A constitution is little less than a firm and binding contract between the majority and the minority, entered into for the sole protection of the minority, with regularly constituted courts to enforce its provisions.
The Supreme Court of the United States, from which every root of the Judiciary Department—one of the three coordinate branches of government—derives its vitality, is our only continuing and unchanging bulwark of liberty.
The executive branch, from President down through all the departments, State, Treasury, War and Navy, is liable to radical change on the fourth day of March every four years. Either house and both houses of Congress frequently change in partisan complexion at a single election. The Supreme Court, the members of which hold by life tenure, remains, theoretically, at least, unchanged.
Unless the people undermine their liberties by “effecting in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system,” which Washington warned against, or unless some executive corrupts the personnel of the Supreme Court by filling vacancies with socialists, or other revolutionary elements, Anglican liberty, the hope of the world, is secured in America against everything except bolshevism. With respect to the courts, Washington’s famous order is pertinent: “Place none but Americans on guard tonight.”
WHO IS AN AMERICAN?
Who is an American, worthy to be placed on guard tonight? Is he American born? He may be, and he may have been born beneath any flag and under any sky. An American is one who believes in and is ready to defend this republic. To be ready to defend our territory, or even our flag, is not enough.
Though we continue our socialistic bent and either undermine or overthrow our form of government through peaceful evolution or forceful revolution, with sword or by ballot, the land will remain. The rains will water it, the sun warm it, human life will exist, the Stars and Stripes will still float, but, except from the map, America will be gone forever.
America is more than fertile fields, more than bursting banks, more than waving flags. The America in which one must believe, and for which he must sacrifice, is constitutional liberty and justice according to law, guaranteed and administered by three coordinate branches of government. Just in proportion as we weaken the energy of the system through changes in the Constitution—which Washington so earnestly warned against—we undermine what thus far no one has succeeded in overthrowing.
I repeat, three coordinate branches of government with no subordinate branch! In the America which the world knows, and which we love, laws must be enacted by the legislative branch, and not by the executive or by the proletariat. Laws must be interpreted by an independent judiciary, fearless and unrecallable except by impeachment. And these laws, whose scope is limited by the Constitution, must be administered by the executive and not by the legislative branch. Congress has no more right to direct the manner of execution of its acts than the president has to direct or coerce the nature of its acts. Let each coordinate branch keep hands off the sacred prerogatives of the other. That’s America! And the man who defends her traditions and her institutions, regardless of his nativity, is an American who can safely be placed on guard tonight.
AN ACTUAL MENACE