This From A Thinker far More Intelligent Than I - Obama's Outright Dictatorship

Obama’s on the verge of outright dictatorship

By Alan Keyes
June 25, 2010

[An excerpt from my latest column at WorldNetDaily]

Throughout his political career, Obama has consistently declared his view that the Constitution’s purposeful restraint of government power is obsolete. Since the outset of his occupation of the White House, he and his faction have signaled their intent to circumvent, undermine or simply set aside the authority of the U.S. Constitution. Both here and in postings on my blog I have repeatedly had occasion to remark upon the design for despotism that has been evident in their actions.

Now “eight Republican senators … are warning that the Obama administration is drafting a plan to ‘unilaterally’ issue blanket amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants as it struggles to win support in Congress for an overhaul of immigration laws.” This represents the decisive step beyond derelict law enforcement. Not content merely to ignore the laws the legislature has properly and constitutionally made, Obama signals the intention to undertake unilateral executive action that alters the clear terms and intention of the established laws, entirely without the constitutionally determined consent of the people. This will be a blatant and presumptuous usurpation of legislative power. This is not just dereliction, it is lawless tyranny. It is outright dictatorship.

Constitutionally exercised, the executive power represents the force of law. Once divorced, however, from constitutional provisions for ascertaining the consent of the people, it asserts instead the law of force, the unjust rule that might makes right. In effect, just laws fall silent, and all that speaks are the government’s instruments of force and intimidation, imposing rules that have no more warrant of lawfulness than the command of a terrorist over those he holds, by threat of violence, hostage to his will. The forces under the authority of the presidency become in that case a weapon, loaded and cocked, held to the head of the American people.

Cicero famously observed “Inter arma enim silent leges,” “under arms the laws fall silent.” For some time now, executive dereliction has effectively silenced what U.S. immigration laws have to say about the status and treatment of those who take up residence in the United States in violation of their provisions. If the Obama faction implements the reported plan to impose amnesty by executive fiat, the illegal immigrants’ violation of the laws will in effect be defended and maintained by the executive forces of the U.S. government. Those forces will be arrayed against state law-enforcement agencies, such as those in Arizona, that continue to respect the provisions of established law. Hence, just as Cicero’s dictum would lead us to expect, Obama’s move to silence the immigration laws through dictatorial abuse of executive power will produce an incipient state of armed conflict between forces acting in conformity with constitutionally established law and U.S. government forces intending unlawfully to impose unilateral executive rule, which is to say, unconstitutional dictatorship.

Though purblind politicos will pretend not to see them, this offensive move has ominous implications for the survival of peace, justice and liberty in the United States, especially if it is successfully carried out. Thereafter, the basis for U.S. government action will no longer be what the laws say, but rather which laws are silent; or which parts of which laws the executive will allow to be heard. The basis for civil peace will no longer be respect for the laws, but submission to unlawful dictatorship. If today the dictator mutes the immigration laws to allow illegal immigrants to violate them with impunity, then tomorrow what will keep him from muting the laws against murder, extortion, theft or arson so that they may be violated with impunity by people acting as his vindictive agents of repression? By warrant of his executive fiat, will they be allowed to assassinate, intimidate, despoil or destroy the opponents of the lawless tyranny he seeks to impose in place of law?

Under the cloak of compassion for hapless illegals, the Obama faction seeks to establish the practical basis for ruthlessly imposing its will upon us all. Once that has been achieved, the threat of silencing some existing laws will be used to intimidate hapless legislators into making whatever new laws are dictated to them by the whims and purposes of America’s new iteration of the age-old regime of tyranny.

It's clear that the reported consideration of this dictatorial maneuver is already intended as such a threat. Given that fact, the Obama faction's reported plan for fiat amnesty for illegals signals the commencement of the last stage in their consolidation of socialist dictatorship. While they still have the opportunity to do so, the people who oppose this surrender of American sovereignty and liberty must raise a hue and cry like none the nation has seen before. By all reasonable and peaceful means they must communicate and confirm their determination to remove from the seats of legislative power every vestige of the party that thus sponsors the rise of an American dictator.


And when their resolve to do so produces indications of an electoral tidal wave certain to sweep the Obama faction from control of the U.S. Congress in the elections this November, they will have to pray – pray to the God who made and still may keep us free; pray that the likely failure of their schemes of usurpation does not lead the desperate tyrants of the Obama faction to implement their reported plan to silence the laws in order in some way to silence the sovereign voice of the people, as we tell them to surrender the constitutional power they have disgracefully schemed to overthrow.

I'll State It Again; If You Are Not Outraged, You Are Not Paying Attention!