During his recent campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump made it clear that he fully intended to become a dictator on day one of his presidency. Then, a few days ago, he confirmed that as soon as he becomes president, he intends to declare a “national emergency” to justify his use of the military establishment to round up and deport an estimated 13 million immigrants living here in the United States without official permission.
I know that it’s not considered a politic thing to do to bring up acts committed by German leader Adolf Hitler. But I disagree. When it comes to dictatorship, I think most everyone would agree that Hitler sets the standard. Thus, if a ruler does something that Hitler did, I think that a presumption arises that that act should be viewed with some suspicion. Therefore, sometimes such a comparison can be helpful.
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When I read that Trump intended to declare a “national emergency” in order to exercise extraordinary powers that he could not otherwise legally exercise, what came immediately to my mind was the Enabling Act.
When terrorists fire-bombed the Reichstag, Hitler went to the German parliament, declared that there was a “national emergency” involving terrorism and communism, and sought the grant of extraordinary emergency powers. If the Reichstag had voted against him, he could not have exercised such powers, at least not legally.
Hitler promised that the grant of “emergency” powers would be only “temporary.” As soon as the emergency was over, the powers could be taken away from him.
The Reichstag agreed to give Hitler the “temporary” emergency powers he sought. The legislators did that with the Enabling Act, which was enacted on March 23, 1933. That was many years before Hitler would implement the Holocaust.
One big problem is that these extraordinary emergency powers enabled Hitler to consolidate power so that by the time the Enabling Act was set to expire, it was too late to stop his permanent dictatorial rule. With his skillful use of the military and the Gestapo, he was able to ensure that resistance to his dictatorial rule was futile.
Interestingly, however, whenever the Enabling Act (or a renewal of it) was set to expire, Hitler would dutifully ask the Reichstag for another renewal of the law. He did this all the way to the day he died.
Trump is not dumb. He knows that “emergencies” have always been the time-honored way for rulers to exercise and consolidate power. In fact, our Founding Fathers and our American ancestors understood that principle as well. That’s why they provided no emergency exception in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They knew that that if they provided an emergency exception, it would effectively nullify the concept of limited and restricted powers of the Constitution.
It’s important to recognize that there is a difference between what Trump is doing compared to what Hitler did. Hitler went to the legislative branch of the German government and sought the grant of emergency extraordinary powers. Trump isn’t doing that. Instead, he wants to use a law previously enacted by Congress that enables him to decree a “national emergency” and then to exercise “emergency” powers — powers that entail the use of the military.
You can count on the military-intelligence establishment to follow orders and do whatever Trump orders them to do. As far as they are concerned, when they follow the president’s orders, they are fulfilling their vow to support and defend the Constitution.
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Moreover, the possibility that the federal judiciary will declare Trump’s “national emergency” decree to violate the Constitution is, in my opinion, virtually nil. That’s because Trump’s power grab involves the military, and the federal courts have long been loathe to buck anything that involves the national-security establishment.
Our American ancestors fiercely opposed large, permanent military-intelligence establishments, which they called “standing armies,” because they considered them to be the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of a citizenry. (See my article “The Dangers of a Standing Army.”) In his Farewell Address, President Dwight Eisenhower pointed out that the new governmental system that 20th-century Americans adopted — i.e., a “national-security state” or what he called the “military-industrial-complex” — posed a grave threat to the rights and liberties of the American people.
Of course, there will be plenty of Americans who will be cheering Trump’s “emergency” decree and his use of the U.S. military-intelligence establishment to ferret out and rid our nation of the “illegals” and the “invaders,” just as there were multitudes of Germans cheering the Enabling Act and Hitler’s use of the military establishment and the Gestapo to keep the German people “safe” from the terrorists and the communists. In the process, they will be celebrating the destruction of their own rights and liberties.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
