The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.

     It seemed a good idea to post those three paragraphs today. Yes, of course they’re Article II of the Constitution of the United States; congratulations on remembering. I posted them because I fear that many Americans won’t recognize them or appreciate their significance.

     My point is that constitutionally – “the supreme law of the land,” don’t y’know – the president’s authority is very straitly circumscribed. The president was intended to concern himself mostly with matters of war and foreign policy. It’s right there in black and white. Yet in this Year of Our Lord 2024, we’ve gone a little nutty about who is to be the president for the next four years, as if whoever is selected will be the most important factor in our lives for the four years to come.

     No, it’s not the first time. It’s been more than a century since the office of the presidency burst its constitutional bonds. Since then, the president has wielded powers over matters both foreign and domestic that many a dictator would envy. But the Framers didn’t intend that. They’d just finished liberating the thirteen colonies from a foreign monarch, and were unlikely to countenance the creation of a domestic one.

     Of course, the presidency isn’t the only federal office that’s been constitutionally naughty. Congress wasn’t granted anything like the powers that it wields today. Neither were the federal courts. The Constitution has ceased to limit Washington and its agents. What was born small and inoffensive has grown into the Leviathan the Founders feared.

     As a result, our lives have been thoroughly politicized. No sphere of wholly private activity remains. How could it be otherwise, when the president is allowed the authority to send drones into foreign lands to assassinate disliked individuals? When state governors have the power to close your business and lock you into your home? When bureaucrats in Washington have the power to cast you into prison and seize all that’s yours for filling in a puddle on your rightfully owned property? When Congress in its majesty determines what you may and may not own and how much of your income you can keep? When venerable, wholly private, social institutions such as marriage are redefined at the whim of the federal courts? When “law enforcement officers” can break down your door in the middle of the night on the strength of an anonymous allegation, and murder you, your spouse, and your children for daring to take up arms against the intrusion? When “environmental conservation” officials can raid your home to seize and kill your pets on a whim?

     Today, a quadrennial Election Day on which We the People exercise our sovereign power to be bamboozled by the “major parties” into voting a new Emperor into office, is a day that’s otherwise without news. All other priorities have been rescinded. All traffic has been halted to make way for the Imperial carriage. Nothing but the election will matter until some time tomorrow.

     And such is the depth to which we have fallen that even that oh-so-important election will be decided not by our votes but by which of the “major parties” proves more adept at manipulating the tallies.

     Yes, I’m in a bad mood. No, it’s not because I slept poorly. It’s because I too will be riveted to the election returns until a verdict has become clear.

     The late Joseph Sobran put it plainly. We have devolved from a constitutional republic to something formless and vile. Washington’s power has become absolute and unbounded. Though lesser, the powers of the states have swollen beyond all constraint as well. Political power, not the sacred rights of the individual citizen, is all that matters now. And every two or four years, We the Governed are told that our moment has come. It’s time for our regularly scheduled show of “consenting” to it. We’re told to “pull the lever and feel the power” – that it’s our duty to do so.

     Reflect, Gentle Reader, on who is telling you that. Ask yourself what interest they have in chivvying us all into polling places.

     I do not consent. Do you?

     To our British cousins: Happy Guy Fawkes Day.