Claremont Institute Neocons ♥ Presidential Despotism (and John Yoo)

Last week Tom Woods explained why American presidents do not have the constitutional authority to lob missiles at Libya or any other country completely on their own, without any kind of Congressional authorization. Today, Tom responds to neocon radiomouth Mark Levin, who responded to Tom’s article in typical neocon/Trotskyite fashion with name calling, ad hominem attacks, and zero evidence in support of his position that presidents do in fact have unlimited, despotic powers when it comes to foreign military intervention.

In today’s essay Tom mentions how he and a coauthor eviscerated the now-discredited views of former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo, who was hired by the Dub-Yuh administration to invent a case for constitutional presidential dictatorship. Yoo’s arguments were disgraceful and ahistorical, but he’s not alone in inventing lies in support of totalitarian presidential despotism. Tom and others should know that one of the foreign policy propaganda arms of the Republican Party, the Claremont Institute (which really should be renamed the Dr. Strangelove Institute) provides faux intellectual support for John Yoo and his fanciful fabrications of constitutional history. In a review of one of Yoo’s books Claremontista Joseph Bessette praises Yoo’s “intriguing argument” for unlimited presidential war powers and swoons over his “impressive body of evidence” that supposedly shows that NONE of the founders involved in the writing or the ratification of the Constitution “understood that the president would need Congress’s approval” to invade another country. This is an example of the dark art of “Straussian” rewriting of history based on a twisting of history and the English language so severely that the claims that are made are exactly the opposite of historical truth.

Bessette revels and celebrates the notion, taken from Yoo’s book, that Yoo supposedly makes “a compelling case that Congress need not formally authorize many, perhaps most, military commitments abroad.” This is Levin’s position; Levin did not cite any links or references in support of his position either because there are none, or he is too embarrassed to cite John Yoo’s totalitarian arguments.

(Bessette’s review was not exactly done “at arm’s length” as is the custom in academe: JohnYoo lists on an online resume that he is on the advisory committee of the Claremont Institute’s Center for the Study of Constitutional Jurisprudence).

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7:11 am on March 28, 2011