The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that “no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Obviously, the Third Amendment has little relevance today. But what is relevant for us today is the mindset that underlay the passage of that amendment – a mindset of deep antipathy toward militarism and standing armies. Our ancestors’ fierce opposition to a powerful military force was consistent with their overall philosophy that guided the formation of the Constitution and the passage of the Bill of Rights.

While the Framers understood the need for a federal government, what concerned them was the possibility that such a government would become a worse menace than no government at all. Their recent experience with the British government – which of course had been their government and against which they had taken up arms – had reinforced what they had learned through their study of history: that the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of a people was their own government.

Thus, after several years operating under the Articles of Confederation, the challenge the Framers faced was how to bring a federal government into existence that would be sufficiently powerful to protect their rights and liberties but that would not also become omnipotent and tyrannical.

Their solution was the Constitution, a document that would call the federal government into existence but limit its powers to those expressly enumerated in the document itself. Thus, a close examination of the Constitution shows that the powers of the U.S. government originate in it. The idea was that if a power wasn’t enumerated, federal officials were precluded from exercising it.

Even that, however, was not good enough for our American ancestors. They wanted an express restriction on the abridgement of what had become historically recognized as fundamental and inherent rights of the people. In other words, they wanted what could be considered an express insurance policy for the protection of their rights. While government officials could not lawfully exercise powers that were not enumerated in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights would make the point even more emphatically that federal officials had no authority to abridge the fundamental rights of the people.

The Constitution provided other measures to protect against the rise of omnipotent and tyrannical government. One was the division of government into three separate branches, with the aim of establishing a system of “checks and balances” that would prevent the rise of powerful centralized government. Another was the Second Amendment, which ensured that the people would retain the means of resisting tyranny or even violently overthrowing a tyrannical government should the need arise.

Given their view that the federal government they were bringing into existence constituted the biggest threat to their freedom and well-being, constantly on the minds of our ancestors was the primary means by which governments had historically subjected their people to tyranny – through the use of the government’s military forces. That is the primary reason for the deep antipathy that the Founders had for an enormous standing military force in their midst. They understood fully that if such a force existed, their own government would possess the primary means by which governments have always imposed tyranny on their own people.

Using armies for tyranny

Historically, governments had misused standing armies in two ways, both of which ultimately subjected the citizenry to tyranny. One was to engage in faraway wars, which inevitably entailed enormous expenditures, enabling the government to place ever-increasing tax burdens on the people. Such wars also inevitably entailed “patriotic” calls for blind allegiance to the government so long as the war was being waged. Consider, for example, the immortal words of James Madison, who is commonly referred to as “the father of the Constitution”:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and … degeneracy of manners and of morals…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The second way to use a standing army to impose tyranny was the direct one – the use of troops to establish order and obedience among the citizenry. Ordinarily, if a government has no huge standing army at its disposal, many people will choose to violate immoral laws that always come with a tyrannical regime; that is, they engage in what is commonly known as “civil disobedience” – the disobedience to immoral laws. But as the Chinese people discovered at Tiananmen Square, when the government has a standing army to enforce its will, civil disobedience becomes much more problematic.

Consider again the words of Madison:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The idea is that governments use their armies to produce the enemies, then scare the people with cries that the barbarians are at the gates, and then claim that war is necessary to put down the barbarians. With all this, needless to say, comes increased governmental power over the people.

Sound familiar?

The Founding Fathers

Here is how Henry St. George Tucker put it in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England:

Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Virginian Patrick Henry pointed out the difficulty associated with violent resistance to tyranny when a standing army is enforcing the orders of the government:

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?

When the Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution in 1788, its concern over standing armies mirrored that of Patrick Henry:

… that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Virginia’s concern was expressed by North Carolina, which stated in its Declaration of Rights in 1776,

that the people have a Right to bear Arms for the Defence of the State, and as Standing Armies in Time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, they ought not to be kept up, and that the military should be kept under strict Subordination to, and governed by the Civil Power.

The Pennsylvania Convention repeated that principle:

… as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.

The U.S. State Department’s own website describes the convictions of the Founding Fathers regarding standing armies:

Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.

In fact, as Roy G. Weatherup pointed out in his excellent article, “Standing Armies and Armed Citizens: A Historical Analysis of the Second Amendment,” the abuses of their government’s standing army was one of the primary reasons that the British colonists took up arms against that army in 1776:

[The Declaration of Independence] listed the colonists’ grievances, including the presence of standing armies, subordination of civil to military power, use of foreign mercenary soldiers, quartering of troops, and the use of the royal prerogative to suspend laws and charters. All of these legal actions resulted from reliance on standing armies in place of the militia.

Moreover, as William S. Fields and David T. Hardy point out in their excellent article, “The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History,” the deep antipathy that the Founders had toward standing armies followed a long tradition among the British people of opposing the standing armies of their king:

The experience of the early Middle Ages had instilled in the English people a deep aversion to the professional army, which they came to associate with oppressive taxes, and physical abuses of their persons and property (and corresponding fondness for their traditional institution the militia). This development was to have a profound effect on the development of civil rights in both England and the American colonies…. During the seventeenth century, problems associated with the involuntary quartering of soldiers and the maintenance of standing armies became crucial issues propelling the English nation toward civil war.

Did the antipathy against standing armies mean that our ancestors were pacifists? On the contrary! After all, don’t forget that they had only recently won a violent war against their own government and its enormous and powerful standing army.

In their minds, the military bedrock of a free society lay not in an enormous standing army but rather in the concept of the citizen-soldier – the person in ordinary life in civil society who is well-armed and well-trained in the use of weapons and who is always ready in times of deepest peril to come to the aid of his country – but only to defend against invasion and not to go overseas to wage wars of aggression or wars of “liberation.” As John Quincy Adams put it in his July 4, 1821, address to Congress, America “does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

U.S. foreign policy

Are the ideas and principles of the Founding Fathers relevant today? They couldn’t be more relevant. Many decades ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Unfortunately, the American people failed to heed his warning. The result has been an ever-growing military cancer that is bringing death, ruin, shame, and economic disaster to our nation – just as our Founding Fathers said it would.

More and more people are finally recognizing that the anger and hatred that foreigners have for the United States is rooted in morally bankrupt, deadly, and destructive foreign policies – policies that have been enforced by America’s enormous standing military force. The resulting blow-back in terms of terrorist attacks, such as those on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, have been used as the excuse for waging more wars thousands of miles away, and those wars have produced even more anger and hatred, with the concomitant threat of even more terrorist counter-responses. All that, in turn, has provided the excuse for more foreign interventions, ever-increasing military budgets, consolidation of power, increasing taxes, and massive infringements on the civil liberties of the American people.

It is not a coincidence that the president’s indefinite detention and punishment of American citizens for suspected terrorist crimes without according them due process, habeas corpus, right to counsel, jury trials, freedom of speech, or other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being enforced by the standing army that our ancestors warned us against. And make no mistake about it: Given orders of their commander in chief, especially in a “national security crisis,” to establish “order” in America, U.S. soldiers will do the same thing that soldiers throughout history have done – they will obey the orders given to them. Just ask the survivors of the massacre at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco or the victims of rape and sex abuse at Abu Graib prison in Iraq or Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was denied due process, habeas corpus, and other rights accorded by the U.S. Constitution.

In determining the future direction of our nation, the choice is clear: Do we continue down the road of empire, standing armies, foreign wars and occupations, and sanctions and embargoes, along with the taxes, regulations, and loss of liberty that inevitably come with them? Do we continue a foreign policy, enforced by the U.S. military, that engenders ever-increasing anger and hatred among the people of the world, which then engenders violent “blowback” against Americans, which is in turn used to justify more of the same policies?

Or do we change direction and move our nation in the direction of the vision of our Founding Fathers – toward liberty and the restoration of a republic to our nation – toward a society in which the government is limited to protecting the nation from invasion and barred from invading or attacking foreign nations – a world in which the United States is once again the model society for freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony – a nation in which the Statue of Liberty once again becomes a shining beacon for those striving to escape the tyranny and oppression of their own governments?

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Copyright © 2004 Future of Freedom Foundation

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On September 10, 2002  I asked 35 questions regarding war with Iraq. The war resolution passed on October 16, 2002.  Now today, as some of my colleagues try to reestablish credentials regarding spending restraint, I want to call attention to my 18th question from six years ago:

“Are we willing to bear the economic burden of a 100 billion dollar war against Iraq, with oil prices expected to skyrocket and further rattle an already shaky American economy?  How about an estimated 30 year occupation of Iraq that some have deemed necessary to “build democracy” there?”

Many scoffed at my “radical” predictions at the time, regarding them as hyperbole.  Six years later, I am forced to admit that I was wrong.  My “radical” predictions were in fact, not “radical” enough.

I warned of a draining 30-year occupation.  Now, politicians glibly talk about a 100-year occupation as if it is no big deal.  On cost, according to estimates from the Congressional Research Service, we have already burned through around $550 billion in Iraq, at a rate of about $2 billion per week.  Economist Joseph Stiglitz’s estimates are even higher, at $12 billion a month.  It is a total price tag quickly heading into the trillions, if we don’t stop bombing and rebuilding bridges in Iraq that lead us nowhere but bankruptcy!  Bridges in this country are crumbling along with our economy, while some howl about earmarks.  Earmarks are a drop in the bucket compared to war and occupation.

Yes, I was wrong about Iraq.  I knew it would be bad.  I didn’t know it would be this bad.

The American people deserve better.  Being asked to endorse such a farce is beyond insulting.  Clearly, the rosy predictions of the neo-Conservatives from before the war are not coming true.  Far from it!  With a straight face, one official estimated the TOTAL cost of reconstruction in Iraq would be just $1.7 billion.  Turns out that we spend more than that in ONE WEEK.  Our friends are not pitching in to cover the cost.  Expenses are not being covered by oil from a grateful and liberated Iraqi people.  Rather, big corporate interests are benefitting, the price of oil has more than quadrupled, and the American economy is on its knees and sinking fast.

No one predicted the exact course of this war before it started.  But to continue to listen to the foreign policy advice of those that were the MOST offbase will only lead to more foreign policy disasters.  We need to keep this in mind as we think about Russia, Iran, Cuba and other countries.  Keep in mind – the doomsday predictions on the Iraq War from six years ago, sound like a cakewalk today.  While what leaders in the administration had predicted, reads like a fairytale.  Ask yourself, when listening to the same foreign policy “experts” explaining situations around the world and suggesting policy positions: In light of the facts of today, and the predictions of yesterday, how expert have they shown themselves to be?

Passing HR 2605 to sunset authorization for the use of force in Iraq is the first step to stopping this bloody war, and the consequent bleeding of our treasuries.  Serious fiscal conservatives will support it, as will those who have been paying attention to foreign policy predictions and reality.

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.

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.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives to the Executive Branch the command of the nation’s armed forces, while Article I, Section 8 gives to the Legislative Branch the power to decide when the United States goes to war.

Presidential candidate, Bob Barr has taken a strong stand in support of the Constitution in a recent post on his website:

“Former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher have proposed a new statute to encourage the president and Congress to cooperate in going to war.  But the Constitution already sets forth a clear rule:  Congress, and only Congress, is tasked with declaring war,” explains Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.  “Absent exigent circumstances, like defending against a surprise attack, only Congress has the authority to take America into a conflict.”

When crafting the Constitution, the founders weighed the individual will of the Executive against the deliberative function of the Legislature, whose constituents would bear the full costs of any war.

Thus, the framers deliberately separated the powers of declaring and waging war; they confined these powers in such a way so as to thwart the tyranny of kings.

Despite being known as one of the greatest champions of centralized power of the times, even Alexander Hamilton felt that the President must generally bow to Congressional directions in times of peace and also in times of war. He stated this clearly in Federalist #69:

“The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect, his 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.; 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.”

Our nation’s founders were far from perfect, and at times, inconsistent and unjust; but, on the powers of war, they were unwavering, and their principles were sound.

Barr again shines in his recognition of the separation of war-declaring vs war-making powers:

“presidents must acknowledge that being military commander-in-chief does not entitle them to take the nation into war.  Rather, they are to fight only conflicts authorized by Congress,” Barr observes.  “At the same time, Congresses must be willing to confront tough issues, rather than leave them for the president.  Legislators have no higher responsibility under the Constitution and to the voters than to decide when Americans must fight abroad.”

One obvious reason for dividing the war powers was to prevent such massive powers from being placed in the hands of one person, the President.

The framers understood that, throughout history, rulers of nations worldwide had begun wars strictly on the basis of international politics or personal desires.

They clearly understood that rulers would often get the urge to remove foreign public officials, or dictate the policies of foreign nations, and that such urges are dangerous to liberty, no matter what the reason.

The reason for entrusting the Legislature with the power to declare war was to ensure that the People would be involved in the decision as much as was physically possible.

What the Framers did not imagine was a weak and ineffectual Congress that failed to claim its rightful authority in deciding when the nation would go to war, or a power-hungry President that wouldn’t refuse an extra-constitutional transfer of such power from Congress.

By rejecting the advice and the rules laid down by the founders and early Presidents, our recent leaders have gone so far astray from warnings against entangling alliances, that the founders would hardly recognize the government they created.

Policing the world and “spreading democracy” is not our calling. Additionally, no such action is permitted by the Constitution.

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.

Watching Keith [Olbermann] just now, I heard him mention Antonin “Nino” Scalia’s dissenting opinion from today’s ruling in regards habeas corpus rights for detainees.

The lowlight of Justice Scalia’s opinion was the paragraph:

“The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

While others will surely spend countless hours and buckets of ink and pixels debating the merits or madness of the second sentence, I’ve a bone to pick with the first.

Scalia has, over the years, demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court. His devotion to the concept of “originalism” selectively ignores the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, key components of the document as “originally” ratified. The codicil to the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, in which the nation’s ultimate appeals court, where all legal precedent is finally decided, declares that the judgment in that case is not, in fact, legal precedent.

I have come to expect little in the way of Constitutional wisdom from Justice Scalia.

But he is not alone in the delusion he propounds in the first sentence of today’s killer graf. Nearly every candidate, commentator and speechifier will, at convenient times, refer to the President of the United States as “the nation’s commander-in-chief” or “our commander-in-chief.”

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

This is a very specific delineation. When broad powers are claimed for the President, many rightly so, in his role as “commander-in-chief,” these broad powers do not automatically apply to those persons not in the armed forces of the United States. Where they exist at all, they apply to the men and women of the uniformed services of the Army and Navy, the state Guards and other armed services.

The president not only is impotent to hold me without allowing me to demand the charges against me, he is impotent to search or seize my person, goods and papers without a warrant showing probable cause. He is enjoined from quartering his armed troops on my property.

In point of fact, the president of the United States cannot do a damned thing to me that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do. And this limitation to his powers, embodied in the purposefully broad Tenth Amendment, holds because I am not a member of the armed forces.

In short, the president is not my commander-in-chief. Odds are, he is not yours, either. He is not Antonin Scalia’s commander in chief, not Hillary Clinton’s nor Chris Matthews’.

For us, the citizens of and visitors to the United States, he is the Chief Executive, pledged to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. He is not our commander. He is our servant.

I hope I’ve not made too much of a much here, but this anointing of the Chief Executive with unlimited powers over all citizens, like some ancient Imperator can’t be reversed solely by Court decisions. It must be dismantled in the minds of us, the citizens.

And refusing to accept the rule of a commander when you don’t wear the uniform is a reasonable place to start.

As reported by the AP (vis CBS News):

Spending to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan next year will total nearly $200 billion, according to a budget request the White House will take to Congress next week, making 2008 the most expensive year of those conflicts to date.

The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, which cited unnamed Pentagon officials.

The Bush administration has earlier this year said it would need $147.5 billion for fiscal 2008, but the estimates have been raised by another $47 billion. This request is in addition to the Pentagon’s nearly half-trillion annual budget, which omits war spending but covers routine costs, including training, payrolls and weapons procurement.

To keep it simple – that’s over $16 Billion – every single month.  $16 billion that’s taken from you by force and given to the merchants of death – the weapons makers, the contractors, and the like.

A war that can continually be funded through the coercive method of taxation is one that’s not easy to end.

Yet another reason why the income tax needs to go.

From the article:

One of the more morally reprehensible notes from the supporters of death I receive is the one that goes something like this: “I am for peace, too, but not at the expense of my family.” These people are saying that it is okay to ruin my family and thousands of other families in the U.S. who have been torn apart like the bodies of our loved ones to keep other families “safe.” I have news for these people, as bad as the sacrifices have been for some families in America, the people of Iraq have suffered far more for the deceptions and greed of BushCo…

…What makes Mrs. Safety think the Iraqi babies are less precious than her babies? Does the geographic accident of her baby’s births give them more right to be safe than the Iraqi babies? Maybe Mrs. Safety thinks her babies deserve more protection because they are white and Christian? Or just maybe because they are hers?

She’s absolutely right. Long ago, people realized that the “divine right of kings” was morally repugnant; that it’s absurd to accept the idea that, by some accident of birth, certain people have more rights than others. Sadly, this way of thinking is still pervasive in the halls of government, and we see its results in Iraq every day.

Bush and his criminal cohorts in the Republican and Democratic parties seem to think that as long as they can create what we believe to be a “secure” America, that it’s within their rights to violate the most basic rights of men, women and children in other countries. This becomes more and more obvious every day – politicians from both sides overwhelmingly supported the war in Iraq, and much of the recent opposition to it has risen only in response to “failure” or “mismanagement.”

But, this war would be a moral abomination whether it ended in victory or defeat. The problem doesn’t lie in how the war is waged, but in the idea that killing people to achieve political goals is acceptable.

The solution to this madness is not simply a change of course in Iraq (or Afghanistan), but rather a complete change in our point of view. No person has any right, whatsoever, to use aggression to take the life of another.

It is morally acceptable to go after criminals, but it is a crime to kill their families, their friends, their neighbors, or anyone else not criminally complicit. Murder is murder whether it’s committed by a person or a king.

Every person has a right to do what they want with their person or property as long as by doing so they don’t infringe on other people’s rights to do the same. We, as a society, need to start living by that principle – and realize that criminals are criminals whether they’re robbing banks or getting elected.