Harvey Mansfield is an apologist for dictatorship

If you are in the mood to have a chill run down your spine, don't go see Hostel...just read this column by Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield. The column, which appeared in the prestigious and influential political journal The Weekly Standard, is a straight-up defense of the notion that executive power should be basically unlimited - in other words, that our country should be not a republic, but an electoral dictatorship.

The article presents very little original argumentation. The basic argument that it makes is that, in order to counter the enemies of a nation, the nation's executive must be given the authority to violate the nation's laws. Mansfield contends that the concept of "rule of law" should be discarded when in "emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply."

As for the possibility that a dictator will do something bad? C'est la vie, says Mansfield: "[T]here is no way to draw a line between...wise and the unwise [executive decisions] without making a law (or something like it) and thus returning to the inflexibility of the rule of law."

This is the classic justification for dictatorship; a dictator will naturally be more flexible and quicker to act than any other decision-making apparatus (such as legislatures or courts), and a dictator is thus necessary during times of crisis. Mansfield makes it clear that he thinks dictatorship is superior to a democratic republican system when he says "in rejecting monarchy because it was unsafe, republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective." (Note: Mansfield fails to give historical examples of republics that failed because they did not invest sufficient power in an executive.)

Some of you may already be staring in wide-eyed shock, retching on the floor, or Googling "Canadian visa." Calm down. Outrage won't help put down the idea of dictatorship; reason and argumentation will (and has many times before). What Mansfield is saying isn't new - this argument has been made again and again throughout history, and it isn't going away. We just have to keep striking it down. Here's the obvious (perennial) counterarguments:

1. If unlimited power is available to the exective during "emergencies," the executive can just declare permanent emergencies. This has currently happened in Egypt and Syria, and look what those countries are like. If America's current situation is an "emergency," when will this emergency ever end? Humankind as a whole will never forsake terrorism, so terror will always exist. Thus, Mansfield's position would give us a permanent dictatorship. This happened in the Roman Empire, when supposedly temporary dictatorship gave way to permanent dictatorship in the time of Caesar. It happened in the French Republic, with Robespierre and Napoleon. It happened in Germany's Weimar Republic, with that most famous of elected dictators.

2. Unlimited executive power can easily turn into persecution of political opponents (and usually does). After all, if an executive belives that he has the right to break any law in order to defend the nation, and if he believes that his national defense policies are the best, then what's to stop him from arresting political opponents whose alternative policies he considers unwise? What's to stop a dictator suspending elections and declaring himself a permanent dictator? After all, election law is just another kind of law. Free executives from the constraints of law, and kiss representative democracy bye-bye.

3. Dictatorship is destabilizing; democracy is stabilizing. Democracies rarely go to war against each other, if ever; dictatorships often do. Thus, unlimited executive power is likely to spread war, human suffering, economic calamity, etc.

4. Freeing executives from any legal constraints also nullifies property rights, which then removes the foundation upon which a prosperous free-market society is built. The idea that the executive can appropriate anyone's land or business at any time to serve the purpose of the state will scare investors, hugely increase business risk, disrupt financial systems, and basically wreck the economy.

5. Dictatorial decision-making may be quicker and easier than republican decision-making, but it is also likely to be more extreme. When dictators get it wrong, they really screw the pooch. Most of the great national blunders of history are attributable to the bad judgement of a dictator. How many national disasters are attributable to a republic's system of checks and balances? Few, if any.

These arguments against unchecked executive power - even during emergencies - are correct. They have worked time and time again in this country, and they'll work this time too. Americans don't want dictatorship, they don't want a king. An unrestrained excutive is anathema to our national character. Many self-identified conservatives, regular Republican voters, share the idea that government power over the populace should be limited. No country stands for the rule of law more strongly than this one, conservative and liberal alike. So far, every time Bush exceeds established limits (even recently established ones) on the use of executive power, his popularity falls.

That's why we should take heart, and not panic. Mansfield is in the minority when he makes statements like this. But we have to keep on making the same arguments over and over again. We can send dictatorship into remission, but we can never kill it completely. This battle may be the most important one that we as a nation ever fight, but it's an eternal one. Vigilance against the Mansfields of this world is what is required of us. Let's grit our teeth and go at it again.