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of congressional power—to govern the farms of America throughthe power of appropriation, enforcing compliance with otherwiseillegal orders by withholding funds. But the Court that made thatdecision is no more—a new batch of judges owing their appointmentto the present executive is in power.If the present movement should succeed and the powers of thefederal government should be pushed to the last limit under thenew interpretations of the interstate-commerce and the generalwelfareclauses and emergency theories, and these powers should besupplemented with a great bureaucratic structure empowered toengage in almost every kind of enterprise, including chiefly thegreat enterprise of banking and investment, the power of thefederal government over every phase of our national and localfunctions will be complete. If, along with that, the Congress shouldconsent to forego the exercise of many of its powers while delegatingothers to the President, contenting itself with the role of amere supervising and critical agency, making great lump-sum appropriationsand adopting yearly a few vague directives instead oflaws, then indeed we will have in this country a centralized governmentwith practically unlimited powers, and with those powers forall practical purposes lodged in the hands of the executive. Thisis as near totalitarian government as the present advocates of ourAmerican brand of national socialism believe is necessary. Though,if we arrive at this point, there will be no barrier save an explosionof public resistance to prevent the central government from goingto any limit it desires.6. CAN IT HAPPEN HERE?I have already observed that no idea is more deeply rooted in theAmerican consciousness than the belief that nothing can depriveus of our long-established freedoms. For this reason it is difficultfor us to give very much credence to the possibility that the objectivesoutlined here will ever be realized. Let us see.Generally these objectives are:i. To make appropriations to the executive in lump sums formajor purposes and to leave him free to work out all the detailedallocations to specific organization units.M5