Category Archives: Federalist

Its become painfully obvious over the past year that the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland has been weaponized and politicized to the point that it represents an active threat to the rule of law and the separation of powers. Its not too much to say that Garlands DOJ has become a threat to the republic.

Just take this past week. On Thursday, following an historic 6-3U.S. Supreme Court rulingthat struck down a New York law for violating state residents Second Amendment rights, a DOJ spokeswoman released a statement saying we respectfully disagree with the ruling.

The ruling is of coursea great victory for the Constitutionand a long-overdue vindication of New Yorkers Second Amendment rights. The law in question had been on the books for more than a century, and made it nearly impossible for ordinary people to obtain a concealed-carry license, The unconstitutional law forced New Yorkers to prove to a municipal bureaucrat that they needed a gun for self-defense. In practice, this made it almost impossible for law-abiding citizens in New York to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms.

But neither the law in question nor the Supreme Courts decision implicates federal gun laws in any way. There is no reason for the DOJ to weigh in on the matter or express any opinion whatsoever on the ruling. Only an utterly politicized Justice Department hoping to undermine the Supreme Courts constitutional authority and sow the seeds of nullification would issue such a statement.

But thats not nearly the worst thing Garlands DOJ did this week. In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning, more than a dozen federal investigatorsraided the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official with the Trump administration. Why? Because Clark had the temerity to investigate claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

That made Clark a target for the House Democrats Jan. 6 committee, whose Soviet-style show trial spent a good deal of time Wednesday implying that Clark, who once oversaw 1,400 lawyers and two divisions at DOJ, is traitor who tried to overturn the results of the election.

This should come as no surprise, since the entireraison dtreof the Jan. 6 committee is to smear anyone who questioned the outcome of the election or raised concerns about its unprecedented irregularities as a coup-plotter responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection. In fact, Clarks only crime is that in a sea of attorneys who didnt want to lift a finger to investigate the election, he looked for options and fought to uncover the truth.

Of course, hes not the only one the DOJ targeted this week. The same day Clarks house was raided, FBI agentsraided the home of Michael McDonald, Nevadas top GOP official.

His crime, according to the Justice Department and the Jan. 6 committee, was signing a document with five other Nevada Republican Party electors after the 2020 election signaling their support for Trump. Among the signatories of the purely symbolic document was state GOP secretary James DeGraffenreid, whom FBI agents tried but failed to find on Wednesday.

These are just a few of the people against whom the Jan. 6 committee has unleashed Garlands Justice Department. So far, the committee hassubpoenaed more than 100 lawmakers, local officials like McDonald and DeGraffenreid, internet and communications companies, Trump White House officials, and others. Make no mistake: the committee is using the DOJ as a weapon against its political enemies, and Garland is allowing it to happen.

We should have seen this coming. From the outset of his tenure, Garland has betrayed a willingness to use the DOJ as a partisan weapon. There was theraid on Project Veritas founder James OKeefes homelast November, and preceding thatmonths of illegal spyingon his organization.

Even worse, in some ways, was theunprecedented memoin October designed to threaten and silence parents whose only crime was to speak out about the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Garland smeared them as domestic terrorists and directed the Department of Justice and the FBI to launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.

But this rise in criminal conduct was pure fiction. Garland got it from a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the National School Boards Association, which made vague and unsubstantiated claims about threats and acts of violence against school board members from parents opposed to critical race theory. Less than a week after the letter was sent, Garlands memo appeared. It was a transparent ploy to get the federal government to intimidate parents into silence and suppress their First Amendment rights, which Garland was happy to do.

At every turn, Garland has shown himself hostile to the Bill of Rights and to law-abiding Americans who exercise those rights, and beholden to Democrat partisans and left-wing advocacy groups. He has brazenly allowed political influence to direct the Justice Departments considerable powers.

If you think Garlands DOJ isnt a threat to the republic, then you need to start paying attention, because the weaponization of federal law enforcement under Biden and Garland is almost certainly going to get much worse.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Merrick Garland's DOJ Is A Threat To The Republic - The Federalist

President Biden really does not want the public to know about his federal takeover of election administration. Dozens of members of Congress have repeatedly asked for details, to no avail. Good government groups, members of the media, and private citizens have filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Not a single one has been responded to. All signs indicate a concerted effort to keep the public in the dark until at least after the November midterm elections. The lack of transparency and responsiveness is so bad that the Department of Justice and some of its agencies have been repeatedly sued for the information.

When President Biden ordered all 600 federal agencies to expand citizens opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process on March 7, 2021, Republican politicians, Constitutional scholars, and election integrity specialists began to worry exactly what was up his sleeve.

They had good reason. The 2020 election had suffered from widespread and coordinated efforts by Democrat activists and donors to run Get Out The Vote operations from inside state and local government election offices, predominantly in the Democrat-leaning areas of swing states. Independent researchers have shown the effect of this takeover of government election offices was extremely partisan and favored Democrats overwhelmingly.

At the time the order was issued, Democrats were also hoping to pass H.R. 1, a continuation of the effort to destabilize elections throughout the country via a federalized takeover of state election administrations.

Biden gave each agency 200 days to file their plans for approval by none other than Susan Rice, his hyperpartisan domestic policy advisor. Yet fully nine months after those plans were due, they are all being hidden from the public, even as evidence is emerging that the election operation is in full swing.

There are several major problems with Bidens secret plan, critics say. Its unethical to tie federal benefits to election activity. Its unconstitutional to have the federal government take authority that belongs to the states and which Congress has not granted. And, given that all 50 states have different laws and processes governing election administration, its a recipe for chaos, confusion, and fraud at a time when election security concerns are particularly fraught.

Mobilizing voters is always a political act. Choosing which groups to target for Get Out The Vote efforts is one of the most important activities done by political campaigns. Federal agencies that interact with the public by doling out benefits can easily pressure recipients to vote for particular candidates and positions. Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939, which bans bureaucrats and bureaucracies from being involved in election activities after Democrats used Works Progress Administration programs and personnel for partisan political advantage.

Executive Order 14019 ignores that the Constitution does not give the executive branch authority over elections. That power is reserved for the states, with a smaller role for Congress. With H.R. 1 and other Democrat Party efforts to grab more control over elections have thus far failed, Congress hasnt authorized such an expansion.

As with previous efforts to destabilize elections, the chaos and confusion that would occur are part of the plan. The Executive Order copied much of a white paper put out by left-wing dark money group Demos, which advocates for left-wing changes to the country and which brags on its website that it moves bold progressive ideas from cutting-edge concept to practical reality. Not coincidentally, Biden put former Demos President K. Sabeel Rahman and former Demos Legal Strategies Director Chiraag Bains in key White House posts to oversee election-related initiatives.

Rahman serves as senior counsel at the White House office that oversees regulatory changes, meaning he approves every federal agencys regulations and provides legal review of executive orders before theyre released. If you were looking to rush out constitutionally and ethically questionable orders, this post would be key to fill. Bains had been Demos director of legal strategies, helping write the paper that was turned into an executive order. He reports directly to Susan Rice, the hyperpartisan head of the Domestic Policy Council.

Rice has served in political positions in Democrat White Houses and the scandal-ridden Brookings Institution. She played a role in the spying-on-Trump scandal, blatantly lying about the same, lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack, and lying about Bowe Bergdahls military record.

Rice is described as President Obamas right-hand woman, and its been said she was like a sister to the former president. She was his National Security Advisor at the same time Hunter Biden was hitching rides on official White House aircraft to other countries for meetings with oligarchs and corrupt government officials. She spread conspiracy theories about the law enforcement officers in Portland during the violent BLM riots that besieged the city. Most worrisome, she was briefed on the Clinton campaigns Russia collusion hoax, which was used to destabilize the 2020 election and question its illegitimacy.

Conservatives may be in the dark, but left-wing activist groups are fully involved in the plot. The left-wing dark money group Demos put out press releases immediately after the executive order was issued, saying it would be happy to work with federal agencies on the project.

And then the group admitted publicly that it organized agency-based working groups and met with the staff in these agencies to provide technical expertise as they developed their initial voter registration plans, to ensure those plans reflect the knowledge and priorities of various agency stakeholders. It also admits it developed research and resources to assist and advance agency efforts to implement robust voter registration opportunities, including a slide deck explainer of the agencies potential for impact, best practices for conducting voter registration at federal agencies, and recommendations for modernizing and improving the accessibility of Vote.gov.

All of that information should be available to oversight authorities in Congress and the American taxpayers paying for its implementation, not just the left-wing groups that produced it. Yet as of this publication date, none of it has been shared.

Bidens plan raises serious ethical, legal, and constitutional concerns, wrote Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., along with three dozen Republican members of Congress on January 19, in a letter to the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), demanding more information by February 28 about the secret plot. It went unanswered.

The top Republican members of nine House committees and subcommittees likewise demanded information from Rice and the head of OMB in a letter they sent on March 29. They noted that election activity goes well beyond the scope of each agencys authorizing statute and mission.

One of the concerns shared by the members was that Biden was directing agencies to work with third-party organizations. Nobody knows which third-party organizations have been approved by Rice for her political efforts, nor which are being used. They also asked how much money is being spent on the effort, which statutory authorities justify the election activities, and what steps are being taken to avoid Hatch Act violations. They received no response.

The Foundation for Government Accountability filed a lawsuit on April 20th to compel the Department of Justice to respond to the FOIA request for information. And the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed suit on June 16 to compel Justice to comply. Those suits are ongoing.

While the White House and agencies are steadfastly refusing to share details about how theyre complying with the executive order, who they met with to develop their plans, or how theyre justifying their involvement in something Congress has not authorized them to participate in, some details are trickling out. Here are a few examples of the widespread and coordinated effort by Bidens political appointees to meddle in the state administration of elections.

The tactics being used by these agencies were almost certainly contained in the plans submitted to Rice that have been withheld from investigators and overseers who had hoped to have some transparency about what the plans were. Frequently, the agencies claim the tactics are in response to the executive order, yet information about how they were developed has been withheld from the public for much of the year.

It is unclear why Biden and his political appointees are being so secretive about the work that went into their plan to engage in a federal takeover of election administration.

Whatever the case, Americans have a right to know whether these bureaucracies that are meddling in elections have experts in for each states election laws, what type of training is going on to ensure that state laws are being followed, whether they are allowing inspections and oversight to ensure no illegal activity, how they are determining whether a third-party group is genuinely non-partisan, whether they are allowing state investigators to approve money, and how much is being spent on this federal takeover of elections.

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Yes, Biden Is Hiding His Plan To Rig The 2022 Midterm Elections - The Federalist

During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas has questioned the constitutional basis with respect to the growth of the administrative state, whereby a federal agency amasses legislative, executive, and judicial de facto powers. He has raised concerns that this development is contrary to the Founders intentional design in the Constitution to separate the powers of those three branches, and this amassing of power is a threat to our liberty.

After three decades of service on the court, few know Thomas beyond his contentious confirmation and the surrounding media firestorm. The following interview is an excerpt from Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, where Thomas unpacks his views on the administrative state and much more.

Michael Pack: Let me ask you about another set of issues that have come up. Youve been a leader in the administrative state cases. What is at stake there? It seems to be a question of liberty again.

Clarence Thomas: The very people who say they dont want the government in their lives want this sort of expansive administrative state, which is in their lives, and then every aspect of their lives. And a lot of it comes at the expense of the very structure of the Constitution that is intended to prevent the government from coming in. The separation of powers, the enumerated powers, federalism. The whole point was to keep the government in this box. Justice Scalia and I often talked about that, that the structure was the main way to protect your liberty. The danger in the administrative state is seeing those powers all coalesce again in various agencies. If you think about your life today, theres very little major legislation that comes from the legislature. The legislation comes in the form of regulations from agencies. They tend to have all three powers. They have the executive power, the enforcement power, they have administrative judges to adjudicate, so they have all three. And the question for us is, where do they fit in the constitutional structure?

When a private right is somehow intruded upon by one of these agencies, what is the role of the federal courts? If we simply defer to the agencies, which is what we do now, in many cases, arent we doing precisely what happened when it came to the royal courts of the pre-Revolutionary era? How does that make us any different? Youve got this creation that sits over here outside the Constitution, or beyond the Constitution. How does it fit within our constitutional structure? Hows it limited and what is the risk that it will actually vitiate the constitutional protections that we have?

We have a form of government where weve limited the national government in what it can do. Weve separated the powers. Youve got enumerated powers. One of the ways that weve limited the national government is to divide the power. You said, Heres the legislative power, heres the judicial power, heres the executive power. That structure was very important to keeping the national government at bay. You also had federalism, in other words, that the states had most of the authority, and certainly the local authority, beyond what was in the Constitution and the rest remained with the individuals.

MP: I think it was James Madison who said that if you combine the executive, legislative, and judicial in one person, or branch, its the very definition of tyranny.

CT: Thats wonderful rhetoric, and it plays out that way when people look at agencies, and they think, Of course I have no way to defend myself against an agency. And what we have simply been trying to do is to raise the question of what are the limits of that. There are different views about it. But at least when you look back at guys like [Frank] Goodnow or Woodrow Wilson or the Progressives at the close of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, at least you have the advantage of them being candid. To some extent, they meant progressto progress beyond the Constitution. And how that is consistent with the Constitution is something I think is worth discussing.

MP: They were clear, too, that they believed in experts and agencies rather than in traditional legislating by elected members of Congress.

CT: I think to some extent they thought that the quaint ideas that the Framers had were anachronistic, at best, and that you could have someone who understood how a government should operate or how a policy should operate. Once you lose the notion of self-governing, that of self-governance, then where are we? And I think the stark choices are between government by consent and being ruled. And perhaps some people think that we can have a little of both. But good luck! I think the tendency throughout history is that once people get authority to rule, they tend to rule more, not less.

MP: When people use the expression, the administrative state, what does that mean?

CT: I think thats their way of saying were being governed by administrative agencies. And its like affirmative action, who knows? You get a sense of what theyre talking about, but I think we have to be more precise in defining the relationship between, say, a specific agency and the constitutional protections. I think most people dont follow administrative cases and they dont think about the role of these financial boards or the environmental boards. People like a particular policy. Then theyll argue about the policy and not think about how you got to that policy. And I think how you got there, and by what authority, is the more important question for us, not the policy itself.

MP: The phrase the administrative state, itself, implies that each of these little agencies has some particular role, but when you accumulate all of them together, it looks like almost a fourth branch of government.

CT: I dont know which agencies are little anymore. I ran EEOC and it was small. But look at the reach and the effect that you could have. I ran that little Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, look at the reach and the things that it could affect. So the reach is nationwide.

Mark Paoletta and Michael Pack are co-editors of the forthcoming book "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," taken from more than 25 hours of interviews with Justice Thomas conducted for the documentary of the same name. Pack produced and directed that film as well as over 15 other nationally broadcast documentaries. Paoletta is an attorney and worked on Justice Thomas confirmation.

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Clarence Thomas: Expanding The Administrative State Comes At The Expense Of The Constitution - The Federalist

The U.S. Supreme Courts Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization ruling is not the end of the fight for unborn lives. Its the beginning of a long, drawn-out battle to save unborn lives in all 50 states which are no longer under the curse of Roe v. Wade.

Despite the moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth from the pro-abortion left and their cronies in the corrupt corporate media that the end of womens health is near, the Supreme Courts decision to overturn the infamous ruling from 1973 will give states the authority to create their own protections for life inside the womb.

Voters and legislators in several states such as Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, are attempting through petitions and bills to incorporate laws or constitutional amendments affirming an unborn or born alive babys right to live on their respective 2022 midterm ballots. Their quest to explicitly defend and protect unborn children, as stated in the Iowa legislatures proposal, would strengthen the states abilities to restrict and even ban abortion.

Many of these measures are strongly opposed by pro-abortion groups and politicians who arent happy to see Roe go. In Kansas, Democrat Gov.Laura Kelly wrote off her states proposed life-saving amendment as an economic development issue.

There are a number of CEOs who really look to see what kind of inclusive policies we have in place that make it easier for them to recruit and retain a talented work force. It will be an economic development issue for us, Kelly said.

A Dobbs victory is worth celebrating because it means that pro-lifers who have benefitted from years of the cultural swing towards preserving life have an even better chance at protecting the unborn. But beware because it also opens the door for radically pro-baby-killing states to double down on their abortion agendas.

While pro-life voters and legislatures are actively fighting to amend constitutions to include protections for preborn babies, pro-abortion groups are plotting to take advantage of the festering Dobbs panic on the left and in the corporate media to rally their troops to put killing infants back on the books. Many blue states are trying to radically codify the unmitigated slaughter of unborn infants. If they are successful, hundreds of thousands of preborn babies will continue to die in states, predominantly Democrat-controlled ones, each and every year.

In Arizona, the pro-abortion group Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom is racing against the clock to gather enough signatures on a petition that would put killing unborn babies up for a vote in November. If certified by the secretary of state at the July 7 deadline and then approved by enough voters in the fall, the Grand Canyon States constitution would be amended to endorse abortions up to the point in a pregnancy at which there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.

At the behest of Planned Parenthood and Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, leftist legislators in California are already well on their way to codifying abortion. Just this week, the state senate passed a constitutional amendment that would bar the Golden State from banning abortion. If two-thirds of the California state assembly votes to pass the amendment by June 30, it will appear on voters ballots in November.

In Michigan, the pro-abortion group Reproductive Freedom For All has teamed up with Planned Parenthood, ACLU of Michigan, and progressive organization Michigan Voices, to garner public support for a constitutional amendment that would solidify abortion as an unregulated practice in the state.

If the measure is added to the ballot and subsequently passed by voters, something Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has expressed support for, it would not only keep abortions around in Michigan but would likely make them more accessible by neutering laws banning baby killing after viability and permitting minors to get abortions without parental consent.

This poorly-worded amendment would repeal dozens of state laws, including our states ban on tax-funded abortions, the partial-birth abortion ban, and fundamentally alter the parent-child relationship by preventing parents from having input on their childrens health, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children said in a statement rejecting the attempt to codify abortion.

Perhaps the most radical example of this push to codify abortion is in Vermont. Abortion in Vermont already became codified in 2019, but pro-abortion politicians and organizations in the state, including GOP Gov. Phil Scott, Democrat Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, the ACLU of Vermont, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, are pushing for voters to take it one step further and amend the state constitution in favor of killing unborn babies and mutilating children.

Come November, Vermonters will choose whether to approve or reject the measure which claims abortion is a right that shall not be infringed and that the fatal practice is central to the liberty and dignity to determine ones own life course. If the measure passes, Vermonts constitution likely be endorsing taxpayer-funded irreversible sex experiments on children.

Dobbs is not the end-all solution because theres still plenty of pro-life work left to be done in states, especially those like Vermont where leftists are dreaming up new ways to hurt children. Conservatives and pro-lifers need to act now while the wind from possibly the largest Supreme Court decision in history is behind their backs.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Dobbs Isn't The End. It's The Beginning Of A Ballot Measure Battle To Save Preborn Lives In Every State - The Federalist

For seven years, scandals and public rifts have rocked the declining Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The spectacle of division and embarrassment continued at the just-concluded annual meeting of Baptists in Anaheim.

Now, for the first time, the establishment class of the largest and ostensibly conservative protestant denomination in America is visibly divided against itself. Albert Mohler, the president of the denominations flagship seminary, has publicly broken ranks with SBC elites who have rushed to defend megachurch pastor Rick Warren. Warren is accused of violating the denominations doctrinal standards.

Warrens Saddleback church boasts some 20,000 in attendance, making it the largest congregation in the SBC. His 2002 publication, The Purpose Driven Life, with more than 30 million copies sold, is one of the bestselling nonfiction books in history.

Warrens openness to the political left is evidenced by giving the invocation at Barack Obamas inauguration in 2009 and attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In Davos, Warren met and befriended National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins, a pro-abortion bureaucrat who joined with former SBC chief ethicist Russell Moore to criticize Donald Trump voters.

On May 6, 2021, Warrens Saddleback Church ordained three women as pastors, in defiance of both the clear teaching of the Bible and Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BFM 2000). The latter states, While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. Rather than reprimand Saddleback, SBC Credentials committee chair Linda Cooper asked the convention to appoint a committee to study the meaning of the word pastor and report back to the convention next year.

In a surprise appearance, Warren addressed the convention: Welcome to Orange County, with 149 Southern Baptist churches, 90 of them started by Saddleback . . . it is customary for a guy who is about to be hung to let him say his dying words. Then this: I have no intention of defending myself . . . I am most like Christ when I refuse to defend myself.

Warren then read a prepared love letter to Southern Baptists. He said hes planted thousands of churches around the world. Ive had the privilege for 43 years of training 1.1 million pastors. Sorry friends. Thats more than all the seminaries put together.

By my calculation, that comes to 71 pastors trained per day for 43 straight years! One wonders if the churches planted and pastors trained, whatever the actual numbers, have also adopted a pick-and-choose posture toward the Bible and BFM 2000 articles, as modeled by Warren and Saddleback.

Warren then chided messengers who frown upon the liberties Saddleback has taken with clear scriptural teaching: Are we going to keep bickering over secondary things or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing? Warren did not specify the main thing referenced.

Mohler responded, I served on the committee that brought the BFM in 2000 that was overwhelmingly adopted by this convention. . . If we eventually have to form a study committee over every word in our confession of faith then were doomed, were no longer a confessional people. . . the words mean what Southern Baptists said in the year 2000 [that] pastor is the most easily understood word among Southern Baptists for pastoral teaching and leadership.

Cooper, answered, I know what pastor means but to some of our Southern Baptist churches pastor means a spiritual gift that is given to many people. Coopers response exposes the core cause of theological compromise of the wider evangelical industrial complex that phalanx of luminaries and institutions associated with Presbyterian Pastor Timothy Keller.

It encompasses not only the SBC but also the Presbyterian church in America, many non-denominational congregations, and every major evangelical publishing house, including the venerable and once-stalwart Eerdmans, which joined in this years homosexual Pride festivities. The touchstone of doctrine for Cooper is not the Bible, the BFM 2000, the Christian tradition, nor anything boasting ancient roots, but the committees current reading of what some of our Southern Baptist churches believe and practice.

We are witnessing the step-by-step genuflection of the last major conservative Christian institutions in America before the same insidious force leftists have succumbed to for 200 years. Thats what Southern Baptist theologian Timothy George called the imperialism of the present.

On both sides of the ocean, from the heady days when the father of Protestant Liberalism Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834) held forth at Trinity Church in Berlin to Brooklyn Heightss national sensation, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) to that sometime Presbyterian, sometime Baptist preacher at Riverside Church in Manhattan, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), to todays Joel Osteen, progressive preachers have made the satisfaction of contemporary sensibilities, not the Bible or doctrine, priority number one. Why do they do it? Because, in business terms, measured in bodies, buildings, and bucks, at least for a time, it works.

The fawning protection of Warren by SBC establishment elites in Anaheim is just the tip of the iceberg. For more than a decade, Keller and SBC entity heads have sought, found, and employed winsome ways to reach contemporaries deemed capable of keeping evangelicals on the right side of history, namely the blue communities of college-educated, Democrat-voting denizens of the nations cities and blue enclaves scattered across the fruited plain.

That population has drunk deeply from the well of second-wave feminism that lacks patience with ancient Biblical distinctions between the proper roles of men and women in the church. The businesspersons hyper-alertness to the satisfaction of contemporary customers, and preservation and expansion of market share, best account for why Cooper cited the committees reading of contemporary views about the word pastor rather than either the Bible or Article VI of her own denominations confession in defense of Saddleback.

Christians anchored to the Bible and the confessions of faith crafted to protect and preserve the teaching of the Bible, have always, eventually, come to recognize such progressive catering to culture as sub-Christian lapses from the faith once delivered to the saints. If history is any guide, the SBCs current iteration of this old pattern shall meet with a similar fate.

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By Catering To Rick Warren, Baptists Subvert The Bible To Social Fads - The Federalist

MORGANTOWN, W. V. When I moved to this college town in the summer of 1975 as a 10-year-old Muslim immigrant girl from India, I found my stride doing something very simple: tackling the rolling hills outside our home on Cottonwood Street.

Each day, I logged my mile running the same route, down Cottonwood, down Headlee, up Pineview, up Cottonwood as religiously as I did my prayers. I subscribed to Runners World magazine and Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers became my hero. Every morning, Id meditate upon the image of then-Bruce Jenner to put a kick in my step. Running 10ks and competing in cross country and girls track in middle school and high school made me a lifelong athlete.

In recent years, girls and women in sports have come under attack as a result of an aggressive, well-funded campaign to allow boys and men who identify as girls and women to compete in female sports, in the name of transgender rights. University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a male who competed in mens swimming then last year started swimming on the womens team after identifying as female, has most notoriously dominated womens swimming after the NAACP allowed Thomas to compete in womens swimming.

Too often, athletes, parents, and sports organizations who disagree with males in womens sports have cowered or stayed silent in the face of this controversy because shaming naysayers as transphobic is a tactic of activists on this issue, just as racist and Islamophobic are weaponized to silence people on issues of race and religion.

But that is now finally changing. Earlier this week, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) voted to approve a new policy restricting most transgender athletes from competing in elite womens aquatic competitions. Then on Wednesday, the International Rugby League ruled that transgender athletes cannot compete in womens sports,

A mother in Australia, Katherine Deves, expressed relief, writing on Twitter: I am relieved and delighted my daughters sport is now safe and fair at [the] elite level.

On Thursday, the 50th anniversary of signing Title IX into law, a diverse team of athletes stood under the banner, Our Bodies, Our Sports, at Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks from the White House, to stand together for protecting girls and womens sports for guess what girls and women. The rally was supported by the Independent Womens Network, where Im a senior fellow in the practice of journalism and a parent advocate.

After much reflection, as a classic liberal and feminist, I am proud to have stood with the athletes and advocates speaking up for girls and women in sports. This is not just an issue any longer of conservatives.

Included among the advocates were lesbian rights activist Lauren Levey and womens rights advocate Amanda Houdeschell, a leader at the Womens Liberation Front, known as WoLF. Ive created a Whos Who on my Substack. These athletes are champions in their sports and now they are trailblazers in public policy. They include:

Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an original sponsor of the Protect Womens Sports Act, says protecting girls and womens sports is a feminist issue that should be supported by anyone of either party who wants to increase opportunities for women and girls.

Activists and politicians have just gone too far in laying claim to womens and girls sports. I say this as someone who has faced death threats advocating for the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender people in Muslim countries, where in too many nations a person having anything but heterosexual sex within a marriage can be a crime punishable by death.

Long before I was a journalist or senior anything anywhere, I was just a girl running the Coliseum track in Morgantown. Athletics specifically girls athletics empowered me as a Muslim girl in West Virginia.

I still remember, as if it were yesterday, the call I got from a classmate named Jane, inviting me to join a relay team for our track meet at Suncrest Junior High School. As I passed the baton to Lynda McCroskey, I felt strong and empowered.

A cousin came one day and saw me running in shorts, and he told my father, That is haram for her to show her legs. Haram is the Arabic word for illegal.

Indeed, too often, girls in my religiously conservative Muslim communities arent allowed to bicycle or run as we near puberty for fear of breaking our hymen, or maidenheads, and losing our virginity. Whats more, our movement, the sun on our bare arms, or the wind in our hair can be deemed haram. In Pakistan, women have defied threats to run a road race.

My father, a firm believer in girls and womens rights, ignored my cousins complaint. I continued running and competing against girls my age.

At Morgantown High School, I had to run against boys in cross country because it was 1978 when I was a high school freshman. My classmate, Kaye, and I didnt have enough girls to make a girls team. I still remember a boy hobbling as if his knee was in pain right before I was about to pass him.

As hard as we trained, Kaye and I were only fast enough to qualify for the boys junior varsity team. It would take us four years on junior varsity to qualify to letter and get the much-coveted lettermans jacket as a Morgantown High Mohican.

The cartilage in my right knee wore thin by my junior year when Big Al, the trainer, had me popping daily ibuprofen for the pain. I couldnt run cross-country my senior year, alas, and never got my varsity letter. What I did get was a priceless, lifelong devotion to athletics.

Its with much meditation that I now say we have to keep girls and womens sports for those born female. As parent advocate Harry Jackson, a lacrosse and football referee and former Olympic-level athlete, suggests: sports federations can create open categories in which athletes born male and self-identifying as a female can compete. Or sports authorities can find some other solution. But having males compete with girls and women isnt the answer.

My younger self is an empowered woman today because of what running the Coliseum track with girls as Jane and Kaye allowed me. As we find solutions to support transgender athletes, we should allow the same destiny for all young girls.

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The Tide Is Finally Turning Towards Fairness In Women's Sports - The Federalist

Marilyn Monroe made history again in March of this year when her portrait sold for $195 million, more than any other work by a 20th-century artist at auction. Sixty years after her death at the age of 36, Monroe is still one of societys foremost icons and is often imitated by todays most influential celebrities.

Take Billie Eilish for one. Eilish rocked the Met Gala last year with a deviation from her usual street style to a Marilyn Monroe-inspired ballgown, only to be topped at the 2022 Met Gala by Kim Kardashian wearing (and reportedly ruining) Marilyn Monroes iconic dress that she wore when she sang Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy.

2021 brought us a new documentary of Monroe, and this spring Netflix aired another documentary featuring interviews with Monroes inner circle. Now, Netflix is releasing yet another film about Monroe, Blonde, starring Ana de Armas in September.

To sum it up: we love Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe had all the factors by which to make her a lasting star a rumored scandal with JFK, early status as a sex symbol, and an early death. But there is one more component that forever fixed Monroes position as the north star in todays record of fallen lights: She lived in the 1950s.

Our cultures fixation with Marilyn Monroe flows largely from the dichotomy between her image and her era. Monroe was a sex symbol in a Hollywood wholly unknown to the modern viewer one that condemned actors filming in the same bed, onscreen kisses of more than three seconds, foul or sexual language, etc. Studios didnt drop the strict production code until 1968.

Hollywood of the 50s marketed desire, not sex. And theres something about this forbearance to a modern age with no modesty that attracts us. Theres something alluring about not baring all. Marilyn Monroe is a sex symbol, but only because we never watch her have sex.

Modern sex symbols are harder to find. Women like Megan Fox, Rihanna, and Kim Kardashian are our modern equivalents but they blend in. They fade into a culture of sexual license and become known for their talents or wealth. Promiscuity is too general now to establish one in the hall of fame. They dont compare with Marilyn Monroe, and everyone knows it.

What truly makes Monroe a sex symbol is the society of the 50s.

As such, Monroe is the emblem of a community we secretly admire but dont actually want. The one that looked down on divorce and sleeping around and drugs and had never heard of trans. We think weve liberated ourselves from this eras moral limits, and yet when we look at many of our popular films and TV shows, we find ourselves going back to what we left.

Downton Abbey: A New Era was just released last month. The second season of Bridgerton dropped this year. Persuasion is coming in July to add to the film and TV adaptions of Jane Austens works that have been making bank for the last twenty years. WandaVision in 2021 was a shorter reach back in time but one just as well-loved with the audience.

Though we deny it, we find a community set of values appealing. It brings together instead of dividing like your truth, my truth, and it rewards patience, commitment, and hard work unlike the modern staples of social media, porn, and video games.

Community standards are appealing to us, yes, but not worth the work. We might want the effects of the 50s community standards and of the rigid moral code of Jane Austens world and the purpose, respect, and chivalry of its inhabitants, but we also want overt sexualization. And desire trumps sex is a hard sell.

So, we take replicate the community of conservative eras, and we think itll be better if we put some sex in it. We take the career of Marilyn Monroe, sprinkle in a lot of smut, and we get Blonde, the first original Netflix film to gain an NC-17 rating. We take the societal norms of Regency England, throw in obscene amounts of nudity and we get Bridgerton.

We think these hybrids will make us happy. And they do entertain Bridgerton is the #1 most-watched English-speaking show on Netflix. And yet we betray ourselves with every nod to Marilyn Monroe. Somethings wrong, we feel it. We believe a house with no walls is no house, but we ditch the only thing that separates a man from an animal his morals and think well be satisfied.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.

Originally posted here:

Our Fixation With Marilyn Monroe Reveals Our Desire For 1950s Morality - The Federalist

Even with the titanic marketing force of Disney and buzz (no pun intended) around featuring a lesbian couple kissing, Lightyear proved to be a flop. Although it was expected to top the charts and bring in $70 million in its first weekend (a modest goal, all things considered), the movie made $51 million, second behind the newest Jurassic Park installment. For context, Top Gun: Maverick made more than $100 million in its opening weekend.

While its fair to see this as yet another instance of the truism, go woke, go broke, its worth asking why Disney keeps doing this. They have a whole slew of perfectly profitable franchises to tap, and they can churn out blockbusters from any of them without breaking a sweat. Why do they feel the need to shoehorn a scene of lesbians kissing that no asked for? Why did they double-down against their own audience?

Probably the first and foremost reason that Disney executives do this is because they can. They believe they have a monopoly over young audiences and can start treating them like a captive audience. Daniel Greenfield makes a convincing case in Frontpage Mag that this is exactly what Disney is thinking: Disney may have started out feeding the imaginations of children, but now its business model is acquiring intellectual properties with active fandoms and milking the adult fans for every cent. Rest assured, Disney will keep issuing more sequels and spinoffs ad nauseam, knowing full well that their cult-like fandoms will continue to watch them.

When entertaining people becomes secondary, its only natural to propagate a message. These days, that message is diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE, as Jordan Peterson puts it), which has become the standard in all popular entertainment. For example, it was clear Frozen II would make a lot of money just because it was Frozen II, so its creators decided to turn the movie into a convoluted propaganda piece that spoke on the environment, the treatment of indigenous people, and female empowerment. No one seemed to mind that the movie was terrible, and theres little doubt that Disney will make another sequel when the time is right.

However, what really seems to lie at the heart of this decision to promote lesbianism in a kids movie is something much more profound and personal than anyone cares to admit. Disney filmmakers and most of the creative class in Hollywood have become boring. They arent all that interesting, and nothing really interests them. Action, drama, romance, and all the magic of moviemaking doesnt excite them anymore.

Rather, like bored teenagers addicted to TikTok, Disney executives are more interested in identity politics and social justice, and they believe that everyone else is interested in this too. Sure, people may watch the new show about Obi-wan Kenobi because they know and love the character, but whats really going to hook them is the black female antagonist because shes (wait for it) black and female. And, if they dont like her, theyre haters and Disney will delight in taking a quixotic stand against these anonymous bigots.

Wokeness has become a vicious cycle for privileged creators: success makes them bored, so they go woke, but this bores them again, so they double-down on their wokeness, which soon becomes boring, etc. This cycle is then reinforced by social media, which affirms these peoples narcissism and casts their dissatisfied fans as ignorant bigots.

Seen from a healthy distance, this phenomenon of bored filmmakers injecting wokeness in Lightyear makes little sense. How can anyone be bored by a story about a space ranger fighting for his friends on a distant planet? Why would they feel the need to spice this up with wokeness? Was depicting acts of valor against space aliens not enough?

And yet, this is how a woke person sees the world. Discussing a theologians bold (and nonsensical) claim that Jesus was actually a transgender person, Catholic writer Michael Warren Davis notes how narrow this view is: The Bible is the most profound and influential book in the whole history of the world. It contains the philosophy of Jesus Christ, the most important philosopher and mystic in world history Now, imagine if all you could find in those pages was a parable for transvestic fetishism. What a boring little place your head must be.

For most people, this is the real problem with the woke agenda: its boring and predictable. Perhaps a few people were outraged when they heard of the lesbian kiss in Lightyear, but the majority people likely rolled their eyes and muttered, Oh okay. Ill pass then.

Not surprisingly, these peoples suspicions were confirmed. The movie was indeed dull: the characters were flat, the story was dumb, and the themes resonate more with adults suffering from a midlife crisis than with actual kids. Clearly, the creators of the movie were more worried about indulging themselves and crafting woke propaganda than in entertaining audiences. Its the work of bored people putting out a boring product for an increasingly bored audience thats burned out on the wokeness.

Hopefully, filmmakers at Disney can learn from this mistake and break the cycle. The world is so much more than peoples skin color and sexual orientation, and the possibilities for storytelling are endless. These people need to get over their boredom, stop obsessing over diversity and representation, and return to making fun movies that transcend all that and really go to infinity and beyond. Itd be a win-win: Fans would be happy, filmmakers would find purpose again, and the modern entertainment in general would be slightly less mediocre.

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Dull 'Lightyear' Is Another Victim Of Bored, Woke Filmmakers - The Federalist

#DateTitle11787Oct27General Introduction21787Oct31Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence31787Nov3Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence (continued)41787Nov7Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence (continued)51787Nov10Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence (continued)61787Nov14Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States71787Nov15Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States (continued) and Particular Causes Enumerated81787Nov20Consequences of Hostilities Between the States91787Nov21The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection101787Nov22The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued)111787Nov24The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy121787Nov27The Utility of the Union In Respect to Revenue131787Nov28Advantage of the Union in Respect to Economy in Government141787Nov30Objections to the Proposed Constitution From Extent of Territory Answered151787Dec1Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union161787Dec4Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)171787Dec5Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)181787Dec7Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)191787Dec8Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)201787Dec11Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)211787Dec12Other Defects of the Present Confederation221787Dec14Other Defects of the Present Confederation (continued)231787Dec18Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union241787Dec19Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered251787Dec21Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered (continued)261787Dec22Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered271787Dec25Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered (continued)281787Dec26Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered (continued)291788Jan9Concerning the Militia301787Dec28Concerning the General Power of Taxation311788Jan1Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)321788Jan2Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)331788Jan2Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)341788Jan5Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)351788Jan5Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)361788Jan8Concerning the General Power of Taxation (continued)371788Jan11Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government381788Jan12The Same Subject Continued, and the Incoherence of the Objections to the New Plan Exposed391788Jan16Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles401788Jan18On the Powers of the Convention to Form a Mixed Government Examined and Sustained411788Jan19General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution421788Jan22The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered431788Jan23The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered (continued)441788Jan25Restrictions on the Authority of the Several States451788Jan26Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered461788Jan29The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared471788Jan30The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts481788Feb1These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control Over Each Other491788Feb2Method of Guarding Against the Encroachments of Any One Department of Government by Appealing to the People Through a Convention501788Feb5Periodical Appeals to the People Considered511788Feb6The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments521788Feb8The House of Representatives531788Feb9The House of Representatives (continued)541788Feb12Apportionment of Members of the House of Representatives Among the States551788Feb13The Total Number of the House of Representatives561788Feb16The Total Number of the House of Representatives (continued)571788Feb19The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation581788Feb20Objection That The Number of Members Will Not Be Augmented as the Progress of Population Demands Considered591788Feb22Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members601788Feb23Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members (continued)611788Feb26Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members (continued)621788Feb27The Senate631788Mar1The Senate (continued)641788Mar5The Powers of the Senate651788Mar7The Powers of the Senate (continued)661788Mar8Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered671788Mar11The Executive Department681788Mar12The Mode of Electing the President691788Mar14The Real Character of the Executive701788Mar15The Executive Department Further Considered711788Mar18The Duration in Office of the Executive721788Mar19The Same Subject Continued, and Re-Eligibility of the Executive Considered731788Mar21The Provision For The Support of the Executive, and the Veto Power741788Mar25The Command of the Military and Naval Forces, and the Pardoning Power of the Executive751788Mar26The Treaty-Making Power of the Executive761788Apr1The Appointing Power of the Executive771788Apr2The Appointing Power Continued and Other Powers of the Executive Considered781788Jun14The Judiciary Department791788Jun18The Judiciary Continued801788Jun21The Powers of the Judiciary811788Jun25The Judiciary Continued, and the Distribution of the Judicial Authority821788Jul2The Judiciary Continued831788Jul5The Judiciary Continued in Relation to Trial by Jury841788Jul16Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered851788Aug13Concluding Remarks

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Federalist Papers

There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation; since they can never admit its truth, without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. Every man the least conversant in Roman history knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

There can be no need, however, to multiply arguments or examples on this head. A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.

Taking it for granted, therefore, that all men of sense will agree in the necessity of an energetic executive; it will only remain to inquire, what are the ingredients which constitute this energy? How far can they be combined with those other ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense? And how far does this combination characterize the plan which has been reported by the convention?

The ingredients which constitute energy in the executive are unity; duration; an adequate provision for its support; and competent powers.

The ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense are a due dependence on the people, secondly a due responsibility.

Those politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for the soundness of their principles and for the justness of their views have declared in favor of a single executive and a numerous legislature. They have with great propriety, considered energy as the most necessary qualification of the former, and have regarded this as most applicable to power in a single hand; while they have, with equal propriety, considered the latter as best adapted to deliberation and wisdom, and best calculated to conciliate the confidence of the people and to secure their privileges and interests.

That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished.

This unity may be destroyed in two ways: either by vesting the power in two or more magistrates of equal dignity and authority, or by vesting it ostensibly in one man, subject in whole or in part to the control and co-operation of others, in the capacity of counselors to him. Of the first, the two consuls of Rome may serve as an example; of the last, we shall find examples in the constitutions of several of the States. New York and New Jersey, if I recollect right, are the only States which have entrusted the executive authority wholly to single men. Both these methods of destroying the unity of the executive have their partisans; but the votaries of an executive council are the most numerous. They are both liable, if not to equal, to similar objections, and may in most lights be examined in conjunction.

The experience of other nations will afford little instruction on this head. As far, however, as it teaches anything, it teaches us not to be enamored of plurality in the executive. We have seen that the Achaeans on an experiment of two Praetors, were induced to abolish one. The Roman history records many instances of mischiefs to the republic from the dissentions between the consuls, and between the military tribunes, who were at times substituted to the consuls. But it gives us no specimens of any peculiar advantages derived to the state from the circumstance of the plurality of those magistrates. That the dissentions between them were not more frequent or more fatal is matter of astonishment, until we advert to the singular position in which he republic was almost continually placed and to the prudent policy pointed out by the circumstances of the state, and pursued by the consuls, of making a division of the government between them. The patricians engaged in a perpetual struggle with the plebians for the preservation of their ancient authorities and dignities; the consuls, who were generally chosen out of the former body, were commonly united by the personal interest they had in the defense of the privileges of their order. In addition to this motive of union, after the arms of the republic had considerably expanded the bounds of its empire, it became an established custom with the consuls to divide the administration between themselves by lotone of them remaining at Rome to govern the city and its environs; the other taking the command in the more distant provinces. This expedient must no doubt have had great influence in preventing those collisions and rivalships which might otherwise have embroiled the peace of the republic.

But quitting the dim light of historical research, and attaching ourselves purely to the dictates of reason and good sense, we shall discover much greater cause to reject than to approve the idea of plurality in the executive, under any modification whatever.

Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust or office in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even animosity. From either, and especially from all these causes, the most bitter dissentions are apt to spring. Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operations of those whom they divide. If they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive magistracy of a country, consisting of a plurality of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures of the government in the most critical emergencies of the state. And what is still worse, they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering differently to the different individuals who composed the magistracy.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have been consulted, and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their estimation an indispensable duty of self-love. They seem to think themselves bound in honor, and by all the motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon, contrary to their sentiments. Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind. Perhaps the question now before the public may, in its consequences, afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice, in the human character.

Upon the principles of a free government, inconveniences from the source just mentioned must necessarily be submitted to in the formation of the legislature; but it is unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to introduce them into the constitution of the executive. It is here too that they may be most pernicious. In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority. When a resolution too is once taken, the opposition must be at an end. That resolution is a law, and resistance to it punishable. But no favorable circumstances palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissention in the executive department. Here they are pure and unmixed. There is no point at which they cease to operate. They serve to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate, from the first step to the final conclusion of it. They constantly counteract those qualities in the executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its compositionvigor and expedition, and this without any counterbalancing good. In the conduct of war, in which the energy of the executive is the bulwark of the national security, everything would be to be apprehended from its plurality.

It must be confessed that these observations apply with principal weight to the first case supposedthat is, to a plurality of magistrates of equal dignity and authority, a scheme, the advocates for which are not likely to form a numerous sect; but they apply, though not with equal yet with considerable weight to the project of a council, whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible executive. An artful cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of administration. If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a spirit of habitual feebleness and dilatoriness.

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. Responsibility is of two kindsto censure and to punishment. The first is the most important of the two, especially in an elective office. Men in public trust will much oftener act in such a manner as to render them unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. The circumstances which may have led to any national miscarriage or misfortune are sometimes so complicated that where there are a number of actors who may have had different degrees and kinds of agency, though we may clearly see upon the whole that there has been mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce to whose account the evil which may have been incurred is truly chargeable.

I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their opinions that it was impossible to obtain any better resolution on the point. These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur the odium of a strict scrutiny into the secret springs of the transaction? Should there be found a citizen zealous enough to undertake the unpromising task, if there happened to be a collusion between the parties concerned, how easy is it to cloth the circumstances with so much ambiguity as to render it uncertain what was the precise conduct of any of those parties?

In the single instance in which the governor of this state is coupled with a councilthat is, in the appointment to offices, we have seen the mischiefs of it in the view now under consideration. Scandalous appointments to important offices have been made. Some cases indeed have been so flagrant that ALL PARTIES have agreed in the impropriety of the thing. When inquiry has been made, the blame has been laid by the governor on the members of the council; who on their part have charged it upon his nomination; while the people remain altogether at a loss to determine by whose influence their interests have been committed to hands so unqualified and so manifestly improper. In tenderness to individuals, I forbear to descend to particulars.

It is evident from these considerations that the plurality of the executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power, first, the restraints of public opinion, which lose their efficacy as well on account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among a number as on account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall; and, second, the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to their removal from office or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it.

In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the public peace that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom than to annex to the king a constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the advice they give. Without this, there would be no responsibility whatever in the executive departmentan idea inadmissible in a free government. But even there the king is not bound by the resolutions of his council, though they are answerable for the advice they give. He is the absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office and may observe or disregard the council given to him at his sole discretion.

But in a republic where every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office, the reason which in the British Constitution dictates the propriety of a council not only ceases to apply, but turns against the institution. In the monarchy of Great Britain, it furnishes a substitute for the prohibited responsibility of the Chief Magistrate, which serves in some degree as a hostage to the national justice for his good behavior. In the American republic, it would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.

The idea of a council to the executive, which has so generally obtained in the State constitutions, has been derived from that maxim of republican jealousy which considers power as safer in the hands of a number of men than of a single man. If the maxim should be admitted to be applicable to the case, I should contend that the advantage on that side would not counterbalance the numerous disadvantages on the opposite side. But I do not think the rule at all applicable to the executive power. I clearly concur in opinion, in this particular, with a writer whom the celebrated Junius pronounces to be deep, solid and ingenious, that the executive power is more easily confined when it is one; that it is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people; and, in a word, that all multiplication of the executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty.

A little consideration will satisfy us that the species of security sought for in the multiplication of the executive is unattainable. Numbers must be so great as to render combination difficult, or they are rather a source of danger than of security. The united credit and influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty than the credit and influence of either of them separately. When power, therefore, is placed in the hands of so small a number of men as to admit of their interests and views being easily combined in a common enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse and more dangerous when abused, than if it be lodged in the hands of one man, who, from the very circumstance of his being alone, will be more narrowly watched and more readily suspected, and who cannot unite so great a mass of influence as when he is associated with others. The decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number, were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any ONE of them would have been. No person would think of proposing an executive much more numerous than that body; from six to a dozen have been suggested for the number of the council. The extreme of these numbers is not too great for an easy combination; and from such a combination America would have more to fear than from the ambition of any single individual. A council to a magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, are generally nothing better than a clog upon his good intentions, are often the instruments and accomplices of his bad, and are almost always a cloak to his faults.

I forbear to dwell upon the subject of expense; though it be evident that if the council should be numerous enough to answer the principal end aimed at by the institution, the salaries of the members, who must be drawn from their homes to reside at the seat of government, would form an item in the catalogue of public expenditures too serious to be incurred for an object of equivocal utility.

I will only add that, prior to the appearance of the Constitution, I rarely met with an intelligent man from any of the States who did not admit, as the result of experience, that the UNITY of the executive of this State was one of the best of the distinguishing features of our Constitution.

PUBLIUS

Source:The Federalist: The Gideon Edition,eds. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 362-369.

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Federalist No. 70 | Teaching American History