bed” becomes “no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,” “no animal shall drink alcohol” becomes “no animal shall drink alcohol to excess,” and “no animal shall kill any other animal” becomes “no animal shall kill any other animal without cause.”
That’s why on this issue I agree with historian Kevin Gutzman, who says that those who would give us a “living” Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power.
During my public life I have earned the nickname Dr. No, a reference to my previous occupation as a physician combined with my willingness to stand against the entire Congress if necessary to vote no on some proposed measure. (I am told I have been the sole “no” vote in Congress more often than all other members of Congress put together.) As a matter of fact, I don’t especially care for this nickname, since it may give people the impression that I am a contrarian for its own sake, and that for some reason I simply relish saying no. In those no votes, as in all my congressional votes, I have thought of myself as saying yes to the Constitution and to freedom.
The Constitution has much to say to us regarding foreign policy, if we will only listen. For over half a century the two major parties have done their best to ignore what it has to say, especially when it comes to the initiation of hostilities. Both parties have allowed the president to exercise powers of which the Framers of the Constitution thought they had deprived him. And since both parties have been contemptuous of the Constitution’s allocation of war powers between the president and Congress, neither one—with very rare exceptions—ever calls the other out on it.
The Framers did not want the American president to resemble the British king, from whom they had separated just a few years earlier. Even Alexander Hamilton, who was known to be sympathetic toward the British model, was at pains in the
Federalist Papers
to point out a critical difference between the king and the president as envisioned by the Constitution:
The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the
declaring
of war and to the
raising
and
regulating
of fleets and armies—all of which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.
Whatever kind of evidence you want to examine, whether constitutional or historical, the verdict is clear: Congress was supposed to declare war, and the president in turn was to direct the war once it was declared. This rule was scrupulously observed throughout American history until 1950 and the Korean War. Short of a full-fledged declaration of war, in lesser conflicts Congress nevertheless authorized hostilities by statute. Any exceptions to this general rule involved military activities so minor and on such a small scale as hardly to be worth mentioning.
The Korean War was the great watershed in the modern presidential power grab in war-making. President Harry Truman sent Americans halfway around the world without so much as a nod in the direction of Congress. According to Truman, authorization from the United Nations to use force was quite sufficient, and rendered congressional consent unnecessary. (Apart from being dangerous, that idea is simply false: Article 43 of the United Nations Charter states that any United Nations authorization to use force must be subsequently referred to the governments of each nation “in accordance with their respective constitutional processes”; this principle was reaffirmed in the United
That’s why on this issue I agree with historian Kevin Gutzman, who says that those who would give us a “living” Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power.
During my public life I have earned the nickname Dr. No, a reference to my previous occupation as a physician combined with my willingness to stand against the entire Congress if necessary to vote no on some proposed measure. (I am told I have been the sole “no” vote in Congress more often than all other members of Congress put together.) As a matter of fact, I don’t especially care for this nickname, since it may give people the impression that I am a contrarian for its own sake, and that for some reason I simply relish saying no. In those no votes, as in all my congressional votes, I have thought of myself as saying yes to the Constitution and to freedom.
The Constitution has much to say to us regarding foreign policy, if we will only listen. For over half a century the two major parties have done their best to ignore what it has to say, especially when it comes to the initiation of hostilities. Both parties have allowed the president to exercise powers of which the Framers of the Constitution thought they had deprived him. And since both parties have been contemptuous of the Constitution’s allocation of war powers between the president and Congress, neither one—with very rare exceptions—ever calls the other out on it.
The Framers did not want the American president to resemble the British king, from whom they had separated just a few years earlier. Even Alexander Hamilton, who was known to be sympathetic toward the British model, was at pains in the
Federalist Papers
to point out a critical difference between the king and the president as envisioned by the Constitution:
The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the
declaring
of war and to the
raising
and
regulating
of fleets and armies—all of which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.
Whatever kind of evidence you want to examine, whether constitutional or historical, the verdict is clear: Congress was supposed to declare war, and the president in turn was to direct the war once it was declared. This rule was scrupulously observed throughout American history until 1950 and the Korean War. Short of a full-fledged declaration of war, in lesser conflicts Congress nevertheless authorized hostilities by statute. Any exceptions to this general rule involved military activities so minor and on such a small scale as hardly to be worth mentioning.
The Korean War was the great watershed in the modern presidential power grab in war-making. President Harry Truman sent Americans halfway around the world without so much as a nod in the direction of Congress. According to Truman, authorization from the United Nations to use force was quite sufficient, and rendered congressional consent unnecessary. (Apart from being dangerous, that idea is simply false: Article 43 of the United Nations Charter states that any United Nations authorization to use force must be subsequently referred to the governments of each nation “in accordance with their respective constitutional processes”; this principle was reaffirmed in the United
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