If you’ve discussed or debated politics, chances are that you’ve come across a MAGA who flexed his asserted political acumen with statements like “We’re not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic.”
That’s true, in fact, if “democracy” is taken to mean direct, unrestrained democracy in which a 50% plus one majority gets its way regardless of how it may harm or affect others.
I will mention only in passing that this same MAGA has always been avid fans and champions of pure, 50% + one democracy when the aim is to take rights and dignity away from groups of people using ballot propositions decided by direct popular vote. MAGA’s adoration for pure 50%+1 democracy shows up repeatedly in right wing talking points such as “In fact, federal judges are now even trying to strike down various state marriage amendments thwarting the sovereign will of the people.”
MAGA adores pure democracy with zero safeguards for minority rights when it suits them. But what about monarchy?
To answer that question, let’s first dispense with another MAGA word game: the idea that “separation of powers” means that any one of the three branches of government has no power to act as a check against unlawful, illegal or unconstitutional activity being committed by another branch. According to Reuters, “Vice President JD Vance wrote on [Twitter] on Sunday that ‘judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power’ after U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan blocked Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff from accessing Treasury Department payment records.”
This is dangerous and unconstitutional rhetoric. In no possible universe could the separation of powers ever mean that one branch has no power to stop another branch from acting illegally. If that were true, it would lead to chaos: each branch of government would be fully empowered to enact differing or even opposing policy directives that would each be legally binding. Common sense alone forces the conclusion that this would be an impossible definition of the separation of powers.
No, MAGA, that is not what separation of powers means. Our separation of powers gives us three co-equal branches of government in that no one branch is unchecked by any other, and most certainly not “one royal, monarchical executive branch which cannot even be touched by either of the other two branches of government.”
If we had the king that MAGA wants, then the Congress would have no power to impeach or remove a president, since impeachment and removal does what MAGA’s “Unitary Executive Theory” forbids: exercise powers over the Executive Branch.
I know, I know; you’re waiting for me to get around to the Founding Fathers.
In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison warned, “It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.”
Federalist #10 deals with the dangers posed by the rise of powerful and malevolent factions within our body politic. It cannot be overemphasized that we are faced with the rise of a powerful and intensely malevolent faction in the form of MAGA. Madison wrote of such factions: “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.“
While the Founders did disagree among themselves over just how powerful the office of the executive should be, none of them come close to the true dictatorial powers with no checks or balances that MAGA now craves.
As Madison also wrote in Federalist #10, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” Not only would a king effectively be a judge of his own cause, but when the agencies tasked with the enforcement functions of the Executive Branch become hand-picked and sworn to do a president’s bidding, the effect is the same and then some: such agencies, in their pure loyalty, would be judges for the president’s cause as if it were the King himself rendering judgments upon himself.
Moreover, since most all the Founders were keenly interested in designing a system of government that would hold up during times when enlightened statesmen, as Madison put it, were not at the helm, it is impossible to pretend that the Founders would have purposefully allowed an unqualified individual, let alone an outright lunatic, to possess sweeping monarchical powers.
As Madison debated at the Constitutional Convention, “In the case of the Executive Magistracy which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.”
MAGA likes to allude to the alleged “intent of the Founding Fathers.”
Let me be clear: there is absolutely no way that the Founding Fathers would even have come close to structuring an Office of the President that would give a single lunatic unchecked and unencumbered powers.
As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.”
The Founders disagreed over how much power the Executive should have, and over whether it should be just one man or several. They opted for a one-man presidency for the express reason that it would be easier to hold one man to account than several.
But there is no way in hell that they would have intended a design that would give a madman unaccountable powers.
The first installment of this new series appears here: First Amendment 1: The Redress of Grievances – and MAGA’s Hostility to Redress