The American electorate demands change from the failed leadership and policies of the past.
They want our country to once again be that “shining city on a hill,” the visionary hope and exemplar of truth, justice, and the American way respected and emulated throughout the world and here at home.
Upon his triumphant election next year, Ron Paul will bring that restored vision to his office as President of the United States.
Once again, the traditionalist Anglo-American primacy of the rule of law since the Magna Carta will direct the role the executive branch plays in the constitutional matrix of our federal republic.
Separation of powers will once again become Constitutionally mandated and respected, emboldening the rights and liberties of everyday citizens, and restraining an out-of-control Leviathan state.
The providential blessings of liberty, peace, and prosperity will once again be proclaimed throughout the land.
The specious concept of the “unitary executive” will die a sudden, much prayed-for demise.
The Paul ascendancy will be a dramatic departure from the imperial presidency of administrations of the past century, regimes who reigned over an ever-growing and bloated welfare-warfare state.
Nowhere can this contrast be illustrated and demonstrated more than by examining Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, edited by John V. Denson, now available on-line.
This bold and important study of the unfolding usurpation and seizure of authority by the executive branch is the starting point for the average citizen/reader who wants to know how all of this transpired, and what the Paul administration will face on January 20, 2009.
Editor Denson of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute has assembled a world-class array of scholars (many well known to the readers of this website) to catalog and detail this process, this long chain of abuses and extra-constitutional departures from the libertarian vision of the Framers.
The judicious citizen/reader will next turn to The American Presidency, Gore Vidal’s marvelous historical gaze into the furtive minds and shrouded character of the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Together with Vidal, Lewis H. Lapham ranks as one of our greatest essayists and social observers. Imperial Masquerade, The Wish for Kings: Democracy At Bay, and Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration, are three of his best collections of essays touching upon the American presidency.
For an encyclopedic overview of the American presidency, the absolutely essential “Who’s Who” resource focusing upon the major domestic and foreign policy issues, elite cabinet members, and key appointments of each administration is Phillip H. Burch, Jr.’s three volumes, Elites in American History: The Federalist Years to the Civil War; Elites in American History: The Civil War to the New Deal; and Elites in American History: The New Deal to the Carter Administration.
Nicholas Von Hoffman’s Make-Believe Presidents: Illusions of Power From McKinley to Carter, provides an irreverent, iconoclastic, and illuminating examination of presidential power by the famed syndicated columnist and former 60 Minutes “Point/Counter-Point” commentator.
And lastly, for a brilliant, in-depth synthesis in Establishment Studies, discerning citizen/readers should relish Kevin Phillips’ American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, and Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty From Watergate To Iraq.
November 12, 2007
