My goodness sakes, what a lot of people have been upset by the last piece I wrote, one that condemns — nay, damns — President Obama and UK Prime Minister Cameron for deliberately paving the way for the West’s defeat by the growing Islamist movement. Several people seem especially apoplectic about the quote I used from the English republican Algernon Sydney in which he warned that a country’s people must not tolerate a national leader who negates the country’s security, ignores the law, and/or makes his own law, adding that if such a lawless individual cannot be brought to book by the law, there are other means to do so, including violence as a last resort.
Now, unless you thrill at the thought of America as an authoritarian state — one determined, for example, to crush the Little Sisters of the Poor for their religious convictions — or of its evolution into a monarchy formed by the Democratic Party, whose history is signally marked by a lust for authoritarianism, how could you possibly be upset by my reminder that the Founders of our republic took to heart the lesson that it is the citizen’s duty to resist the growth of arbitrary government which was taught by Algernon Sydney, John Milton, and other leading English republicans?
Well, no matter. Lets bring the subject closer to home and examine the following words by an American opponent of arbitrary government:
“The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe the legal rights of the people, as the people are bound to yield subjection to him. From whence it follows, that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law; he loses the king in the tyrant, he does to all intents and purposes unking himself, by acting out of, and beyond, that sphere in which the constitution allows him to move in. And in such cases, he has no more right to be obeyed, than any inferior officer who acts beyond his commission. The subject’s obligation to allegiance then ceases of course; and to resist him, is no more rebellion, than to resist any foreign invader.”
A renowned Protestant minister named Jonathan Mayhew wrote those words in 1750 in an sermon/essay called “Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers.” For present purposes, just replace the word “king” with the word “president” and you will have the situation which America is today approaching.
Obama and those of his lieutenants who oversee what the president seems to consider his personal plantations here in America openly announce which laws they will enforce and which they will not. They also unilaterally rewrite laws to make them what they want, which is always to expand presidential power. And they quietly issue hundreds of presidential-power-expanding “regulations” which are penned and enforced by the same breed of authoritarian, America-hating bureaucrats, men and women who have graduated from U.S. university and law-school systems in which the bulk of the professoriate share those America-killing characteristics and inclinations.
Clearly, Mr. Obama, in a paraphrase of the Rev. Mayhew’s words, is on the verge of “un-presidenting” himself not only by putting himself above the law, but also by making himself the sole source of some laws. If this process continues, American citizens are duty bound to act in the manner they deem most useful to stop the consolidation of arbitrary power in, and its exercise by the national government.
At the risk of adding to the apoplexy of some readers, it would be well for Mr. Obama, his lieutenants, and their abettors in Congress from both parties to recall the words of a man who wrote a document whose words still command some right to the attention, respect, and eventual action of the American people:
“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 and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —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 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Words like the foregoing must be unbearably exasperating to both Democrats and Neoconservatives. If more people read them and then delve deeper into what the Founders said and did to acquire and preserve liberty, they will never be able to accomplish their goal of enslaving this country, the former to use as a laboratory to test their political and social authoritarianism, and the latter to ensure that Israel — their country of first allegiance — survives and has America’s young men and women to fight its wars.
Let us hope Americans begin to read the Founders and think about what they intended for our country. In such a case, the days of the usurpers in all parties, as well as their acolytes in the media and the academy, would be numbered.
