The Word "Emergency" Doesn't Exist in the Constitution. That's no Accident.

And just to kick it off, let's set the foundation with this dire warning from George Mason in 1787.

And considering we live under the largest government in history and have for a long, long time, he sounds pretty prophetic.

He wrote, this government will set out a moderate aristocracy.

It is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy.

It will most probably vibrate some years between the two and then terminate in the one or the other.

But he did not have a crystal ball.

He just understood the mechanics of both human nature and power.

As St. George Tucker warned, the political elite...

The people who want to rule over you will gladly weaponize your trust in them to build the exact kind of tyranny that George Mason predicted.

Tucker put it like this.

But the most easy and successful mode in which an aristocracy commences or advances consists in the secret and gradual abuse of the confidence of the people in a representative democracy.

Now, politicians, they don't normally just seize power and attack your liberty out in the open, at least not at first.

As Tucker explained, they use that oldest weapon in the book, one magic word.

Emergency, he said, slight and sometimes even imperceptible innovations, occasional usurpations founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion or upon former unconstitutional precedents.

And Federal Farmer understood the playbook.

If you want to expand government power, you can't let the people have the time to stop and think.

You've got to make them panic.

It's always do or die right now.

He wrote, it is natural for men who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure to tell us now is the crisis.

Now is the critical moment which must be seized or all will be lost.

and to shut the door against free inquiry whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover.

And this wasn't some new tactic even in 1787 when the federal farmer wrote that essay.

This has been the historical rule of tyrants.

He said this has been the custom of tyrants and their dependents in all ages.

And just to kick it off, let's set the foundation with this dire warning from George Mason in 1787.

And considering we live under the largest government in history and have for a long, long time, he sounds pretty prophetic.

He wrote, this government will set out a moderate aristocracy.

It is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy.

It will most probably vibrate some years between the two and then terminate in the one or the other.

But he did not have a crystal ball.

He just understood the mechanics of both human nature and power.

As St. George Tucker warned, the political elite...

The people who want to rule over you will gladly weaponize your trust in them to build the exact kind of tyranny that George Mason predicted.

Tucker put it like this.

But the most easy and successful mode in which an aristocracy commences or advances consists in the secret and gradual abuse of the confidence of the people in a representative democracy.

Now, politicians, they don't normally just seize power and attack your liberty out in the open, at least not at first.

As Tucker explained, they use that oldest weapon in the book, one magic word.

Emergency, he said, slight and sometimes even imperceptible innovations, occasional usurpations founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion or upon former unconstitutional precedents.

And Federal Farmer understood the playbook.

If you want to expand government power, you can't let the people have the time to stop and think.

You've got to make them panic.

It's always do or die right now.

He wrote, it is natural for men who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure to tell us now is the crisis.

Now is the critical moment which must be seized or all will be lost.

and to shut the door against free inquiry whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover.

And this wasn't some new tactic even in 1787 when the federal farmer wrote that essay.

This has been the historical rule of tyrants.

He said this has been the custom of tyrants and their dependents in all ages.