We’ve taken our post, ‘Revolution Within the Form – Review and Commentary’ and disaggregated it. It was too long and tortuous as extracted from the source material, so we took it apart into more cohesive modules. However, as with all blog posts, these modules were posted in reverse order so that they would be in order when read later. This post links these posts for those who saw them issued in reverse order.
Do Not Look for a Revolution – Garet Garrett and his views on our loss of the American Republic to empire, his so-called ‘revolution within the form.’
Our Government’s Erosion – Garet Garrett’s synecdoche, centered on the Constitution’s phrase, “The Congress shall have power to declare war,” for the erosion of the American republic and transformation into empire.
We also attempted to get these published in a national blog, but they weren’t appropriate to their needs. Hopefully these smaller articles will get wider distribution and reading. Garrett foresaw what many did not seventy years ago. Some, however, did. The difference of course is that he said something about it. He was forgotten.
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy (January 10, 1873 – March 3, 1952), Public Domain in the US
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
He quotes Aristotle’s Politics, “one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.”
People do not easily change but love their own ancient customs; and it is by small degrees only that one thing takes the place of another; so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about a revolution in the state.
The extent to which the original precepts and intentions of constitutional, representative, limited government, in the republican form, have been eroded away by argument and dialectic is a separate subject, long and ominous, and belongs to a treatise on political science.
…When the process of erosion has gone on until there is no saying what the supreme law of the land is at a given time, then the Constitution begins to be flouted by executive will, with something like impunity. The instances may not be crucial at first and all the more dangerous for that reason. As one is condoned another follows and they become progressive…
As we see every day, the revolution is not over. However, Garrett’s point is that the revolution started in the early Twentieth Century. Keep in mind that the original source article was published in 1952, seventy years ago.
The extent to which the original precepts and intentions of constitutional, representative, limited government, in the republican form, have been eroded away by argument and dialectic is a separate subject, long and ominous, and belongs to a treatise on political science.
…When the process of erosion has gone on until there is no saying what the supreme law of the land is at a given time, then the Constitution begins to be flouted by executive will, with something like impunity. The instances may not be crucial at first and all the more dangerous for that reason. As one is condoned another follows and they become progressive…
Garrett describes a representative instance of the whole erosive process,
…There was one thing a President could never do. There was one sentence of the Constitution that could not fall, so long as the Republic lived.
The Constitution says: “The Congress shall have power to declare war.”
…Congress could be trusted never to do it but by will of the people. And that was the innermost safeguard of the republic. The decision whether or not to go to war was in the hands of the people – or so they believed. No man could make it for them…
He writes that this constitutional principle was circumvented, an example of the progressive ‘revolution within the form,’
President Truman, alone and without either the consent or knowledge of Congress, had declared war on the Korean aggressor, seven thousand miles away, Congress condoned his usurpation of its exclusive constitutional power. More than that, his political supporters in Congress argued that in the modern case that sentence in the Constitution conferring upon Congress the sole power to declare war was obsolete.
Mark you, the words had not been erased; they still existed in form. Only, they had become obsolete. And why obsolete? Because war may now begin suddenly, with bombs falling out of the sky, and we might perish while waiting for Congress to declare war.
The reasoning is puerile. [Firstly,] the Korean War, which made the precedent, did not begin that way; secondly, Congress was in session at the time, so that the delay could not have been more than a few hours, provided Congress had been willing to declare war; and, thirdly, the President as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Republic may in a legal manner act defensively before a declaration of war has been made. It is bound to be made if the nation has been attacked…
A few months later Mr. Truman sent American troops to Europe to join an international army, and did it not only without a law, without even consulting Congress, but challenged the power of Congress to stop him. Congress made all of the necessary sounds of anger and then poulticed its dignity with a resolution saying it was all right for that one time, since anyhow it had been done, but that hereafter it would expect to be consulted.
But the damage had been done. The congress no longer held this constitutional power, de facto. All that was left was for the executive branch to declare it de jure. Garrett writes,
At that time the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate asked the State Department to set forth in writing what might be called the position of Executive Government.
The State Department obligingly responded with a document entitled, “Powers of the President to Send Troops Outside of the United States, February 28, 1951.” For the information of the United States Senate, it said: “As this discussion of the respective powers of the President and Congress has made clear, constitutional doctrine has been largely molded by practical necessities. Use of the congressional power to declare war, for example, has fallen into abeyance because wars are no longer declared in advance.”
…If constitutional doctrine is molded by necessity, what is a written Constitution for?
Garrett states that the modus operandi for every revolutionary act undertaken by the Wilson, FDR, and Truman administrations, in the context of his example,
Thus, an argument that seemed at first to rest upon puerile reasoning turned out to be deep and cunning. The immediate use of it was to defend the unconstitutional Korean precedent, namely, the declaration of war as an act of the President’s own will. Yet it was not invented for that purpose alone. It stands as a forecast of executive intentions, a manifestation of the executive mind, a mortal challenge to the parliamentary principle…
If you think about recent history, this method of operation is used to this day at all levels of government. Imagine teaching these things in civics class.
If you may have Empire with or without a constitution, even within the form of a republican constitution, and if also you may have Empire with or without an emperor, then how may the true marks of Empire be distinguished with certainty? What are they?
Garrett lists six of these marks,
1) The executive power of government shall be dominant. – What Empire needs above all in government is an executive power that can make immediate decisions, such as a decision in the middle of the night by the President to declare war on the aggressor… The Federal income-tax law of 1914 gave the government unlimited access to wealth…not for revenue only but…for redistribution of the national wealth. Congress…principal function was to enact and [fund] them. The part of the Supreme Court was to make everything square with the Constitution by a liberal reinterpretation of its language… For all the years before when you spoke of the executive power of government you meant only the power to execute and administer the laws. Henceforth it would mean the power to [rule].
No longer did the Congress of the United States speak for the people, but the President did, as head of the Executive Government. Garrett writes, “Thus the man who happens to be the embodiment of the executive principle stands between the Congress and the people and assumes the right to express [the people’s] will.”
Examining the second mark of empire, Garrett writes,
2) Domestic policy becomes subordinate to foreign policy. – It needs hardly to be argued that as we convert the nation into a garrison state to build the most terrible war machine that has ever been imagined on earth, every domestic policy is bound to be conditioned by our foreign policy… We are no longer able to choose between peace and war. We have embraced perpetual war…
The third mark of empire is this,
3) Ascendancy of the military mind, to such a point…that the civilian mind is intimidated. – War becomes an instrument of domestic policy. Among the control mechanisms on the government’s panel board now is a dial marked War. It may be set to increase or decrease the tempo of military expenditures, as the planners decide that what the economy needs is a little more inflation or a little less – but of course never any deflation. And whereas it was foreseen that when Executive Government is resolved to control the economy it will come to have a vested interest in the power of inflation, so now we perceive that it will come also to have a kind of proprietary interest in the institution of perpetual war…
He then identifies a historic structural aspect of empire,
4) [It acquires] a system of satellite nations. – We speak of our own satellites as allies and friends or as freedom loving nations. Nevertheless, satellite is the right word. The meaning of it is the hired guard… For any one of them to involve us in war it is necessary only for the Executive Power at Washington to decide that its defense is somehow essential to the security of the United States…
…Any candidate for office who trifles with its basic conviction will be scourged. The basic conviction is simple. We cannot stand alone. A capitalistic economy, though it possesses half the industrial power of the whole world, cannot defend its own hemisphere. It may be able to save the world; alone it cannot save itself. It must have allies. Fortunately, it is able to buy them, bribe them, arm them, feed and clothe them; it may cost us more than we can afford, yet we must have them or perish. This voice of fear is the voice of government.
This hired guard becomes a source of both boasting and fear for empire. Garrett says,
5) [It is in thrall to a combination] of [boasting] and fear. – As we assume unlimited political liabilities all over the world…there is only scorn for the one who says: “We are not infinite. Let us calculate our utmost power of performance, weigh it against what we are proposing to do, and see if the scales will balance.” The [boastful] answer is: “We do not know what our utmost is. What we will to do, that we can do. Let us resolve to do what is necessary. Necessity will create the means.”
Conversely, the fear. Fear of the barbarian. Fear of standing alone. A time comes when the guard itself, that is, your system of satellites, is a source of fear. Satellites are often willful and the more you rely upon them the more willful and demanding they are… How will they behave when the test comes? …If they falter or fail, what will become of the weapons with which we have supplied them? What if they were surrendered or captured and turned against us? The possibility of having to face its own weapons on a foreign field is one of the nightmares of Empire…
The last mark of empire, Garrett writes, is that the time comes when,
6) [It] finds itself a prisoner of history. – …A Republic is not obliged to act upon the world, either to change or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power… It is our turn: to assume the responsibilities of moral leadership in the world; to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everywhere – in Europe and Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, by air and by sea…; to keep the peace of the world; to save civilization; and to serve mankind.
…Always the banners of Empire proclaim that the ends in view sanctify the means. The ironies, sublime and pathetic, are two. The first one is that Empire believes what it says on its banner; the second is that the word for the ultimate end is invariably Peace. Peace by grace of force. One must see that on the road to Empire there is soon a point from which there is no turning back…
Summing up his description of empire, Garrett writes,
Between government in the republican meaning, that is, constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire, on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.
The country has been committed to the course of Empire by Executive Government, one step at a time, with slogans, concealments, equivocations, a propaganda of fear, and in every crisis an appeal for unity, lest we present to the world the aspect of a divided nation, until at last it may be proclaimed that events have made the decision and it is irrevocable. Thus, now to alter the course is impossible.
Who says it is impossible? The President says it; the State Department says it; all globalists and one-worlders are saying it.
Garrett wrote these things seventy years ago. Having had a brief respite from new perpetual wars, we are right back at it. What comes to my mind is the scripture, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Jeremiah 6:14, English Standard Version.
What Empire needs above all in government is an executive power that can make immediate decisions, such as a decision in the middle of the night by the President to declare war on the aggressor…
The Federal income-tax law of 1914 gave the government unlimited access to wealth and, moreover, power for the first time to levy taxes not for revenue only but for social purposes, …for redistribution of the national wealth.
Congress received from the White House laws that were marked “must.” Its principal function was to enact and [fund] them. The part of the Supreme Court was to make everything square with the Constitution by a liberal reinterpretation of its language.
The word executive came to have its new connotation. For all the years before when you spoke of the executive power of government you meant only the power to execute and administer the laws. Henceforth it would mean the power to [rule].
Garrett concludes, “The result is Bureau Government, administered by bureaucrats who are not elected by the people…” He then examines the ways that executive power expands.
(1) By delegation. That is when the Congress delegates one or more of its constitutional powers to the President and authorizes him to exercise them.
(2) By reinterpretation of the language of the Constitution. That is done by a sympathetic Supreme Court.
(3) By innovation. That is when, in this changing world, the President does things that are not specifically forbidden by the Constitution because the founders never thought of them.
(4) By the appearance in the sphere of Executive Government of what are called administrative agencies, with power to issue rules and regulations that have the force of law.
(5) By usurpation. That is when the President willfully confronts Congress with what in statecraft is called the fait accompli – a thing already done – which Congress cannot repudiate without exposing the American government to the ridicule of nations…
(6) Lastly, the powers of Executive Government are bound to increase as the country becomes more and more involved in foreign affairs. This is true because, both traditionally and by the terms of the Constitution, the province of foreign affairs is one that belongs in a very special sense to the President.
Examining the administrative state more deeply, Garrett writes,
These [administrative] agencies have built up a large body of administrative law which people are obliged to obey. And not only do they make their own laws; they enforce their own laws, acting as prosecutor, jury and judge; and appeal from their decisions to the regular courts is difficult because the regular courts are obliged to take their findings of fact as final. Thus, the constitutional separation of the three governmental powers, namely, the legislative, the executive and the judicial, is entirely lost.
Garret wrote this seventy years ago. Sadly, generations of conservative opinion makers seem to have made their fortunes from this kind of material. Garrett was conveniently forgotten. The administrative state has only grown larger these many years.
Do not ask whether or not it is possible [to alter our course]. Ask yourself this: if it were possible, what would it take? How could the people restore the Republic if they would? Or, before that, how could they recover their Constitutional sovereign right to choose for themselves?
When you have put it that way you are bound to turn and look at the lost terrain. What are the positions, forgotten or surrendered, that would have to be recaptured?
He then lists the hills that must be retaken if the republic is to be reestablished.
The first hill is “a state of mind,”
To recover the habit of decision the people must learn again to think for themselves; and this would require a kind of self-awakening, as from a wee small alarm in the depths.
The second is “renewed public debate of foreign policy.” Citing a speech given to the National Women’s Democratic Club on November 20, 1951, by President Truman, Garrett quotes,
You remember what happened in 1920. When the people voted for Harding, that meant a tremendous change in the course the United States was following. It meant that we turned our backs on the new-born League of Nations… I think most people now recognize that the country chose the wrong course in 1920… Since I have been President, I have sought to steer a straight course of handling foreign policy matters on the sole basis of the national interest. The people I have chosen to fill the major positions concerned with foreign policy have been picked solely on merit, without regard to party labels. I want to keep it that way. I want to keep our foreign policy out of domestic politics.
Garrett then analyzes Truman’s remarks,
So far had the American mind been conditioned by the infatuate phrase, bi-partisan foreign policy, that extraordinary statement was vacantly received. What was the President saying? He was saying that because, in his opinion, the people once voted wrong on foreign policy, they ought not to vote on it at all anymore. Let them leave it to the President. It follows logically that the people have no longer anything to say about war and peace.
On this [hill], where foreign policy once more shall be debated by the people who may have to die for it, let the wind be cold and merciless. Let those be nakedly exposed to it who have brought the country to this impasse.
The next hill that must be retaken is the “public purse,” once controlled by the people through congress, and now by the unelected Government Executive through (or, sometimes, in spite of) the president. He writes,
Until the people have recovered [the public purse] they cannot tame Executive Government. Passing laws to control or restrain it is of no avail whatever. The only way to reason with it is to cut it off at the pockets… No matter how badly the people may manage the public purse it cannot control them, whereas, in the hands of the government, control of the purse becomes the single most powerful instrument of executive policy touching the lives of the people.
Finally, the highest hill Garrett identifies, is the cost to save the republic that each citizen must pay, which he names “the Peak of Fortitude.”
What you have to face is that the cost of saving the Republic may be extremely high. It could be relatively as high as the cost of setting it up in the first place, [two hundred forty-seven] years ago, when love of political liberty was a mighty passion, and people were willing to die for it.
When the economy has for a long time been moving by jet propulsion, the higher the faster, on the fuel of perpetual war and planned inflation, the time comes when you have to choose whether to go on and on and dissolve in the stratosphere or decelerate. But deceleration will cause a terrific shock. Who will say, “Now!”? Who is willing to face the grim and dangerous realities of deflation and depression?
…No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose.
To restore the republic, two things must happen. First, we must repent of our luxury and moral indifference and function as free and responsible citizens again. And second, we must pray that the hand of God removes the administrative state with its rules and regulations and installs responsible citizens in reconstituted city, state, and federal governments.
During this time of turmoil and strife, we do well to abide by the command,
“Do not call [confederacy] all that this people calls [confederacy], and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. Isaiah 8:12-13 (English Standard Version and Geneva Bible)
I’ve been reading several commentaries on the Book of Revelation. Many people think it’s a coded message describing world history in detail. But Sweet’s commentary says it’s a broad picture of the Creator God’s plan to save people from the penalty of their sins, destroy evil, and recreate His paradise in which He will dwell with mankind forever.
Revelation, Sweet says, describes the cyclical rise and fall of empires and the beastly nature of those emperors. He uses those emperors (e.g., presidents, prime ministers, etc.) to chasten those who will repent, and He lets them destroy those who will not repent. Those who follow the leaders (beasts and false prophets) don’t realize that they lead them to destruction. Those who reject the leaders’ domination obey God’s moral law to the end and show and tell others of His sacrificial love to those who follow the beast, if perchance, they repent, too.
At a time of His choosing, when all those who will be saved are saved, the Creator God will intervene and call a halt to these cycles of destruction. Then God will mete out rewards and punishments to everyone for deeds they’ve done. Those found in the Book of Life enter His presence forever in the new earth and those who are not found in that book are driven into the outer darkness away from His presence forever. God as the Creator has the right to re-create a new earth in which He will dwell with mankind.
This is a simpler, more straightforward, and even countercultural understanding of a misunderstood and maligned book. Sweet emphasizes that the one whose Christian witness and moral practice endures to the end will be saved. On the flipside, he wrestles with Calvinism, attributing it, at one point, to unwarranted smugness. He also caters to a liberal understanding of the Book of Daniel but that can be overlooked.
Sweet makes some very strong points that organize our understanding of Revelation. First, that the book says it’s meant to be read out loud. Therefore, hearers would be listening to the rhythms and cadences of the book while picking up on verbal markers linking the book together and with Old Testament sources. Just like Jesus’ exclamation, “I thirst,” calls to mind Psalm 69, John’s symbols refer to and sometimes reinterpret Old Testament stories and images. He argues that the book was made to be apprehended by those who hear it, though textual analysis provides further depth.
Numbers also take on significance in the book. As an example, concerning Rev. 7:4, he says, “Twelve is the number of tribes of Israel, a thousand intensifies it (and is itself a military formation), a squared number expresses perfection: twelve times twelve thousands, therefore, means that the sealed are the totality of God’s Israel, brigaded for His service.”
Another organizing principle Sweet advances is that what John says he sees is interpreted by what he hears. He says, “What is heard, the ‘voice’, represents the inner reality, the spirit; what is seen, the ‘appearance’, represents the outward, the flesh.” Sweet is careful to say this is neither a gnostic nor Platonic understanding, but rather, “To the Jew the outward world is the locus of God’s ‘speaking’, His self-revelation and action, so that there is a dialectical relationship between inward and outward, spirit and flesh, hearing and seeing.”
He cites several examples. Sweet says,
Thus the slain Lamb (which John sees) is interpreted by the Lion of Judah (of which he hears): its death is not weakness and defeat, as it seems to be, but power and victory (cf. 1 Cor 1:23 ff).” Also, he says, “In Rev. 7 John hears (Rev. 7:4) the number of the 144,000 who are ‘sealed’ (i.e., the spiritual truth of Israel’s ‘election’), which interprets what he sees (v. 9), a multitude drawn from all nations: i.e., ‘salvation is of the Jews’. But the outward reality of the church, in which there cannot be distinctions between Jews, Greek, and barbarian (Col. 3:11), reinterprets the traditional theological truth of Israel’s priority.
Sweet says that the letters (Rev. 2, 3), “show that the church’s chief dangers are internal: complacency, somnolence, and compromise with worldly values.” However, Sweet says, there is also danger from external attack: false jews who attack faith in the Messiah and false prophets and Nicolaitans (Niko-laos means Conquer–people) who adulterate it with heathen religion and morals. The false prophets and Nicolaitans are associated with Balaam (Bala‘–’am means Destroy–people,) Balak, and Jezebel. Balaam and Balak, Sweet points out, are one of several Old Testament representatives of the false prophet and beast king of Revelation.
Sweet points out that within his four septets structure (i.e., letters, seals, trumpets, and bowls) there is another feature crucial for understanding the book. He says,
The visions of destruction (Ch. 6–20) are bracketed by the overarching vision of God the Creator and Redeemer (Ch. 4–5,) who makes all things new (21:1 – 22:5): carnage and chaos are within the divine plan and lead through into the fulfilment of man’s destiny in final union with God.
However, Sweet struggles to reinterpret all the destruction of chapter 6 through 20 as sacrificial love instead of vengeance, but ends up concluding rightly, with Farrer, “No other New Testament writing presents such embarrassing pictures…yet to a large extent Revelation merely colors in what was everywhere taken for granted…And as for divine vengeance, no New Testament Christian felt any qualms about it. God’s mercy was outpoured to save as many as would repent; but the triumph of His power over irreconcilable hostility was to have all the splendor of a victory.”
Finally, he analyzes the book and presents the following outline. Others, who agree with the symbolic interpretation, differ with the breakdown for textual reasons.
Death on a Pale Horse is a version of the traditional subject, Four Horsemen of Revelation, 1796, Benjamin West (1738 – 1820), in the public domain in the US
Mandated Memoranda 