American Liberty v. Obama’s Social Engineering

Frank Salvato has a great piece up over at The Publius Forum. It is a must read and fits perectly into what this blog is all about.

After the General Election of 2008 I made a conscious effort to give President Obama a chance. I wanted to give him an opportunity to be true to his word; to prove that he was committed to governing from the center. I also wanted to demonstrate that I was not of the same ilk as the Bush-hating, “he stole the election,” fact-ignoring Progressive malcontents that served to divide the country over the eight years of the Bush Administration. But now, a year after the election, and as we approach a full year of the Obama Administration, it has become abundantly clear that Mr. Obama has abandoned almost all of his campaign promises (but for his commitments to the SEIU) and is governing from the far Left. He has instituted a campaign of social engineering that can only be described as a direct threat to liberty.

Liberty

Liberty is defined as, “freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.” It was the single most motivating factor in the American Revolution and war for independence. Our Founders and Framers risked their lives to free the people of what would become our nation from the elitist tyranny of King George and his court, a tyranny that choked liberty – personal and societal – dead.

In addition to the limitations placed on religious freedom and freedom of speech, taxation was excessive and exploitative and it was imposed without representation. Many of the colonists believed the denial of direct representation in the British Parliament was an illegal denial of their rights, as colonists were considered Englishmen subject to the king’s rule. Thus the credo, “no taxation without representation,” served as the rallying cry for Patriots in each of the thirteen colonies as they coalesced into a movement toward American independence.

Thomas Jefferson is quoted as having said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” If Jefferson were alive today to witness the encroachment of government into the private sector being perpetrated by the Obama Administration or the non-representation of constituencies in the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi and the US Senate under Harry Reid, he would be validated in his statement.
Intolerable Acts

In the run-up to the American Revolution, the British Parliament imposed five laws that Patriot colonists referred to as “Intolerable Acts .” Four laws were enacted in direct response to the Boston Tea Party:

The Boston Port Act closed the port until such time as the East India Company should be paid for the tea destroyed.

The Massachusetts Government Act gave complete control of seating government officials to the King and Parliament. It also severely limited activities at town hall meetings.

The Administration of Justice Act allowed the king’s appointed governor to move trials of accused royal officials to another colony or even to Great Britain. This made it nearly impossible for witnessed to testify against those charged due to monetary and geographical constraints.

The Quartering Act allowed the king’s appointed governor to house soldiers in non-governmental buildings.

The rult of the imposition of these acts was the formation of the First Continental Congress and the eventual Declaration of Independence, which not only stated the colony’s declared independence, but enumerated the Patriot colonists’ grievances with the king.
Intolerable Acts II

Today, we are witnessing another establishment of “Intolerable Acts” by the 111th Congress and the Obama Administration that enable an encroachment into the private sector and onto the personal liberties of every American; an encroachment of liberties that dwarves the Intolerable Acts of 1774.
The Stimulus Bill

The $787 billion stimulus bill that was rushed through Congress by a coalition of liberal Democrats and neo-Marxist Progressives, and signed into law by President Obama, was less a bill that stimulated the growth of the US economy or the creation of jobs and more a pork-laden special interest bill that was timed to be dispersed for the maximum political benefit it could afford the elected Democrats and Progressives. In reality, the almost trillion dollar legislation was a raid on the Treasury by political factions to reward loyal special interest groups and bankroll the intellectual manipulation of voters in 2010 and 2012, just before the elections.

The Healthcare Reform Bill

The trillion dollar healthcare bills proposed by both houses of Congress and championed by the Obama Administration have more to do with a governmental power-grab of one-sixth of the US economy than they do with affording the uninsured in the United States healthcare benefits.

Instead of crafting legislation that would mandate the private sector to cover the uninsured and promote true free-market competition among private health insurance companies (which would lower premiums for all), the Obama Administration and Congress are deceptively marketing a government take-over of the healthcare insurance industry as a protection against the “evil healthcare insurance industry.” An examination of the almost bankrupt federal Medicare program provides a perfect example of government-run healthcare.

The EPA, CO2 and Cap & Trade

With the recent announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that carbon dioxide (CO2 – the stuff we exhale and which is required for plant growth) is now considered a pollutant by the federal government, the Obama Administration has enabled itself to not only usurp the legislative process but coerce the electorate and the total of the energy industry into supporting a Cap & Trade Bill. Of course, this designation – as well as any legislation designed to address this issue – is based on the now debunked junk science of anthropological global warming – or what the disingenuous eco-zealots are now calling climate change.

With this designation, FOX News reports that the Obama Administration has positioned itself to force one of two outcomes with regard to energy management in the United States:
“The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.
“The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“…while administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.”
Taxation Without Representation

The 111th Congress and the Obama Administration have veered violently away from representative government where the citizenry is concerned and moved to execute a government that represents special interest groups, unions, advocacy organizations and the two political parties. They have crafted legislation behind closed doors and in the company of special interest groups and union officials that provides wealth and privilege to the few while mandating a debt that future generations will have to bear if, in fact, we do not collapse the US dollar and watch, helplessly, as our country fades into the pages of the history books as another failed experiment of government and human nature.

A Usurpation of the Established Branches of Government

In seating a plethora of “czars” – overseeing everything thing from broadcast regulation to safe schools, jobs and the economy to environmental issues – President Obama has effectively usurped the congressional oversight used to vet cabinet level appointees and department heads. In essence, Mr. Obama has seated a shadow government with ideological generals who answer to no one but him. This usurps the complete idea of representative government as mandated by the US Constitution.

The Revolution Starts Now
James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution, said in Federalist 10 :

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole

“…Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

Today, enlightened statesmen are not at the helm. Political opportunists who have their own interests and the interests of the financial benefactors in a position of priority are seated in power. And while there are a scant few in government who still do adhere to the notion of public service and are still dedicated to their oaths of office and the US Constitution, the controlling majority of those in federal government – and in many cases state government – have come to represent everything our Founders and Framers despised in the elitists they waged war against for independence.
Now, the question is this, will those of us who still believe in the sanctity of the Charters of Freedom – The Declaration of independence, The US Constitution and The Bill of Rights – defend them, doing so in a cohesive manner so as to avoid the politics of factionalism – as with the institution of litmus test politics, or will we watch, helplessly, impotent, as Rome burns?

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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us