By: Dale Weckbacher
Deuteronomy 17:14-17
"When you come
to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in
it, and say,'I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around
me,' 15 you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses;
one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a
foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 But he shall not multiply
horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses,
for the LORD has said to you,'You shall not return that way again.' 17 Neither
shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he
greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.
NKJV
It was always the intent of God the Father that Israel
worship God as their king. However,
Deuteronomy 17:14 shows us that God knew a time would come when Israel desired
a king like the other nations surrounding them.
With this in mind, God instructs Israel to select a king who God chooses
(Deuteronomy 17:15). The scripture goes
on to instruct the one selected as king not to multiply horses, symbolic of a
powerful military or material wealth in the form of silver or gold. This king is also not to instruct the people
to move back to Egypt. The king is also
to have one wife so his heart does not turn away from the Lord (Deuteronomy17:16-17).
In the United States we have no king or queen. However, every four years the nation elects a
president. The original intention of the
authors of the Constitution was that the office of The President have limited
powers and not rule the nation as a monarch like the king of England. Over the next four Wednesday postings we will
define the Presidency of the United States in order to better understand the
duties of the office so in this election year we as voters will elect the
individual best qualified to fulfill these duties. To begin, we will look at the original intent
of the founders of the nation by attempting to view the state of the newly born
nation in the context of the times in which these individuals lived.
In 1776, the founders of the United States essentially
signed their death warrants by authoring and signing the Declaration of
Independence. This is because their
signatures on this document were an act of treason against the British Crown
and had England prevailed in the Revolutionary war, they would have been hanged
for treason. (1) However, only five of them were captured and
tortured for treason. Nine others fought
in the Revolutionary War and died from wounds or hardships suffered in the
war. However, life for the remaining 42
signers was not easy with them suffering financial loss through the pillaging
and burning of their properties. (2)
After the failure of governance under the Articles of
Confederation, the states convinced the Continental Congress to convene in Philadelphia
in 1787 to in their words “devise such further provisions as shall appear to
them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to
the exigencies of the Union.” (3)
Those meeting at the 1787 convention had been alive during
the Revolutionary War and understood the reasons behind entering into that
war. Their strong intention not to see
the newly founded nation become a tyrannical monarchy like the one in Britton
was behind the adoption of the Articles of Confederation but its failure had
demonstrated the need for a more powerful federal government. However, the desire not to form another
monarchy remained strong and the result was a constitution establishing a
federal government with power separated between three co-equal branches of
government who had defined enumerated powers and a system of checks and
balances on each other.
The President is the head of the executive branch of the
U.S. Federal government whose enumerated powers are defined in Article 2 of the
U.S. Constitution. Next Wednesday we
will look in greater depth at these powers and for this posting I will suffice
it to say the authors of The Constitution intended for the President to preside
over the Military and enforce laws enacted by Congress and signed by the
sitting President or the ones that held the office prior to His or Her
election. In no portion of Article 2 is
there mention or implication that the President has the power to enact
legislation via executive order but only the power to suggest legislation to
Congress for them to pass. Unfortunately,
through the years since 1787, the office of the Presidency has changed to where
today it is beginning to more closely resemble a tyrannical monarchy then the
limited power head of the executive branch of the government as outlined in
Article 2 of the Constitution.
Next Wednesday, in part 2 of this series, we will begin to
look at the enumerated powers for the presidency as outlined in Article 2. After gaining this perspective of how the
founders intended the Presidency to function we will move on to see how the
once co-equal status of the Presidency of the United States has begun to usurp
the powers of the legislative and judicial branches. This usurpation of power by the executive
branch is in direct violation of the original intent of the authors of the U.S.
Constitution, and something we must begin undoing.
1. Maxey, David. The Unfinished Revolution. www.nps.gov.
[Online] The National Park Service. [Cited: April 30, 2016.] https://www.nps.gov/revwar/unfinished_revolution/treason.htm.
2. NHCCS.org.
Destiny of the Signier of The Declaration of Independence. www.nhccs.org. [Online]
[Cited: April 30, 2016.] www.nhccs.org/destiny.html.
3. City, University
of Missouri in Kansas. Convention? What Were the Key Compromises That Were
Made in Philadelphia? law2.umkc.edu. [Online] University of Missouri in
Kansas City. [Cited: April 30, 2016.]
law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/convention1787.html.
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