The Constitution states unequivocally that it “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Not always, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles contended on his Monday show.
Following New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s unconstitutional decision to suspend laws permitting open-carry and concealed firearms in public, Knowles took to his show to praise the principle of wielding executive power to bypass the law, only expressing discontent that Lujan Grisham would use such authority to enact gun control.
“In principle, her point is right,” said Knowles, referring to Lujan Grisham’s brazen defiance of the law.
If conservatives simply recognize the legitimacy of Lujan Grisham’s underlying principle, that “would perhaps allow us to get around the very unjust wielding of the strict letter of the law on legitimate national emergencies,” Knowles continued.
This immediately prompts the question: Who decides what qualifies as “legitimate national emergencies?” In New Mexico, out of pure coincidence, the person who gains additional power in emergencies just so happened to identify the current emergency.
Knowles argues that Lujan Grisham’s abuse of power is wrong because gun restrictions make for bad policy-making and the recent shootings do not constitute an emergency. However, if, as Knowles argues, the executive is not strictly bound by the law, what is to stop this rogue governor, or any future executive with like-minded inclinations, from doing so anyway?
According to Knowles, Lujan Grisham is guilty only of poor policy-making. But the reality is that flawed policy measures are regularly enacted at the federal, state, and local levels. Disagreeing with a policy decision does not render the policy invalid, unless, of course, we choose to affirm the not-so-revolutionary idea that executive authority is bound by the law. Rejecting such a notion only serves to validate the unjust exercise of power demonstrated by Lujan Grisham.
If we accept that Lujan Grisham can both declare an emergency and exercise unlawful emergency powers, we become unable to stop such authority, and we encourage further incursions of the law. Emergency powers are quick to exceed the threat of any so-called legitimate emergency. Indeed, Knowles has already beaten us to the punch.
A legitimate emergency is something that “threatens our entire political order,” Knowles explains, citing invasion as a good example. Then he adds: “Unfortunately, we have not been able to stop the invasion on our southern border.”
Would Knowles then support granting President Biden additional executive powers if they were justified by the emergency at our border? According to the argument Knowles has presented, the answer appears to be yes. Knowles has identified a current national emergency and contends that the executive does not always need to strictly adhere to the written law.
Therefore, the question arises: What would prevent Biden from unilaterally enshrining into law an open-borders policy? The Biden administration could argue that open borders would effectively address the border crisis by eliminating the concept of a border altogether. Knowles’s disagreement with the policy choice becomes irrelevant because he endorses the mechanism through which such a policy can be enacted.
Milton Friedman famously said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” If we recognize emergency powers as a government program, the risk becomes even more glaringly apparent. American history is no stranger to abuses of power excused by emergency powers. Woodrow Wilson threw people in jail for anti-war speech and F.D.R. implemented internment camps for Japanese Americans, both justified through emergency wartime powers.
In all fairness to Knowles, he does recognize the abuse of power by Wilson and FDR. However, he contrasts those with more widely favorable acts; namely, Abraham Lincoln’s suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War. Regardless of whether Lincoln was right or wrong in this instance, it can nonetheless be stated that Lincoln had at least a reverence for our country’s Founding. Knowles outrightly mocks recourse to the Founding, arguing that Founding-era uses of emergency power make invocations of the Founders’ principles inadequate. That’s not what Lincoln thought in the abstract. The Declaration of Independence is a “revolutionary document and abstract truth, applicable to all men at all times, and do so embalm it there that today and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression,” Lincoln said in 1859. And it’s not how Lincoln thought when it mattered, either. He was at great pains to justify even his most extraordinary actions in constitutional terms, pushing back against others who urged him to go further. Of the idea of applying the Emancipation Proclamation, a military measure, in places where it was not military necessary, Lincoln wrote:
If I take the step must I not do so, without the argument of military necessity, and so, without any argument, except the one that I think the measure politically expedient, and morally right? Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the boundless field of absolutism? Could this pass unnoticed, or unresisted? Could it fail to be perceived that without any further stretch, I might do the same in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri; and even change any law in any state? Would not many of our own friends shrink away appalled? Would it not lose us the elections, and with them, the very cause we seek to advance?
Knowles shares a different view: Conservatives must stop “whining about abstract rights, which do little more than make us feel good and righteous all the way to the Gulag,” he said on Monday. Knowles may justify his position from Lincoln’s actions, but their underlying principles show a stark contrast. Naturally, belittling such intrinsic rights simply excuses efforts to impede them.
Conservatives must choose. Shall we replace the “Don’t tread on me” text of the Gadsden flag with “Tread on me if you think you have to”? Or shall we instead oppose abuses of executive authority and so-called exceptions to the Constitution?