Well, we have this executive order that’s been updated. Issued by the White House, apparently late on Friday, called the National Defense Resources Preparedness. I’ve taken a close look at it as have many others.
You know, I knew there was something like this out there, but I have to confess, I never read it before. This is atrocious. This was in place in 1950 for the Korean War and subsequent wars I guess, um, but I don’t like it.
This could, in the wrong hands in fact, be abused by a President. This is not new to Barack Obama incidentally. I said 1950. But this is an awful amount of power to convey to a President under any circumstances.
And the question is. After that power is used in some “emergency” circumstance how do we get back to a situation in which that power devolves back to the People, back to the different branches of government, back to these private industries and so forth? And to ignore that is foolish. And even though there is a statutory basis for what this executive order says….Congress does not have statutory authority to change the balance of power under the Constitution. No branch of Government has that authority under the Constitution.
Now, I can understand some emergency powers for a President if we’re attacked in the case of war and so forth, but there’s two problems with this. I don’t like this notion of a standing emergency order, that’s number one, and number two, it’s one thing for a President to act quickly when the usual deliberative processes can’t work, but it’s quite another to authorize a president to so thoroughly upend the Constitution. I just don’t like it. And let me say this. I especially don’t like it under this president. Because in my view, this president disrespects the Constitution to begin with. So he’s not a Ronald Reagan who would after asserting authority if he did, which he didn’t , and say OK now, we’ve got to put things back in order. I don’t think this president would do it for a second. Given his long track record in three years, long enough, and I won’t go thru the gory details, you’re well aware of it.
These utopian statists, are hostile towards Constitutionalism, as I’ve said over and over again, and they must be. Because the Constitution limits their power and yet the power of the presidency increases every time there appears to be an emergency or at least a claimed urgency. And to some extent today under this President, I’ve said this before, we have an imperial president, this president is trying to rule by Executive fiat. By Federal regulation. And so in the hands of a President like that, with that kind of a mindset, I’m extremely troubled with this Executive Order. And now that we can all see it and we all know what it is, it’s problematic, again particularly in his hands.
The government generally and the president specifically does not normally have this kind of power. The president today exercises more power than his predecessor. And so I would argue that a republican congress should we take the Senate, needs to pull this back. Or needs to reform it in a significant way. Particularly, if Obama is re-elected. Fingers crossed that he won’t be. I don’t want this kind of, what should we call it, latent, because it’s sitting there, this kind of latent power in the desk drawer of this president. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him with all of this power. I don’t trust most presidents with all of this power. And neither did the framers of the Constitution. There’s nothing in the Constitution like this. In case of emergency, you know, you can make claim to these resources, and those resources…nothing in there like that.
Then I’m thinking to myself, have we ever fought a war, short of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, where anything of this sort would even be necessary? If it was even necessary in those instances. And the answer is no. I don‘t believe even in WWII this executive order didn’t exist in World War II, or the act, the Defense Production Act of 1950.
Now if measures need to be taken, urgent measures, they should have a temporary timeframe, statutorily I mean. There has to be a way with modern technology if a president needs certain powers, to act for invative for instance, or some third world country fires off a bunch of nuclear weapons, because we didn’t stop them in the first place from building them, there needs to be a plan to address that, but you address that on a temporary basis. Why do you have to trash the entire Constitution over this? So this is alarming to me.
And when you read this, I printed it out and its twelve pages long based on my printer, we’ve got, I’ll read you some of the headlines, Mark what are what are you talking about, well, prepare and coordinate, priorities and allocations, expansion of productive capacity and supply. I mean, you’ve got an entire top down control of a great deal of the private sector. Um. Strengthening domestic capability and uh and it’s just uh late(?) requirement goes on and on that the defense production act committee, the various cabinet officers, director of Hum Be (8:29 Sp?), they address civil transportation, farm equipment, fertilizer, food resources, food resource facilities, health resources, offsets, special projects, strategic and special materials, water resources, and it goes on and on.
That’s an extraordinary amount of power and it’s not Constitutionally based. I’m not one of these guys that rings alarm bells all the time, but this troubles me. I don’t like it. I don’t care if it was adopted in 1950 or not and I urge Congress to take another look at this. Particularly given this President’s brazen statement about “fundamentally transforming America, particularly given this President’s brazen conduct in office with his Czars, with his unconstitutional appointments, with his efforts to uh to rule by regulation, and so forth. This requires a new (?), and yes, I don’t believe this president can be trusted with a much power as this statute provides him with. ….I mean his mindset. Given his approach to governing.
My buddy Shawn Hannity today was talking about Woodrow Wilson….I spoke about this at some length at the Reagan Library which was played on CSPAN twice yesterday, and I’ve talked about the (?)…I’ve written about them. Woodrow Wilson rejected the most important line in the Declaration of Independence:, the line of unaliable rights, I have it right here. I have it right here. Constitutional government in the United States this represents a number of lectures, Columbia University lectures, put together in 1907, later in 1911 (?)…Columbia University Press that I cited in Ameritopia, and just to sum up, Woodrow Wilson not only attacks the most important line in the Declaration of Independence, that involves your individual sovereignty, he brutally attacks the Constitution, he rejects the notion of Federalism and state sovereignty, he rejects the idea of divided government with three branches and enumerated powers, he talks about the government as if it’s a human being with organs and he makes the point over (?) they have to work together. And he talks about (my words) creating a judicial oligarchy with master minds who know best. Congress should take a much power as Congress can. Ther president above all the others ….should use as much power as he can get away with. That’s the bottom line. That is the basis today of the modern Democrat party under Obama, Pelosi and Reid. We have a Woodrow Wilson institute in the nation’s capitol, the Woodrow Wilson Institute. I guarantee they’re not teaching Constitutionalism and the Declaration. The notion of individual liberty and the nature of man and all of these things that are crucial to our founding. And to our liberty. But Obama embraces this notion that Wilson talked about as did FDR. More on this when we return.
So this executive order and the statute that underlays it, need to be revisited in my view because I don’t believe a statute of this sort which claims to confer this kind of power on a president is constitutional. I really don’t. And I don’t believe it is necessary. A president has certain inherent powers I believe in times of war particularly when war reaches our own beaches; it’s got a lot of power that’s not inherent as a matter of fact, a lot of direct and numerated authority in the Constitution, that’s an act of war, so I am somewhat uncomfortable about all of this. And it grows out of the mindset that of the new deal as well, at a time when centralized all powerful government was the fad and apparently has never stopped. So it’s something that needs to be addressed in my view. Now, on the other hand, I wouldn’t panic everybody, became this has been around a long time in it’s essential form. But, I think a lot of us weren’t quite – weren’t quite aware of it – I certainly wasn’t aware of a – the extent of it – and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. How do we put his back into the box if its unleashed? What are its limits if its unleashed? And I think that’s what concerns a lot of you. Particularly under this president and it’s perfectly legitimate to say so. Well other presidents ok, but this president is different. THIS president wants to fundamentally transform America. THIS president has already, in my humble opinion, abused his powers. And if he were a conservative republican or if his name was Richard Millhouse Nixon, um, then the democrats in Congress would be going all kinds of wackoo to deal with. Uh. But not now. All power is good power when it’s in the hands of a lib apparently. Now, that’ s my view anyway.
There’s also an individual who Franklin Roosevelt relied on. His name was Henry Segar. And he was a professor at Columbia. And he was part of the Kennedy lectures series 1910. Henry Rogers Segar. And he was a big proponent of Social Security as a matter of fact, he was relied on by the Roosevelt FDR brain trust, as they were developing unemployment insurance and social security. And one of the tings that troubled the late professor Segar (sp), was this whole notion of American Individualism. He says it’s in their blood. It’s in their system. They had it before they had a declaration. I’m paraphrasing. They had it before they had a Constitution. It persists to this day. It’s a powerful force. And he essentially argues that until we delude the individual of this kind of value – that they’re on their own that they are independent, until we change the psychology in America – and he referred to it as the psychology in America – until we change the thinking of the individual in America – to be thinking about community – about cooperation – about consensus…Until we start that process of changing the psychology of the American people he wrote, then we can’t have progress. We can’t have progress. SO he was basically mouthing with the Fabian Socialists in Europe had been mouthing and others in the United States had been mouthing. And this was very alluring to Franklin Roosevelt and his brain trust. These utopians. This is the mindset that continues to this day, the attack on the individual. The attack on the individual’s private property rights, the attack on successful individuals. You see, YOU stand in the way of paradise ladies and gentlemen, that is why an executive order like this in the hand of somebody who is essentially embracing this attitude is problematic to me. He has no more respect for the Constitution and its limits than he would for a statute like this under the wrong circumstances.
THANK YOU! I listened to Mark Levin - I knew I could count on him to be intrepid, courageous and able to succinctly nail the important issues. Hardly any issue is more important than this one and I salute him - AND you! - for bringing this to light when no one else is dealing with it.
Hot Air and American Thinker have discounted this and have done such a disservice to us all and to the cause of liberty. It makes me nuts that these rhino sites have anyone paying attention to them.
Thank you so much, Kara, for this transcript. I am very concerned about this EO and will send the transcript to my friends - both Repubs and Dems. This so surpasses party lines and is terrifying in the hands of NObama.
I have perused FR over the years but just joined today so I could voice my concern about this EO and my gratitude to Mark Levin.
It is a gross understatement to say we are at a crossroads...liberty or tyranny comes to mind.
I think we all should make sure our friends wake up and truly understand what is at stake.
This thing was a bad idea in 1950 and its a really bad idea now. Its unconstitutional and Levin is right about the fact that it will be difficult to get things put back to normal after the fact.
I don’t think Barry would be dusting this thing off if he was not planning to use it.
I wasn’t able to listen to Mark. So appreciate the transcript, good work!
Thanks for posting the transcript. The history of this EO demonstrates how our freedoms have been eroded over time, hidden away ‘in plain sight’.