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Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross
Many are worried that we will lose our democracy if Trump is elected to a second term.
Folks, we lost our democracy a long time ago. We just kept on talking like we still had one because we didn't want to face reality.
One of the most fundamental powers of the people in a democracy is the exercise of the war power by the people's legislative representatives in Congress. The people lost that power in 1950 when President Harry Truman launched into the Korean War without the required declaration of war from Congress. There hasn't been one since.
The democracies of ancient Israel, Greece and Rome, as well as our own up until the Korean War, understood that executive branch "judges" (Israel), "archons" (Greece), "consuls" (Rome) and "presidents" (America) would be happy to exclusively exercise the war power themselves if the people allowed them to do so, because that power enables them to single handedly turn the nation in whatever new constitutional direction they want. War is simply that disruptive to democratic society.
For example, the people stood around watching after the war power was taken away from them in the 1950s. Consequently, in the 1960s and 1970s America's national government leaders and culture gurus were then able to head off into a new social, cultural and economic direction which included no-fault adultery, no-fault divorce, late-term abortion, jagged-edge pornography, legalized gambling, rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment, decriminalization of much of white collar and blue collar crime, monopoly in industry and unregulated interest rates in banking, and implementation of Jim Crow in big city policing, just for starters.
But don't get me wrong. There is still more to lose in 2024. If Donald Trump is re-elected, we will be losing our independent judiciary, our professional and non-partisan federal workforce, honest civics and history instruction in public schools, adherence to treaty obligations and respect for international law, uncontested voting rights for minorities and reasonable immigration rights for newcomers. We risk losing whatever we have left of non-partisan education, homeland security, public health, local government, economic mobility, justice, equality and just about anything and everything else good, wise and true.
So, what do we have then today, if not democracy? We have an aristocracy that has taken over the people's Congress, an oligarchy that has taken over the people's Supreme Court and an autocracy that has taken over the people's executive branch. Each of those branches belong to the people, and our "original" or real, authentic, Constitution has abundant provisions in it to ensure that the three branches continue to belong to, that is, are controlled by the people of the nation and states. But since our people have no idea what is in the Constitution, that makes it easy for usurpers to create whatever kind of government they want, which now includes three new systems of government all competing for supreme power in the land.
The Constitution is clear that the Congress and state legislatures are the supreme governing bodies of the land. However, right now it seems the court has positioned itself in first place in policy-making power, with the President in second place and Congress in last place. If Trump is re-elected, the President will muscle out both the court and the Congress for first place in policy-making power.
The Congress gradually turned into an aristocracy when the people stood by as political parties brushed aside term limits and pushed for life-time re-election of party members to legislative power.
The Court turned into an oligarchy when it gradually departed from "originalist" interpretation and embraced legislative style "precedents" in legal decision-making, thus trashing the Constitution's sophisticated prescription for organization and operation of the government.
The executive branch turned itself into an autocracy with a series of power grabs beginning with theft of the war power from the people in 1950 and continuing with the gradual usurpation of the law-making power, the revenue raising power and the treaty finalization power.
If you ask the citizens on the street about any of this, you will get a "deer-in-the-headlight" look that confirms our people still don't know anything about what is going on in government today. It will continue to be easy, then, for bad people to steal the remaining crumbs of democracy away from those who still do have a healthy respect for republican government.