The word “emergency” doesn’t exist in the Constitution. That means the rules of the constitution apply whether someone calls it an “emergency” or not.
This wasn’t an accident. It was very intentional, and based on the founders own warnings, long-forgotten and ignored today. Let politicians have extra power or funding because they declare an emergency? You’ll get never-ending emergencies.
THE PLAYBOOK
George Mason’s dire warning about where things were headed sounds prophetic today, especially considering that we live under the largest government in history, and have so for a long time.
“This government will set out a moderate aristocracy: it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.”
But he didn’t have a crystal ball. He just understood the mechanics of human nature and power. As St. George Tucker warned, the political elite will gladly weaponize your trust to build the tyranny Mason predicted.
“But the most easy and successful mode in which an aristocracy commences, or advances, consists in the secret and gradual abuse of the confidence of the people, in a representative democracy.”
Politicians don’t normally seize power and steal your liberty out in the open. At least not at first. As Tucker explained, they usually use the oldest weapon in the books. One magic word: Emergency.
“Slight, and sometimes even imperceptible, innovations, occasional usurpations, founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion: or upon former unconstitutional precedents.”
Federal Farmer understood the playbook: If you want to expand government power, you can’t let the people think. You have to make them panic. It’s always do-or-die right now.
“It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, now is the crisis—now is the critical moment which must be seized, or all will be lost: and to shut the door against free enquiry, whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover.”
He knew, this isn’t a new tactic, it’s the historical rule.
“This has been the custom of tyrants and their dependents in all ages.”
INCENTIVES
That brings us back to the warning from above. Samuel Adams understood the perverse incentives of “emergency” power. When people with power get to decide if they have extra power or funding for an emergency? You’ll end up with never-ending emergencies.
“Those Kings by the way, being the sole judges when emergencies happen, they generally create them as often as they want money.”
They knew this wasn’t just theory. History already proved it. In Cato’s Letters, Thomas Gordon showed how the ruling class pulls off the “just this once” scam to trick the people into letting them expand their own power.
“I have read somewhere, of the States of a country, who having wildly granted to their prince a power of raising money by his own authority, in cases of great necessity; every case, ever afterwards, was a case of great necessity; and his necessities multiplied so fast, that the whole wealth of the country was swallowed up to supply them.”
That was in France, and Samuel Adams brought the receipts to show how fast it snowballed. The first king started with a modest sum. His son quickly tripled it. And the kings after that didn’t stop until the people were bled dry.
“Charles the seventh, who began them, never rais’d annually more than one hundred and eighty thousand Pounds. His Son Lewis the eleventh almost trebled the Revenue; and since then, all that the Kingdom and People had, even to their Skins, has hardly been thought sufficient for their Kings.”
Even Machiavelli – the guy who literally wrote the book on ruthless political power – knew this was a fatal mistake. He warned that expanding power beyond the constitution – even for a “good cause” – will set a precedent for plenty of evil ones in the future.
“Now in a well-ordered republic it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures; for although they may for the time be beneficial, yet the precedent is pernicious, for if the practice is once established of disregarding the laws for good objects, they will in a little while be disregarded under that pretext for evil purposes.”
During the American Revolution, John Dickinson pointed to a British example everyone knew. The lesson? There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary – emergency – government program. Especially when it comes to taxes.
“The method of taxing by EXCISE was first introduced amid the convulsions of the civil wars. Extreme necessity was pretended for it, and its short continuance promised. After the restoration, an excise upon beer, ale and other liquors, was granted to the king,† one half in fee, the other for life, as an equivalent for the court of wards.”
THE TYRANT’S PLEA
By the time John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667, he had spent thirty years watching both kings and parliaments use fear-mongering over emergencies to grab power – including the tax Dickinson later wrote about.
They all used the exact same word: Necessity.
“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.”
But that’s not the end of the story. Once the door is opened, it keeps getting worse. As Dickinson pointed out, that “temporary” emergency tax didn’t just become permanent. Like a cancer, it metastasized. Because once government gets a taste, their appetite is insatiable – even when people in power change.
“Upon James the Second’s accession, the parliament gave him the first excise, with an additional duty on wine, tobacco, and some other things. Since the revolution it has been extended to salt, candles, leather, hides, hops, soap, paper, pasteboards, mill-boards, scale-boards, vellum, parchment, starch, silks, calicos, linens, stuffs, printed, stained, etc. wire, wrought plate, coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.”
And as John Adams warned us, that deadly disease isn’t just the politicians. Once the people themselves become dependent, they will keep begging for more.
“The nature of the encroachment upon [the] American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue.”
The political class is more than happy to oblige because it feeds what they crave – power. Which, as George Mason explained, moves only in one direction.
“From the nature of man we may be sure, that those who have power in their hands will not give it up while they can retain it. On the contrary we know they will always when they can rather increase it.”
And how do they expand their power? They wait for a crisis and jump at the opportunity.
John Dickinson looked to Spain as the ultimate example of crying emergency as a reason to suspend the rules and take more power.
“Spain was once free. Their Cortes resembled our parliaments. No money could be raised on the subject, without their consent. One of their Kings having received a grant from them, to maintain a war against the Moors, desired, that if the sum which they had given, should not be sufficient, he might be allowed, for that emergency only, to raise more money without assembling the Cortes.”
The smartest guys in the room knew exactly what it was – a power grab. But fear of an emergency is a powerful weapon, and the majority lacked the backbone to say no.
“The request was violently opposed by the best and wisest men in the assembly. It was, however, complied with by the votes of a majority.”
That one cowardly vote sealed their fate. Because, as St. George Tucker warned, a power grab never ends with the emergency. It becomes the new baseline.
“The most unauthorized acts of government may be drawn into precedents to justify other unwarrantable usurpations.”
And Dickinson gave us the final verdict that one emergency measure started a domino effect in Spain. It didn’t just cost them money. It cost them everything.
“And this single concession was a precedent for other concessions of the like kind, until at last the crown obtained a general power of raising money, in cases of necessity. From that period the Cortes ceased to be useful,—the people ceased to be free.”
THE SOLUTION
The only way to break that cycle? Thomas Gordon gave us the answer: stop trusting people with power.
“Power is like fire; it warms, scorches, or destroys, according as it is watched, provoked, or increased. It is as dangerous as useful. Its only rule is the good of the people; but because it is apt to break its bounds, in all good governments nothing, or as little as may be, ought to be left to chance, or the humours of men in authority.”
There is no loophole that should ever be tolerated. An emergency doesn’t mean they get to break the rules. It means you have to change the rules if you want them to have more power.
“All should proceed by fixed and stated rules, and upon any emergency, new rules should be made.”
George Washington applied this same rule to the Constitution. If the people – not the politicians – think more power is needed? The Constitution literally spells out how that needs to be done.
“If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.”
He followed that up with a stark warning. Bypassing the Constitution – even for an “emergency” – is not a helpful shortcut. It’s the preferred weapon of tyrants to destroy freedom.
“But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.”
Understanding this foundation, it shouldn’t be a surprise at all that the founders absolutely rejected the notion of emergency powers, and the word “emergency” isn’t in the constitution at all. It wasn’t in the Articles of Confederation either.
No branch of government is delegated a power to expand their own power for an emergency, or any other reason. And no branch is delegated power to re-delegate their power to another branch for an emergency, or any other reason.
That includes the power to tax, the power to decide the question of war or peace, and everything else in between
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