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THE RISE OF THE DUAL STATE
First developed by a German lawyer in the 1930s, the Dual-State theory preposes that authoritarianism can take hold in small areas even while the broader legal systems function more or less normally. The theory is that within the “dual state” there are in effect two interlinked systems, a concept called “parallel states.”
In these two entities are the normative state which includes the ordinary law that most people live under and benefit from. Alongside it is the prerogative state, a zone of authoritarianism sometimes called the “legal abyss,” in which government power is unbounded.
This is how Germany functioned in the 1930’s. Hitler’s Nazis created a system in which the state could do anything from seizing a person’s assets to sending them to a concentration camp. And yet the Nazis still maintained the ordinary legal system to handle cases that were not seen as political or involve individuals seen as enemies of the regime.
This is, of course, the antithesis of the American system of justice in which one law applies to all men and all institutions. Today, however, the T**** administration is claiming the prerogative right to create its own legal abyss. Consider:
Using dubious claim of an emergency because he doesn’t like the current tenor of international trade, and with his unchecked and arbitrary use of tariffs, T**** has unilaterally usurped the Congress’ and by extension the people’s power to “regulate commerce among foreign nations” as delineated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. of the U.S Constitution.
Part of the broader Alien and Sedition Acts, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was intended to empower a President to take action against foreign nationals during wartime. By imaginatively claiming that Hispanic gang members constitute an “invasion,” T**** is using the Act as a way to claim the prerogative to arrest people by secretive agents without warrants, incarcerate them in unfit prisons, deny them their right to counsel and deport them without even a pretense of due process.
T**** and his agents have fired over a hundred thousand federal workers without the authority to do so. Although only Congress has the authority to allocate government funding which has, upon signing by the president, the force of law, he has taken it upon himself to cancel appropriations for any and all programs and agencies of which he disapproves, again without the legal authority to do so.
In these and other ways, like his scathing attacks on Harvard University, his cleansing all government entities of DEI and so-called “woke” initiatives, his removal of exhibits he doesn’t like from the Smithsonian Museums and engaging in revisionist history, Donald T**** has taken upon himself the dual state prerogative of one-man authoritarian rule.
There is historical precedent for this.
After the birth of our country different legal systems applied to Native Americans. In the Jim Crow era Southern states operated as single-party, authoritarian regimes permitting and even encouraging extra-legal violence against Blacks. During the so-called “war on terror,” the Bush administration claimed sweeping powers to detain “suspected terrorists” both on battlefields abroad and domestically
Fortunately, in these instances the U.S. came back from the brink. However, unless T*** can be defeated in his attempt to hijack the American legal system and establish dual state, dictatorial rule, we may not be so lucky this time.
There is, however, a way to oppose Donald T**** leading the country into the legal abyss of government rule by his prerogative alone. There is way for citizens to reclaim our envied system of justice and the Constitutional rule of law. There is One Path Forward.
RESIST
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