Ghost of a flea: An illegal national referendum to repeal the 22nd Amendment

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July 08, 2009

An illegal national referendum to repeal the 22nd Amendment

Suppose, from a purely hypothetical standpoint, the crisis in Honduras was mimicked in the United States?

A fictional American president, lacking the votes in Congress and the judicial nod from the Supreme Court, circumvents the constitutional process and holds an illegal national referendum to repeal the 22nd Amendment -- thus infinitely extending his potential for reelection.

The obvious legislative differences between the United States and Honduras aside, reactions would be nearly identical. Members of the Armed Forces take a solemn oath to "support and defend the Constitution," not to a specific individual. The oath further specifies an obligation to defend the Constitution and the Republic against "all enemies, foreign and domestic." This was a revolutionary concept back in the 18th century, when most of the dominant European armies mandated an oath of loyalty to their respective monarch, though it's wholly in line with the clear Platonist distinction between an organized, functional republic and the chaos of pure democracy. An American military coup in a similar Honduran scenario, against the tyranny of the majority, wouldn't just be likely -- it would be the obligation of every serviceman who swore to uphold the rule of law.

Brilliantly, succinctly stated. RTRest.

Better: The above image is by the electrifying Alex Grey.

Update: In case anyone thinks I make joke (hat tip to Five Feet of Fury).

During the last Great Crisis Franklin Delano Roosevelt led America out of the Great Depression and through World War II. Today, Barack Obama leads us through the worst Economic Crisis since the Great Depression and leads the War on Terror.

We are wise enough to choose our own leader and to decide how long that leader will serve.

The leader. He leads.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 8, 2009 01:28 AM

Comments

See, what I would say on this topic is that while you may be entirely right, I can't get behind military coups ousting Leftist presidents. I'm an anarchist, so if a bunch of black bloc kids burned down the presidential palace and sent homeboy and his minions fleeing likewise to Miami or wherever--game on. But when it comes to military coups in Latin America ousting Left politicians, my lefty roots make it impossible for me to feel anything but outrage.

Also, while the referendum may be "illegal" it is no less arbitrary than whatever process brought the constitution into place in the first place. All sides in this issue have taken up the language of "illegal"--the referendum was illegal, the coup was illegal, etc. This goes to the liberal notion of the "rule of law," a fanciful creation of eggheads abstracting power from its real world applications into a world of do-gooder theorizing. In truth the law is whatever the people in power say it is. The only way of enforcing any law perceived to have been broken by the state is to exert some new "illegal" power over that source of the law. That is to say the referendum's illegality could only be confirmed and addressed by an "illegal" coup, which could only have been perhaps stopped by street riots and other illegal activities on a mass scale (cf. Caracas '02).

All this to say, at the bottom of the law and the constitution is illegality. All our structures of law and order rest on a basis crime and chaos--the "law" of the jungle, force. Proof positive of this is the ideological coherence of (it sounds reasonable to make) the argument presented above regarding an hypothetical referendum by Obama and a resulting military coup. The constitution's ultimate viability is propped up by the threat of martial law, military coups and "illegal" violence.

Shameless plug (I figure it is okay since I actually read the piece and put up a real comment): check out the site I write for, The Deliverators. We just started linking to Ghost of a Flea.

Posted by: Andrew Dobbs at July 12, 2009 09:53 PM

I am afraid I delete shameless plugs but as this one was so charming it can stand. :-)

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at July 13, 2009 07:29 AM