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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 565
this drastically changes during declared national emergencies. This was emphasized by a Senate
Report issued by The Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, on
November 19, 1973. The committee was chaired by Senators Frank Church and the report issued
by Charles Mathias. In the reports forward the Senators warned:
Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared
national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed
states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by
President Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by
President Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the
states of national emergency declared by President Nixon on March 23, 1970, and
August 15, 1971.
These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law. These
hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily
exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of
all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer
enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional
processes.
Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize
property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities;
assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all
transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise;
restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all
American citizens.
1959
[The introduction continued] A majority of the people of the United States
have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and
governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees,
been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The
problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far
antedates the Great Depression. As a philosophical issue, its origins reach back to
the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. And, in the United States, actions
taken by the Government in times of great crises have-from, at least, the Civil
War-in important ways, shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of
national emergency.
1960
In 1933, speaking before Congress on the President Roosevelt's “Emergency Powers,”
Congressman Beck stated: “I think of all the damnable heresies that have ever been suggested in
connection with the Constitution, the doctrine of emergency is the worst. it means that when
Congress declares an emergency, there is no Constitution. This means its death. It is the very
doctrine that the German chancellor is invoking today in the dying hours of the parliamentary
body of the German republic, namely, that because of an emergency, it should grant to the
German chancellor absolute power to pass any law, even though the law contradicts the
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