With military action taking place in Libya right now, the essential question must be asked: Is it even Constitutional? For those of you who don’t want to read more than a sentence or two, here’s the short answer. Absolutely not.

DELEGATED POWERS

The ninth and tenth amendments, while they didn’t add anything new, defined the Constitution. In short, they tell us that the federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers delegated to it in the Constitution…and nothing more. Everything else is either prohibited or retained by the states or people themselves.

What does this have to do with Libya? Well, whenever the federal government does anything, the first question should always be, “where in the Constitution is the authority to do this?” What follows here is an answer regarding American bombs being dropped on Libya.

WHO DECIDES?

Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution has been regularly cited as justification for the President to act with a seemingly free reign in the realm of foreign policy – including the initiation of foreign wars. But, it is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that lists the power to declare war, and this power is placed solely in the hands of Congress.

Article II, Section 2, on the other hand, refers to the President as the “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States.” What the founders meant by this clause was that once war was declared, it would then be the responsibility of the President, as the commander-in-chief, to direct the war.

Alexander Hamilton clarified this when he said that the President, while lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized.”

Thomas Jefferson reaffirmed this quite eloquently when, in 1801, he said that, as President, he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.”

In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the President’s 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 which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the legislature.”

James Madison warned us that the power of declaring war must be kept away from the executive branch when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

“The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”

WORDS HAVE MEANING

If, like any legal document, the words of the Constitution mean today just what they meant the moment it was signed, we must first look for the 18th Century meaning of the words used. Here’s a few common 18th-century definitions of the important words:

War: The exercise of violence against withstanders under a foreign command.
Declare: Expressing something before it is promised, decreed, or acted upon.
Invade: To attack a country; to make a hostile entrance

What does this all mean? Unless the country is being invaded, if congress does not declare war against another country, the president is constitutionally barred from waging it, no matter how much he desires to do so. Pre-emptive strikes and undeclared offensive military expeditions are not powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, and are, therefore, unlawful.

HOW IT APPLIES TODAY

Here’s the quick overview of how this all plays out:

• In Constitutional terms, the United States is currently at war with Libya.
• Libya is not invading the United States, nor has it threatened to do so.
• Congress has not declared war. Barack Obama did.

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Some would claim, and news articles are already reporting on it, that the 1973 war powers resolution authorizes the President to start a war as long as it’s reported to Congress within 48 hours. Then, Congress would have 60 days to authorize the action, or extend it.

The only question you should have to ask for this would be – “where in the Constitution is congress given the authority to change the constitution by resolution?”

It doesn’t. And that resolution, in and of itself, is a Constitutional violation. More on that in a future article, of course.

James Madison had something to say about such a plan when he wrote:

“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” [emphasis added]

War Powers resolution or no war powers resolution – without a Congressional declaration, the president is not authorized to start an offensive military campaign. Period.

The bottom line? By using US Military to begin hostilities with a foreign nation without a Congressional declaration of war, Barack Obama has committed a serious violation of the Constitution. While he certainly is not the first to do so in regards to war powers, it’s high time that he becomes the last.

by Thomas E. Woods, LewRockwell.com

We are long past the point at which constitutional arguments have much hope of restraining the American political class, either at home or abroad. They are still worth making, though, since they serve to show the two major parties’ contempt for American law and tradition.

Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution – which refers to the president as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” – has been interpreted to mean that the president may act with an essentially free hand in foreign affairs, or at the very least that he may send men into battle without consulting Congress. But what the framers meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack).

The Framers of the Constitution were abundantly clear in assigning to Congress what David Gray Adler has called “senior status in a partnership with the president for the purpose of conducting foreign policy.” Consider what the Constitution has to say about foreign affairs. Congress possesses the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” “to raise and support Armies,” to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” to “provide for the common Defense,” and even “to declare War.” Congress shares with the president the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the president himself, he is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs: he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he has the power to receive ambassadors.

At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates expressly disclaimed any intention to model the American executive exactly after the British monarchy. James Wilson, for example, remarked that the powers of the British king did not constitute “a proper guide in defining the executive powers. Some of these prerogatives were of a Legislative nature. Among others that of war & peace.” Edmund Randolph likewise contended that the delegates had “no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype.”

To repose such foreign-policy authority in the legislative rather than the executive branch of government was a deliberate and dramatic break with the British model of government with which they were most familiar, as well as with that of other nations, where the executive branch (in effect, the monarch) possessed all such rights, including the exclusive right to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution believed that history amply testified to the executive’s penchant for war. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.

James Wilson assured the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”

In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the president’s 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 which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.”

Abraham Lincoln famously explained the principle this way:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure…. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us” but he will say to you “be silent; I see it, if you don’t.”

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

According to John Bassett Moore, the great authority on international law who (among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of international law at Columbia University, “There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.”

In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,” he said, “therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”

The typical neoconservative response to this argument is to claim that the president has sent troops into battle hundreds of times without congressional authorization. A well-known neoconservative whose name I shall mercifully keep to myself made just this argument in his review of my Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

Let’s see how well the claim stands up.

Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as “altogether false.” John Adams “took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes.” (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)

Consider an interesting and revealing incident that occurred during the Quasi War. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. “In short,” writes Louis Fisher in summary, “congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress.”

Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.”

In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense”; Congress alone could authorize “measures of offense also.” Thus Jefferson told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”

Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. “Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate,” Fisher writes, “imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’”

Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an “intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve.”

The nineteenth century, on closer inspection, turns out not to provide the precedents for presidential warmaking that its proponents would prefer to see. We don’t see anything approaching the open-ended and truly staggering authority that neoconservatives would grant the president until the closing years of that century, and even then only in miniature.

Cornell University’s Walter LaFeber pinpoints the origins of modern presidential war powers in an obscure incident from 1900. In 1898 a group of anti-foreign Chinese fighters known to the West as the Boxers rose up in protest against foreign exploitation and extraterritorial privileges in their country. They targeted Christian missionaries and Chinese converts, as well as French and Belgian engineers. After the German minister was killed in 1900, several nations sent troops to restore order amid the growing terror. McKinley contributed 5,000 American troops. This apparently minor action, however, was pregnant with consequences, as LaFeber observes:

McKinley took a historic step in creating a new, twentieth-century presidential power. He dispatched the five thousand troops without consulting Congress, let alone obtaining a declaration of war, to fight the Boxers who were supported by the Chinese government…. Presidents had previously used such force against non-governmental groups that threatened U.S. interests and citizens. It was now used, however, against recognized governments, and without obeying the Constitution’s provisions about who was to declare war.

Now what of those “hundreds” of cases of presidential warmaking? This argument – surprise – originated with the U.S. government itself. At the time of the Korean War, a number of congressmen contended that “history will show that on more than 100 occasions in the life of this Republic the President as Commander in Chief has ordered the fleet or the troops to do certain things which involved the risk of war” without the consent of Congress. In 1966, in defense of the Vietnam War, the State Department adopted a similar line: “Since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior congressional authorization, starting with the ‘undeclared war’ with France (1798–1800).”

We have already seen that the war with France in no way lends support to those who favor broad presidential war powers. As for the rest, the great presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin pointed out that this lengthy list of alleged precedents consisted mainly of “fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like.”

The neoconservative argument, therefore, is based on ignorance or dishonesty. There is no third possibility. To support their position – although for obvious reasons they don’t put it quite this way – they are counting chases of cattle rustlers as examples of presidential warmaking, and as precedents for sending millions of Americans into war with foreign governments on the other side of the globe. No comment really seems necessary.

Consider, on the other hand, the words of Senator Robert A. Taft in 1951: “My conclusion, therefore, is that in the case of Korea, where a war was already under way, we had no right to send troops to a nation, with whom we had no treaty, to defend it against attack by another nation, no matter how unprincipled that aggression might be, unless the whole matter was submitted to Congress and a declaration of war or some other direct authority obtained.”

Taft, some readers will recall, was known in his day as “Mr. Republican.” There’s yet another way in which the world has been turned upside down.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 7, 2005 at LewRockwell.com

Thomas E. Woods is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. A senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Copyright © 2005 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

The “federal” government, particularly the executive branch, can do almost anything it wants. The limits are few, and those that survive can often be gotten around through chicanery. Much of what government does is out of public view, thanks to off-budget accounting and other dubious methods that would get the rest of us prosecuted.

Even if the average person had the time to monitor what government is up to — a tall order for sure — much of it is so esoteric for a layman as to be nearly incomprehensible. He’d have to give up his job and master several disciplines in order to do a proper job. That puts a new light on the term “educated voter.”

On the other hand, trusting one’s representatives — “misrepresentatives” is a more precise term — to watch over things is pointless: They don’t read the bills they vote on; deal-cutting is a higher priority anyway.

In recent years they’ve voted to bail out Wall Street banks, “stimulate” the economy, invade countries, and inflate the power of government to violate civil liberties—all without reading the relevant materials. (Not that the executive always waited until Congress blindly passed the requested authorization.)

By what criterion are we entitled to call this “representative government”? Periodic elections are a necessary condition for that label to apply, but they are hardly a sufficient condition.

A government of self-defined powers is  hardly new in the United States; nor is it the monopoly of any one party. But it has accelerated in the last decade through the exploitation of fear: fear of economic calamity, fear of terrorism, fear of the unfettered market.

From the beginning, fear has propelled the growth of the state. H. L. Mencken saw this more clearly than most –“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — and Robert Higgs has spent a career explaining it.

Using powers the origins of which predate the New Deal, government has now extended its tentacles to encircle the entire economy. Bureaucrats exercise wide-ranging discretion with, at best, murky authority.

The unaccountable Federal Reserve System creates money in order to buy not only government securities, but also “troubled” assets from investment banks and other favored firms. The FDIC now insures all bank debt, not just deposits, and guarantees government loans to hedge funds that buy the kinds of securities Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner prefers.

The Treasury last fall asked for $700 billion for one purpose (buying worthless mortgage-backed securities) but uses it for other things instead, such as buying stock in banks and bailing out insurance and auto companies that have earned the right to fail.

As George Will writes, “TARP’s $700 billion, like much of the supposed ‘stimulus’ money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases.” This points to another unsettling practice: congressional blank-check authorizations to the executive branch: “Here’s some money; do something good with it.” (Of couse it is not only in domestic policy that blank checks are handed out.)

All told, such government-run-amok financial undertakings have the hapless taxpayers on the hook for an amount of money rivaling the gross domestic product. The Fed has created trillions in funny money—portending a horrendous price inflation—and the current deficit is nearly half the entire budget.

When Congress is asked to rubberstamp executive activities — as occasionally it is — most of our misrepresentatives faithfully comply. The news media call this being “responsible.” Dissenters, such as those in the House last fall who voted down the first TARP bill, are stigmatized as fringe characters unworthy of serious attention, and quite possibly nihilists.

The Chrysler Intervention

The latest example of government run amok is the Obama administration’s interference with the bankruptcy of Chrysler. Under the administration’s plan the UAW will get 43 cents on the dollar and a majority of the stock shares, while secured nonbank bondholders are offered about 30 cents and have their contractual rights nullified.

When they balked in an attempt to fulfill their legal responsibilities to their investor clients, Barack Obama denounced them as greedy speculators. Where does the White House occupant get this authority? Does he know or care that he is engaged in the destruction of wealth? Does the public even wonder about these questions?

It is taken for granted that government can do whatever it wants so long as those doing it seem to be acting in good faith and aren’t benefitting too overtly. This trusting attitude is a far cry from the “jealousy” toward government that Thomas Jefferson prescribed for a free people.

Government has been exercising such power so long that people are accustomed to it. It’s normal. They don’t expect modest government in either domestic or foreign matters. If we think government runs amok in the economy, look at what it’s doing in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Foreign policy not only gives government great scope for unmonitored mischief, it also efficiently drains the taxpayers. Like domestic intervention, foreign intervention is madly expensive—not to mention dangerous to innocents and those only suspected of crime but not yet proved guilty. Yet many people  who are distrustful of carte-blanche power over domestic affairs apply a different standard to government’s powers in foreign matters.

It’s as though Foggy Bottom the Pentagon, and the CIA weren’t departments of the government — as though war,  intervention, and the resource-eating military budget had no effect on the marketplace. Freedom’s greatest advocates, including Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, and Frederic Bastiat, knew better. There could be no laissez faire at home and continuous war-making abroad.

Thus Rep. Ron Paul wisely writes, “We need to rein in our overseas empire, as quickly as possible. We need to bring our troops home, and get our economy back into the business of production, not destruction. The smartest thing we could do is admit we don’t know all the answers to all the world’s problems. If the new administration can take a closer look at real free trade and no entangling alliances, we would be much better off for it…. But unfortunately, it is not likely to happen.”

So those who understand had better get to work.

Sheldon Richman is the editor of The Freeman and “In brief.” He is a contributor to The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (“Fascism”).

Last week I discussed our worsening economic situation and the fact that there are very few options for the new administration to improve things in the long run.  The same is not true on the foreign policy front.  Our interventionist foreign policy stands ready to be put on a new course with the new administration.  Unfortunately, it seems the new administration is likely to continue the mistakes of the past.

I’ve often discussed interventionist foreign policy and the resulting blowback.  The current administration’s foreign policy, I’m afraid, has created a huge impetus for blowback against the United States.  However, I truly believe much of the world stands ready to look beyond our nation’s recent blunders if the new administration proves to be heading in a more reasonable direction.

Other nations around the world find our interference in their affairs condescending, and it is very dangerous for us.  We may think we have much to gain by inserting ourselves in these complex situations, but on the contrary we suffer from many consequences.

Other countries have their problems, to be sure.  But how would we feel if China or Russia came to our soil and tried to depose our problematic leaders or correct our policies for us?  Our problems are ours to solve, and we need to give other countries that respect as well.  Instead, we have been turning alleged, phantom threats into real, actual threats.

We should follow the foreign policy advice of the Founders – friendship and commerce with all nations.  One positive step would be to end our destructive embargo of Cuba, which deprives our farmers of a market just 90 miles from US shores while strengthening the Communist regime.   We’ve seen 50 years of statist restrictions not accomplish anything.

A change is needed.  Other countries should decide how to govern themselves.  Even if we don’t necessarily approve, it’s none of our business.  If other people foolishly choose to live under statist experimental regimes, they need to fail in their own right, and not have us as a scapegoat.  We need to focus on our own affairs.

However, the pressures exerted on our leadership from the military industrial complex and big business is not in favor of peace or freedom, or especially nonintervention.  Intervention is big business.  Defense contracts topped $300 billion last year, and total spending on war and our overseas empire is up to $1 trillion per year.

That represents a lot of people earning a living off of war and conquest.  But rather than adding to our economy, all of this money is taken from the economy in order to wage war and destruction.  Imagine if those resources were put to creative, productive use here at home!

We need to rein in our overseas empire, as quickly as possible.  We need to bring our troops home, and get our economy back into the business of production, not destruction.  The smartest thing we could do is admit we don’t know all the answers to all the world’s problems.

If the new administration can take a closer look at real free trade and no entangling alliances, we would be much better off for it.  Economically – we could save hundreds of billions of dollars each year!  The new leadership has the opportunity and the political capital to do this.  But unfortunately, it is not likely to happen.

Ron Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.

Many who agree with me on a lot of other issues, do not understand my enthusiasm for gold and sound money or why I spend so much time studying and talking about monetary policy.  It’s true that I talk about money differently than most, but the fact is sound money offers many benefits.

For example – peace.

Can sound money really bring about peace?  Actually, it plays a big part in peaceful international relationships.  Money based on commodities, rather than paper, is not subject to government manipulation, and is a key component to free and honest trade.

History shows that if countries engage in trade with each other, their governments tend to find ways to get along for the same reason you do not kill your customers at your place of business, even if they occasionally annoy you.  If someone outright cheats you, however, you may engage in “war” by taking them to court, for example, and the relationship will sour.  Governments and central banks with unfettered power to manipulate currency also have the ability to cheat their creditors.

One way they do this is to simply create enough currency to pay off debts.  This devalues the currency and “cheats” the recipient out of what they are owed.  It would not be fair if you watered down your product the way our government waters down its currency, so it is not hard to understand, in these simplified terms, why loose monetary policy contributes so much to ill will and war around the world.

Sound money, on the other hand, simply is what it is.  Removing governmental power to manipulate money, removes the temptation for government to spend, print and cheat.  Sound money ensures that our government’s spending priorities would be brought into sharp focus and reduced to only what we can afford.

Sound money also limits the ability to wage wars of aggression.  Imagine how much more careful Washington would have to be about starting a war if they did not have this financial sleight of hand at their disposal!

Fiat currency allows government do expensive things they should not be doing while paying the bills with cheap money.  The Federal Reserve has lately been auctioning off large amounts of treasury bills as a way to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our crushing entitlement burden.

The resulting devaluation of the dollar is quickly eroding our image as a good trading partner in the world.  As a consequence, there is therefore more talk of economic isolation and war.

This vicious cycle of spending, fighting and inflating is not what Americans want.  It is what the government wants, and it has had to deceive the citizens into allowing and supporting it.

Sound money curbs the government’s ability to engage in these shenanigans and reduces the wars we fight to only truly defensive ones, for which Americans are more than willing to stand and fight.  So in these ways, sound money is very conducive to peace.

Ron Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.

In reading the Constitution, we can plainly see that Congress possesses the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, to raise and support armies, to grant letters of marque and reprisal, to provide for the common defense,” and even “to declare war.” Congress shares, with the President, the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the Executive, the President is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs; commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the power to receive ambassadors.

The United States Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land in our country, delegates the power to declare war to the Congress and the power to wage war to the President. What that means is that only the Congress, as representatives of the People and of the States, can determine whether or not the nation goes to war. If the People, through Congress, decide that the nation shall go to war, the President then, and only then, has the authority to wage it.

Unless the country is being invaded, if the congress does not declare war against another country, the president is constitutionally barred from waging it, no matter how much he desires to do so. This is, again, shown clearly in the following statements:

“As the executive cannot decide the question of war on the affirmative side, neither ought it to do so on the negative side, by preventing the competent body from deliberating on the question.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”
- James Madison

Presidential orders, even those issued as commander-in-chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress. A Congressional declaration of war, for example, limits Presidential powers, narrows the focus of the action, and implies, or clearly stipulates, a precise end-point to the conflict. Like it or not, the Constitution is clear, and the only way it can be changed is through the procedure for amendments as outlined in the Constitution.

All Presidents that have waged war without a Congressional declaration, including Presidents Truman, Johnson, Clinton and Bush, have broken the law; the law specifically stated in the Constitution; thereby conducting themselves like dictators, albeit democratically elected, in order to determine the future of foreign people and nations.

In addition, the fact that Congress is not permitted under the Constitution to transfer the war-declaring power to a President has been repeatedly ignored. Only Congress can declare war, if we are inclined to follow the rule of law. Thus, those members of Congress who’ve voted to do so are just as guilty, in violating the law, as Presidents have been in their act of accepting, rather than refusing, this illegal transfer of power.

To add insult to injury, many acts of war by our country have cited United Nations resolutions as justification. Ignoring the Constitution, while citing the UN as a justification for war, has shown us the callous disregard that our political rulers have had for the restraints written in the Constitution.

The framers deliberately wanted to make war difficult to embark upon without public legislative debate; thus, they intentionally kept this power out of the hands of the executive branch. It is logical to assume that they never would have dreamed of a President with such powers, or of the possibility that an international governmental body would have influence over our foreign policy; telling us when we should or should not enter into armed conflict.

As a result of our multiple undeclared wars, millions of people are dead. Since just 1999, United States’ forces have attacked at least three more nations. Each time, a President has either started the war outright, or allowed Congress to relinquish its power to decide.

Without a proper declaration or war, without public debate, without the People deciding whether or not to engage in conflict, no war is legal, moral, or just! This is exactly what our nation’s founders warned against when creating our government. Most had just left behind a monarchy where the power to declare and wage war rested on the decision of one person, the King of England. It is this they most wished to avoid.

Some have argued that the war-declaring power comes from the sum of constitutional provisions dealing with war. Abraham Lincoln’s well-known act of combining the commander-in-chief clause with the clause authorizing the President to enforce the laws is a misbegotten form of this claim.

Resolutions authorizing the Executive to initiate force are not declarations of war, however, and this point is of the greatest concern to our nation; these resolutions transfer the constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare wars to the executive branch. These resolutions have told Presidents that they, and they alone, have the authority to determine when, where, why, and how war will be declared, waged, and completed.

Numerous bills have been passed by Congress, merely asking the Executive to give a courtesy report to the People, through Congress, sometime after war has begun to let us know what is happening.

But, in an age where warfare can destroy nations and people in weeks rather than years, any resolution requesting a courtesy call after conflict begins effectively hands to the Executive the dictatorial powers to declare, wage, and complete wars without the input of Congress and the People.

However, as the Supreme Court affirmed long ago, the Constitution does not permit one branch of government to delegate its powers to another branch. Thus, Congressional resolutions authorizing the President to decide whether or not to invade a foreign nation are null and void under the Constitution; leaving the President with the illegal dictatorial power to both declare and wage war.

President Clinton’s bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan on the eve of his indictment ended a Taliban plan to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan. His bombing of Yugoslavia resulted in thousands of deaths, and his bombing of Baghdad on the eve of his impeachment hardly reassured anyone of a just and balanced American foreign policy.

President Bush chose to ignore the United States Constitution by ordering our military into Iraq. His son has done the same. President Reagan ignored the Constitution by attacking Libya, while Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did so by sending troops to Vietnam.

The continued bombing, blockade, and subsequent invasion of Iraq has been carried out by three Presidents and Congresses led by both major political parties. The result? The deaths of well-over a million innocents.

In launching illegal wars, these, and other Presidents sent the world the following message: While the United States is a nation that has a Constitution which expressly limits the President’s power regarding warfare; in practice, our system of government gives the Executive the power to ignore the law and exercise dictatorial powers instead.

Michael Boldin [send him email] is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center.

We’ve heard how the value of the dollar affects gas prices – and indeed the price of everything.  I was pleased that my request for a hearing on such was granted by the Financial Services committee and we were able to hear some very informative testimony.  Certainly domestic policies, regarding off-shore oil drilling bans, ethanol mandates, refining capacity, and CAFE standards are interventionist and harmful enough in the energy market.

But how does foreign policy affect gas prices?  One important factor is that oil on the world market has been priced in dollars exclusively since 1973.  Only two leaders have gone against this arrangement – Saddam Hussein in 2000 and more recently Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the recently opened Iranian Oil Bourse which trades in non-dollar currencies. 

But since oil is otherwise exclusively traded in dollars, this means that oil producers have vast amounts of assets held in dollars.  Especially since the War on Terror and the PATRIOT Act, many oil-producing nations and banks are concerned the US government may freeze assets based on flimsy pretexts.  This fear contributes to dollar weakness, and therefore also high oil prices.

Recently I and other members of Congress spoke out against H Con Res 362 and exposed this seemingly innocuous bill for what it really is – a call for a blockade and a build up to war with Iran.  Thankfully it has not come to the floor for a vote as I had fully expected it would.

But to even propose legislation like this, and get an alarming 261 cosponsors, makes the oil markets jittery and encourages more capital flight from the dollar.  We only isolate ourselves on the world stage with actions and attitudes like this.

After all, how can it be wise for the rest of the world to bank on America, when we tend to freeze assets and blockade entire countries for no good reason?

Another major factor is our intervention in international military conflicts.  These conflicts are often much more complicated, and have more to do with oil than our own leaders are willing to acknowledge.  Too often the side we support points our weapons right back at us down the road.

The best policy is always free trade with all and entangling alliances with none, but instead we isolate ourselves by picking sides and making enemies out of our friends or potential friends.  In the recent conflict with Russia and Georgia, it appears that once again the administration is going to pick sides and send taxpayer money, when we are in a deep recession here at home.

There is no good reason for us to put a dog in every fight around the world.

The contributing factors in the price of oil are complicated and legion.  The fact is, it is an immensely valuable resource, and, as our demand for this resource is great, our relationships with world leaders who control it should be handled with reason and intelligence.

However, our interventionist mindset when it comes to foreign policy never ceases to get us into sticky situations, for which we pay a premium at the gas pump.

Ron Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.

Throughout U.S. history, the American people have balanced liberty and security. Finding the right mix isn’t always easy. But policy-makers must never forget that they are duty-bound to protect a free society.

Government had ample powers before 9/11 to deal with terrorism in a manner consistent with the Bill of Rights. If we needlessly sacrifice the liberties that make America great, we, in the manner of Esau, will have sold our national soul for a mess of pottage.

September 11 wasn’t the first time in U.S. history that the American people sacrificed their freedoms and allowed the government to seize extraordinary powers. Shortly after the American Revolution, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, allowing the federal government to jail its critics.

Habeas corpus was suspended during the Civil War, and the federal government prosecuted political opponents. Civil liberties were widely violated during World War I; then came the “Red Scare” and so-called Palmer Raids.

World War II spawned the internment of Japanese-Americans. Surveillance of domestic political opponents occurred during the Cold War.

In all of these cases, Americans eventually realized that they had sacrificed liberty without gaining security in return. Decisions were overturned, powers were rescinded, and accountability was re-established.

As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned in Olmstead vs. United States in 1928, “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.” Although we usually are vigilant against “evil-minded rulers,” Brandeis added, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

So it was in the aftermath of 9/11. Americans feared another attack and therefore acquiesced to an unprecedented power grab by the federal government. This unprecedented expansion of government authority threatens to allow the false promise of security to permanently trump America’s historic commitment to liberty.

The “War on Terrorism” is the first conflict since the Civil War in which the American homeland is a battleground. Thus, the president claims the right to decide when the rules of war will govern domestic civilian society.

Moreover, for the first time in our history we are fighting a conflict that has no apparent end. We knew when we had defeated Germany and Japan in World War II, but history suggests there will always be terrorists. It is a never-ending war in an undefined and unlimited battlefield.

We cannot allow America’s dearly bought freedoms to be so easily lost.

Liberty is far more than just a bank account, e-mail or Social Security number. Liberty defines a free people. It is our birthright to keep personal affairs private from others, and especially from the government. It is our constitutional right not to have our privacy invaded and evidence gathered against us without the government having a good reason for doing so and securing a warrant. It also is our constitutional birthright not to be arrested except through the due process of law. And it is our duty to hold those who exercise power accountable for their actions.

This is not a liberal issue or a conservative issue. It is an American issue.

After 9/11, Americans heard a familiar refrain: “You must give up a little privacy, a few liberties, in order to have security.” After all, it was said, “if you have nothing to hide, there is no reason to be concerned.”

Anyway, we were told, we faced a new kind of enemy, one never contemplated by America’s Founders. Only with new powers could the government combat these new threats.

But the dichotomy of liberty versus security is false. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 did not succeed because government was too weak. Rather, public officials did not use their existing powers and did not competently perform their duties. Giving these same officials new, unfettered and unreviewable powers has not made America more secure. Indeed, the U.S. has lost moral standing around the globe, making us more vulnerable to foreign threats.

The Founding Fathers well anticipated the world in which we live. They recognized that power corrupts and could spur even the most well-meaning public officials to invade the liberties of the people.

At the same time, those who created the new nation understood the need to preserve liberty in a dangerous world. America was birthed out of revolution against Great Britain, the most powerful empire on earth. In its early years, the United States also was threatened by France and Spain. Despite such clear and present dangers, the Framers deliberately limited the authority of government and ensured the accountability of public officials.

Liberty is not an afterthought, but the very essence of our civilization. The philosopher Ayn Rand spoke of “the process of setting man free from men.” Our Founding Fathers understood that. The Bill of Rights protects it.

But the current administration and many others, including Sen. John McCain, appear to disdain it. Only the American people can truly re-establish our society’s foundation of freedom. That is the American Solution.

Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President and a former member of Congress from Georgia.

What will it take to get our troops out of Iraq?   The roughly 70 percent of Americans who are firmly against the war often ask this question.  Those in power are reluctant to give conditions, but when they do and those conditions are met, the goal post is quietly moved.

Voters were promised, passionately and vehemently, that the new Congress would bring our troops home.  Many were explicitly elected in 2006 under that banner.  But our troops are still overseas, funding has been increased even beyond the administration’s wish list, and troop withdrawal has been negotiated away.

When things are going badly in Iraq, they say we must stay until the situation improves.  When things improve, they tell us we must stay because our gains cannot be jeopardized.

We are told that we must establish a functioning democracy there, and train Iraqi armed forces so they can keep order in our absence.  Iraq now has a Constitution, an elected parliament, and hundreds of thousands of security forces.  The problem now is that their troops are supposedly not trained quite well enough, and that could take many more years.  Defining an adequate training level for Iraqi troops is highly nebulous and its anyone’s guess when or how that criteria could be satisfied.

The latest outrage came last week.  For years we heard the administration claim over and over that the Iraqi government wants us there, and is begging us to stay.  On the other hand, all they had to do was ask and we would respect their wishes and leave.  That also has now happened.  Al-Maliki perhaps took his cue from his challenger, al-Sadr, who has been clamouring for us to leave for years.  Popular opinion in Iraq now mirrors that in the United States, with about 70percent of Iraqis wishing us to leave.

At the end of the year, our Status of Forces Agreement expires.  Without a new agreement and understanding with the Iraqi government regarding our presence there, we officially become occupiers.

Eventually our troops will leave Iraq.  The overwhelming will of the people, in both countries, can’t seem to get them out.  Things going well can’t get them out.  Things going badly can’t get them out.  Iraqis telling us to leave can’t get them out.  Perhaps not even the UN can get them out.  My hope is that it does not take the complete collapse of our financial system, but if we don’t leave under any other circumstances, economic chaos is inevitable, and will make it impossible to fund the war, even through debt and inflation.

We have been financing this war through inflation, and attempting to paper over reality with misleading economic indicators.  The government has changed the methodology of calculating things like CPI and GDP to hide the bad news.  They won’t even publish M3, the total money supply statistic anymore.  But reality is hitting the American people at gas pumps and grocery stores, sending more Americans into foreclosure and unemployment lines.  More are hurting while Washington keeps forgetting its promises.  Eventually, this will all come to a head.

Perhaps an even greater fear is that even if our financial trouble doesn’t get our troops out of Iraq, moving them over to fight a new war in Iran, will.  Washington should be crystal clear on this very important point – just getting the troops out of Iraq means nothing.  Bringing them HOME means everything, and that is what the people in both countries demand.

What is the importance of the war in Iraq  relative to other current issues?  This is a question I am often asked, especially as Americans continue to become increasingly aware that something is very wrong with the economy.   The difficulty with the way the question is often asked relates to the perception that we are somehow able to divide such issues, or to isolate the cost of war into arbitrarily defined areas such as national security or international relations.

War is an all-encompassing governmental activity.  The impact of war on our ability to defend ourselves from future attack, and upon America ‘s standing in the world, is only a mere fraction of the total overall effect that war has on our nation and the policies of its government.

The cost of this particular war is enormous, and therefore its of great importance.  There is no single issue that is more important at this particular time.   The war has, of course, made us less safe as a nation and damaged our credibility with allies and hostile nations alike.  Moreover, years of growing deficits have been spurred on by the high price tag of war, and the decision to pay that price primarily by supplemental spending rather than traditional “on-budget” accounting.

War takes what would otherwise be productive economic capacity and transfers both that capacity, and the wealth it would generate in normal, peaceful, times into far less economically viable activities.  It also impacts budget priorities in ways that are detrimental to our nation.  I have often pointed to the fact that we are building bridges in Iraq while they are collapsing in the United States.

All war, but most particularly war funded by monetary inflation, bleeds a country in multiple ways.  Obviously, many of the young people who are in the military literally give their blood, and sometimes their lives, fighting in wars of this type.  Meanwhile, those who do not fight the war, but fund it, are forced to pay both the immediate costs, as well as seeing their long term purchasing power erode, as the twin pillars of debt and inflation are foisted upon the backs of current taxpayers and future generations.

Neither conspiracy nor coincidence explains steep increases in the price of gas as the war drags on.  No, this is simply a reality of the inflationary policies that, among other things, make this war possible.

As people are continually asked to choose whether our nation’s teetering economy or the failed foreign policy of the past several decades is most important as we look forward, it is well for those of us who understand that these two issues are closely linked, to continue to explain this fact to our fellow citizens.

To fix the problem requires a proper diagnosis.

Ron Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.