Disrespecting “Separation of Powers”

“Separation of powers” was important to our nation’s founders. By dividing power between three branches – Congress, the President, and the Courts – they hoped to prevent one branch, or one party, from ever dominating. Yet today, Democrats seem to ignore “separation of powers,” driving America toward tyranny.

Look closely, and you will see that the Founding Fathers were intensely concerned about concentrated power, in one branch or party.  They feared it.  They hated power concentration and factions, believing both enabled tyranny. 

One route to tyranny, what modernists might call totalitarian rule, was letting one branch or party dominate. The Founders knew about tyranny, and capricious kings.

Looking ahead, they strived to limit and balance federal and state powers. They divided power between states and the federal government with the 10^th Amendment, which respected states’ and individual rights.

They then divided, limited, and balanced federal powers, so no one branch could overtake, dictate, or emasculate the powers of another. That was the aim.  

Wrote James Madison, in the Federalist Papers: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” They sought to avoid that, at all costs.

Yet here we are. We have a Democrat-controlled US Senate, dozens of members freely trading stocks on insider information, excusing themselves from liability, and now trying to dictate “ethics” to the US Supreme Court.

Contrary to the Constitution and Marbury v. Madison in 1803, allowing the Supreme Court to “say what the law is,” Senate Democrats want control.

Specifically, Senate Democrats angle to take away the Supreme Court’s power of self-rule, governance over internal matters by a co-equal branch, just as the Senate sets its own rules.

Why? They have a political agenda. Bluntly, it trashes the Constitution, disrespects history, and separation of powers to gain the upper hand, and dominate the High Court.

They want to attack conservative justices, put them in a legal straitjacket, and then – as Biden’s Justice Department has done to opponents – prosecute and replace them.

The agenda is so transparent and unconstitutional that it boggles the mind, an audacious way to ditch limits, and gain control. If law and history are not to their liking, they just ignore them.

In other ways, modern Democrat leaders, including the President and Attorney General, knowingly demean separation of powers, undermining principles.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with Dobbs, returning abortion to states, finding no right written in the Constitution, Democrats pushed violence.

Then-Speaker Pelosi told pro-abortion groups to “vent their anger,” Democrat Majority Leader Schumer threatened conservative justices, told them they “will pay,” and the Attorney General did not enforce laws protecting justices at their homes, one justice nearly assassinated. They all were, we know now, in fear.

This is not respect for the rule of law, separation of powers, text, or intent of the Constitution. It is an invitation to lawlessness, the opposite of respect.

When the Supreme Court said the president cannot dismiss half a trillion dollars in student loan debt without Congress, he ignored them and signed an order anyway.

This kind of thing gets catchy. When the Supreme Court ruled that the 2^nd Amendment matters, citizens have a “right to keep and bear arms,” state-level Democrats, for example in New Mexico and Maryland, decided to ignore the law.

While the New Mexico Governor tried to block the right, Maryland limited it into non-existence, conditioning it on Democrat approvals, training, and licenses.

When the 5^th Circuit US Court of Appeals last month declared the Maryland law unconstitutional by Supreme Court precedent, Maryland Democrats with White House approval ignored their decision, and kept unlawful limits on gun ownership.

Where does this stop? How can a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House just ignore laws of the land, not enforce many that require enforcing – like protecting Supreme Court justices and gun ownership – while capriciously misusing others to prosecute political opponents?

How can they pretend laws tied to classified information, First and Fourth Amendment rights in speech, home and papers, apply one way not the other?

Acts tolerated for Democrats are criminalized for Republicans. How can that be right? How can it be right to twist public testimony, falsely describe it to punish an opponent’s supporters, omitting what exculpates them, and hiding it? Right?

Examples keep coming. False statements are tolerated, laws twisted to criminalize parents for protecting children against Marxism, cultural perversion, endangerment of girls in bathrooms, loss of their privacy, and end of Title 9. These parents are called terrorists, investigated, and harassed. That task force, by the way, still exists!

Our Constitution is about limits – on government. It aims to stop the government from oppressing people, taking individual rights, or one branch or party dominating.

Bottom line: There is a terrible rumble in the rails. Can you hear it? It is growing. That rumble is the sound of power being concentrated by one party, disrespect for founding principles, throwing away limits, the Constitution, and the “separation of powers.”

If this sounds like lofty legal stuff, pie in the sky, too much to worry about, watch out. Madison wrote: “Philosophy is just common sense in big words,’ and “There are more instances of abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Sometimes, you have to see what is happening, understand it, and then stand up for fair, impartial, and constitutional application of law. This is one of those times.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.