Written By Bradley J. Birzer, Constitution, Monarchy, Politics, Senior Contributors
Why are the American people so ready to give themselves over to an emperor? Why do they want a god-king? I would suggest that our very loss of the classical world—especially in education—has led us to forget the great lessons of Western civilization.
For what it’s worth, I do not consider myself a political person, and I’m even deeply hesitant about the actual constitutionality of political parties. That is, I don’t think that parties violate the letter of the Constitution, but I wonder frequently whether they violate the very spirit of the great document. As such, my views on politics might be more than a bit suspect, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking, “Birzer, go back to writing about Tolkien.”
But, here it is, anyway….
The Midterm 2022 shocked me. Being relatively apolitical, I didn’t follow individual elections very closely, but I never expected a “Red Wave.” Still, I didn’t expect there to be such huge, massive, gargantuan support for strong executive power, either. This is what shocked me.
In Michigan, for example, Governor Gretchen Whitmer easily won re-election with more than 55% of the vote. Her opponent came in at just 44% support. I’ve lived in Michigan since 1999, and I’ve never seen a more blatant abuse of executive power as I have over the last couple of years. Our governor locked us down for months and months, sometimes contrary to the wishes of the state legislature, which tried to restrain her. Yet, Michigan readily re-elected her.
Though 2022 was a midterm election, it was still a referendum on the policies of President Joe Biden. Though Mr. Biden comes across as a very weak person—in terms of his character and abilities—he has wielded executive power in dramatic ways. Think of just one example: his cancellation of nearly $1 trillion worth of student loans. Additionally, he has treated the war in the Ukraine as, for all intents and purposes, as a proxy war against Russia, all without consulting Congress. In this latter example, admittedly, Mr. Biden is acting as almost every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has acted.
When one looks at the United States Constitution, one finds almost no support for such executive action. The Founders created a republic that emphasized the power of the Senate (through the states) and the House. Only the House can begin the process of taxation, and only the Congress as a whole can declare war. If anything, Article II, which is the article dealing with executive power, is a list of what the president cannot do rather than a list of what he can do. Indeed, Article II is deeply restrictive as well as deeply suspicious of executive power.
Such restraint reigned—with the exceptions of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln—throughout the nineteenth century. Strong presidents began to emerge, however, on a consistent basis in the twentieth century, first with the Progressive presidencies of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and, second, with the rise of the New Deal and the Cold War. What we see now, in the American constitutional order, especially with a strong executive and a strong Supreme Court, is almost everything the Founders did NOT want for the United States. Even the most pro-executive of the Founding generation, Alexander Hamilton, feared that the presidency might very well prove to be “the fetus of monarchy.”
In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, somewhat shrouded in myth, the king was one who served only to execute the laws established by the people. Famously, when King Alfred, the first true English king, sat down with his Witan (his council), he and they refused to create new laws, but rather passed judgement on old laws, prudently determining what could be passed on, what needed to be reformed, and what needed to end. “For I dared not presume to set in writing at all many of my own,” Alfred recorded, “because it was unknown to me what would please who should come after us.”
In the Medieval Thomistic tradition, a just king was one who sacrificed himself completely—as Christ would for the church or a husband would for his wife—for the common good. The unjust king was one who kept a private wealth, using the resources of a country for his own private benefit. Debate among the Thomists—such as Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez—raged as to how to depose the unjust ruler.
In the Western tradition, from the Greeks forward, there was always a caution about placing too much power in one person. The god-kings of Persia did such things, but the Greeks (at least for a while) rejected such travesties. So too, with Rome. Beginning in 509BC, the Romans removed kings—who were seen as synonymous with rapists—from the equation, creating, instead, Consuls and Tribunes. Not until the Caesars arose—with the republic long decayed—did such executive power come back to Rome.
One of the most just of all Christian Roman emperors was Justinian. He offered a defense of his imperial authority. “That which seems good to the Emperor has also the force of law,” Justinian claimed, “for the people, by the lex regia, which is passed to confer on him his power, make over to him their whole power and authority.”
However good Justinian was as an emperor and a Christian, his tradition was not the Anglo-American tradition. Indeed, our lineage comes through King Alfred and the Common Law rather than from the Caesars and imperial law.
So, this takes me back to the 2022 midterm election. Why are the American people so ready to give themselves over to an emperor? Why do they want a god-king? I would suggest that our very loss of the classical world—especially in education—has led us to forget the great lessons of Western civilization. Indeed, our very dismissal of Western civilization—criticized as being merely about racism, sexism, classicism, etc.—has shifted us away from any true knowledge of our past. I, for one, am not willing to live under a succession of “Red Caesars” and “Blue Caesars.” Yet, for all intents and purposes, that is where the American republic finds herself in 2022.
Ok, politics over. I’ll now go back to writing about Tolkien.
