As November 3rd comes closer, I wanted to address what is actually on the ballot in many parts of the country this year.
In many of our “blue” liberal states, socialism is on the ballot. The Democratic Socialist Party of America (DSA) is on the rise in the national Democrat Party, and its candidates espouse views that are directly antithetical to our U.S. Constitution.
What do I mean by that?
Our Framers recognized that our rights don’t come from government, they come from God. And the new government they were instituting was formed precisely to protect those God-given rights. In so doing, our Framers understood the weaknesses of men and the temptations of unlimited power and made certain that this new Constitution held inherent counterweights to those temptations.
That is why, at the foundation of our Constitution, is the Separation of Powers. This critically important principle lies at the heart of James Madison’s view, in Federalist 47, in which he stated that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
So, they set up three branches of government, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. And the Framers intended for each of the three branches to “stay in its own lane” and to insist that the other branches remain in theirs. That is why, for example, the U.S. House of Representatives—the “People’s House” that provides for 2-year terms—controls the “purse strings” of the federal government and can influence policy by what it decides to fund or not fund. The House also initiates impeachments but the Senate, designed to be the more deliberative body, is elected for 6-year terms and conducts all impeachment trials as well as having the power to confirm or reject all presidential appointments.
Further, both chambers of Congress pass legislation which is sent to the president to either sign or veto. If vetoed, a 2/3rds majority of both houses can override the veto, and the legislation becomes law even though it was vetoed. The President is also the Commander in Chief in addition to being the head of the Executive Branch and its enormous federal agencies.
The U.S. Supreme Court, for its part, has the power to declare “what the law is” and determine what the Constitution means and whether the legislative actions of the president and Congress are unconstitutional or illegal. However, Congress may decide to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts, and the Senate may decide not to confirm presidential nominees to the federal courts.
My point is that all three branches of government are delicately positioned to check the actions of the other two branches. And that is why the rise of Democratic Socialist candidates concerns me. DSA candidates would abolish most of these protections. The DSA would dissolve the U.S. Supreme Court and eliminate the U.S. Senate, creating a unicameral Legislature that would make all decisions based upon nothing but the “popular will” or so-called “widely held public opinion.” The great danger here is whose “popular will” and whose “widely held public opinion?” This is the definition of mobocracy which then devolves into anarchy.
The DSA plan for the Supreme Court alone is enough. An impartial and independent judiciary is critical to maintaining our form of government given, one, the crucial role of the Supreme Court in seeing that our Separation of Powers is maintained and, two, because the Court protects the rights of the minority in our constitutional republic from the tyranny of the majority. The will, and very existence, of the minority are threatened if all that is considered is the “popular will” or “widely held public opinion.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court is certainly not perfect—with Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Roe v. Wade being three of its most egregiously wrong decisions—it nevertheless remains a firewall in protection of all of our natural rights. Again, the DSA would eliminate it.
President Reagan warned us:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
So, let us fight.
(Shreveport attorney, Royal Alexander, worked in D.C. in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 8 years for two different Members of Congress from Louisiana. He has witnessed up close several Speaker races. He can be reached at RoyalAlexanderlawfirm@gmail.com .)
