Dictatorship, Freedom, and Efficiency

by Gerard Emershaw

The United Nations’ chief climate official Christiana Figueres has recently claimed that China is dealing with climate change better than democratic nations. According to Figueres, this is because China has avoided some of the “legislative hurdles” that are present in the American system. These “legislative hurdles,” of course, are elected representatives in the House and Senate who often disagree, often debate, and often block legislation. China’s dictators can simply push through any “reforms” that they wish.

There is little or no reason to believe that climate change is a real problem. Global temperature appears to have stopped increasing over a decade and a half ago. However, the issue is bigger than that. Take any problem that you believe is genuine and grave. Maybe that problem is air and water pollution. Maybe it is cancer. Maybe it is childhood poverty. Maybe it is obesity. Maybe it is child pornography. It does not matter what scourge you have in mind. The issue is that a dictatorship will always be able to handle some specific problem like these in what might be deemed a more efficient manner. President Obama has often lamented not being a dictator for this very reason.

What a constitutional republican democracy like the United States might lose in the short term ability to deal with a problem most efficiently it more than makes up for with the stability and protection of individual rights that comes from being slow and less efficient legislatively. The checks and balances of the three branches of federal government against one another and the added check of state governments providing another bulwark against federal power provided by the Tenth Amendment guarantees that neither tyranny of the dictator nor tyranny of the majority will threaten the individual rights of all Americans. When it comes to legislating, the slower the better. If climate change were a real problem, having a federal government with the ability to quickly do drastic and draconian things such as banning the use of fossil fuels would threaten individual rights and threaten the nation as a whole. The American form of government allows cooler heads to prevail, and cooler heads are more likely to solve real problems. More importantly, a limited government that cannot easily infringe upon the natural rights of its citizens is less likely to create problems in the first place.

President Obama has recently threatened to again act like a dictator if Congress does not pass the economic legislation that he desires. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” the President warned, hinting that he would use executive orders and other means outside of Congress to establish policies. While executive orders have been commonly used by all presidents, the power to issue them does not appear among the enumerated powers of the President in Article II of the Constitution. Therefore, the President does not have the power to use them. This is especially true when the President uses an executive order in order to establish a pseudo-law which Congress could legislate but has chosen not to. Will President Obama use executive orders to reignite his failing administration? Will he use it to establish economic reforms, gun control, amnesty, climate change legislation, etc.? If he does attempt to do it, chances are an impotent Congress will do nothing to stop him.