The Czar System Undermines Federalism

The Czar System Undermines Federalism
By Alan Sears
11/9/2011

When the Founding Fathers created a government for our Republic, they took pains to ensure that it was such a one as would keep powers of various governmental branches in check via the powers of other branches. In other words, each of the three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—would not only have distinct roles to play in governance, but would also serve as a check on the powers of the other two branches at any given time.

The Obama administration’s obsession with appointing a wide range of “czars” flies in the face of this construct and is dangerous to our form of government.

Under the system America’s founders created, a piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, for example, can be overturned (or disallowed) by the Supreme Court if said court finds the law unconstitutional. On the other hand, if a president has a hankering for legislation that Congress believes to be unconstitutional, House members can balk at the idea and refuse to take up the legislation in the first place, thus avoiding a constitutional train-wreck by deciding not to board the train to begin with.

Therefore, while the powers of our government can truly be said to rest with the American people, who elect presidents, congressional members, and senators—the latter of which are charged with confirming or rejecting judicial nominees—the Founding Fathers envisioned this power being delegated by the people to the various agents of the three branches of government (those agents most popularly referred to as the president, congressional members, senators, and jurists).

It is important to note that none of these various agents has original power in and of themselves. Rather, the power resides wholly in the people, and the agents of the government only have such powers which they derive from the citizens, as outlined in the Constitution.

Nowhere in the Constitution will one find even the slightest hint of the office of “Czar,” much less the power of a czar to rule over the American people. Yet the Obama administration is rife with such officeholders, put in place as a way to enlarge the role of the president in the midst of system that was not meant to be enlarged upon in such a way.

For example, President Obama has a health czar: (Nancy-Ann DeParle), an information czar (Vivek Kundra), an intellectual property czar (Victoria Espinel), and an intelligence czar (James Clapper). None of these agents are kept in check by the system our Founders established and which has kept our nation politically solvent for nearly 240 years.

And in addition to these czars, the Obama administration literally has approximately 34 others.

From an auto recovery czar to an urban affairs czar to a Great Lakes czar to a Mideast peace czar, each of these agents are rogue as far as the Constitution is concerned. And their existence alone is a threat to the balance in government we’ve witnessed throughout our nation’s history.

Placing power in the hands of unelected officials who have no explicit constitutional limits on their powers, and no congressional oversight on their offices, is certainly a recipe for disaster.
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China's One-Child Policy: the Culture of Death on Steroids
By Alan Sears
10/27/2011

Ever wonder what the world look like if Planned Parenthood’s dreams came true? If there were no Judeo-Christian pressures or legal limits, and abortion was viewed as just another amoral solution to some of this world’s problems?

If so, you need look no further than China to see how such a paradigm works in real life.

In 1979, China instituted a one-child policy, which has been used as a justification for killing approximately 400 million preborn children since. This is the culture of death on steroids. It’s a state-sponsored license to kill that is biased against females and has wiped generations off the face of the earth.

How does the one-child policy work? It allows each family one live birth. Records are kept, women of childbearing age are medically examined every two months to see if they’re pregnant, and those who are pregnant for a second time are forced to have an abortion (and sometimes to be sterilized).

While such policies vary from province to province, the mental anguish they place on Chinese women who want to get pregnant and mothers who are pregnant for a second time is unimaginable. According to a U.S. congressional report, 500 women committed suicide in China i>each day in 2009.

What this is leading to in hard numbers is a surplus of as many as 40 million men by the year 2020. (The birthrate in China is already at a 20 percent surplus, with only 100 women born for 120 men.)

This top-down promotion of death, from the state level, necessarily impacts families (and would-be families) throughout China.

For example, if a woman who thinks she might be pregnant skips her medical exam to avoid detection her home might be razed, family members killed, or she herself sterilized. Additionally, she and others like her would be rounded up like cattle and forced to have an abortion.

And this brings us to a broader application of the one-child policy, namely, the fact that it literally expunges the human rights of Chinese women. If they get pregnant, they can have the baby only if it’s their first, but even then there is pressure to abort if the child is female. And there is simply no denying the kind of problems this will lead to down the road, when a population disproportionately full of males will be forced to import females via the avenues of prostitution and human trafficking simply to satisfy their need for companionship with the opposite sex.

The culture of death is like cancer in a body. It permeates, destroying as it goes, and lays ruin to what might otherwise be a robust and vibrant life or culture. Our legal efforts at the Alliance Defense Fund to protect innocent human life have revealed this all too often.

China’s example reminds us that once the culture of death is given a foothold in any society, it is hard to control. It reminds me of the allegory of the little boy who ignored his parents’ prohibitions and chased a fox just to tug at its tail. In the end, when the fox turned, it was a lion, and the boy’s refusal to heed sound advice resulted in his death.

China began tugging on that fox’s tail in 1979, and now the lion we call the culture of death is wreaking havoc upon the weakest members of Chinese society.
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To read another article by Alan Sears, click here.