If President X Suspended the Constitution, what would WE do?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this thread, which suffered from a poorly-thought-out premise and went off the rails, I put forth this hypothetical scenario;

In the not-too-distant future, the popular, yet divisive and contentious President X, of the Y Party, is near the end of his second term in office. His party has enjoyed a substantial majority in both houses of Congress and in many state legislatures since the beginning of his term, but many Americans have become disappointed with them and things are looking iffy in the coming election.
On a sunny day in October, President X arrives on the White House Lawn for a scheduled press conference about Social Security, only to announce that he has something far more important to discuss. He has just learned, he says, of a plot by the ABC terrorist group to undermine the US government by infiltrating every branch of operations with thousands of clandestine operatives, who any day now are to begin the process of tearing down the entire system from within. Due to the extent to which they’ve infiltrated the government and the nature of the threat, he tells us, extraordinary measures must be taken to preserve our way of life, and he asks Congress to pass a series of Constitutional amendments ‘temporarily’ abolishing habeas corpus and the right to a public trial, postponing all elections indefinitely, and granting the president carte blanche to use any means he deems necessary to arrest any person for any reason. Within hours, the Y-controlled Congress approves the articles, 37 state legislatures ratify them, and the Constitution is amended to grant President X near god-like authority.

What do we do?

2

Snark on the SDMB about either “We were right all along” if President X was a Republican, or “This really is necessary and acceptable” if President X was a Democrat.
On a more serious note: What you’re talking about here isn’t just “President X goes crazy and declares himself Dictator.” You’re talking about President X and a super-majority of Congress and a majority of the state officials of 37 states deciding it’s time for Dictatorship. That’s not going to happen just because President X decides he doesn’t want to give up power. A super-majority of our top elected officials must be so corrupt as to have decided that they’re willing to destroy American democracy in order to hold onto current power, and to believe that they can get away with it. And if that’s the case, then there isn’t even a democracy to restore, given how rampant such corruption was.

So the only good solution is an automatic rifle, and either open season on all elected officials, or swallowing a bullet, or some combination of the two.

3

I daresay it’d be time to nourish the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

4

But is President X gay? NTTAWWT.

5

If the government is so infiltrated with “terrorists”, how do we know the President isn’t one of them? Or, maybe a small, crab-like species has tunneled into his spine and taken over his brain. It could happen, just like on Star Trek!!

6

I say we insist on total nudity for everyone. Anyone appearing clothed in public is probably slug-ridden. Shoot on sight.

7

An assumption so far-fetched that it’s laughable. Do you honestly believe that Congress would pass the proposed amendments with the concurrence of 38 States within hours? Even days? Unless the clandestine infiltration is so deep and so conclusive, it is almost impossible to occur. Even the other amendment process under a Constitutional Convention requires a 2/3 support of the various state legislatures for the call, followed by a 3/4 ratification for any proposed amendments to become law.

As posted in the OP, you need to readjust your tinfoil hat a bit. Of course, if you plan to sell this script to Hollywood, you’ll make a ton of money.

8

I’m not trying to defend the scenario I describe or say that it’s plausible or likely. I just constructed it as a premise for the discussion of “What would/should the average Joe do if the US government abandoned the Constitution?”

9

Well, if the president is a Republican, everyone would just follow orders, of course.

Now are you happy?

What exactly are you trying to get at? A coup attempt, even by the president, would be resisted and stopped.

The reason your question won’t work is that there’s no way the President, Congress, the Supreme Court and 3/4 of the state legislatures would just wake up one day and decide make America a dictatorship. Of course political changes could happen such that America becomes a dictatorship, but your scenario essentially presumes workable mind control of a couple of hundred people.

So if your plotters could only mind control those couple hundred people, eventually–within a couple of months–they’ll be pulled from the state houses and governor’s mansions and capitol buildings and strung up from lampposts. And then constitutional government would be restored.

Any realistic scenario for an American dictatorship has to include a large public consituency for dicatatorship, not a tiny clique of top officials. The Nazis didn’t take over Germany by secretly getting Hitler into the Chancellor’s office and then he proclaimed dictatorship and everyone had no choice. Yeah, the majority of people in Germany didn’t want dictatorship, and the vast majority didn’t want another war. But the Nazi party got a plurality of votes, even though the Nazi platform was openly contemptous of democracy. Caesar didn’t become dicator for life merely by declaring himself dictator, be became dictator because he was enormously popular, the Republic was tearing itself apart in repeated civil war, Republican government was failing. And Caesar’s legions weren’t loyal to Rome, they were loyal to Caesar himself. But such legions do not exist in America today, or in any first world country.

So any scenario of an American dicatorship would have to include an economic meltdown and a disasterous war (and I’m not talking about a mere pinprick like being chased out of Iraq or Vietnam), creating a large and dynamic public movement of impoverished that despises democracy, leaders of that movement getting into positions of power, any potential opposition movements are disorganized and have discredited themselves and are despised, the true believers are willing to spontaneously use gang violence against anyone who publicly opposes the new regime, the military backs the new regime, the situation being so screwed up that the majority of the public who don’t subscribe to the new ideology take a wait and see approach, figuring that they can’t do much worse than the current crop of losers who got us into this mess, and the new movement has some sort of plan for the country that can at least work for a short time…expel the Jews or the Mexicans, government make-work jobs, cancelation and repudiation of debts, nationalization of industry, whatever.

If a determined and united plurality of Americans work to impose dictatorship, dictatorship we will have. It doesn’t even take a majority. But that plurality is not a few hundred people. Yeah, in third world countries you can stage a coup with just a few key military officers and government officials. But not in America or any other democratic country. These third world coups don’t replace representative government with dictatorship, they replace one gang of oligarchs and kleptocrats with another gang. The public isn’t outraged because they had no loyality to the original gang in the first place, and there’s always a chance the new gang will be better than the old one at least for a while.

10

Right. Or putting it a bit more concisely that Lemur: by the time there is the combination of a President + Congress + 38 state legislatures, already in office, that agree that those are the steps that need be taken, with a military structure that believes that government is issuing lawful orders that they will obey, well, guess what, the Republic **HAS ** fallen and they’re just doing the paperwork.

11

That’s what I was trying to say with my post, but you phrased it brilliantly. Nice work.

12

Your premise loses momentum because you offered a specific scenario that literally falls on its face. What might be a better direction is are there any scenarios where the government might usurp the Constitution and what would/should the average American do if that happened? At the same time, is average America so blind that they would acquiesce as the government moved in the direction to usurp the Constitution in the first place?

13

Here is what you should do. Just type “I hate Bush a real lot.” about 1,000 times. Try and get it out of your system. Then, if you really want an honest answer, try and put out an honest hypothetical.

14

Exactly. This is like Tarkin informing Princess Leia that the Imperial Senate has been dissolved and the last vestiges of the Old Republic swept away…twenty years after Palpatine assumed absolute power. Abolishing the Senate was a much delayed afterthought. By the time Bush–I mean “President X”–gets around to formally repealing the constitution we’ll have been under dictatorship for years already.

The President doesn’t get his power from a scrap of paper called the constitution, he gets his power because the rest of us agree with the words written on that scrap of paper. The Constitution can’t be repealed by the President getting on national TV and declaring it repealed, it can only be repealed when the rest of us agree that it has been repealed.

15

…or enough of us just don’t mind or care about it so that there’s no consequence to doing so.

16

Maybea majority the 35 % that vote will not agree. The 65 % are sheepishly treadmilling along. There are a bunch of vigilantees practicing for government war. we will finally find out how many there really are.

17

It’s a combination of blindness and feelings of helplessness. The government has already moved in the direction of setting aside some of our Constitutional rights. This one seems fairly blatant:

From the Bill of Rights:

Amendments VI, VII, and VIII also look damaged to me.

I’m no lawyer and I shouldn’t have to be one to interpret the Bill of Rights – should I? But these points are argued all the time – and understandably so.

If we lose our Constitution, it will be in bits and pieces over time until there is not enough left to save us. Who knows when we pass that “point of no return”?

18

Not to hijack, but I think an interesting related question would be “What would be the easiest way President X could suspend our Constitution?”

I’d think that following a natural disaster/terrorist event/mass protests, the President could mobilize the Army inside the US like what has happened along the Mexican border and what happened post-Katrina in New Orleans. There is some writ that is supposed to prevent this from happening but it has been ignored recently. Perhaps the executive has good information that Congress and the State Houses are targets of terrorist operations. Or perhaps a few of them have already been targeted. So Congress and state legislatures are suspended, the Armed Forces are deployed with the National Guard, and we have a de facto military state.

Now probably what would happen is there would be a Congress-in-absentia in a secret site not too long after the fact. There are probably plans on the table.

While I agree that the OP’s scenario is unlikely, I think, given what people were willing to put up with after 9/11, what would happen. I think at least 30% of the country would just go along with it. With the mood of the country after 9/11, I wouldn’t be surprised if 60% of the country, at least for a while, went along with it. I do think, however, that one of the strongest points of our country is that the military has a strong tradition of independence and separation from the executive, and they would, as good Americans, gladly act against an executive in gross breach of its oath.

19

Interesting premise. It is not really important exactly how it comes about, but what if over time the constitution was suspended. I don’t believe it could ever happen “overnight” but by chipping away at it. Start by requiring licenses for protests - as a “public safety” measure, over time tighten the restrictions. Then expand search and seizure rules one step at a time. Then suspend rights to public trials - as we don’t want to incite “hate speech” or give “terrorists” a platform.

Having done this THEN suspend elections - people that complain get arrested, public protests are illegal etc etc. Enact a law that says that people who stand for election must be of “good character” and your flunkies are the ones that decide what “good character” means. (after all - how many people would complain about an altrusitic goal like making sure elected representatives were of good character, without looking at the details?)

Is not really important HOW it comes about, but if you wake up at the end of say, a three month period to find the constitution and elections are suspended - what would you do? What activities could you collectively undertake to “restore” your rights and “remove” the government?

20

I’ve always considered the Second Amendment the Contitustional Escape Clause.