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Presidency

The Rise of the American Imperial President

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“The presidency will survive. The real question is what leads American presidents into the imperial temptation. When the American presidency conceives itself as the appointed savior of a world in which mortal danger requires rapid and incessant deployment of men, weapons, and decisions behind a wall of secrecy, power rushes from Capitol Hill to the White ... [click for more]

Trump and the Right to #Resist

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Since Donald Trump’s election, it has become fashionable for his opponents to use a #Resist hashtag on their social media postings. Public demonstrations have become more fashionable than at any time since the Vietnam War. Federal agencies are actively working to thwart the Trump administration; the Obama holdover chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even refused to vacate ... [click for more]

Donald Trump as Carnival Hawker and His Leftist Enemies

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Politics has a strange influence on people. People who in their daily lives seem to act quite normal are driven into various forms of madness by politics. For instance, I have friends and acquaintances on both the political Right and Left, with whom totally normal conversations and interactions may be had — unless it turns to politics. Donald Trump is ... [click for more]

TGIF: The War of 1812 Was the Health of the State, Part 1

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Part 1 | Part 2 In 1918, having watched in horror as his Progressive friends gleefully jumped onto Woodrow Wilson’s war wagon, Randolph Bourne penned the immortal words: “War is the health of the state.” As he explained it, The republican State has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has ... [click for more]

Obama: Dictator or Monarch?

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As part of his strategy of shifting blame for the sequester onto Republicans, President Obama told reporters that his hands were politically tied. He stated, “I am not a dictator, I’m the president.” In other words, he could not bypass Congress to unilaterally impose his will. And yet this is precisely what Obama has been doing for years. He has ... [click for more]

His Majesty Obama and the Debt Ceiling

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President Obama may be poised to claim an unprecedented executive power. Or not. It depends on whether you credit official denials from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney or public statements from high-ranking Democrats. The monarchical power in question is the ability to raise the debt ceiling at will. It involves bypassing the House of Representatives, which currently has ... [click for more]