Warlord in Chief

By now, unless you've had your head in the sand, you've heard of ISIS (or ISIL). They are an 'extremest' terrorist organization operating in Syria and Iraq. They have been leaving a trail of destruction and death in their wake as they overtake cities that were once occupied by American forces. With the new 'threat' abroad, President Obama has decided that he may take action. As is custom for this President, he will not commit ground troops but instead intends to begin bombing Syria. With this new plan being tossed around, President Assad told President Obama to seek permission to begin bombing first. However, on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki emphatically rejected that condition, telling reporters "We're not going to ask permission from the Syrian regime."

Now you can think what you want about Assad, but we have just told him that we will not seek permission or even notify him when we start blowing up his country. It has now become the job of the President to send bombs to foreign nations to kill 'radical extremists' that currently pose no threat to American soil.  Also, no matter how much we do not approve of Assad, he is still the leader of Syria. We have created this tangled web of alliances with radical groups throughout the Middle East. We support guerrilla organizations and influence the overthrow of governments, inadvertently creating a power vacuum where these more radicalized groups come in and take control.

This outcome is what happens when the President himself has the power to essentially declare war. We have granted him the authority to bomb foreign nations and pick which foreign regimes to overthrow. This is not the role of the executive envisioned by the founders and that power is not to be found anywhere in the Constitution. And there is good reason for that, the modern presidency essentially has the power of the British monarch from the 1700s. This is exactly what the founders were trying to prevent.

We have created a new kind of Executive, one that the writers of the Constitution never imagined. The government we now possess is much similar to the government we broke away from. The powers granted to those who hold office far exceed their original limits.We have become what W. F. Buckley refers to as a 'crown' government. Or maybe more accurately what George Mason called an "elective monarchy." We have vested almost all power to one central office.

We have created an executive office that our Constitution was meant to prevent. The president is granted powers over social issues, economic affairs, as well as the US military. And amazingly, most of this usurpation of power only started 60-70 years ago. The modern presidency will likely only increase in power, therefore making our congressmen virtually useless. We are in a sense evolving backwards. We created a government that was divided and checked against each other, with the primary role going to congress to create laws. We broke away from a monarch that had excessive power over its people. In modern times instead of American's being ruled by a British monarch, we willingly vote in our own.