Building the Better … Tyrant

Our Founders gave us a beautiful system of government. They envisioned a government of laws and not of men. Every concerned party had a say, the Federal government, the states’ governments and the people. This arrangement held until about the time of the Civil War. Since then two of the three concerned parties have been loosing their voice. The states’ governments lost their voice in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment. The people are losing their voice with each passing day.

I cringe every time I hear our system of government described as a democracy. Our system is not a democracy, it’s a republic. Now, I don’t mean this in a red versus blue or R versus D sense. Our system is a constitutional republic; however we select our representatives democratically. In a democracy, each time a new leader is elected the entire government changes. The leader installs his cronies at various positions of power and they follow his dictates and he can do most anything he wants. Our system is different; at each election although the power may transfer the basic governmental structure remains the same, because it is not based on the dictates of some leader but on a written Constitution. The leaders’ power is limited by the Constitution.

This is why we are told time and again by the left that our country is a democracy. They want the entire government to change; they want no constraints. I’m sure you heard after the election of Obama, “Well, he got elected, he can do want he wants.” But the Constitution stands in his way, or at least is supposed to.

Our government is governing in direct opposition to the will of the people. Congress passed and the President singed the Health Care bill over the objections of the majority of the American people. Obama’s Justice Department is getting ready to sue Arizona over their immigration law even though the American people have expressed majority support for the Arizona law and want more laws like it.

Our Founders were extremely afraid of the President becoming a tyrant. To this end, they instituted checks on his acquisition of power. Perhaps the most effective of these checks was supposed to be Congress. In their view, Congress would be loath to grant power to the Executive branch so as to maintain their own authority. But now in the era of one party rule, the ruling class seeks only the easiest route to implement its agenda. If that means empowering the President, then so be it, seemingly at the cost of Congress becoming irrelevant.

Let’s see now, Obama controls GM and Chrysler. He controls many banks through the TARP bailouts which in a lot of cases he will not accept repayment. Today Obama signs the Financial Overhaul bill. The legislation gives federal regulators, controlled by Obama, the power to seize and/or break-up firms deemed “too big to fail” regardless of whether they are in danger of failing or not.

Congress wants to hand over more authority to the President. A new proposed bill would give the President the absolute power to shut down the internet in the event of a “national emergency.” Senator Joe Lieberman has been promoting such a bill for years describing it as “cyber security.” Who will determine what constitutes a national emergency? Tom Gann, VP of McAfee, thinks the reason is more ominous, “…the federal government is desperate to seize control of the Internet because the establishment is petrified at the fact that alternative and independent media outlets are now eclipsing corporate media outlets…”

There is also a very real danger in unelected bureaucrats having so much power. USDA official Shirley Sherrod told a group at the NAACP of how she withheld full assistance from a farmer because the farmer was white. We might dismiss this incident as an isolated case of racism, but the case is much more illustrative than to be dismissed out of hand. These are the type of unelected bureaucrats that will now be making your health care decisions for you. There is no way to be certain that some faceless bureaucrat will not turn down a citizen for a needed operation simply because they didn’t like their skin pigmentation.

It is said that Sherrod came to her senses and finally did the right thing. That may be fine if it’s a farm in jeopardy but if it’s a necessary operation the correction of the wrong may come too late.

Perhaps not since FDR has there been such a concerted effort to bestow dictatorial power on a President and his minions. Following FDR the 22nd Amendment was ratified because it became apparent just how close we came to having a tyrant. Now it seems they are building the better tyrant.