National Archives Architectural Inscription from
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act II, Scene 2
Preface
Nothing changes simply because it might, it could, or it
should. Change happens because it is made to happen. Change happens because
those that desire change commit to bringing it about and devote time, labor, and
wealth, to the end of change.
Our independence from Great
Britain , for example, was not necessarily inevitable.
Preconditions necessary to change came into play. Those preconditions included
threats to, and loss of, civil and economic liberties, denial of equal
representation in government, the exacerbation of dangers attending to the
exploration, settling and development of a new land, and the denial of accept
rights of Englishmen.
But neither calamity nor oppression necessarily create change. How different
this world would be if that were so. If change occurred simply upon realization
of circumstances of oppression, no Iraqi invasion would have been necessary to
the removal of Saddam Hussein. Under regimes whose histories and brutalities
spell the name of the Twentieth Century – from the Soviet Union and Communist
China on the grand scale, to Albania
and Cuba
on the small scale – people continue to demonstrate a shocking toleration for their
own suppression, repression and oppression.
In colonial America ,
change was preceded by agitation for change. Agitation for change was preceded
by realization that the circumstances in which free Englishmen were living
would not have been tolerated broadly in their homeland. Realization produced
agitation, agitation coalesced a corps of advocates committed to bringing
change to pass. Finally, in colonial America , change required active
risk of loss.
TWO OTHER GREAT
TRUTHS
Imagine the era in which our Nation’s birth was imminent.
From first footholds on the coast of the land, to
exploration, to building villages, towns, and then cities, Englishmen and
others labored to wrest, first, that foothold, then, an existence, and
eventually, an enduring life in that distant, promising, and sometimes strange
new world. This story is America ’s
story.
It is also my family’s story.
One of my forebears, John Beckley, came from England to America as an indentured servant. Beckley worked seven years
to pay for his passage and freedom. After, as so many others, he began to build
just such a life in America .
In the course of his life, he befriended Thomas Jefferson, became the first
clerk of the House of Representatives, the first Librarian of Congress
and, as some historians conclude, the first
political campaign manager in United States politics.
His story matters. Our story, as a People, matters. Understanding
our story matters.
This nation did not simply “happen.” Coincidence did not
craft our liberties, nor did it separate us from our English ruler. Coincidence
did not articulate the Declaration of Independence, one of the most profound
statements of the natural rights of men.
An increasingly hostile British government neglected the
dangers facing its distant sons and daughters. Worse, that government began
predating on them. Special taxes and levies were imposed on goods and services.
Taxes and penalties were imposed without representative participation in the
process.
An ancient and established right – to have one’s guilt or
innocence when accused of a crime decided by a jury of one’s peers – was denied.
The hard won livelihoods of colonists were violated by coercing colonists to fund
bed and board to the very troops sent by the hostile government to keep
subversive sentiment at bay. When those troops attacked colonists, even killed
them, the government evinced that same hostility by protecting those troops
from the consequences of their criminal conduct.
These impositions, hostilities, and attacks did not come all
at once. Rather, they accumulated over time. In fact, some of them were met
with such strenuous opposition in response that they were retracted; the Stamp
Act of 1765 provoked a significant and burdensome boycott of British goods that
led to its repeal, although the repealing Act, the American Colonies Act,
asserted the direct power of Parliament to legislate for the colonies. Over the course of time, like the healed
bruises and bones of an abused child, the unmistakable evidence mounted that
the American child was not as well loved as his brothers back in England . The
constant train of abusive conduct led American colonists ineluctably to the
conclusion that only worse abuses and oppression would follow.
It was that temper of those times that set the stage for Thomas Jefferson’s
crafting of the Declaration of Independence, his profound statement of the
natural rights of man. In our modern times, the connection of the abuses of
American colonists’ liberties to Jefferson ’s
clarion cry of liberty may have become quite attenuated. That this is so was
most recently evidenced by the rather
blank assertion by TV news reader Chris Cuomo that our rights are not gifts of
God.
Cuomo might, of course, be right. There might be no God. Or,
there might be a disinterested God that grants no rights. Nonetheless, Thomas
Jefferson asserted and the signers of the Declaration of Independence agreed,
Nature’s God exists and Nature’s God established certain truths as self-evident.
On those truths, Jefferson built the case that the Englishmen of the New World possessed the right to dissolve their
connection to the Crown and Parliament and stand up a new federation of States.
Of course, for patriotic events, and for the sheer force of its
cogency, few statements so soundly lay a claim on the mind, or set fire to
reason as thoroughly as these:
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration knew that a
world beyond the American shores would watch what would happen here. They knew that
other peoples, living under other kings, in other lands, would necessarily
consider what was done, and on what grounds it was justified. In fact, in his
preamble, Jefferson wrote:
When in the Course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,
a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.
Now we have the long view of history to aid us as we consider
the premises of that revolution, the provocations of it, and the truths on
which it was premised. We also have the benefit of the testing of the truths of
the Declaration over time, and the opportunity to evaluate whether, given the present
course of events, a like train of abuses and usurpations is driving a free
people to a new revolution.
Like most American school children, in elementary school, and
in junior and senior high school, at varying levels of detail and
sophistication, I learned about the great truths asserted by Jefferson and the signers
of the Declaration of Independence. You, too, remember those truths: that we are endowed by our Creator with certain
unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. These familiar truths focus on the rights of every person, on what
we today call our civil rights. To observe
that little emphasis was placed on two other self evident truths stated in the Declaration
of Independence would be, I think, fair.
Those two further truths suffer in desuetude. Perhaps they
are mostly ignored, not intentionally, but because, we have, as a people, lived
a long period of national remorse of our failing to respect these truths, most
particularly because we recognize the inconsistency between the stirring
assertion of those fundamental, unalienable rights and our Nation’s checkered
history in relation to them, particularly our historic dalliance with, and
blood-letting devotion to, the Peculiar Institution of Human Slavery, the
treatment of Native Americans, and other tolerated instances of disrespect for
those rights.
Of course, schooling on these topics might be different
today. In my youth, we lived in the shadow of the burgeoning civil rights
movement. As significantly, we witnessed a growing, generational focus on
personal rights. For that reason, the other two great truths, self-evident
truths, asserted in the Declaration remained hidden in plain sight under the
umbra of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those latter
principles pertain to the defense and maintenance of the previously stated
natural rights.
So, then, what were those two additional self-evident truths?
And, as importantly, was there a nexus between those two further truths and the
monumental act of civil disobedience, The Revolutionary War?
That to secure those rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
and
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Let those self-evident truths sink in. Imagine the impact of
such a declaration. Remember how different were the times in which they were
asserted, in the face of monarchical rule across Western
Europe , indeed, right around the globe. Yet, these words declared
that the only true and good purpose of government is to secure the unalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The reason. To secure those rights.
As a practical theorem, this presumption – that governments come
into existence and continue in force to secure those natural rights, those
civil rights – is one we can evaluate objectively, with a significant body of history
as evidence. Do governments exist only for this great purpose? What evidence
exists to support, or to disprove, that theorem?
Sadly, substantial empirical evidence exists that this
theorem of government – as the servant and protector of liberty – is unfounded,
or at least it is not a universal truth. Indeed, it is probably, certainly,
easier to prove that governments exist for other purposes, nefarious, dark
ones, then the contrary and wholesome purpose of securing liberty.
Abounding examples include the brutal scourge that has been Marxist
communism.
In Eastern Europe and Western Asia, the Russian Revolution
and eventual rise of the Soviet Union provide
ample evidence that the securing of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
did not drive monumental governmental and social change. If securing life was
the goal, then how do we explain the millions of people dead in
Soviet Georgia and Ukraine under Stalin? If securing liberty was the goal,
then what explanation justifies the creation of the Soviet Gulag, a system of internal
incarceration for subjects of the Soviet state? If securing the right to the
pursuit of happiness was the Marxist-Leninist vision, then how do we explain
the assignment of jobs, of housing, and of university courses of study by the
state? And how
do we explain the constant exodus from such a place?
What of the bloody and devastating reign of Mao Zedong in China? What
of the continued brutality of China’s “one child” policy, with forced
abortions, the consequent devaluation of baby girls, and the resulting
desperate efforts of those who value, but fear the deprivation of, the right to
procreate, to flee their homes, their native land?
And what of the Haitian procession of brutal dictators name Duvalier? Or the brutality
of Ho Chi Minh’s regime, including the puncturing the eardrums of Catholic
school children and slicing off the tongues of the Catholic priests who taught
them? How to fit the syphilitic madness and cruelty of President for Life General Doctor
Idi Amin Dada into such a theorem?
Hitler. Mussolini. Mugabe. Pol
Pot. Khrushchev. Hussein.
Just these few names – chart toppers, if you will, on a hit
parade of governmental brutality and denial of individual rights and liberties
– lay substantial doubt at the feet of Jefferson’s notions about the purpose of
governments. There is no end to the litany of governments and leaders whose
aspirations, whatever they may have been, worked themselves out in the blood,
forced labor, deprived opportunity, and coerced choices of those trapped under
their heels.
Were the framers of the Declaration of Independence in
error?
Are governments not really instituted to secure these rights? Or, is there a further truth that illuminates the meaning of the principle they enunciated?
Are governments not really instituted to secure these rights? Or, is there a further truth that illuminates the meaning of the principle they enunciated?
If there is unstated, but intended, a sense that good governments, right governments, are created for the sole and salutary purpose of
securing self evident, unalienable rights, then that self-evident truth
purchases greater support in reality. After all, our new governments, we
understand, were instituted because the British one preceding them became
destructive of the rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.
And that “good” sort of government just might be what is apprehended in that
self-evident truth, for, as they explain their view, such governments derive “their
just powers from the consent of the
governed.”
(No Pollyanna here, the very men that pledged their lives on these truths nonetheless acceded to the continuation in force of the Peculiar Institution of Human Slavery. Their singular hypocrisy – declaring the created equality of everyman while impressing into hard bondage and uncompensated labor the men and women ofAfrica – cannot be
ignored. Yet, for the success of their venture, wisely or no, they believed a
compromise on the question of slavery was necessary to get the entire
enterprise of liberty off the ground. Yet, we should not lose sight of the fact
that, had America
remained part of the English kingdom, slavery would have ended decades sooner,
and possibly at the cost of less blood, fewer lives, and shorter bondage.)
(No Pollyanna here, the very men that pledged their lives on these truths nonetheless acceded to the continuation in force of the Peculiar Institution of Human Slavery. Their singular hypocrisy – declaring the created equality of everyman while impressing into hard bondage and uncompensated labor the men and women of
The Declaration speaks of just powers.
The question arises, what are the “just powers” of a
government? It seems reasonable to wonder if there is a connection between “just
powers” and the reason they government exists: to secure the unalienable rights
before mentioned. Perhaps the just powers of a government are those necessary
to the securing of those unalienable rights. In other words, a power to secure the
natural rights of the people, by the creation and maintenance of an armed
force, military or police, would be, by such reasoning, a just power, if at
all, because it is necessary to secure those unalienable rights and because its
uses are limited to that end, served only by means consistent with it.
In fact, the test of whether American colonists could
continue to consent to being governed by the Crown and Parliament is set out in
the Declaration. 
So, a constant course, a design,
could be discerned in the actions and inactions of the British government. How
hard would it be to divine an intention from among such acts as denying
representation in Parliament, denying colonial legislatures permission to
convene, suspending laws enacted by colonial bodies, targeting the colonies
with burdensome laws not generally
applicable within the Kingdom, denying rights of due process and property,
quartering troops among the people in response to petitions and objections to
the abuses suffered? That design, Jefferson
wrote, was “to reduce the[ colonists] under absolute despotism . . . .”
Despotism is absolute authority.
Despotism is autocratic rule. Despotism is tyranny.
The litany of crown abuses given
by Jefferson left little room for doubt that
King George III was ill-disposed toward the American colonists. The failure of
Parliament to act on the constant pleas of those colonists for relief left little
room for doubt that the Parliament cared not for the depredations suffered in America by
British citizens. The Declaration of Independence left little room for doubt
that a people suffering so, under the heel of a tyrant and with the complicity of
Parliament, had both a right and a duty “to throw
off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
Barack Obama: American Despot?
Have we come to such a time? Are we now under a design to
reduce us under the “absolute despotism” of Barack Obama? Have our pleas for rectification
of his wrongs gone unheard and unanswered in the Congress?
A few examples serve to outline a justification, at least, for asking these
questions, for questioning whether the imperious acts of the President evince a
design of rendering the People subject to the singular, autocratic rule of a
President that consistently, when afforded the opportunity to do so, gone so
far outside the boundaries of his responsibilities and proper powers. Indeed,
these examples, which can certainly be supplemented by myriad others, justify
asking whether we are witnessing anew the careless push by a potentate of the
People toward the precipice of new revolution.
To
understand despotic action, to evaluate a claim that our Nation is being led
toward such an absolute despotism, we must understand the nature and structure
of government in America .
Not a democracy, America
is a federal republic: fifty separate States, each guaranteed a republican form
of government by the United States Constitution, that have created a general
government, also republican, or representative, in nature.
The
framers of our governments, State and federal, anticipated the dangers of
despotism and sought to prevent its occurrence here by fracturing governmental
power in two ways. First, as a federated republic, we are a body of States,
each constructed on a republican – that is, representative – mode of
government. Thus, though a Nation of
some 320 million inhabitants, we are not a monolithic nation-state, but 50
separate States. Second, those States have joined together in a single union, the central powers and
responsibilities of which have been voluntarily deposited by those States in
three distinct, separated branches: the Legislative, the Executive, and the
Judicial.
These
structural divisions – between the States and the general government and between the branches of the general
government – reflect a reality. That reality is that concentration of power
(think “despotism”) endangers liberty.
The
separation between States and the general government entirely withdraws from
the sphere of the general government’s authority the power to interfere with a
broad variety of concerns often referred to as matters of health, safety, and
morals. That separation produces a circumstance in which Vermont
can permit marriage with parental consent at age 14 and South Carolina can prohibit that same
marriage. Likewise, it recognizes that Florida
may desire to provide personal injury immunity to amusement park operators
while New Mexico
can allow personal injury lawsuits for serving coffee hot.
The
separation of powers among the branches of the general government likewise
withholds from any single branch of the government a sufficient quantum of
power to risk the rise of despotic rule.
Given
these parameters, we see that the constitutional design limits the power of the
President to a specific set of authorities, and does not grant him a broad writ
to undertake the exercise of kinds of power belonging to the States, or to the
coordinate branches of the federal government. In respect of the separation of
power, we have to understand that, in matters assigned to one branch alone, it
is a violation of the Constitution, for one branch of the federal government to
usurp powers assigned to another branch. The Constitution deposits the power to
legislate solely in the Congress of the United States . Neither the
President nor the Courts have any legislative power at all.
While some
might pause and wonder over a concept like separation of powers, raising
concerns that such considerations are above the grasp of minds not trained in
the law, the basics are fairly easy to grasp.
If you
will, picture a common circumstance in your life, such as visiting a doctor’s
office. You would suspect something awry if you arrived at the office, were
checked in at the registration desk by the doctor, had basic vitals and health
information taken by a visiting pharmaceutical sales representative, and your
examination conducted by the building janitor. Your suspicions would be greatly
aroused if you noticed that the doctor was handcuffed to the registration desk,
the sales representative had fresh bruises on her face from being punched, and
the janitor had a pistol tucked into the back of her jeans. In either
circumstance, no one is doing their assigned task, and while some are doing
tasks they might manage as well as anyone, others are clearly out of their
element.
The separation of powers designed into the Constitution by the States and the
People is not so very different. So, imagine if Chief Justice Roberts and a
majority of the Supreme Court issued a decision tomorrow declaring that the United States was at war with Russia , ordering troop movements, dispatching
our strategic bombers, and recalling the ambassador to Russia . Or,
imagine if the President decided to conduct all federal criminal trials before
panels of attorneys from the Department of Justice. Not jury trials by one’s
peers, but panel trials conducted by the very officials accusing defendants of
crimes. Or, imagine if Congress began passing laws declaring named individuals guilty
of stated crimes and imposing sentences on them, all the while omitting
indictments, pleas, trials, attorneys and the like.
These examples show what a
separation of powers violation might resemble. To be sure, the offered examples
are blunt instruments, showing ham-fisted grabs for power and obvious
constitutional violations. Does subtlety of action, however, mean that a
violation of the separation of powers has not occurred?
President
Obama’s Penchant for Executive Action:
When President Obama stated, “I’ve got a
pen and I’ve got a phone,” he signaled his conclusion that, on important
matters of policy planning and execution, he would bypass the Congress where,
in his view, it had failed to act. This tantrum – “I’m not getting what I want
out of Congress so I’ll do things that my impatience with Congress confirms are
responsibilities of Congress and not the President” – justifies NOTHING. It merely confirms the President’s lawless disregard
for the Constitution.
Thus far,
we know that, by executive action,
Obama has adopted as a rule of action provisions of the DREAM Act, under so
called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.” Via executive action, Congress having not enacted the DREAM Act, Obama
has opened a door to millions of undocumented aliens living in America that
arrived here as children (up to age 16), so long as they show that they are in
school, or have completed school, and
are free from any significant history of criminal activity. Via executive action, Obama has announced
his intention to expand that amnesty to millions of additional family members
of persons that qualify under DACA.
Obama’s
administration has signaled its intention to prohibit, by executive action, the importation and sale of one of the most
widely popular bullets used by AR-15 owners. Leave aside the constitutional
question – no small objection except to Democrats – whether a ban on bullets
with militia use and effect may be regulated or suppressed by the federal
government. Under which clause of Article II of the Constitution arises this
presidential authority to sift among bullets and prevent importation of those
not intended for “sporting purposes?”
In both cases – regularizing the status of undocumented aliens and restricting
imports and sales of goods – Obama’s executive
action violates the constitutional separation of powers. First, Congress, not the president, has the
power to provide a uniform rule of naturalization. So it is beyond the
president’s power to make rules in this area.
Second, Congress, not the president, has the Commerce Clause power to
regulate interstate and international commerce.
Now, as the Obama administration pursues international agreements, with China and with Iran, we learn that the President will at least consider embodying those agreements in packages that are not treaties. Treaties, of course, must be ratified by the Senate to bind the United States:
The President ... shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur ....
Yet, in a daily press briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest asserted that duly elected members of the Senate, who with their fellows enjoy an equal role with the President in the treaty making power, were not qualified to vote on any climate change accord that the United States and China might craft: "I’m not sure they would be in the best position to decide whether or not a climate change agreement is one that is worth entering into." Further pressed by the Fox News correspondent whose question provoked the response above, Earnest announced a test for qualification for the right to vote on treaty ratification that is entirely a-constitutional: "I think it's hard to take seriously from some members of Congress who deny the fact that climate change exists, that they should have some opportunity to render judgment about climate change agreements."
Obama’s administration also admitted consideration
of raising taxes through executive
action:
Pick nits with me over immigration.
Accuse me of counting angels on pinheads over the threatened ammunition import and sales bans.
Still, you cannot deny that as a matter of history, this Nation’s tumultuous rise fixed as a principle of our future government that imposition of taxes without representation was tyranny. The Executive Branch is not a representative body of the people. Moreover, the power to lay and collect taxes belongs to the Legislative Branch, not the Executive:
Accuse me of counting angels on pinheads over the threatened ammunition import and sales bans.
Still, you cannot deny that as a matter of history, this Nation’s tumultuous rise fixed as a principle of our future government that imposition of taxes without representation was tyranny. The Executive Branch is not a representative body of the people. Moreover, the power to lay and collect taxes belongs to the Legislative Branch, not the Executive:
Thus,
this Administration’s acknowledgment that it is looking at such action is its
admission that it considering a flagrant constitutional violation with a strong
nexus to the provocations leading to the first American Revolution.
You can
see for yourself the White House’s assertion of “executive action” on a
variety of matters here. A White House document summarizing planned executive actions, prepared for the 2014
State of the Union address is here.
Obama publicly remonstrates that he
“isn’t a dictator.” His denials, however,
are belied by his frequent and increasing reliance on executive action, particularly when his actions are on matters
plainly and solely within spheres of responsibility and authority assigned to
Congress by the Constitution.
Suspension
of Legislation:
King
George III, Jefferson wrote, forbade colonial
governors from passing “laws of immediate and pressing importance.” In the push
for health care reform, the White House and the Democratic leadership of
Congress constantly pressed precisely the case that such reform was of
immediate and pressing importance. Its importance was highlighted by the
decision of congressional leadership to press for immediate passage rather than
to consider amending the Affordable Care Act to make it more amenable to
Republican, and thus, bipartisan, support.
President
Obama spoke to the urgent need for reform: “The
tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance
cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot
wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and
federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs. It is time for us to
come together. It is time for us to act. It is time for those of us
in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to
future generations.”
Then
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, claimed that the Act would “provide
Americans and American businesses … quality, affordable, accessible health care
they need and deserve[ and] give Americans stability and peace of mind that
they cannot be denied care or coverage for pre-existing conditions.”
Then-Senate
Leader Harry Reid, in like vein, addressed the pending reform legislation,
stating, “these
are serious problems. And serious problems deserve serious efforts by serious
legislators to develop serious solutions.”
So,
without the vote of a single Republican representative or Senator, Congress,
enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Act reformulated
the health care insurance industry in America , one previously regulated
by each of the fifty States. The Act imposed mandates requiring individuals to
have health insurance and employers to provide such insurance. Obama, of
course, signed the Act indicating his consent to its terms and conditions.
As
quickly as the ink dried, however, Obama’s administration began to swiss-cheese
the law’s requirements with exceptions and exemptions. In all, over 1000
exemptions were granted, and over 24 implementation deadlines were waived or
moved back. These were granted by Obama’s administration but not authorized
under the terms of the Act. Each of these administrative suspensions of the
Act’s requirements had the same impact, identical in effect, as if Obama had
suspended Congress from legislating as to the involved issues.
In another area, Obama has likewise “refused his assent to laws, the most
wholesome and necessary for the public good.” He did this by vetoing the
Keystone XL Pipeline Construction Act.
That legislation enjoyed bipartisan support in the House and the Senate.
In effect, the pipeline would lessen dependence on Venezuelan and Middle Eastern
supplies of energy. An earlier Obama candidly acknowledged that our dependence
on foreign energy supplies weakened us as a Nation. Candidate Obama, in 2008,
stated, “The
price of a barrel of oil is now one of the most dangerous weapons in the world.
[] The nearly $700 million a day we send to unstable or hostile nations also
funds both sides of the war on terror, paying for everything from the madrassas
that plant the seeds of terror in young minds to the bombs that go off in
Baghdad and Kabul. [] Our oil addiction even presents a target for Osama bin
Laden, who has told al Qaeda, ‘focus your operations on oil, since this will
cause [the Americans] to die off on their own.’”
Yet, given
the opportunity, Obama vetoed the Act, a law most “wholesome and necessary for
the public good.”
Quartering
Others amongst Us:
Under
British rule, colonists were required to provide quarters and, at times,
provisions for British troops. At times, the requirement to provide such
quarters and provisions was accepted; for example, during the French and Indian
War, troops were housed and provisioned by the colonists, and, as the war was
fought to protect them, colonists accepted the burden. The same burden of
quartering and provision, however, imposed on the colonists when the troops
were posted in the colonies for the purpose of suppressing dissent, caused
substantial unrest.
To be clear, however, quartering of troops did not typically mean having to give
up one’s own beds and food. The Quartering Acts simply required that quarters
and provisions be provided. It was not
that colonists were being forced out of their own beds. Rather, it was that
they were assessed considerable financial burdens to support the British
troops.
Today, no
one living in America
can complain that they are being rousted from their beds to provide space for
troops.
Yet, by a series of executive actions and inactions, the American people are
being strangled financially by a like harm.
The unresolved problem of illegal immigration to the United States ,
together with recent executive actions
calculated to substantially increase the tax burdens of American citizens and
legal residents, inflicts the identical set of harms on the livelihoods of
Americans.
Some will dispute any comparison between quartering troops involuntarily and
being required, involuntarily, to receive, regularize and financially support
illegal immigrants. Remember, the
principal objection to the Quartering Act was its costly burden, not just the
seeming unseemliness of having to provide bed and board to your oppressors.
While the quartering provisions to which the Founding generation objected were
temporary in nature, the Obama Administration recently acknowledged in Texas litigation that it
had extended deferrals under its DACA
program for over 100,000 applicants for an additional three year period.
Given the
porous condition of the Nation’s borders, the refusal of Congress to secure the
borders, and the words and actions of the Obama Administration, the quartering
harms associated with illegal immigration and illegal executive amnesty far
outstrip those temporary ones provoking our colonial rebellion.
Erecting
a Multitude of New Offices:
It will
be said that, under Obama, the number of government employees has fallen to its
lowest level since the Johnson presidency. But the enactment of the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has resulted in a call by the
Internal Revenue Service for an additional 9,000 agents and an additional
$2,000,000,000 in funding. 9,000 REVENUE agents ADDED! And to what end, if
not to eat out the substance of the people, both through the extortionate
command to purchase health care insurance and the punitive imposition of a tax penalty
-- the so-called Shared Responsibility payment -- on those that fail to obey
the statist command to buy health insurance.
Abolishing Our Most Valuable Laws and Altering
Fundamentally Our Forms of Government
As to the latter charge – altering fundamentally our forms
of government – the discussion above regarding Obama’s persistent violation of
the separation of powers evidences his design to “fundamentally transform America .”
As to the former, with some trepidation I approach the
contentious question of the legal structure of marriage in America . Whether you
are gay or straight, for same sex marriage or traditional marriage, you
should be taken aback by the Obama administration’s wanton failure to defend a federal statute defining marriage for
federal law purposes and affirming the sovereign right of each State to define
the institution of marriage through its own system of law. Yet, Obama and Holder refused to
present the defensible arguments for the constitutionality of the
Defense of Marriage Act. That failure of duty only marks a waypoint in the present administration’s
decision to one-sidedly attack political solutions adopted in the States and in
the Congress for an unresolved, still developing, highly contentious issue.
Declaring Us Out of His Protection:
Amity – friendship – is a lost skill. It is, it seems, more
intensely missing on the battlefields of politics and ideology today than ever
before. Still, being an ideological opponent or a political opponent, while
sharing a common heritage in this Nation and a love for this land and its
people, had formerly put beyond the pale certain kinds of character attacks and
assassinations. The relationship of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill amply evidence how political opposites had related formerly.
With Obama’s rise, however, we see foreign enemies treated with kid gloves. In Iran , the Supreme Leader smiles while crowds
chant "Death to America ," and Obama labors to find a nuclear détente with that oppressive regime. Yet, in the very same moment, here at home, Obama’s military and Homeland Security
identify as extreme and dangerous: conservatives, Catholics, Christian
fundamentalists, constitution advocates, and others whose single greatest
threat to America
is their evident clinging to God, guns and the Bible.
Obama’s stand-ins, following the 2012 election, were even more direct and
chilling in their threats to Americans that opposed the President and resisted
his agenda. It is broadly reported that Valerie Jarrett expressed this threat quite directly:
After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us, and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded; the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay.
After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us, and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded; the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay.
Apparently the Obama administration believes it also has power to declare war on Americans.
Exciting Domestic Insurrection:
As a nine year old living in the suburbs of Washington , DC Los Angeles erupt in
flames. Still, these incidents of manic self-destruction and wanton violence –
understandable I suppose in the way that a Buddhist monk’s self-immolation as a
political statement is understandable – were infrequent episodes on the road
toward fulfillment of the Declaration’s promises
of equality.
Today, with the insufferable interposing of Obama’s
Department of Justice, the chant “Hands up, don’t shoot!” has come to represent
a reality: America is more deeply divided on
racial lines than prior to the Obama presidency. We now know that the rioters’
mantra was a sick fantasy and unrelated to the facts of the Ferguson incident.
Yes, we are sick to our soul over needless deaths of young black men. And we rightly worry about a too ready resort to lethal force by police. Still,
when Obama might have quelled unrest in Ferguson ,
Missouri
Combined with Others to Subject Us to a Jurisdiction
Foreign to our Constitution, and Unacknowledged by Our Laws:
Under Article VI of the Constitution, the Constitution itself
is the Supreme Law of the land. Together with the Constitution, federal
statutes and treaties share in that supremacy, but the Article’s meaning could
not be clearer. Any federal statute, any treaty, inconsistent with the
Constitution is subject to the boundaries and binding of the Constitution. So,
for example, the Treaty on Small Arms being contemplated for signature by the
Obama administration, would threaten the right of Americans to keep and bear
arms. That Second Amendment right is Supreme over treaty law, yet the
administration continues to consider becoming a signatory to the treaty and
subjecting the People of the United
States to the jurisdiction of international
bodies with respect to handgun ownership.
The kinds of treaties so loved by progressives are just this kind of attack on liberty.
Not just the Small Arms treaty, recall the Clinton/Gore push for approval of
the Kyoto Protocols on “climate change” that would have hamstrung American
business, raised astronomically the cost of energy generation, and reduced our
international footing for economic competition.
*****************************************************************
We Americans, those sensible to the danger to liberty that a rising tyrant presents, have not failed to seek redress.
We have called on the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional
powers – budget, oversight, and impeachment – in answer to the tyrannical bent
of Obama. We have prayed for their solicitude to our claim that each exercise by him of executive action usurping the Legislative Power does not merely demeaning the Congress, but strikes a deadly blow against representative government, against our Republic.
Our pleas go unanswered.
Congress withholds its disciplinary hand. The President proceeds apace in his constitutional profligacy. In so doing, he looms larger in his tyranny. The precious liberties of the People fall under the looming shade of his usurpation. Still, a Congress entirely in the hands of the political party opposite the President does not heed the danger, does not act to curtail the abuses.
Congress withholds its disciplinary hand. The President proceeds apace in his constitutional profligacy. In so doing, he looms larger in his tyranny. The precious liberties of the People fall under the looming shade of his usurpation. Still, a Congress entirely in the hands of the political party opposite the President does not heed the danger, does not act to curtail the abuses.
If you see tyranny, whether in its infancy or blossoming into full vigor, in this administration, you have a duty to speak. And the sufficiency of
speaking may soon pass. We may be peering into that time, as Jefferson
described it, “when[] a[] form of government [has
]become[] destructive of these ends . . . .” If so, will you stand with Jefferson
and the Framers, averring “the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their safety and happiness[?]”
