Anyone who may have wondered just how much damage to America Obama could do over the next two years need only consider a few of his latest “initiatives“. To suggest that these few are the only examples which could be cited is absurd, but it would take pages and pages to cite all of the examples of Obama’s unilateral actions just in the last year.
And, as a practical matter, there is nothing that can be done. You see, the American people have been very naive all these years…believing that this is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people'”.
We thought “elections matter” and that a “free press” and an independent judiciary were effective safeguards against tyrannical rule. A two party political system was yet another assurance that this great nation would endure for many more generations.
Well, think again folks.
As a conservative, I had some misgivings about the Patriot Act when it was created after the 9-11 attack. I was concerned that it gave too much power to the central government. It recalled Orwellian themes of oppressive control over the population. Every “conversation” between ordinary citizens could be subject to monitoring by federal agencies.
But, my fears were alleviated a bit by my confidence in a press which would serve as an effective check on the inevitable tendency of government leaders of any political stripe to seek control over the governed.
And so it was . . . as long as the federal government was led by a Republican president. The media was ever vigilant that a George Bush would not overreach. The populace would be immediately alerted. Media coverage would be relentless. Political opposition would be aggressive and popularly supported. The judicial branch of government wouldn’t hesitate to step in to protect the Constitution.
And all that . . . even to a fault . . . was the reality. The vigilance and opposition itself tended to overreach, but as potentially (and factually) abusive as it could be, at least there was some equilibrium. A semblance of the freedom the US Constitution “guaranteed” was preserved.
But now we see that the protection Americans enjoyed from its “free press” and its “independent” judiciary and its vibrant two party political system was actually illusory.
How many times has it been said, always of course from the conservative side: ” . . . if Bush had done this, the media would have gone wild . . .”, or, “the Dems are only enthusiastic when it sees an opportunity to block any Bush agenda item . . .”? And how often do we hear (almost only on conservative outlets or from conservative pundits), the various direct quotes of a pre-president, or earlier president, Obama, contradicting the very thing he is doing at the moment? Pointing out once again Barack Obama’s previous laments:
“I think if you look at the history, getting votes for the debt ceiling is always difficult, and budgets in this town are always difficult.”— President Obama, news conference, Jan. 14, 2013
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. … I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”— Then-Sen. Barack Obama, floor speech in the Senate, March 16, 2006 )
The decades of a liberal/leftist education system, the erosion of individual accountability which comes from a nation fostering the illusion of a government “which could, and would, provide for its citizens’ every need” has taken its toll.
That “free press”, we learned, is not so “free” after all.
And that Judiciary we thought would protect us from the destruction of our Constitutional guarantees — who can forget or disregard this sequence:
September 20, 2009: George Stephanopoulos interview ABC News: STEPHANOPOULOS : Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: “No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. “
Wall Street Journal, June, 2012: By a 5-4 vote, the court held the law’s mandate requiring Americans to carry health insurance or pay a penalty valid under Congress’s constitutional authority to levy taxes.The financial penalty for failing to carry insurance (the Obamacare “mandate”) possesses “the essential feature of any tax,” producing revenue for the government, Chief Justice Roberts wrote.),
Rename something a tax and there is no limit on what the Constitution allows.
It turns out the court is just as much an ideologically corrupted branch of government.
The combination has brought us to this. A president who has no restraints. Increasingly becoming almost a daily occurrence, he issues another decree. The media applauds, the opposition party grouses, the Judiciary inexplicably cowers, the “electorate” looks on with either confused rage or ignorant approval, the population goes about its pursuits, unaware that they have become the “subjects” of a new oppressive and relentless “Royalty”. Consider again the alacrity of this president:
(CNN), July 2011 — America’s immigration system is broken, but only a bipartisan political movement can fix it, President Barack Obama said Monday.
“The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions,” Obama told the National Council of La Raza.
Speaking at the organization’s annual conference in Washington, Obama said passing immigration reform measures will require support from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
“Let’s be honest, I need a dance partner here, and the floor is empty,” he said.
That was then, this is now:
Katie Pavlich reporting Nov 20, 2014: Obama: My Executive Action Isn’t Amnesty and It’s Lawful
After six years of claiming he didn’t have the authority to unilaterally change the nation’s immigration laws without Congress, President Obama laid out a plan Thursday night doing exactly that through executive action.
Obama, unconstrained by law or budget will order paid parental leave to federal workers
Miami Herald: “Obama has backed legislation in the past for paid leave for federal workers, said Betsy Stevenson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, but is introducing his own initiative. She put the price tag for providing paid leave to federal workers when a child arrives at $250 million for the first year.”
And, of course, having become a weekly occurrence, no doubt it will soon become a daily one, and a deadly one:
Guantánamo: five more prisoners freed Associated Press:
“Miami – Five men from Yemen have been freed from the Guantánamo Bay prison after more than a dozen years of captivity and sent to Estonia and Oman for resettlement, US officials have said Wednesday. It is the latest in a wave of releases that have alarmed congressional opponents of closing the detention centre. Four of the men went to Oman and one to Estonia, according to a Pentagon statement. It was the first time either nation accepted Guantánamo prisoners for resettlement. The men had been cleared for release since at least 2009 but the US has balked at sending captives back to Yemen, where the government is battling an…”
DLH
