Is It Always Unconstitutional for the President to Refuse to Enforce the Law?

by Gerard Emershaw

As discussed in a previous column, Senator Ted Cruz has recently published a list of 76 alleged abuses of power by President Barack Obama. Among these alleged abuses of power is President Obama’s refusal to prosecute violations of drug laws involving certain mandatory minimum sentences. This raises the question of whether it is always wrong for the President to refuse to enforce a lawfully enacted act of Congress. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” While the federal government seems to have forgotten that it is the Congress and not the President, the executive regulatory agencies, or the federal courts which may legislate, it is clear that the major role of the President domestically is to enforce duly enacted federal laws.

However, the President takes an oath which states: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” What happens if the President views a duly enacted act of Congress as being unconstitutional? What if his mandate to execute laws and his oath to defend the Constitution are at odds?

Imagine that Congress passes a law that bans Christianity. Or passes a law that requires the military to confiscate all guns held by American civilians. Or passes a law that mandates the confiscation of all land owned by civilians in the United States. Does the President have a duty to enforce such laws? Is it only the Supreme Court which has the power to declare a law unconstitutional? Is it only the states which have the right to nullify laws passed by Congress?

In the case of the refusal to prosecute certain federal drug crimes involving mandatory minimum sentences, what if President Obama is doing that because he views it as an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers to allow the legislative branch to usurp the authority of the judicial branch regarding specific criminal sentencing? Is this any different than if he would rightly refuse to uphold the hypothetical despotic and unconstitutional laws mentioned previously?

Is there anything in the Constitution which mandates that the President or any other elected federal official must do something which is unconstitutional? Are the Constitution and the Republic which it serves both not safer if all elected federal officials defend the Constitution even if it means not carrying out a law which they believe—rightly or wrongly—to be unconstitutional? Is it even possible for the President to faithfully execute every law even if none are unconstitutional? Does the federal government have the money or manpower to do so? Are all duly enacted laws necessarily consistent? Can they all even be faithfully enforced?

A much bigger problem with the Commander-in-Chief in recent decades has been the President doing things which he knows are unconstitutional rather than refusing to do things which he believes are unconstitutional. If President Obama and all future presidents would concentrate on defending the Constitution, even if their Constitutional interpretations turned out to be erroneous, if these interpretations are sincere and in good faith, then the country and its citizens would be much better off.

Does Ted Cruz Consider President Obama’s Military Action in Libya Unlawful?

by Gerard Emershaw

Republican Texas Senator and likely presidential hopeful Ted Cruz recently released a report in which he details 76 alleged abuses of  power by President Barack Obama. Many of the items on Cruz’s list are undeniable abuses of executive power such as the extrajudicial killing of Americans overseas by drones without due process, the continuation of aid to Egypt despite it being against American law to give aid to military juntas involved in coups, and treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy.

What is most shocking is not what appears on Senator Cruz’s list but what does not appear anywhere on it. Despite mentioning President Obama’s reference to the Fort Hood shooting as workplace violence rather than as an act of terrorism, Senator fails to mention President Obama’s unconstitutional military action in Libya. If the biggest issue with the President was a matter of semantics, things would sure be peaceful. However, President Obama egregiously violated the Constitution which mandates that only Congress may declare war. President Obama launched his so called kinetic military action in Libya without the approval of Congress. The War Powers Resolution of 1973—which is itself likely unconstitutional—gave the President the limited power to introduce American military force overseas “in the absence of a declaration of war”:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

Qaddafi and the Libyan government had not declared war against the United States. Congress did not give specific statutory authorization for President Obama’s kinetic military action against Libya. And there was no national emergency or anything even resembling an imminent attack planned by Libya against the United States. Therefore, President Obama’s military intervention in Libya—which was the catalyst which caused the blowback that led to the tragic murder of four Americans in Benghazi—was unconstitutional. In fact, if any actions performed in office by President Obama have been deserving of impeachment, his actions against Libya have.

Why is it that Senator Cruz does not believe that President Obama’s Libyan actions were unlawful abuses of power? With Senator Cruz shaping up to be a serious future contender for the Republican presidential nomination, this is an important question. It suggests that Senator Cruz believes that the president has the constitutional authority to wage war without the approval of Congress. If so, that means that he may be no different in his outlook on foreign policy and the Constitution than President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

It seems unlikely that this was a mere omission on Senator Cruz’s part. After all, if his list includes the complaint that members of President Obama’s staff owe back taxes, then it is clear that he has pretty much cleared the decks and mentioned every complaint that he had with the Commander-in-Chief. This makes it appear likely that Senator Cruz may be a neoconservative posing as a Tea Partier. While Senator Cruz rightly opposed using the American military directly in support of Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels, he did propose that the United States military should invade Syria in order to secure and destroy its chemical weapons.

Unconstitutional interventionist foreign policy has been one of the most problematic parts of President Obama’s disastrous presidency. If Senator Cruz is ultimately an interventionist who believes in the unconstitutional neocon idea of the Imperial President, then he should admit it. If not, he should add President Obama’s Libyan misadventure as the 77th item on his list.   

Why Does the Government Fear Deflation?

by Gerard Emershaw

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has said that the United States economy is still in need of stimulus because unemployment and inflation are well short of the Federal Reserve’s goals. Yellen claims that the inflation rate is below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

Inflation hurts the average American consumer. The prices of goods and services became more expensive. The Federal Reserve’s “printing” of money has destroyed the value of the dollar over the decades, eroding up to 95% of its purchasing power. Why is this a good thing? Even if it is a good thing, is it true that there is virtually no inflation? The Federal Reserve uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Core CPI (Consumer Price Index) as its measurement of inflation. The Core CPI does not include prices of food and fuel. Without taking these important economic factors into account, how can anyone be sure what the inflation level is? If the rate of inflation were to be measured in the same way that it was calculated in 1990 before the federal government began hiding the true inflation rate, it would be 5% and not under 2%.

The Federal Reserve and the federal government in general are fans of inflation. Deflation is what they fear and dread. The worst thing that they can imagine is that the prices of goods and services should fall. Imagine the horror if all of a sudden the dollar could buy more. Imagine the evils that would arise if suddenly struggling American families could put more food on the table for the same amount of money. Nearly 15% of Americans are food insecure—including approximately 25% of black and Hispanic households. Imagine the apocalypse that would arise if the working poor could afford more food and worry less about their families being food insecure. The horror! The horror!

Deflation is bad. Or at least that’s what the Federal Reserve, the federal government, and economists like Paul Krugman tell us. Paul Krugman is a genius. At least that is what he and the left-wing media constantly tell us. Paul Krugman is such an enlightened Keynesian that he believes the magic bullet to save the economy is an alien invasion: “If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months.” Given that Mr. Krugman has apparently read the graphic novel Watchmen or perhaps has watched a few too many “Twilight Zone” episodes, of course he knows what he is talking about.

Mr. Krugman believes that deflation is bad:

So first of all: when people expect falling prices, they become less willing to spend, and in particular less willing to borrow. After all, when prices are falling, just sitting on cash becomes an investment with a positive real yield– Japanese bank deposits are a really good deal compared with those in America—and anyone considering borrowing, even for a productive investment, has to take account of the fact that the loan will have to repaid in dollars that are worth more than the dollars you borrowed. If the economy is doing well, all this can be offset by just keeping interest rates low; but if the economy isn’t doing well, even a zero rate may not be low enough to achieve full employment.

And when that happens, the economy may stay depressed because people expect deflation, and deflation may continue because the economy remains depressed. That’s the deflationary trap we keep worrying about.

He must be right. After all, The New York Times believes that Paul Krugman is a genius, so he must be. Plus, he came up with that brilliant idea to spend money to build up arms to defend against imaginary little green men. That idea is even more brilliant than Keynes’ idea to save the economy by paying workers to dig holes and then fill them in again. Given that Krugman is correct, it is true that American consumers have not bought laptops and tablets, flat screen TVs, or smartphones. These high-tech items have been getting both better and less expensive. Therefore, it is the case that most Americans are still using their Commodore 64s, still watching their black and white console televisions with rabbit ears, and still communicating with soup cans connected by strings. Since they know such high-tech goods will drop in price, they will defer such purchases. Perhaps indefinitely. Wait. These items are popular? Actually, they are becoming rather ubiquitous. Given that Krugman is such a genius and must be correct, it would be folly for a retail chain like Walmart to advertise a policy of falling prices. If widgets are advertised by Walmart as having “falling prices,” then consumers will put off buying widgets. After all, they’ll be cheaper tomorrow. So, of course, Walmart must be nearing bankruptcy since consumers will not spend money if they even suspect prices may be lower tomorrow. Somehow, Walmart earned $17 billion in profits in 2013.

It appears that Americans will spend money even if prices are falling. In general, the American consumer will nearly always spend money—whether he or she has it or not. If anything, lower prices will likely cause them to spend even more money than they normally do. After all, many Americans have the bad habit of buying things not because they need them, but simply because they are on sale. If anything, deflation would increase demand and increase spending.

Krugman also believes that deflation is bad because it increases the burden of debtors:

A second effect: even aside from expectations of future deflation, falling prices worsen the position of debtors, by increasing the real burden of their debts. Now, you might think this is a zero-sum affair, since creditors experience a corresponding gain. But as Irving Fisher pointed out long ago, debtors are likely to be forced to cut their spending when their debt burden rises, while creditors aren’t likely to increase their spending by the same amount. So deflation exerts a depressing effect on spending by raising debt burdens – which, as Fisher also points out, can lead to another kind of vicious circle, in which depressed spending because of rising real debt leads to further deflation.

Out of control spiraling deflation would certainly not be a good thing. That would cause debtors to be unable to service their debts, and this would lead to massive bankruptcies. However, nobody is talking about that. If one assumes that all deflation is dangerous deflation of this kind, then in fairness, one must also assume that all inflation is Weimer Republic wheelbarrow hyperinflation. With mild deflation, the increase in real debt of debtors will be offset in good part by the fact that the debtors will be able to purchase more with their money. This will allow them to have more money to apply to their debts since they need to spend less on goods and services. Mild deflation will also encourage investments of all sorts. Those who do defer spending are likely to invest their money—even if that investment is as simple as placing money in an interest bearing bank account. Some will win and some will lose in the end. But that is always the case. Some debtors will be burdened. However, creditors will earn more money and will have more money to spend and invest. Some of those lucky creditors may even be Kurgan’s alien friends.

Finally, Krugman worries about falling wages. This was a constant worry during the Great Depression. And in fact, it was President Herbert Hoover and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unwillingness to allow wages to drop along with prices that exacerbated the Great Depression. According to Krugman:

Finally, in a deflationary economy, wages as well as prices often have to fall—and it’s a fact of life that it’s very hard to cut nominal wages—there’s downward nominal wage rigidity. What this means is that in general economies don’t manage to have falling wages unless they also have mass unemployment, so that workers are desperate enough to accept those wage declines.

This assumes that the economy will be more or less stagnant. However, regular mild deflation will likely spur the economy as consumers have more money to spend and invest. Wage levels are always in great part affected by unemployment levels. When the economy has high levels of unemployment, wages will drop as there are more workers willing to do the job for less. However, at times of near “full employment,” wages inevitably rise because workers who can fill job openings become more scarce. Therefore, deflation is unlikely to harm workers. Any drop in wages will be offset by a drop in prices. As employers’ dollars have more buying power, it is also likely than many of them will hire additional workers. This falling wage fear is a delusional relic of the Progressive Era.

Why do the Federal Reserve, the federal government, and statist economists like Paul Krugman actually favor inflation? The answer is simple. Inflation allows the government to play its economic shell games. It allows the federal government to “tax” the people through the mechanism of the Federal Reserve. It allows the federal government to spend money on its welfare/warfare empire without actually having to openly raise taxes. Inflation makes banksters like those behind the Federal Reserve even wealthier by redistributing money from American citizens to the banks and their cronies. In the long run, as Keynes said, we are all dead. But in the slightly shorter run, inflation makes more citizens dependent on the state by draining the value of their dollars. This means that more Americans will rely on government largesse, and as a result, more Americans will be loyal. As this happens, fewer will protest against unconstitutional wars of aggression, mass illegal domestic surveillance, or any other type of tyranny. Inflation enslaves the people. All statists ultimately love that idea.

In Defense of the Electoral College

by Gerard Emershaw

Every four years during a presidential election year, blowhard pundits—typically of the neo-progressive persuasion—decry American’s electoral college which awards presidential candidates all of a given state’s electoral votes in a winner take all fashion instead of proportionally. This leads to the very real possibility that the winner of the popular vote will not be elected president. This has happened four times in American history—John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and George W. Bush in 2000 all became president without winning the popular vote over their competitors. Some see this as unfair and anti-democratic. The organization National Popular Vote is attempted to rectify this alleged evil in the American federal electoral system. Ten states have already pledged to award their votes not to the winner of the popular vote within the state but to the winner of the national popular vote in the presidential election. It does seem plausible that the winner of a presidential election should be the winner of the popular vote. But is this preferable to the Electoral College system currently employed?

States are free to decide how its presidential electoral votes are awarded. A state is free to award them winner take all, winner and loser take proportionately, winner of national majority take all, or taller candidate take all. However, a state that wishes to deviate from the traditional winner take all based upon popular vote within the state is doing itself qua state and its citizens qua state citizens a disservice. The United States was formed as a union of individual and sovereign states joining together. The state guarantees that its sovereignty is more likely to be respected by the federal government by employing the traditional electoral college method and by ensuring that the Tenth Amendment is always respected by the federal government. If presidents were to be elected merely by national popular vote, then states lose their sovereignty and individual characters. This would lead presidential candidates and political parties to ignore smaller states. It would also be yet one more dangerous step toward eliminating the federalist system. Tyrants have traditionally eliminated federalism within totalitarian nations. The Nazis, Soviets, and Maoists all did this. Eliminating the electoral college system will be yet one more step toward eliminating states as a vital check and balance against federal power. The Seventeenth Amendment, removing the right to elect Senators from state legislators and giving it to the voters was one step towards the neutralization of states as a check and balance against federal tyranny. The gradual weakening of the Tenth Amendment has been another. With the three branches of the federal government increasingly unwilling to act as checks and balances against one another, eventually a loss of federalism will mean that a triumvirate of federal dictatorial branches is cooperating to divide up the power to tyrannize Americans.

Those states that are so willing to trade their own sovereignty and that of their citizens—Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Hawaii—are by and large “blue” states. It is apparent that the powers that be in these Democratic strongholds care more about the future of their political party than the future of their citizens. It is more important to them that another election similar to Bush defeating Gore does not happen than that the sovereignty of their state and citizenry be defended. This is partisan cynicism and is dangerous to the health of the Republic.

Psychiatry and Social Control

by Gerard Emershaw

The FDA is currently weighing whether to ban “electrical stimulation devices” used by mental health professionals to modify aggressive or self-injurious behavior in patients suffering from severe emotional problems or developmental disorders such as autism. Critics of these devices have compared them with shock collars used on dogs. The devices are applied to the arms or legs and deliver a two-second shock that has been compared to a “hard pinch.” These devices are rarely used, but they have been widely employed at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts—a residential facility which treats children and adults with severe developmental disabilities. Former Rotenberg students have likened this “aversion therapy” to “torture, in the plainest sense of the word.” One former student said it feels “like a thousand bees stinging you in the same place for a few seconds.” Rotenberg students have claimed that these devices have burned them and caused them to feel anxiety, fear, and depression and that the devices were employed to give shocks “for things like noncompliance with staff direction, talking too much and being disruptive in class.”

The most troubling thing here is the very idea that punishment someone constitutes therapeutic treatment. Punishment is meant to do harm, so how can such practitioners honor the Hippocratic Oath? Forms of aversion therapy have been employed in the past in the dubious effort to treat homosexuals. Such treatment will forever be associated with the Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange based upon the Anthony Burgess novel. The iconic image of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex being forced to look at violent images while being sickened by drugs and forced to listen to his beloved Beethoven will forever be burned into the public consciousness.

Psychiatry seems to be alarmingly becoming more a tool of social control than a therapeutic discipline. Psychiatry was widely abused in the Soviet Union and used as a means of stifling dissent. Political dissent was defined arbitrarily as a form of mental illness and treated as such. As the United States becomes increasingly authoritarian, it is alarming to see how the psychiatric profession is becoming more like that of Soviet psychiatry.

An astounding 19% of American boys between the ages of 14–17 have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and about 10% are taking medications such as Ritalin for it. Ten percent of high school girls have been likewise diagnosed. Between 2007–2012 sales of stimulants such as Ritalin to treat ADHD have more than doubled from $4 billion to $9 billion. At some point, the public education system transformed overly energetic and fidgety students into mentally ill patients. If students are not “normal”—e.g. they will not sit quietly and do exactly as they are told—then they are sick and need to be medicated. There is no telling what effect generations of Ritalin zombies will have as they enter adulthood in greater numbers. Judging by the increasingly poor academic performance of American public school students, this treatment of ADHD as if it is an epidemic has not been particularly helpful.

A symbol of American psychiatry’s move away from medicine and toward political control can be seen in the disorder Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). ODD is a personality disorder defined by a persistent and disruptive pattern of  negativity, hostility, disobedience, and hostility by children toward adult authority figures. What is even more troubling is that there is some movement within the psychiatric establishment to characterize ODD as an adult affliction as well as a childhood personality disorder. If Adult ODD manages to gain acceptance as a legitimate disorder, it will only be a matter of time before it is used in Soviet-fashion to label dissidents, protesters, and government critics as mentally ill. One wonders what forms of psychiatric medications or “aversion therapy” might be used upon such individuals.

The Department of Homeland Security seems intent on categorizing difficult school students not just as mentally ill, but as terrorists. On April 15, 2014, Lisa O. Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, delivered a speech entitled “Countering Violent Extremism and the Power of Community” at the Harvard Kennedy School Forum. Ms. Monaco spoke of American youth as if they were a gang of ticking time bombs or Al Qaeda sleeper agents. She claimed that 80% of cases involving “homegrown violent extremists” involved “warning signs” that had been observed by members of the community. These “warning signs” were allegedly subtle:

What kinds of behaviors are we talking about? For the most part, they’re not related directly to plotting attacks. They’re more subtle. For instance, parents might see sudden personality changes in their children at home—becoming confrontational. Religious leaders might notice unexpected clashes over ideological differences. Teachers might hear a student expressing an interest in traveling to a conflict zone overseas. Or friends might notice a new interest in watching or sharing violent material.

Despite the best unconstitutional efforts of the NSA, FBI, and CIA:

The government is rarely in a position to observe these early signals, so we need to do more to help communities understand the warning signs, and then work together to intervene before an incident can occur, while always respecting our core commitment to protecting privacy and civil liberties. During the past several years, that’s what we’ve attempted to do.

So, the government not only may wishes to declare difficult adolescents mentally ill, but now it wishes to suggest that moody teens may be future bin Ladens.

Ultimately, the more Americans that the federal government can stigmatize as being “mentally ill,” the more Americans whose rights it can take away. The government will attempt to violate rights such as the Second Amendment right to bear arms from such individuals. It will not be a shock if one day the growing numbers of American students diagnosed with ADHD will be placed on lists which prohibits them from legally owning firearms. When any part of the medical profession is coming so perilously close to becoming a cadre of social engineers instead of a community of healers, it is time for conscientious practitioners to champion reforms to get the field back on track. Such reform in the psychiatric profession is long overdue.

New Constitution?

by Gerard Emershaw

“You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head”

Lennon/McCartney

“I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around”

Townshend

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wants to amend the Constitution. Among the tweaks to “the law of the land” that the elderly jurist wishes to make are major changes to the First and Second amendments. In his latest book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, Justice Stevens argues for the following amendments to the Constitution. He wants the First Amendment to remove protection against “reasonable” campaign spending limits at both the federal and state levels. He wants the Second Amendment to be rewritten to state that only members of the state militia have the right to bear arms. He wants an amendment to prohibit political gerrymandering to create “safe” Congressional seats. He wants to eliminate the anti-commandeering rule by which the federal government may not force the states to carry out federal government activities. He wants to eliminate sovereign immunity for violations of constitutional rights. He wants to amend the Eighth Amendment to state that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In general, Justice Stevens’ suggestions would lead to fewer rather than greater rights. Americans would have their natural rights greatly diminished by his suggested changes to the First and Second Amendments. Campaign finance contribution limits are unnecessary and violate the natural right to free speech. The natural right to bear arms is a necessary safeguard against tyranny which cannot be infringed without inviting inevitable totalitarianism. States would come dangerously close to becoming slaves of the federal government if the anti-commandeering rule were eliminated. Eliminating sovereign immunity is a good idea, but it ought to be unnecessary since that concept is not enumerated within the Constitution. Limiting the use of political gerrymandering would be a good idea, but certainly not at the cost of the other rights that Justice Stevens wishes to eliminate. Furthermore, a Constitution-sized government is one in which political parties would have less reason to gerrymander, and the gerrymandering they did do would have less of a practical effect. Stevens is also likely correct about wishing for Eighth Amendment clarification. The government should not have more rights than the people. If a citizen can only kill in the defense of self or others from imminent harm, then the same is true of the government. Therefore, capital punishment should be eliminated.

Many individuals all over the political spectrum have suggested that the United States ought to have a new Constitutional Convention. The question is whether this would be an improvement. Would this be likely to lead to more rights being protected or fewer? Activists of all stripes would bitterly contest one another in the crafting of a new constitution. Would civil libertarians be able to win the day or would statists? Any compromise concerning natural rights is unacceptable. If civil libertarians wish Americans to be completely free while statists wish Americans to be complete slaves of the state, how would a compromise in which Americans wind up being merely half enslaved by the state be a positive outcome? The major political machines of both party have become hopelessly statist. On the Democratic Party side, the Blue Dogs and fiscal conservatives—of which the unfairly economically maligned Presidents Carter and Clinton were good exemplars—are gone. Neo-progressives rule the party roost. These Wilsonians are the architects of the Nanny state, fascistic wars of aggression, the Social Security Ponzi scheme, and Obamacare. These are the individuals who champion FDR’s collectivist “Second Bill of Rights.” On the Republican side, true conservatives have long been dominated by progressive RINOs and Trotskyite warmongering neoconservatives who care not about deficits or sane fiscal policy as long as the military-industrial complex, oil companies, and U.S.-friendly Middle East governments benefit. Is there any doubt that if these two nasty political machines began compromising, the only true losers would be the American people?

Even if the Constitution were changed to fit the will of the people, it is not clear that natural rights would not be lost. A poll taken in 2000 found that only about half of the American public would vote for the United States Constitution. A 2013 poll found that 34% of Americans believe that the First Amendment goes too far in guaranteeing freedom. According to Gallup, nearly half of all Americans believe that gun control laws should be more strict than they are now.

A new Constitution would inevitably wind up being a legal version of New Coke. What is the point of that when the United States Constitution is Classic Coke? The problem with the Constitution is that it is being obeyed less and less by the government. Time and again, when there is a problem, it is not due to a deficiency in the document but a deficiency in the government’s willingness to be bound by the document. What is the point of either a New Constitution or the current Constitution if the government refuses to obey it?

The true answer is for the American people to hold their elected leaders accountable. The voters must hold their elected representatives’ feet to the fire. Primary them and vote them out if they do not obey the Constitution. Deny support to candidates and political parties which are not true to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. The problem is with our elected officials and with us for putting up with them. There is no significant problem with the Constitution.

Wild Horses

by Gerard Emershaw

Wild horses couldn't drag me away
Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day

Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

In the wake of the recent Bundy ranch standoff, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is facing a wave of bad publicity. To make matters even worse, the BLM has recently been involved in a situation that has angered animal rights activists and horse lovers. The BLM rounded up a herd of horses that roamed free on federal land in northwest Wyoming and gave the horses to Wyoming state officials. In turn, the Wyoming state officials sold the 41 horses that had been rounded up to Bouvry Exports, a slaughter house in Canada, for a grand total of $1,640—$40 per animal.

Wild horses are protected by the federal government. However, the government declared that these Wyoming horses were not wild horses despite the fact that they were descendants of stray rodeo horses from the 1970s. The reason these horses were not considered wild is that they had not interbred with other wild horses.

The slaughter of horses is a big industry in Canada and Mexico, but it had effectively been banned in the United States since 2006 when the federal government ended the funding for a program of regulators or horse slaughterhouses. Congress has recently lifted the ban, and many are planning to open horse-slaughter plants around the country. There is a large international market for horse meat, which costs 40% less than beef.

Several issues are at play within the Wyoming horse slaughter story. First, the federal government has no business owning large tracts of land. In fact, owning such land is unconstitutional. The Constitution permits the federal government to purchase and control land within states only “for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.” There are no “needful Buildings” in the wilds of Wyoming or in any other similar areas in other states. Even if it were not unconstitutional, the owning of land by the federal government should be opposed for pragmatic reasons. Government ownership of land leads to the spoil of the commons. Since there is no true owner, federally owned lands often fail to ruin. This is why devastating forest fires on federal lands are so common. Federal ownership of land also leads to corporatist arrangements by which politically connected corporations may use the land via a permit for purposes such as livestock grazing or oil drilling. Thus, federal government ownership of land leads to inefficient and unfair uses of the land.

If all land in the country were privately owned, then the herds of wild horses—including those wild horses which the federal government in its Socrates-like wisdom arbitrarily deems to not be wild enough to be wild—would all be privately owned. Some owners of these horses would simply allow them to roam wildly on their private lands. Some might even attempt to profit by making these lands into private preserves or parks where people could pay to observe and enjoy these horses. Other others might round up the wild horses and sell them to the highest bidder. Some of these horses would be bought by horse protection groups seeking to save their lives. Some would be bought by ranchers or the like seeking to attempt to domesticate them. However, many of the horses would likely be sold for slaughter.

This in turn raises the question about horse-slaughter in the United States. It was illegal, then it was effectively banned, and now it is legal again. Should the practice be legal or illegal in the United States? Given that slaughtering horses does not violate the natural rights of any American citizens or residents or any other human beings, it seems that the “crime” of horse slaughter is victimless. It appears prima facie that there can be no legal objection to slaughtering horses that one owns. With the price of beef reaching all time highs, more economical sources of meat are going to become highly sought after. While the morality of meat eating can be debated, the legality of it from a libertarian perspective cannot.

But from an ethical and psychological perspective, is there a line that must be drawn in terms of the consumption of meat? It is obvious that the slaughter of humans against their will for the purpose of consuming them as meat violates the natural rights of those individuals. But what about if some private entity wished to sell human meat as a Soylent Green delicacy and only made the corpses of willing human beings into meat? Should I be able to sell my body to be consumed as meat the same way that I can now donate my body to science? For many reasons, it seems unlikely that widespread cannibalism is going to occur within the human race. This is especially true in the West. Aside from the occasional Hannibal Lecter-like individual such as Jeffrey Dahmer, the vast majority of Americans have no desire to consume human flesh. However, if you craved human flesh, and I willed my body to you for the express purpose of having you feast upon my remains, it seems that the government should not interfere with this regardless of how distasteful it seems.

If the consumption of human flesh is even possibly permissible, then it seems that the same would be true of horse flesh. However, it is interesting to consider where Americans commonly draw the line. Even the most carnivorous Americans tend to believe that certain domestic animals are not to be consumer. For example, common pets such as cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, parrots and other companion birds as well as horses—which serve both as pets and as useful domestic worker animals. Cats have been useful for hundreds of years as mousers while many breeds of dog have proven useful as hunters, shepherds, guard animals, aids to the handicapped, etc. Some animals such as certain varieties of pigs as well as many other common farm animals are sometimes kept as pets and sometimes consumed as food. As distasteful as it may seem, there seems to be no justifiable reason why Americans should not be permitted to consume Shetland ponies, beagles, Persian cats, parakeets, hamsters, etc. However, it would be unsurprising if consuming certain domestic animals turned out to be psychologically harmful. While it may turn out that eating meat of any kind is unenlightened, it is even more likely that it says something very negative about a human being if he or she is willing to eat certain domesticated animals which are commonly friends and co-workers of human beings.