Provide for the Common Defense

Principle #5 from the Enacting Clause (Preamble) of the United States Constitution

Full Episode Transcript

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, said: “Political parties may now and then answer popular ends, but they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government”.

The dark money sophistries that support judicial nominations, confirmations, and featherbedded accommodations appear to dovetail precisely with President Washington’s prophetic wisdom. The Court has cloaked itself with an absolute judicial immunity that has no foundation within the Constitution of the United States. It is, rather, a doctrine derived from the supposed infallibility of Popes and Kings. And now, certain members of the Federal Judiciary are clearly enamored with the Unitary Executive Theory.

In 2008, law professors Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo described the unitary executive theory as ensuring “the federal government will execute the law in a consistent manner and in accordance with the president’s wishes.” This stands in stark contrast and striking relief against other scholarly literature, such as MacKenzie in 2008, and Crouch, Rozell, and Sollenberger in 2020, stressing the fact that federal employees must faithfully execute the laws enacted according to the process prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.

Former White House Counsel John Dean warned: “In its most extreme form, unitary executive theory can mean that neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it . . .”

As the Supreme Court of the United States vacillates between a secularization hypothesis and quasi-theocratic rule, its moral and legal relativism is widely seen as the inevitable result of abandoning the principles articulated within the Constitution’s Preamble. The public is asking: “What ever became of your Oath?

In the United States, federal judges are required to take two oaths, the Judicial Oath and the Constitutional Oath. The first commits the decision maker to administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich. The second requires them to  support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. A comprehensive understanding of defense is far more than what the military – industrial complex would have us believe.

Most individuals, who reside at the Sentient Center, believe totalitarian wannabes are a clear and present danger to the principles enshrined within the United States Constitution. And they see the Supreme Court’s enabling of such individuals as antithetical to constitutional principle. If the Court’s biases were grounded in truth, or the cardinal precepts delineated in the Preamble, its desire to be seen as legitimate would be respected.