Nov. 25, 2013

David M. Adam, Jr.

ADD INTERNATIONAL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Subject: America's Lawbreaker-In-Chief

 

Forbes  Magazine Op Ed 11/19/2013

 

 

Obama's  Disdain For The Constitution Means We Risk Losing Our  Republic

 

(http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_Inauguration_Oath.jpg) 

President  Barack Obama takes the oath of office. (Photo credit: 

Wikipedia)

By  M. Northrop Buechner

Since  President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has

changed it  five times. Most notably, he suspended the employer mandate last

summer. This  is widely known, but almost no one seems to have grasped its 

significance.

.  It does not authorize him to change existing laws. The changes Mr. Obama

 ordered in Obamacare, therefore, are unconstitutional. This means that he

does  not accept some of the limitations that the Constitution places on his

 actions. We cannot know at this point what limitations, if any, he does 

accept.

By  changing the law based solely on his wish, Mr. Obama acted on the

principle  that the President can rewrite laws and—since this is a principle—not

just  this law, but any law. After the crash of Obamacare, many Congressmen

have  implored the President to change the individual mandate the same way

he had  changed the employer mandate, that is, to violate the Constitution 

again.

The  main responsibility the Constitution assigns to the President is to

faithfully  execute the Laws. If the President rejects this job, if instead he

decides he  can change or ignore laws he does not like, then what?

The  time will come when Congress passes a law and the President ignores

it. Or he  may choose to enforce some parts and ignore others (as Mr. Obama is

doing  now). Or he may not wait for Congress and issue a decree (something

Mr. Obama  has done and has threatened to do again).

Mr.  Obama has not been shy about pointing out his path. He has repeatedly

made  clear that he intends to act on his own authority. “I have the power

and I  will use it in defense of the middle class,” he has said. “We’re

going to do  everything we can, wherever we can, with or without Congress.”

There are a  number of names for the system Mr. Obama envisions, but

representative  government is not one of them.

If  the President can ignore the laws passed by Congress, of what use is

Congress?  The President can do whatever he chooses. Congress can stand by and

observe.  Perhaps they might applaud or jeer. But in terms of political

power, Congress  will be irrelevant. Probably, it will become a kind of

rubber-stamp or  debating society. There are many such faux congresses in tyrannies

throughout  history and around the globe.

Mr.  Obama has equal contempt for the Supreme Court. In an act of

overbearing  hubris, he excoriated Supreme Court Justices sitting helplessly before

him  during the 2010 State of the Union address—Justices who had not expected

to be  denounced and who were prevented by the occasion from defending

themselves.  Mr. Obama condemned them for restoring freedom of speech to

corporations and  unions.

Ignoring  two centuries of practice, President Obama made four recess

appointments in  January 2012, when the Senate was not in recess. Three courts

have found that  his appointments were unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court

has agreed to  take up the case. If the Supreme Court finds against him,

what will Mr. Obama  do?

We  can get a hint by looking at how other parts of his Administration have

dealt  with Court decisions they did not like.

The  Attorney General’s Office is the branch of government charged with

enforcing  federal laws. After the Supreme Court struck down the key provision

of the  Voting Rights Act of 1965, Attorney General Holder announced that he

would use  other provisions of the act to get around the Court’s  decision.

The  Supreme Court has defined the standard for sexual harassment as “

severe,  pervasive, and objectively offensive” behavior to a “reasonable person.”

 In  open defiance of that ruling, the Obama Department of Education has

declared a  new definition of sexual harassment for colleges, that is, “any

unwelcome  conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct,” even if

it is not  objectively offensive—thus reinforcing the reign of terror over

sex on college  campuses. If a young man’s request for a date turns out to be

unwelcome, he is  guilty of sexual harassment by definition.

The  lack of respect for the Supreme Court by the Obama administration is

manifest.  They feel bound by the Court’s decisions only if they agree with

them. If they  disagree, it is deuces wild; they will embrace any fiction

that nullifies the  Court’s decision.

The  direction in which Mr. Obama is taking us would make possible the

following  scenario. A Republican Congress is elected and repeals Obamacare over

a  Democratic President’s veto. The President refuses to enforce the

repeal. The  Supreme Court rules that the President’s refusal is unconstitutional.

The  President denounces that ruling and refuses to be bound by it.

If the  President persists in rejecting all authority other than his own,

the  denouement 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.

The  shocking fact is that our whole 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 he does not?

Mr.  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 United States 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?

Mr.  Obama got his conception of a fair country from his teachers. A fair

country  is an unfree country because it is regimented to  prevent anyone

from rising too high. 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. Mr. Obama and his  colleagues

are the product of those universities, and they have their marching 

orders.

The  most important point is that Mr. 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.

Those  who currently hold political office, and who want to keep our system

of  government, need to act now. Surely, rejection of the Constitution is

grounds  for impeachment and charges should be filed. In addition, there are

many other  actions that Congressmen can and should take—actions that will

tell Mr. Obama  that we have seen where he is going and we will not let our

country go without  a fight.

At the  close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin

was asked  what form of government had been created. “A republic,” he

replied, “if you  can keep it.”

We are  losing it. If Mr. 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 yet!” “Not ever!”

M.  Northrup Buechner is Associate Professor of Economics at St. John’s 

University, New York.