"L'Etat, c'est moi"

"In 1609, James I lectured the English people on his rights and responsibilities as king. It was his duty to “make and unmake” them, he said. Kings have the “power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all causes.”

Not even the “general laws” of Parliament constrained him. The king stands “above” all human-made law. Indeed, it is his prerogative to “interpret” and to suspend such laws “upon causes only known to him.” He could also create new laws to whatever end he desired. The king, as James declared, is “accountable to none but God only.” He is the law speaking.

To enforce his personal rule of law, James could censor speech, the press, legal treatises, and the theater. He could imprison anyone, at any time, for any reason. And though the common law prohibited torture, James could use the rack, dungeon, and Skevington’s irons to get his way.

James also controlled a vast system of favoritism. Earldoms and knighthoods, positions in the state and church and universities, licenses to collect taxes or live in a particular house: all were his to grant. James could create offices as he saw fit. To win a vote in Parliament, James sometimes simply established new peerages. He minted licenses to do business and bestowed monopolies to manufacture or import cloth, tin, wine, even playing cards.

The quid pro quo was simple. In exchange for any such “patent” of “power or profit,” the beneficiary was to return funds and favors. After all, what the king could grant he could take away. In 1603, James imprisoned Sir Walter Raleigh and stripped him of most of his titles and properties. Some he gave to his own favorite, Robert Carr. Later, James gave many of Carr’s titles to a newer favorite, George Villiers, whom he named Duke of Buckingham.

Thus James sat on his throne, the center of a solar system in which every individual orbited around him, or as satellites of his satellites, a vast Cartesian mechanism propelled by venality and obsequiousness, reaching from the most magnificent of courtiers and intellectuals to the poorest of tenants in the remotest of shires.

Most historians do not believe that Louis XIV ever said, “L’État, c’est moi.” But even if apocryphal, this saying distills the idea of absolute monarchy in the days of James and France’s Sun King. Not that we need look four centuries back to understand how such absolutism works. Hitler, Stalin, Mao—each shaped the perception, thoughts, and truths of an entire people. So too Putin and Xi today.

For the first time since the founding, Americans find themselves debating much this same threat, of unfettered prerogative in the hands of a single man. It was Donald Trump’s success in teaching the Republican Party to scrape and grovel that first raised the specter of an authoritarian presidency. But it was the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision granting Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for most of his official actions as president that put flesh to the fear. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up in her dissent: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

These are the opening paragraphs of an article in the current issue of Harper's.  The longread continues at the link.  Even if Harris wins the election, the American people need to consider how to put more constraints on the powers of the executive (and the federal government).  I may add a few more excerpts after I watch today's football games, but I don't want to infringe on intellectual propery rights too much.  The embedded image is my own composite created from various found images.