Our system of representative government depends on it being led by an individual who believes in it; who thinks it is valuable; who believes that a government dedicated to the protection of individual rights is a noble ideal. What if Obama doesn’t believe that? What’s the point of Congress and a separation of powers if Obama ignores our founding documents?
The Constitution authorizes the President to propose and veto legislation – it does not authorize him to change existing law and any changes he makes to existing law is unconstitutional.
The President’s main responsibility under our Constitution is to faithfully execute America’s laws. If Obama rejects this job, if instead he decides he can change or ignore laws he does not like, then what? He has repeatedly made clear of his intention to act on “his own authority.”
If Obama can ignore the laws passed by Congress, of what use is Congress? In terms of political power, Congress will be irrelevant. There are many such faux congresses in tyrannies throughout history and around the globe.
Obama has equal contempt for the Supreme Court. In an act of overbearing hubris, he excoriated Supreme Court Justices during his 2010 State of the Union address – he condemned them for restoring freedom of speech to corporations and unions.
Three courts have found unconstitutional Obama’s four recess appointments in January 2012 when the Senate was in recess. The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case. If they find against him, what will Obama do?
We can get a hint by looking at how other parts of Obama’s administration have dealt with court decisions they didn’t like. After the Supreme Court struck down the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Eric Holder announced that he would just use other provisions of the act to, not only get around the Court’s decision, but to punish any state that adhered to the Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court defined the standard for sexual harassment as “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” behavior to a “reasonable” person. In open defiance of the Court, the Department of Education declared a new definition for colleges that is “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct,” even if it is not objectively offensive. Now, if a young man’s request for a date turns out to be unwelcomed, he is guilty of sexual harassment by definition.
This lack of respect for the Supreme Court is manifest. Obama and his ilk feel bound by Court decisions ONLY if they agree with them. If they disagree – it’s deuces wild – they will embrace any fiction that nullifies the Court’s decision.
If Obama persists in rejecting all authority other than his own, the denouncement would depend on the side taken by the Armed Forces. Whatever side that was, our national self-esteem would be unlikely to recover from the blow of finding that we are living in a banana republic.
Obama is moving our government away from its traditional system of checks and balances and toward the one-man-rule that dominates third world countries. He has said that he wants a “fair country,” implying that, as it stands, the U.S. is not a fair country – an unprecedented calumny committed against a country by its own leader.
What country does he think is more fair than the United States. He has three long years left in which to turn us into a “fair” country. Where does he intend to take us?
Obama got his conception of a fair country from his teachers. Their ideal is egalitarianism, the notion that no one should be any better, higher, or richer than anyone else. Combined with a dollop of totalitarianism, egalitarianism has replaced communism as the dominant ideal in our most prestigious universities. Obama and his colleagues are the product of those universities and they have their marching orders.
The most important point is that Obama does not consider himself bound by the Constitution. He could not have made that more clear. He has drawn a line in the concrete and we cannot ignore it. Rejection of the Constitution is grounds for impeachment and charges should be filed.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government had been created. “A Republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.”
We are losing it. If Obama’s reach for unprecedented power is not stopped, that will be the end. Everyone who values his life and liberty should find some way to say “NO!” “NOT NOW!” “NOT EVER!”
M. Northrup Buechner, Associate Professor of Economics, St. John’s University, NY. First published at Forbes.com, “Obama’s Disdain for the Constitution Means We Risk Losing Our Republic”
“The American dream is not that every many must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man is free to become whatever God intended he should be.” Ronald Reagan
