To correctly understand President Barack Obama’s objectives, you need only filter everything he says through his goal of “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.” And to best understand this fact, one must first ignore the things he says, and pay very close attention to the things he actually does. Think of it as if you are watching a sidewalk scam artist play Three-card Monte.
“The fundamental transformation of the United States of America” is a line President Obama got from one of the architects of his agenda, Robert Creamer, who proclaimed, “If Barack Obama is elected president, we then have the opportunity to fundamentally transform American politics and the economy.” Creamer is a member of Obama’s Chicago mob, a fellow community organizer, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and a convicted felon.
President Obama is a man who with the full support of a complicit media was able to hide who he truly is and convince a number of malleable and entitlement-driven citizens that he was not a threat to their freedom and that his election would be the Second Coming.
When he is not scripted, Obama tends to reveal his true identity with comments such as, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Or, “… the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and … that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the federal government can’t do to you … .”
Scary stuff when uttered by the president of the United States. So let’s take a look at how much of a threat this man and his cabal are to our freedom.
Keep in mind that our Constitution is devoted to clearly delineating the limited role of the central government from the unlimited rights of the states and the people.
To that end, James Madison wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”
But that has not stopped Obama. The stark reality is that his agenda has been totally repudiated by the public, and as a result of the Massachusetts special election, he no longer has any direct path to implement his radical transformation through a legitimate legislative process. So he has begun the process of nullifying the legislature — the Supreme Court — and going around the Constitution.
Nowhere in our Constitution is there any authority or provision for President Obama to further regulate the economy through Soviet-style central planning, completely regulate our national health-care system, and use the Environmental Protection Agency to decree that he has the power to regulate and tax the production of CO2.
Growing up on the south side of Chicago, I experienced the kind of political bullies Chicago has a penchant in producing. Prime examples of this now inhabit our White House. From Rahm “never let a good crisis go to waste” Emmanuel to David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and Obama.
In modern definitions, the term generally used to describe a leader who holds or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power, or makes laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly, is a dictator. Tyranny can be soft or hard and is often characterized by proclamations of national emergencies, ruling by decree, repression or intimidation of political opponents, and a cult of personality.
First, let’s look at this issue through the eyes of one of the Senate’s most respected Democrats, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V.
I feel dirty agreeing — on any issue — with a man who used to be a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. But Byrd is a constitutional scholar and has a long history of jealously defending the constitutional prerogatives of the U.S. Senate.
Byrd informed Obama that the sheer number of his czar appointments was a direct threat to our Constitution, and that his decrees are an attack on the constitutional system of checks and balances.
Obama has decreed that he will now control the census. This is in direct violation of Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that the House controls the census. But he wasn’t finished in ripping up the Constitution. Why stop there? He then decreed he would include sampling in the census. This violates the same article, which calls for an “actual” enumeration.
Obama did it again when the unconstitutional Conrad-Gregg amendment, to create an independent budget-cutting panel, came to the floor. It was soundly defeated in a cloture vote. Obama then announced he would go around Congress and do it by decree.
Now that his campaign to emasculate the legislative branch is well on its way, he could begin to concentrate on the remaining branch. So, during his recent State of the Union address, Obama formally accused the U.S. Supreme Court of being a threat to national security, saying its actions allow “foreign enemies” to corrupt the election process.
What’s alarming about this attack upon the Supreme Court is that even though Obama no longer has a super majority in the Senate, he is ready and willing to undertake extremely abusive interpretations of existing law and procedural rules to ram his agenda down our nation’s throat. He knows that if he goes that route, it ultimately would be the Supreme Court that would rule on the constitutionality of such actions. The underlying context of Obama’s attack is that he is trying to demonize the Supreme Court and say that the justices are basically subversive criminals.
Tactics such as these are to be expected from petty dictators such as Hugo Chavez — not the president of the United States. To our detriment, it’s obvious he has more in common with Chavez than he does with our founding fathers.
President Obama is in the midst of a power grab, the likes of which we have never seen before. He is a clear and present danger to our nation and our constitution and is pushing this country into truly uncharted waters. His arrogance leads him to believe that the Constitution doesn’t apply to him and should only be considered an inconvenient document that is out of sync with his world view. At best, it is to be used piecemeal as long as it advances his radical agenda.
Understanding this premise, it is then somewhat alarming to view the things that Obama is actually doing within this context.
In summary, Obama, when confronted with the reality that he has no public support for his agenda and no legal means to implement it, simply announced “I do not quit” and will ignore the Constitution and implement his decrees “by any means necessary.” The only two possible obstacles that stand between Obama and his brand of soft tyranny are the Supreme Court — which, according to Obama, is enabling “foreign enemies” and thus is a threat to national security — and the American people.
God help us.
— Santa Barbara resident Daniel Petry is the CEO and founding partner of Petry Direct Inc., a 20-year-old management firm that specializes in content production and marketing management. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, class of 1976, and received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Colorado.