Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #398: No Kings? How the Presidency Mirrors Church Authority

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Being Catholic #398: No Kings? How the Presidency Mirrors Church Authority · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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And all thanks to you and brought to you by you. We're going to have a great show for you today.
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I'm here with my wife, Lynn. And again, our show is brought to you by you.
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Any donation that you can make is always welcome and always appreciated.
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And we hope you'll make a donation today, large or small, whatever you can afford.
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We're going to talk a little bit today about what's going on in our society,
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the You Know King's Movement,
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and we'll talk a little bit about how the American government actually is structured
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a lot like the Catholic Church.
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A lot of people don't realize that, and we'll get into that with an article
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that we're going to read.
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Before we start, I want to turn this over to my wife and let her have her say.
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As I mentioned, she's here with us today.
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And of course, we missed a couple of weeks. The last two weeks here,
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things were happening, and there's been illness up and down the line and the
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weather's been up and down like a yo-yo.
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We were going from winter to summer and back and forth. I don't know how many
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different times we've done that.
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And now we're sort of back in winter and I guess we're going heading back towards
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summer. So we'll see what happens.
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At any rate, I'll turn this over to Lynn and see what she has to say.
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Hi, good to be with you again this wonderful weekend.
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You know, this is the end of March. already.
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Lots that happened. And it's near the end of Lent.
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Lent will end on Thursday night, Thursday evening.
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So we don't have a whole lot of time. For those that haven't made their Easter...
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Commitment, which I'm talking about,
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we are required as Catholics to receive the Most Holy Eucharist and go to confession
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once a year in the Easter times, preferably.
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And from Easter, we're talking about from Ash Wednesday until Pentecost.
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So you still got some time left here, But do consider doing it.
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Also, Holy Week starts this Sunday with the arrival of Christ's arrival into
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Jerusalem for the last time.
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And the people spread out palms from the trees and flowers and led him in procession
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as he came into town, praising him.
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Hosanna, Hosanna Nahaius, looking to the, thinking this was their king that
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was going to politically free them, I think, is what they were hoping.
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But it's not what he came here for.
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He was the king, and they rightfully recognized that.
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But by Friday, Thursday and Friday, A few days later, they totally turned against
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him and were crying, crucify him, crucify him.
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Can you imagine being Christ, going into Jerusalem and knowing that you were
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going to your death? He knew that.
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I think how much courage that would have taken.
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Although I know he knew the end result, that he would rise again, but,
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There you have it, and it shows you the fickleness of people.
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Today you're the king, tomorrow we'll crucify you.
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And I think Bob is going to talk a bit about this is secularly.
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They're celebrating no king's day today, Bob?
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Yes, they are. I think I saw that on the news, and people were demonstrating.
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Of course, they got nothing else to do.
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I guess I don't have to work.
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You know, not like the rest of us.
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And this article falls, I mean, the fact is I was going to read this two or three weeks ago.
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And like I say, we've had some problems with the equipment and the station.
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And we've had some, you know, I was ill one of the weekends.
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And I think John had a cold or something like that.
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Anyway, one thing led to another.
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And it turns out that I'm reading this article today, and it's sort of appropriate
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today with this No Kings Day to read from this article because the article actually
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shows that there is power in our presidency that has been conferred from the
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very beginning of this country.
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And the fact is, of course, when George Washington was first president and the
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revolution, the Revolutionary War was just over and was won against Britain,
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then there was a rebellion called the Shades Rebellion.
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And this was the whiskey rebellion because the new country had to raise money
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and it put a tax on whiskey that people had to pay.
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And the farmers, especially in the rural areas and so forth, objected to this.
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And there was a rebellion in Massachusetts, the Shays Rebellion,
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the Whiskey Rebellion, and George Washington put it down by sending an army out against it.
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And that army consisted of about 700 soldiers, and it actually was a bigger
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army in most cases than Washington ever sent against the British.
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And he put the rebellion down, and he threatened them with the hanging.
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And actually, they were under the threat,
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not just a threat, but they were actually under the act of being hung and Washington
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pardoned them, you know, because they backed down and he pardoned them.
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And so, you know, no one was hung.
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But the fact is, is that they could have been. How ironic.
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Rebelled against Britain over the taxation.
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Yeah. And yet, the first thing that they do,
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our government does after it's reformed and after the revolution,
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is to put down a rebellion over taxes. Exactly.
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That's not true.
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And it showed the authority. Washington felt he had to show the authority of
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the federal government.
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And the fact is, is leading up to it, there were all kinds of people going around
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yelling and screaming, King George, King George, and then George Washington.
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In other words, they were saying that, you know, they had gotten rid of King
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George, the British King George, who was, you know, not much of a tyrant,
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really, if you look at the whole thing.
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And they got in his place, George Washington, and they were calling George Washington King George.
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They were calling that because they were angry that these various taxes were
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being opposed upon them, and Washington was backing them up with a military force.
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And so I'm going to read this article, Who Defines Insurrection?
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And it's written by Ken Cuccinelli and Benjamin Osborne and they are.
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Ken Cuccinelli is a senior fellow for immigration and homeland security at the
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Center for Renewing America and lives in Spotsylvania, Virginia.
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Benjamin Osborne is a legal fellow at the Center for Renewing America and lives
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in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
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And so let's read from this and you'll see that the America,
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our Constitution is structured more closely to the Catholic Church than people think.
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And that will come out as we go along in the article here.
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It says, America's constitution is not a manifesto. It is a structure.
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Like all enduring structures, it was built not only for fair weather, but for storms.
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The men who framed the schematics had lived through rebellion,
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occupation, and civil war.
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They knew that a republic without a final authority is not a republic at all,
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but a temporary truce among factions, in other words, without a final authority.
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For this reason, they designed a political framework that tolerates dissent,
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sanctions local life, and yet reserves in the last instance a national power
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capable of preserving the whole.
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That ultimate power is rarely mentioned in political speeches.
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It is not the Supreme Court. A lot of people think that the Supreme Court is
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the ultimate power, but it is not. It is not Congress, nor even the presidency
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in its ordinary administrative role.
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This power is something older, sterner, and more elemental, the authority of
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the United States to execute its own laws when persuasion, litigation,
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and politics have failed.
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In American law, that authority is known as the Insurrection Act,
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and that's what George Washington invoked.
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But believe me, it confers a lot of power on the presidency, as we'll see.
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In recent years, the act has returned from constitutional obscurity into political controversy.
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This debate is not unfolding in the political ether.
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It began with Operation Metro Surge, a large federal immigration enforcement
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operation led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, and the Department
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of Homeland Security, DHS,
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that focused on identifying,
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arresting, and removing individuals unlawfully in the United States.
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Federal officials have described this as one of the largest immigration enforcement
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operations ever undertaken, involving thousands of federal agents and thousands of arrests.
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The President has a constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,
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which necessarily includes enforcing federal immigration law nationwide regardless
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of local political disagreement.
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ICE, DHS, and the Department of Justice are all empowered by Congress to carry
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out that responsibility.
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This federal immigration law enforcement in Minnesota has met intense opposition
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in the form of mass protests, episodes of violence, political unrest,
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disruption of church services by agitators,
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and sharp resistance from some state and local officials.
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This is why discussion of the Insurrection Act has emerged with such urgency.
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We are no longer discussing a theoretical statute from a distant constitutional past.
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We are confronting a live dispute over federal supremacy, state resistance,
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and the president's obligation to ensure that federal law can be executed safely
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and effectively on American soil.
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Notice that phrase, the president's obligation.
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President Trump has warned he would invoke the Insurrection Act to quickly put
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an end to the travesty that is taking place.
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If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don't obey the law and stop the professional
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agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE.
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State leaders have responded in starkly different terms.
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Governor Tim Walz has encouraged Minnesotans to resist the federal immigration
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law enforcement and denounced it as an attack on his state by the federal government.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry has gone further,
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telling federal law enforcement to leave the city altogether and bluntly telling
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ICE to get the F out of Minneapolis while insisting that the federal government
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is responsible for escalating tensions.
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Some speak of the Insurrection Act as an expression of tyranny,
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others as a relic of a more martial age, but neither camp has reckoned seriously
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with what the act actually is, not a loophole for despotism,
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but a keystone of the constitutional order,
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the statute that reveals more clearly than any other what the Union ultimately
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is, a government that can be argued with,
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sued, voted against, and protested, but not physically nullified.
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In other words, You can't nullify federal law simply because you don't like it.
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It is the supreme law of the land, and it can be backed up with force.
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And that is in our Constitution.
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And our Constitution confers that, as we'll see, on one man.
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And that is a lot more like the Catholic Church than people think.
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The American system is often described as a delicate balance of powers.
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That description is true as far as it goes, but it misses something essential.
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Balance alone cannot sustain a political order.
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In other words, something can be in balance, all balance against each other,
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but that doesn't allow for any final say-so.
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And there has to be. There must also be a principle of resolution with some
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authority that decides finally and practically whose law governs a given piece of ground.
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That's more in keeping with a hierarchy than it is with the so-called democracy,
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more in keeping with the power found in a king than it is, you know,
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in keeping with the no kings people.
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That question ceases to be hypothetical when federal officers face organized
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resistance while attempting to execute immigration law in major cities.
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The founders understood the
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tension between federal and state law with an intimacy born of failure.
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The Articles of Confederation had created a nation that could speak, but not act.
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Command, but not compel.
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The result was not liberty, but impotence. In other words, under the Articles of Confederation.
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That's why they met to strengthen the Articles of Confederation.
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And in turn, instead of just strengthening the Articles of Confederation,
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they abolished them and put in a whole new constitution.
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Shade's Rebellion was not merely a rural uprising in Massachusetts,
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but a warning to the entire continent that a government unable to force its
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own laws would soon cease to be a government at all.
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And we're going to stop there and take a break, so stay with us.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic.
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And I'm reading here from an article in Chronicles Magazine,
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the March 2026 issue of Chronicles Magazine. I think I forgot to mention the
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magazine I was reading from.
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And the article is, Who Defines Insurrection?
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And it's talking about the Insurrection Act.
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And it's talking about the power that is conferred actually upon the President
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of the United States, and we'll get into that more as we go along.
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And that is in the Constitution and gives a tremendous amount of power to the presidency.
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And that power actually reaches all the way back traditionally,
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and there is the word tradition, just like in the Catholic Church,
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to the monarchy itself. And here we have this movement going on, no kings.
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But here is a law that can be invoked and maybe will be invoked here and has
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been invoked in recent times, as we'll see.
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And that law reaches all the way back to the monarchy.
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Even though our country was a civil war, I mean, a revolutionary war was fought to end the monarchy,
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the fact is that power of the monarchy was kept because the Articles of Confederation,
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which ditched that power,
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simply were not able to govern the country, and that power had to be re-invoked.
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The Constitution was the answer. It created a federal system in which states
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retained their dignity and their spheres of authority, while the national government
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possessed supremacy in its own domain.
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The laws of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land,
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the document declares, not as poetry but as architecture.
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The clause is not about prestige but motion.
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Federal law must be able to move through courts, through officers,
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and through territory without being stopped at a state line or a governor's desk.
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In other words, it moves through the courts. It moves over the courts.
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It moves beyond the courts.
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This is where the Insurrection Act enters the story.
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It is the statute that operationalizes the Supremacy Clause when other options have failed.
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In other words, it puts teeth in the Supremacy Clause.
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Modern Americans are accustomed to think of the president as a manager of agencies and a signer of bills.
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The Constitution, however, assigns him a more ancient role.
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He is not only the head of the executive branch. He is the chief magistrate
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of the republic and the commander-in-chief of its forces.
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In the constitutional vocabulary of the founding era, the term chief magistrate
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carried far more weight than modern administrative language suggests.
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It drew from English constitutional practice,
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classical republican theory, and colonial governance,
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in which the magistrate was understood as the guardian of public order and the
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officer charged with seeing that the law actually functioned in reality.
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Blackstone described magistracy as the power entrusted with maintaining the
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peace, executing judgments, and preserving the stability of civil society.
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These are the functions the framers deliberately concentrated in a single, listen to this,
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in a single executive to avoid the paralysis that had plagued government under
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the Articles of Confederation.
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In other words, this power,
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was placed in a single executive. It's executive power. It is not judicial power.
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It bypasses the judiciary.
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The American president was thus viewed not merely as a bureaucratic supervisor,
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but as the living instrument through which the law acquires operational force.
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The title commander-in-chief, likewise, reflects an inheritance older than the
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Constitution itself, In other words, tradition, reaching back to British monarchy.
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In British practice, the crown held unified military command precisely to ensure
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that force remained subordinate to civil authority.
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But the crown was capable of decisive action when the nation faced rebellion,
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invasion, or breakdown of order. The framers retained that principle even while
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abolishing the monarchy.
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So there's a monarchical principle really invested in the presidency.
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Conferred upon the president.
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They vested military command in an elected executive who would remain accountable
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to law and legislature, but would be able to act with unity,
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speed, and clarity in moments of crisis.
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So in moments of crisis, when he declares a crisis, he has this power,
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and we'll see it is the president who decides on a crisis.
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As Hamilton explained in Federalist 70,
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energy in the executive was not a luxury, but a safeguard of liberty,
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because a government incapable of enforcing its laws invites either anarchy
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or extra-constitutional remedies.
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Taken together, these roles mean that the presidency was designed as both the
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Republic's chief civil officer and its ultimate guarantor of constitutional order.
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The office that ensures law is not merely declared, but it is sustained,
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defended, and when necessary, enforced against organized resistance.
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The president's duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed is not
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an exhortation to oversee bureaucrats.
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The clause is a charge to ensure that federal law is not merely written and interpreted, that is,
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written and then interpreted by the judiciary, but it is actually carried out in the real world.
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When federal officers are prevented from serving warrants, transporting detainees,
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securing facilities, or executing
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court orders, that failure is not just procedural, it is constitutional.
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Congress cannot, by statute, strip the president of this core authority.
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In other words, Congress doesn't have the power to take it away from the president,
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and neither does the judiciary.
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The Posse Comitatus Act, often invoked as a restraint, explicitly yields the
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constitutional power and does not limit the President's own Article II authorities.
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Enacted in 1878 in the aftermath of Reconstruction, posse comitatus was principally
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intended to prevent U.S.
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Marshals and other civilian officials from commandeering Federal troops for
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routine domestic law enforcement,
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rather than to eliminate presidential constitutional authority to use military
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force when authorized by the Constitution or Congress.
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Notice by the Constitution or Congress. The Insurrection Act,
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far from creating new presidential authority,
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recognizes and channels it, providing a legal pathway for exercising a power
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that already exists in the Constitution.
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The contemporary dispute in Minnesota centers precisely whether federal immigration
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law can be executed safely and consistently amid violence incited by local leaders.
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This is why the Act vests judgment in the President's hands.
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It authorizes him to act when unlawful obstructions, combinations,
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or assemblages make it impractical to enforce federal law through the ordinary
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course of judicial proceedings.
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The language is not judicial, but executive.
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It assumes a man in office who must decide in real time whether the republic
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laws can still be enforced.
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So it confers upon the president, not upon the judiciary.
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The Insurrection Act is not a modern invention.
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Its lineage runs back to the earliest years of the Republic,
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when President Washington marched militia forces to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.
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That episode, now reduced to a paragraph in textbooks, was a constitutional
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challenge of the First Order.
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It established in practice, rather than in theory, that the federal government
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would not tolerate armed resistance to its laws.
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That authority came from the original Militia Act of 1792, often called the
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Calling Forth Act, which empowered the president to summon state militias to enforce federal law.
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Congress later expanded that authority in 187 under President Jefferson,
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allowing the direct use of federal troops, and from that emerged the Modern Insurrection Act.
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It is the Whiskey Rebellion and its protests against a particular federal law,
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an excise tax on liquor, that may best resemble today's violence directed at
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America's immigration laws.
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Later generations would invoke the same principle for different causes.
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Abraham Lincoln relied on the underlying authority to preserve the Union itself.
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And Lincoln gathered a lot of power to himself.
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Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce desegregation
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orders when state officials denied the Supreme Court.
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President Kennedy sent troops to Alabama to confront Governor Wallace when he
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stood in the schoolhouse door to stop integration of the school system.
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In 1992, President Bush invoked the act to restore order amid the riots of Los Angeles.
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Each episode was a response to a crisis in which federal authority confronted organized resistance.
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This can easily be discerned in a standoff between federal immigration enforcement
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and organized protest activity in Minnesota.
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Federalism lets states say no thanks to Washington.
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You shall not pass. In other words, a state can say, you know,
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we don't need your help or we're not, you know, we're not interested.
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You don't need to come and help us. but it cannot block the federal government
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from sending in power to enforce federal law.
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The anti-commandeering doctrine of the 10th Amendment prohibits Washington from
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forcing states to administer federal programs.
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In other words, a state does not have to use its resources to administer a federal
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program if it doesn't want to.
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That doesn't mean it can stop the federal government from using its resources
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to administer a federal program.
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That means a state governor may, under most circumstances, lawfully refuse to
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assist federal immigration enforcement, and a state legislature may prohibit
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the federal government's use of state resources.
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This is lawful non-cooperation, rooted in the dual sovereignty of state governments,
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but this sovereignty does not include a veto over federal action.
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The Supremacy Clause draws a bright line between non-cooperation and obstruction.
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The former is silence, the latter is force.
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A state that declines to use its own reforces to help federal officers remains within its rights.
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A state that deploys its police or National Guard to block federal officers
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from executing valid federal processes crosses into constitutional defiance.
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At that moment, the issue is no longer federalism.
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It is active insurrection.
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This distinction is not academic.
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It is the hinge on which the Insurrection Act turns.
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The statute does not exist to punish disagreement.
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It exists to respond to organized resistance that makes the ordinary operation
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of law impossible or unsafe.
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Whether current events in Minnesota cross that threshold is now a matter of
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national political consequence.
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Today, there are organized bands of resistance with no direct ties to any government
32:24
that seek to obstruct and undermine the enforcement of federal laws.
32:28
The Insurrection Act and its predecessors has been used time and time again
32:34
by presidents back to our founding to address exactly such a situation.
32:40
That is the power that is put into the hands of the presidency.
32:43
And again, the fact is that it is similar to the hierarchy in the Catholic Church
32:49
and the fact that there's a tradition running back that the Pope has,
32:53
you know, after the cardinals and the bishops and so forth meet and all is said
32:59
and heard and so forth, someone has to make a decision and the Pope has the authority to do that.
33:03
And the president has the authority to do that in the United States.
33:07
It is the executive that has that authority, not the Supreme Court and not Congress.
33:13
Neither one can take that authority away from the president.
33:17
In defiance of federal immigration law, Democrats have revived the rhetoric of nullification.
33:23
In other words, that goes all the way back to South Carolina back in the 1830s,
33:30
tried to nullify certain laws.
33:32
And there was President Jackson, I think, back at that time or a little later,
33:36
that put a squelch on that and said they are not going to get away with it.
33:42
They can't nullify federal law. and the Nullification Act was null and void itself.
33:49
Every generation find new words for old temptations.
33:53
Today, the language of sovereignty and invasion circulate through blue state
33:58
capitals and press rooms.
34:00
It carries the echo of an earlier era when South Carolina declared federal tariffs
34:07
null and void in 1832 and claimed the right to interpose its authority against the Union.
34:14
The Supreme Court's answer then and now has been unwavering.
34:18
The states may argue, they may protest, they may sue, they may seek to change
34:23
the law through elections and amendments, they may not physically stop the federal
34:28
government from enforcing its own laws.
34:31
James Madison, so often miscast as a patron of nullification,
34:36
rejected the doctrine in his later years with unmistakable clarity.
34:41
Interposition, he wrote, was a political act, not a legal power.
34:46
It meant persuasion, not suspension. To allow a single state to prevent the
34:52
execution of federal law would be to dissolve the union into a collection of armed camps.
34:58
This Madisonian logic carries into the present.
35:02
A state that claims the right to block federal immigration enforcement on constitutional
35:07
grounds is not engaging in interposition. It is undertaking nullification in operational form.
35:15
The Constitution rejects the existence of such a power.
35:19
We're going to have to stop here and take a break. So stay with us. We'll be right back.
35:24
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. We're back from our break. You're listening to Being
37:02
Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
37:05
And we're talking about the Insurrection Act,
37:08
the ultimate power of the presidency, and how it goes all the way back to the
37:14
time of George Washington and how he exercised it right after the American Revolution,
37:19
and how that act actually reaches further back traditionally all the way back
37:25
through the British monarchy and to monarchies that existed in law even before that time.
37:33
And in that respect, it is similar to the tradition of the Catholic Church,
37:38
reaching all the way back to the time of Christ, having the Pope as the final
37:44
say-so and the final power.
37:45
And our country is more like that than people think.
37:49
And it goes on here, it says, It is important to be candid about political rhetoric
37:55
across administrations.
37:57
During the Biden years, many conservatives described the unprecedented surge
38:02
of unlawful border crossing as an invasion.
38:05
That language rightfully drew on constitutional texts in Article 1's compact
38:12
clause, which allows states to act in self-defense when actually invaded,
38:18
and Article 4's guarantee clause obligates the federal government to protect
38:23
states against invasion.
38:24
The argument rested on the premise of large-scale, unlawful entry across an
38:30
international boundary by non-citizens, which is how the Founders themselves
38:35
understood the danger of invasion.
38:37
But that argument contains its own limiting principle.
38:41
An invasion, in the constitutional sense, presupposes an external force entering
38:48
the United States without sovereign authorization.
38:52
It does not encompass the lawful actions of federal officers executing federal law within a state.
39:01
Whatever one thinks of particular immigration policies, federal agents operating
39:07
under statutory authority are not
39:10
foreign belligerents nor constitutional equivalents of an invading army.
39:15
And this is what we seem to have today going on, this idea of no kings saying
39:20
that their states are being invaded by governmental forces from Donald Trump.
39:27
That's not possible. The federal government can send its officers into any state
39:32
that it wishes, and that is not an invasion.
39:35
That distinction matters enormously in the present debate over immigration enforcement
39:40
in Minnesota and elsewhere.
39:42
Some critics have begun describing federal immigration operations in the Twin
39:47
Cities as an invasion by Washington.
39:50
This is a glaring misconception.
39:53
Federal law enforcement activity inside the United States, even when controversial,
39:59
aggressive, or politically contested, remains an exercise of national sovereignty.
40:05
Not an assault upon lawful rule.
40:08
Calling it an invasion implicitly asserts a state power to resist federal law
40:15
by force, a claim the Constitution decisively rejects.
40:20
Indeed, the very existence of the Insurrection Act reflects the constitutional settlement.
40:27
The statute presupposes that states do not possess a lawful right,
40:32
again, do not possess a lawful right to treat federal enforcement of the law
40:38
as a hostile occupation.
40:41
When organized resistance obstructs federal authority, the constitutional response
40:47
is not state counterforce but federal supremacy, enforced if necessary through national power.
40:54
The act is not a war power against the state.
40:57
It is the legal mechanism that prevents domestic political disputes from escalating
41:03
into something resembling civil war.
41:06
This does not mean federal enforcement is beyond criticism.
41:10
It does mean that constitutional vocabulary must remain tethered to a constitutional
41:17
reality, which it is not under this No Kings movement.
41:23
Conservatives who used the language of invasion at the southern border were
41:28
lawfully and constitutionally pointing to external entry, Notice that external
41:34
entry across the nation's boundary.
41:37
Applying that same label to federal officers carrying out federal statutes within
41:43
Minnesota transforms a policy disagreement into a constitutional contradiction.
41:50
The Supremacy Clause ensures that federal
41:54
law governs where it constitutionally applies And the Insurrection Act stands
42:00
as the statutory affirmation that organized obstruction cannot override that principle.
42:12
The Constitution does not rush to the use of military power.
42:16
It prefers courts to commands, injunctions to interventions.
42:20
The first step for the executive are legal, record-building,
42:25
declaratory judgments, supremacy-based injunctions, and the removal of state
42:31
prosecutions into federal courts.
42:33
These measures aim to keep conflict within the realm of law.
42:37
But the latter does not end there. If state officials or organized groups physically
42:43
obstruct federal officers, if they threaten, detain, or blockade,
42:48
the law provides criminal remedies.
42:52
Assaulting or obstructing a federal officer is not a political statement. It is a federal crime.
42:59
If the obstruction is carried out through the National Guard under state command,
43:05
the Constitution provides a further remedy,
43:08
federalization, Title X allows the president, that is, the president, the executive officer,
43:17
to place the guard under federal control to ensure that it cannot be used as
43:23
an instrument of resistance.
43:25
Only when these measures fail, when the ordinary course of judicial proceedings
43:30
has become impracticable, does the Insurrection Act stand fully revealed.
43:35
It is not the first resort of a free government, but it can be legally used
43:41
by the president as he considers necessary whenever the statute criteria are meet.
43:48
Notice that the president himself decides when he considers it necessary.
43:54
He first has to declare that he's met the statutory criteria,
43:58
but it puts the decision-making in his hands.
44:02
The statute's most controversial feature is also its most revealing.
44:06
It entrusts the determination of necessity to the president. I'll say that again.
44:12
It entrusts the determination of necessity to the president.
44:16
In other words, the president has the power to decide when the Insurrection Act is to be used.
44:24
Critics may argue that courts should second-guess the decision to invoke the
44:29
act. The statute itself says otherwise.
44:33
It frames the judgment as an executive assessment of conditions on the ground.
44:40
In other words, it puts the hands in the executive and not the judicial.
44:45
If litigation arises from a potential federal action in Minnesota,
44:50
courts will likely confront the question of how much respect is owed to federal law.
44:55
But we know from the Constitution which branch is responsible for those determinations,
45:00
and which branch is responsible is the executive in this case.
45:05
The founders placed the responsibility for national security and the execution
45:11
of law in a single office because they knew that delay,
45:17
division, and diffusion of authority could be fatal in moments of crisis.
45:22
That does not make the president a king.
45:25
It may not make him a king, but it certainly gives him kingly authority in this respect.
45:31
It makes him accountable. He is accountable. Nevertheless, he has the ultimate authority here.
45:38
Every invocation of the act carries political risk.
45:41
In other words, he can be voted out when it comes time because he's unpopular for using these things.
45:47
But the fact is that political risk is what can govern him. but it is not the
45:53
Supreme Court or some kind of law.
45:56
Every invocation of the act carries political risk, historical judgment,
46:01
and moral weight, but the absence of such a power would carry a greater risk.
46:06
Still, the transformation of constitutional conflict into territorial contests
46:12
with quasi-sovereign states vying for power, in other words,
46:16
the risk the other way without the president having that power,
46:20
is greater, that is, to have a country that can't act.
46:25
There is a temptation, especially among conservatives, to view any assertion
46:30
of national power with suspicion.
46:33
That instinct is healthy. It has preserved space for local traditions and customs,
46:39
and for state governance.
46:41
But conservatism, at its best, does not encourage fragmentation.
46:47
It is a philosophy of order.
46:50
Edmund Burke defended tradition because it was durable.
46:54
And there again, ended, deferred, defended tradition. It boils down to tradition.
46:59
In other words, it's one of the things in our government that was not invented
47:03
by committees or by people meeting together, something new.
47:08
It is something that goes back, that emerged over time in Western civilization
47:15
by trial and error and found to have worked.
47:18
And a lot of times tradition is a lot better than invention.
47:23
In these kind of respects.
47:26
And we have the same thing in the Catholic Church.
47:29
We have 2,000 years of tradition, and we have the tradition here also in the American government,
47:37
the tradition of ultimately having to resort to one executive power when the
47:46
country is locked and cannot not otherwise act.
47:51
The Constitution is one such tradition, the power that the Founders put into it.
47:57
It is a layered inheritance, combining local loyalty with national authority,
48:02
the hallmark of federalism.
48:04
The Insurrection Act, paradoxically, is part of that inheritance.
48:10
It is the statute that ensures the Republic does not become a federation of state vetoes.
48:17
It preserves the possibility of law and a world of unlawful impossibilities.
48:23
In other words, when you get into situations like we're getting into today,
48:27
it preserves the path of law and order, and it confers that power on the presidency for that reason.
48:35
And yes, it's a risky power, but it's a lot more risky for a country to be without that kind of power.
48:41
The Insurrection Act endures because it answers a question no republic can escape.
48:47
What happens when law meets force?
48:49
The American answer is neither anarchy nor autocracy.
48:54
It is authority under law. The act does not suspend the Constitution, it enforces it.
49:00
You do not have to be a legal constitutional engineer to understand how it is built.
49:06
In a nation as vast and various as the United States, there will always be disagreements
49:12
sharp enough to tempt defiance.
49:15
The genius of the architects of the constitutional order is that it channels
49:20
those disagreements into forms that preserve the whole.
49:24
When those channels are blocked, the republic falls back on its deepest reserve.
49:29
In other words, when it reaches a point where it can't act otherwise,
49:33
there is the power of the presidency.
49:37
That reserve is not a committee. That reserve is not a court.
49:42
It is the sovereign power of the Union vested in an office designed to act when
49:48
others cannot, and that is the presidency.
49:51
This is not a comfortable truth, but it is a conservative one,
49:56
and it is one the Founders themselves sought to bring about by evolving America
50:01
from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution,
50:06
none more than George Washington himself, who used the act by putting down Shade's Rebellion.
50:13
So the fact is, our country is conservative in the same way that the church
50:19
is conservative, reaching back its tradition for 2,000 years,
50:24
and the country is reaching back into monarchy,
50:27
the British monarchy, and using the power that was gained over trial and error
50:33
over thousands of years in the same way.
50:36
The Founders' concern about national impotence remains strikingly relevant as
50:42
modern federal enforcement operations could encounter organized resistance within
50:47
the states, and they are encountering it.
50:49
For a people who inherit their institutions rather than invent them anew.
50:55
And there's that term, invent them anew.
50:59
It is not whether such power can be misused. Any power can.
51:04
The question is whether a nation can endure without it. And the fact is, is it can't.
51:09
And that's why the papacy and that's why the Catholic Church has endured for
51:13
2,000 years because it reaches back to tradition that works.
51:16
And this act, the Insurrection Act, is reaching back to tradition that works.
51:22
The Insurrection Act stands as the Constitution's unsentimental answer.
51:27
Whether or not it is ultimately invoked in Minnesota or elsewhere,
51:32
the conflict there illustrates why the statute exists and why the constitutional
51:37
architecture behind it remains very much alive. So...
51:43
I think that article pretty well explains exactly what the power of the presidency ultimately is.
51:49
And it explains exactly why the people running around with this No Kings idea
51:56
are simply doing the same thing that people did 250 years ago when our nation was formed.
52:05
And the force of the federal government was sent against those people.
52:10
They were put down, and the government was put in place, and the Constitution worked.
52:17
And so, you know, that's something I think we should all keep in mind.
52:21
And the reason I'm talking about it here is because it's very apropos today
52:27
because there's a lot of similarity in that tradition to what's in the tradition of the Catholic Church.
52:35
Anything you want to say further on this, Lynn?
52:38
No, I think that's pretty comprehensive.
52:41
You have to recognize that that's the ultimate power invested in the presidency.
52:48
And I think everybody here, you know, should pray for our president and pray for our country.
52:55
And some of these people I saw on TV this morning that are going out and doing
53:00
these things come right out and say that they hate President Trump.
53:03
And they also hate people who voted for President Trump.
53:07
I don't think that's a very, very good premise to build any kind of a movement whatsoever on.
53:15
It's that you hate your fellow neighbors because they acted legally in a political
53:21
manner that you happen to disagree with.
53:24
And so therefore, you know, you need to hate them and you need to hate the president
53:29
that they elected and that somehow you need to go out and cause the kind of
53:34
trouble that you're causing or the total misunderstanding of the law.
53:38
That's exactly right. They don't have an inkling. They really don't.
53:45
And the state governments are allowing this to grow.
53:53
So somebody needs to wake up and smell the roses.
53:57
And some of these people in state
53:58
government, they either are ignoring our tradition or they don't know it.
54:04
And both, either way, it doesn't bode well for their governance or for the country.
54:10
No, it doesn't. And again, I think it's appropriate here to talk about it on
54:15
being Catholic because the Constitution reaches back traditionally like the
54:22
Catholic Church reaches back traditionally.
54:24
And there's more in common than people think.
54:26
And there's a principle here that there has to be a final, ultimate say-so.
54:31
And that say-so ultimately has to be invested in a human being.
54:37
Committees can't do it. AI is not going to be able to do it.
54:41
I mean, when you flip a coin or something, there has to be ultimately a decision-maker,
54:47
and that has been the factor in the Catholic Church, and it actually is a factor
54:52
in our own government, and most people don't realize it.
54:56
They don't. So at any rate, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
55:00
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
55:04
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
55:07
And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,
55:11
thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world,
55:15
seeking to ruin the souls.
55:17
Amen. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston.
55:21
On Catholic Spirit Radio, if you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:27
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55:31
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