How Congress Screwed Up America

While most American conservatives have embraced “Let’s Go Brandon!” the problems of executive abuse run deeper than the drooler in chief.

Real American conservatives should have been chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” to virtually every president over the last one hundred years.

Not even the “conservative” Reagan should get a pass, but he does.

In fact, you could say that most American presidents should have been impeached, that is if we adhered to the Constitution as ratified.

But the problem with executive abuse is not so much the executive. It’s the Congress.

Back in 1842, John C. Calhoun defended John Tyler’s use of the veto against Henry Clay’s “American System.” Clay wanted to punish Tyler and reduce the threshold for overriding a veto.

Calhoun said this would be folly because Congress was the real culprit in overzealous government action.

You see, Tyler was simply trying to check the unconstitutional acts of Mr. Clay, and Calhoun rightly saw Clay’s potential reforms as little more than grandstanding.

If you want to cut the unconstitutional powers of the president, you need to cut the the unconstitutional government created almost exclusively by congress since 1789.

Calhoun pointed to every element of the American System as an abuse of power and then asked how the president had anything to do with it.

He also argued in 1837 that the Congress could abolish slavery. Why not? It had already passed so much unconstitutional legislation that it was reasonable to argue that it had the power to do whatever it wanted.

This is why Nancy Pelosi stammered indignantly when she was challenged about the constitutionality of Obamacare. Of course it’s constitutional. Anything is constitutional if congress passes it, or so the “nationalists” have always believed.

This is why Congress should be pegged as the entity that really screwed up America. The president and the Supreme Court have had their moments, but both could be checked by Congress.

And you know who could check Congress? The States.

Even President Brandon knows that “only power can check power,” but most Americans think this means the general government.

Nope. The States have always been able to fight fire with fire so to speak.

We just need a few hundred people thinking locally and acting locally to make it happen.

I discuss how Congress screwed up America on episode 637 of The Brion McClanahan Show.