The Executive Order, “Stroke of the Pen, Law of the Land. Kinda’ Cool”

by: debra rae | published: 06 17, 2012

Paul Begala famously described an executive order as the law of the land executed by a mere stroke of the pen. To this, he added, “kinda’ cool.” [i] But not all Americans readily concur. In 1942, for example, FDR’s executive order bypassed approval from Congress while, for the duration of WWII, moving West Coast Americans of Japanese descent to confinement in detention camps in the SW desert.

Mind you, citizens of German and Italian descent were not treated the same. Only Japanese-Americans felt the full force of law through Roosevelt’s imperial executive order. “Stroke of the pen” governance, as his, omits public accountability from the equation; and this, my friend, is the problem.

Governance by Decree

Don’t get me wrong. Executive Orders have constitutionally legitimate purposes (e.g., granting presidential awards); however, they are dangerously inappropriate when used to enact rules and regulations Congress won’t pass—or when they are employed to create new law.

All accept that presidential action is justified in emergencies (as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes), but the job of the executive branch is to carry out the laws that Congress makes. It’s not to rule by decree, thus vesting power of a monarch on whoever happens to hold the office of the presidency. Political affiliation is not the issue; deceptive “soft” law is. [ii]

Deceptive “Soft” Law

The global governance agenda involves activation of “soft” law—specifically, unenforceable agreements among nations on the international stage. Because international agreements appear to represent consensus, they eventually evolve into enforceable international law. Take, for example, global agreements, conventions, pacts, declarations, treaties, summits, and executive orders. After 1907, EO’s were numbered. Since then, over 13,000 have been issued—and not without consequences. [iii]

In May 2012, President Barack Obama’ was at it again—this time with an executive order closely tied with EO13563 and EO12866. In his race to standardize regulations between the United States and its trading partners, Obama flung open the door to further forfeiting our nation’s economic and environmental sovereignty—this, through a single international regulatory system—and the stroke of a pen. [iv]

Collaboration and communication with respect to regulations involves bilateral, regional, or multilateral processes. What’s not to like about global cooperation among nations for trade, environmental, and legislative processes? International regulatory cooperation can, after all, identify approaches that are at least as protective as those adopted in the absence of such cooperation. Moreover, collaboration promises to reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements, does it not?

On Its Heels: Significant Regulations

Not so fast. Keep in mind that meeting “shared challenges” reasonably leads to what Obama’s decree characterizes as “significant” regulations. That is to say, by his own admission, Obama’s “stroke of the pen” subjugates the U.S. to expected “significant” regulations to be enforced by an international body.

The sovereignty of a state is determined with reference to the U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. It is “the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which an independent state is governed and from which all specific political powers are derived. National sovereignty is intentional independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign interference.” [v]

Obama’s bypassing the U.S. Constitution for looming, “significant” global regulations under the banner of international law (or any American President’s doing so) sounds to me like “foreign interference.” Indeed, “foreign interference” is what globalism is all about. Despite lofty claims to the contrary, successful globalization degrades control of governments by global industrial regulations, weakens labor, and thereby threatens our coveted middle-class lifestyle. [vi]

Agenda Behind the Agenda [vii]

By definition, globalism is a one-world agenda devoid of (1) Judeo-Christian ethic and (2) systems of checks and balances—e.g., sovereignty of nation-states, U.S. Constitution. Its iffy brand of “democratic” transnationalism is guided by the principle of sustainable development, specious term the U.N. uses to control populations and distribute wealth, concentrating that wealth (thus, power) into the hands of few who presume to manage masses by means of international law.

In the end, bio-regionally defined global governance trumps the Democratic Republic as brilliantly crafted by our nation’s founding fathers; and America is forced to take on the lowest common denominator the world has to offer. This new world order merges elements of communism with a semblance of capitalism to birth what some distinguish as common-ism.

Government “of, by, and for the people” bows to nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s or civil society). Civil society manages sustainable development, headed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the World Resources Institute (WRI).

True, the IUCN, WWF, and WRI set the ideological agenda, but only the United Nations designates official NGOs. Nongovernmental organizations increasingly acquire legal status to manage international, state, and local government under ultimate enforcement of the U.N. This new paradigm assigns private, nonelected groups as watchdogs to find and punish “soft” law violators. Certainly not what our founders intended.

Mankind at a Turning Point

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln opposed the global theory of free trade that siphons off America’s wealth and brings her economy to the level of others (socialism). You see, socialism serves as steppingstone for expanding bureaucratic controls, tightening regulations, invading privacy, and confiscating, then redistributing wealth (classic Marxism).

Mirroring the Marxist/Leninist maxim of “earning one’s keep on Earth,” sustainable development guides the global economy by this socialist principle of State-managed development. While top-notch university research demonstrates the value of market-based principles, trendy eco-socialists work hard to supplant private with public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

The GATT trade treaty transfers American sovereignty to the World Trade Organization, which acts as a giant international economic Supreme Court in its non-democratic dispute resolution function. Indeed, it locks nations into rules and regulations that exceed authority of their own constitutions. This being the case, the WTO is the closest thing we have to world government. Through it, Americans yield significant control over the domestic economy to an international body that has ruled against the U.S. a number of times. This very principle applies here. [viii]

By c eding portions of U.S. sovereignty to the international community, Obama actively furthers the Club of Rome’s master plan for sustainable growth. Mankind truly is at the turning point for world development based on (1) global allocation of all resources and (2) a new global economic system, minus  American exceptionalism.

De-development

Pioneer sociologist Max Weber reasoned that the Reformation played a major role in the economic revolution that brought unprecedented affluence to America (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , 1905). Clearly, the triumph of America’s economic prosperity is her free market system based on these Judeo-Christian principles: respect for rule of law, individual effort, and fair dealing. But, then, these no longer are valued. Ostensibly, “equity” and “social justice” are achieved, not by these tried and true principles, but rather by the Robin Hood approach of transferring wealth to underdeveloped countries. [ix]

Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund fingers “the only hope for the world“—that being, “to make sure there is not another United States.“  (Say what? ) He continues, “We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars or the amount of industrialization that we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.“ [x]

These are not the words of conciliation. Rather, they smack of force.

Given central control of world markets, the economic reach of globalism maintains a stranglehold on the goose that laid the golden egg—namely, our free enterprise system. In the words of Henry Lamb, publisher of Ēco-Logic , this interdependent, one-world state will result in our taking on “the lowest common denominator that forced equity demands.”

To the delight of the late Paul Ehrlich (Professor of Population Studies) , America’s unprecedented “economic revolution” is fast fading under the shadow of global socialism. Ehrlich insisted, “A massive campaign must be launched to develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” [xi]

The executive order is just what’s needed to see to it.

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