The issue revolving around the Trump administration’s intentional violation of an order of a federal judge to not deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador — and the Justice Department’s refusal to provide answers to questions posed by that judge about circumstances surrounding those deportations — does not revolve around whether a person loves or hates Donald Trump. The issue also does not revolve around whether someone loves or hates the federal judge, James Boasberg. Instead, the issue is simply this: What type of governmental system does a person who wants to be free want for the United States?
The Constitution called into existence a type of governmental system called a limited-government republic. It is a system that divides political power within the various government spheres to ensure that the government does not acquire too much concentrated power. The idea was that divided power would best ensure the freedom of the American people from the potential tyranny of their own government.
Thus, the federal government was not vested with the traditional “police powers” or “inherent” powers that had characterized governments throughout history. Instead, its powers were limited to those few powers that were enumerated in the Constitution.
To ensure an even weaker federal government, the Framers divided the federal government into three branches — executive, legislative, and judicial. The legislative branch would have the power to enact laws. The executive branch would have the power to enforce the laws. The judicial branch would have the power to interpret the laws and would be the deciding factor in determining whether a law or action of the executive or legislative branch was constitutional or not. No branch could exercise the powers of the other two branches.
The Framers didn’t need to do that. They could have simply had a government with an executive branch only and no legislative or judicial branches. The president would have the authority to enact laws, enforce them, and decide whether they were constitutional or not.
Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Chile license.
American conservatives have long hated the type of government that the Constitution called into existence. It is a deep hatred that is being manifested today in the El Salvador controversy. Castigating and condemning the federal judiciary for its “interference” with President Trump’s deportation schemes, they want the federal judiciary to butt out of whatever Trump is doing, especially in the area of immigration. They want to impeach and remove from office any federal judge who dares to interfere with Trump’s schemes. They want Trump to have the omnipotent power to rule over America through the issuance of decree-laws. They do not want any interference by either Congress or the courts.
This is not the first time that American conservatives have displayed their disdain for the divided-government system that the Framers and our American ancestors called into existence in 1789. Their hatred for our system was also perfectly manifested by their support and deep admiration for Augusto Pinochet, the right-wing military general of Chile who took power in a coup in 1973, with the full support of the U.S. national-security state that conservatives also love deeply.
Conservatives loved Pinochet. They still do, especially since he brought into his regime the famous “Chicago Boys” to manage Chile’s welfare state and regulated economy. But it wasn’t just their love of Pinochet that matters. It was also the type of governmental system that Pinochet implemented that they loved so deeply and still love deeply.
Pinochet was a dictator in the full and complete sense of the term. During the 17 years he was in office, Chile continued to have a congress and a federal judiciary, just like here in the United States. But neither the Congress nor the courts dared interfere with whatever Pinochet wanted to do. That’s the part that American conservatives love. That’s what they want for Trump. They want Trump to have all the same powers that Pinochet had in Chile.
If Pinochet wanted to take a particular action, he didn’t need to go to the Chilean congress to request the enactment of a particular law. In the Pinochet system, Pinochet himself enacted the laws through the issuance of decree-laws. In other words, anything that Pinochet decreed through the issuance of an executive order was automatically the law. The Chilean congress had nothing to do with this process.
American conservatives loved that system. They still do. That’s why they are so ecstatic that Trump himself wields the power to issue decree laws, just like Pinochet did, including decrees that nullify laws that have previously been enacted by Congress.
Pinochet also didn’t need to worry about judicial interference. That’s because he intimidated and cowed the federal judiciary into not declaring any of his actions unconstitutional, including the round-ups, incarcerations, rapes, brutal sexual abuse, torture, disappearances, or extra-judicial executions that were meted out by Pinochet’s goons to 50,000-60,000 innocent people. American conservatives loved it. They still do because their mindset was the same as Pinochet’s — that civil liberties, enforced by an independent judiciary, are nothing more than nonsensical constitutional “technicalities” that are designed to let guilty people go free.
If Pinochet decreed that those 50,000-60,000 people were guilty, that is good enough for American conservatives, just like it is when President Trump decrees those Venezuelan immigrants to be guilty of waging war against the United States. In the conservative mind, who needs a stinking hearing or trial with pesky federal judges, persistent criminal-defense attorneys, and constitutional “technicalities” that let guilty people go free when the nation is blessed with an all-knowing, wise, and benevolent right-wing dictator who wields omnipotent power to keep the nation “safe and secure.”
It should surprise no one that conservatives now have a new darling — Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who has become a close friend and ally of President Trump. In return for the payment of $6 million of U.S. taxpayer money to El Salvador’s impoverished regime, Bukele has proudly and loyally incarcerated and is punishing immigrants who Trump has renditioned to him under the ruse of waging “war” and who have never been found guilty of any offense. It’s worth mentioning that to keep the nation “safe,” Bukele previously declared a national “emergency,” abolished civil liberties, ignored the term limits established by the nation’s constitution, and is now exercising dictatorial powers over the citizenry. Bukele, like Pinochet, is a conservative dream.
Time will tell whether Trump and his minions continue to ignore or violate judicial orders and effectively reorganize the federal government into one having the same type of dictatorial regimes as that of Pinochet and Bukele. It’s not a governmental system that appeals to me because I still want to live in a free society before I die, one that entails limited government, economic liberty, and, yes, civil liberties as well.
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