I don’t see the professional US (or UK etc) military as a current threat: they have a vested interest in keeping their funding, which probably means supporting something like the current status quo. I do hope that if a Trupoid says “press the nuclear button” they will find ways to avoid doing so.
But a groundswell of populist militias is another question. Nazi Germany again.
It could happen here…
Except pardon power does not extend to impeachment so he can still be removed from power.
Apparently he was very compulsive, to the point of insanity in his later years.
As Einstein once said about Dirac: the line between genius and insanity is sometimes thin?
Though actually Dirac seems to have had a quite happy family life with his wife…
Except that the people who have that power will (already have, in fact) defer to him, and not impeach him.
They wouldn’t even impeach him after he’d already lost an election, and was on his way out the door. Why would they ever impeach him?
It seems just barely possible to me that Trump might lose the election, but the GOP gain in Congress. It’s inconceivable to me that Trump would win the election, but the GOP not control both the House and the Senate. The MAGAts will rubberstamp anything he sends them, treason be damned.
Kill any congressman who would vote for impeachment, pardon yourself. Problem solved.
He stopped eating and suffered fatal malnutrition because he was convinced someone was trying to poison him.
In other words, he even died paradoxically.
Interesting discussion, especially in light of current events.
A couple of thoughts:
From reading this it seems Gödel was considering getting out of Europe by the late 30’s and took the US citizenship test in 1947. So, during this time he saw a US president, for the first time, elected to more than two terms. I wonder whether in this time before the 22nd amendment (ratified in 1951) he saw a “fatal flaw” as the ability for a president to be re-elected continuously for life (thus effectively becoming a dictator). That might even include “rigging” future elections once in office (seems like I’ve heard election rigging talk thrown around in ways I never expected to hear).
Article V creates two ways to amend the constitution; only one has been used. The other is by a convention of the states - effectively a new constitutional convention at which anything could happen. This convention would be called if two-thirds of the states requested it. R’s control more state legislatures than D’s but I don’t think they control two-thirds. However, if such a convention ever got called it would likely be a chaotic mess full of radical ideas for “fixing” the country.
Business Professor F. E. Guerra-Pujol from the U of Central Florida wrote about this, he noted that there were more sources that did report on that incident of Godel’s, and Professor in this paper, concentrated on what a logician like Godel would have found as a likely loophole. A likely candidate could be the Article 5 of the constitution.
As will be explained, Gödel must have discovered that the same problem of self-reference is inherent to all constitutions with amending power statements. Consider the United States Constitution. The original 1787 Constitution appears to be a finite text because it contains a finite number of constitutional statements spread across seven Articles and eighty-three sentences.93 Yet, Article V consists of an amending-power statement.94 As a result, because the Constitution may in theory be amended an infinite number of times, the Constitution is potentially an open-ended text similar to Borges’s Library of Babel.95
Furthermore, recall that Gödel was troubled by a “loophole” or “contradiction” in the Constitution that might lead to a legalistic dictatorship. Gödel’s ultimate concern with dictatorship may provide a clue to reconstructing Gödel’s discovery.
Under the existing Constitution, political power is divided among different branches of government,96 but in a legalistic or nonmilitary dictatorship, power is concentrated in one individual or one branch of government.97 What, then, prevents the creation of a legalistic or constitutional dictatorship, such as rule by decree by one of the branches of government? To be more precise, what provision in the Constitution reduces the probability that such a state of affairs will occur?The main constitutional protection against the possibility of a legalistic dictatorship is Article V, which makes it difficult to amend or change any part of the Constitution. However, notice that Article V is procedural in nature. Article V allows the people to change or amend the Constitution through a two-stage amendment process, but Article V also makes it very difficult to propose and approve any changes to the Constitution. It requires two-thirds approval by both houses of Congress in the first stage and three-quarters approval by the States in the second stage.98 Given that it is incredibly difficult to amend the Constitution, a dramatic departure from our existing system of constitutional democracy is highly unlikely. However, it is important to notice that Article V does not prevent any change or amendment to Article V itself. This Gödelian observation leads to the following conclusion: If the procedural requirements of Article V may be amended, they may be amended “downward”; that is, these procedural requirements may be reduced or eliminated, making it easier to amend the Constitution in the future. This, in turn, may increase the probability of a future amendment that authorizes a constitutional dictatorship.
I feel certain that the constitution was written with self-modification in mind, and it was actually a selling point that convinced the states to ratify it. It wasn’t a secret, wasn’t forgotten, but was apparent to anyone who tried to understand the constitution, and also anyone who understands that when a genie grants you a wish he won’t grant a wish for more wishes. So what is the point of this story?
Life, and human enterprise have loopholes. Of course there is a contradiction in the Constitution. I think we’re seeing it now.
Basically, what Godel was likely thinking back then, it was a few decades ago (when Godel was becoming a citizen) when Hitler and buddies were doing a number in Europe and elsewhere:
(Somehow, the link did not post in the previous post)
Gödel’s Loophole by F. E. Guerra-Pujol :: SSRN
In theory, the existing provisions in Article V that create a cumbersome two-step amendment process and require supermajorities during both stages of the process could be watered down, streamlined, or eliminated altogether. Accordingly, Gödel’s loophole may have involved the possibility of a downward amendment to the Constitution. Because the amendment procedures in Article V are not entrenched (and even if they were entrenched, see step five), these conditions could always be amended downward to allow legislative amendments to the Constitution.
Once this occurs, the President could request that Congress expand presidential powers by approving an amendment that authorizes rule by decree during a four-year period. Congress could then entrench this expansion of power by approving a second amendment preventing any further amendments to the Constitution regarding executive power. Furthermore, this scenario is not as improbable as one may believe (or as Einstein, Morgenstern, and Judge Forman may themselves have believed), especially in times of national emergencies. This exact scenario occurred in Nazi Germany in 1933 when the German national parliament amended the democratic Weimer Constitution to transfer its law-making powers to Adolf Hitler, thus allowing Hitler to rule by decree.142 In essence, the Reichstag used a downward amendment to legalize Hitler’s military dictatorship.
The point of the story is what it exemplifies about Godel, not what it says about the Constitution. (The fact that the story doesn’t tell us what “flaw” Godel found is evidence for this.)
Just in his later years? I’m not sure it would be possible for a sane mathematician to come up with Gödel’s breakthroughs.
Seems to be an occupational hazard for mathematicians.
There was Georg Cantor too, for example…
But here’s the part that intrigues me: again, start off by granting for the sake of argument that we’re talking about a situation where everyone in Congress scrupulously follows the law as set forth in the Constitution — because, if you don’t, then we’re already done; the ‘loophole’ in the Constitution would simply be that people could disregard it.
So imagine a scenario where the House and Senate (a) would be glad to impeach and remove the guy, but (b) scrupulously, even foolishly, even robotically, follow the law — and you go to them, and you breathlessly ask them to impeach the guy, and they ask you what crime or misdemeanor he’s committing. Arson? Burglary? Counterfeiting?
“Well, no,” you reply; right now, he’s just having breakfast. But, you add, before breakfast, he vetoed a bill, and then he pardoned a guy, and then he nominated an ambassador.
And would their reply, to you, be: “Okay, well, none of those are crimes or misdemeanors; each is specifically allowed by the Constitution; all of them put together are less serious than having an overdue library book. Give us a crime or a misdemeanor to work with and we’ll come down on him like a thunderbolt; if he rapes somebody, if he commits perjury, if he so much as shoplifts a candy bar, we’ll have big important things to say about impeachment and removal. But this? Going strictly by the book, I don’t see how there’s grounds for impeachment and removal; it’s not like he was selling liquor to a minor, is it?”