G. Edward Griffin - The Fearful Master - PDF Archive

do a thing like that? And how many felt any cause for alarm when he said that he was
acting to uphold our commitment to the United Nations and NATO?
On February 23, 1954, the late Senator William Jenner revealed that the machinery had
gained even greater forward motion when he declared:
The doctrine that the President could make personal agreements was
extended to the doctrine that agreements made by any authorized
member of the Government bureaucracy, in the name of the President,
had the same effect as those made by the President. . . . Mr. Dulles tells
us that 10,000 executive agreements have been made pursuant to
NATO alone. . . . The United Nations is preparing a series of treaties
which operate as domestic legislation, affecting our citizens in matters
on which our Constitution does not permit even the Federal Government
to legislate. They would abolish our Bill of Rights and replace it with a
body of state-granted privileges and duties modeled exactly upon the
Soviet constitution. 17
At the conclusion of his speech, Senator Jenner urged his colleagues to support the
Bricker amendment, which was then under discussion in both houses of Congress. The
Bricker amendment was a proposed amendment to the Constitution which simply stated
that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions were under no circumstances to
be overridden by any treaty. It was so simple, so logical and so desirable that there
seemed no good reason why the proposal should not receive the enthusiastic support of
everyone. The 1952 Republican platform contained a promise to support the Bricker
amendment, and surprisingly enough, even Eisenhower went along with no objections.
Then, of course, he was a candidate. After the elections Eisenhower made a complete
about face and used the full prestige of his office to oppose the Bricker amendment. He,
more than any other man, was responsible for its ultimate defeat. As Marquis Childs
reported in the Washington Post:
Once the President decided to come down firmly and unequivocally
against the Bricker amendment, the outcome of the contest was never
in doubt. For two thirds of the Senate to vote against the President on
such a crucial issue would have been, for all practical purposes, the end
of the Eisenhower Administration. 18
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the man who had so brilliantly explained how
treaties can cut across our Bill of Rights, was now speaking against the Bricker
amendment on behalf of the Eisenhower Administration. He spoke before the Senate
Judiciary Committee on April 6, 1953, and assured those present that the new
Administration had no intention of doing any of the dangerous things be had previously
said could be done through treaty law. 19 In other words, under a Government of such good
men as Eisenhower and Dulles, who needs laws?
When the test finally came in the Senate, the Bricker amendment failed to pass by just
one vote.
It is now doubly interesting to return to the pages of the April 1945 issue of the Communist
periodical Political Affairs and read the ominous prediction: