AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
The salient question is, who or what has authority to conduct US foreign policy? The answer is, without dispute, someone bearing authority to execute as The US Government.
A subtle question is, who or what is that someone? A subtler question is, who or what is The US Government?
The US HPSCI is conducting a superb civics lesson regarding this very subject.
The subtler question first.
Is The US Government the agencies of the US Executive Branch that is established by The US Constitution? One of the three Branches established by The US Constitution? Two of those Branches? All three? Some whosit or whatsit either not contemplated by The US Constitution or given by The US Constitution authority that is walled off from that of the three Branches?
The answer is, without dispute, all three.
Equally? Does one Branch have authority over the other two? Do two Branches have authority over the other one? Does each Branch have authority over the other Branches? Does each Branch have authority to do whatever it wishes to do?
The answer is, without dispute, the authority of each Branch is unique and plenary with respect to its specified functions. All authority beyond that specified by the US citizen electorate through The US Constitution to each Branch of The US Government reposes in electorates of the several states and their administrative subdivisions. The Branches’ authorities are equal to their specified responsibilities and those responsibilities are equally important functions of The US Government as well as of governance per se.
The Branches do not have authority in or over each other. They pull and haul against one another, and they are equally faces of the The US Government, but the authorities of the Branches are limited in extent and exercise to and by their unique functions. Moreover, authorities vested in the three Branches are not identical in either substance or puissance.
And there is more to it: the subtle question.
The US Government, as constituted in three Branches, reposes on, arises from, and serves at the pleasure of a higher and penultimate authority — ultimate authority reposing in God — which is the citizen electorate comprising three demographics:
The Electorate of Congressional Districts
The Electorate of States
The Electorate of the Country as a Whole, de-passioned by an Electoral College
The authorities of the Branches, therefore, while equal to their specified responsibilities, are not of equal strength or nature. They have not the same electoral mandate.
The Executive Branch has the most mandate because its electorate is the whole. Its authority is the most secure.
The Legislative Branch has less (Senate) and even less (House) mandate than does the Executive Branch. Therefore, the authority of the Legislative Branch, especially that of the House, is least secure. An exception is the authority of the House Speaker — in itself an authority of lesser security — which gains strength and security in the extenuating circumstance that the head and sub-head of the Executive Branch cannot execute their duties.
The Judicial Branch has less mandate than the other two Branches because its functionaries are not elected, although they come about their position by let and leave of the two Branches who are elected. The authority of the Judicial Branch is derived, not direct, appointed and confirmed, not elected.
This recital answers the subtle question posed by The HPSCI’s lesson in American civics. The US Government is three functions made for their own benefit by one segmented and de-passioned electorate, who invest willing individuals with varying strengths of mandate to execute their wishes through legislative, executive, and then judicial functions.
Now to the salient question: who or what has authority to conduct US foreign policy? With answers to the subtle and subtler questions in place, the answer to the salient question is easy and indisputable, although a certain cohort today insist that the question itself is illegitimate because development and deployment of US foreign policy is walled off, they assert, from the system of authorities, mandates, and responsibilities specified by The US Constitution and just discussed.
US foreign polity is the responsibility of the Executive Branch, all of whom serve at the pleasure of the chief executive, POTUS. There is no permanent unelected bureaucracy. There is no deep state. There is no sovereign interagency consensus. There is no foreign policy establishment. There is no authority of The US Government apart from that specifically established by the electorate through their free but always conditional investiture of individuals willing to execute their wishes with authority to do just that.
Since POTUS has the widest electoral mandate — namely the whole citizen electorate — and therefore the most positional security,
and since The US Constitution specifies — with competent authority — US foreign policy as Executive Branch responsibility,
and since The US Constitution does not specify a fourth branch of government, unelected, to develop and deploy US foreign policy,
there is no US Government entity such as a deep state, interagency consensus, foreign policy establishment, administrative state, etc. walled off from the three Branches of The US Government or, par excellence, from the electorate in whole or in part comprising US citizens.
In fact, there is no deep state, etc. whatsoever.
The Executive Branch has sole authority to conduct US foreign policy. POTUS has sole authority in and over the Executive Branch. Thus we answer the salient, subtle, and subtler questions.
Q.E.D.
The CIA/IC/FPE / unelected bureaucracy / interagency consensus / deep state / administrative state has less mandate of authority than does the Judicial Branch. In fact, it has none at all. Nor has it even a mandated function. Personalities who claim to comprise or represent a so-called deep state, interagency consensus, etc., responsible for developing and executing US foreign policy, sit and serve entirely at the pleasure of the head of the Executive Branch, POTUS, who has the deepest, widest, and most secure authority, mandate, and function in the three-function Government of the United States.
The so-called deep state, etc., is a notional projection, an aspirational construct native to low-minded, venal personalities. Bullies. Control freaks. The USA is not an ochlocracy, no matter who, nor how large or small, nor how intimidating, nor how schooled or connected is the mob asserting that we are.
Thanks to The US HPSCI for conducting this valuable lesson in American civics.
On The Philosophy Of Aesthetics
At the appointed time, necessities become ripe. That is the time when the Creative Spirit (which one can also designate as the Abstract Spirit) finds an avenue to the soul, later to other souls, and causes a yearning, an inner urge.
This yearning — this inner urge — acquires the power to create in the human spirit a new value which, consciously or unconsciously, begins to live in the human being. From this moment on, consciously or unconsciously, the human being seeks to find a material form for the new value, which already lives within him in spiritual form.
In this process, the spiritual value, searching for a form of materialization, finds matter. Matter is merely a storeroom. It is from this storeroom, that the spirit chooses what is specifically necessary for it to reveal itself — just as a cook chooses what he needs from a pantry.
Wassily Kandinsky, Über die Formfrage, Der Blaue Reiter, 1912
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Update 1: Stacey Lennox: This might not be the Hill to die on for Adam Schiff
This is no longer about Democrat verses Republican. This is about taking our country back from unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Hill who believe they make up the persistent government that does not need to follow the lead of our elected officials.
Update 3: Sundance: President Trump Disrupted DC’s Ability to Monetize Government
Update 4: Sundance: Horowitz Leaks Begin – FBI Official Caught Altering FISA Documents, Now Under Criminal Investigation
I commented twice:
Is it not Executive Branch responsibility to fix its errancies? What authority does Legislative Branch have over those? DOJ/FBI/CIA bads are Executive Branch bads, are they not? And POTUS has responsibility for eliminating them, is it not? Not Lindsey. Right?
Lindsey and Co. have responsibility for eliminating bads perpetrated by Moslem Brotherhood and other miscreants inside their own comms and other functions. Are Lindsey and Co. doing that?
The Branches are cops on themselves, not on each other. Right? Why look to Lindsey (Legislative Branch) to save POTUS (Executive Branch)? Executive Branch has far more and far more stable/secure authority than do the other two Branches. Is it not so?
. . .
POTUS can guarantee reelection by cleaning up his own Branch. Police and prosecute without regard to persons or positions. As a successful CEO, he knows why and how to do this and that it is what everyone expects him to do — including the miscreants, who know that they are — and for good reason. The welfare of the organization (in this case, the Country) depends on its happening.
Update 5: Bruce Thornton: Peggy Noonan Reminds Us Why Trump Won
The NeverTrumpers’ fundamental error.
Moreover, the government agencies Noonan extolls are large, hierarchically organized, public-funded bureaucracies. This means they are riddled with group-think, received ideas, and outmoded paradigms that determine advancement. And being funded by taxpayers and protected by a union and civil-service regulations, they are unaccountable to the voters, and so can fail for years without any consequences. Worse yet, mediocrity and politicization flourish in such environments, and those who think beyond the ruling paradigm find it difficult to make changes. In short, they are the “deep state” that Noonan claims doesn’t exist.
I commented:
A finely written and pointed essay! Thank you!
You articulate with accurate ease a phenomenon I have struggled, I think unsuccessfully, for years now to denote: the picayune manners-obsessed hauteur of they who would be masters instead of servants. A writer at Power Line exhibits that profile.
IMO, Peggy got in bad company, lost the thread of American history, then endorsed the globalist dream of rule (aka global governance) by elite practitioners. A pity, but a monitory one regarding effects of bad company, especially the glittering kind.