Queen Elizabeth II (or I, if you’re Scottish) is one of the most powerful people in the world. She can dissolve Parliament on a whim, declare war, revoke passports, and commit just about any act that would be a crime to anyone else with no consequences.

This may surprise you, given that she never does any of these things. Yet the main reason why the monarch of the UK still holds all these powers, what with the Magna Carta and Commonwealth and other historical tidbits, is a simple one. She absolutely never uses them. If she did, you can bet the UK would become a Republic faster than you could sing, “Rule, Britannia.”

This may seem like a rhetorical point, even with Brexit turning far further South than the Treaty of Rome ever enabled. But we’re about to see this principle in action. Not in the UK, but here in the US.

President Ford signed the Emergency Powers Act into law.

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 is one of those things which seems like a good idea. It has actually been used 57 times for various reasons, some of which are still in force. It is invoked with a simple executive order, and it remains in place until it is rescinded. These events include the war in Macedonia, for example, and violations of the Dayton Peace accord brokered by President Clinton.

The Act gives the President broad powers to do many things, including suspend some rights and to spend some money not directly allocated. Every time it is invoked it is supposed to be reviewed by Congress.  But of course, we all know how easily oversight slouches into overlooking.

Here is a list of the emergency powers currently in place, stolen directly from Wikipedia.

Unrest somewhere in the world is often met with one of these declarations.

Note that most of these are related to the seizure of property belonging to people who are actively opposing US foreign policy in some way. Nearly all of them thus apply to foreign nationals doing business in the US, meaning that they do not affect any voter in any way whatsoever.

Feel free to be alarmed that these “Emergency Powers” are not related at all to actual emergencies. What is most interesting about all of this is that much of what is done here could have been done by an ordinary act of Congress. But it wasn’t.

There is little doubt that declaring a lack of a wall on the border to be a “National Emergency” is a new level for this law. It will bring new scrutiny to an area that has been utterly lacking in it. But in doing so, it will highlight just how much power Congress has ceded to the President over the last few decades.

“I could lop off your head!”

In many ways, it’s exactly the same thing that would happen if Queen Elizabeth were to have heads lopped off or something similar. What’s a bit unique here in the US is that while no heads have been lost, power has been used in ways that I think most of us agree it should not be. The burden fell on foreigners who didn’t do just what we told them to, so few have cared.

But this may be different. Sadly, it’s not as different as I hoped when I started researching this piece, however. The President very much can do things like this – he has been enabled.  If he chooses to act like a queen, he can, even if it’s just to be a drama queen.

In using this power in this way, however, I hope we can see why it is essential that we put a stop to it. Just ask, “What would Queen Elizabeth do?” and then realize that we were supposed to be a Republic all along and such questions should be ridiculous.