As we strive to maintain our liberties as a people and the qualities that have made us great as a nation, one of the obstacles is that so many people fail to see the erosion of those liberties. It happens so gradually, and there is a strong sense of complacency. “It can’t happen here.” That kind of thinking.
If that’s how you think, I ask you to reflect on Obama’s recent declarations that he wants to bypass Congress and act on his own, as President, to address the distressed housing market. USA Today quotes him as saying, “We can’t just wait for Congress. Until they act, until they do what they need to do, we’re going to act on our own, because we can’t wait for Congress to help our families and our economy.”
And what’s more troubling that that is the number of commentators and politicians who are echoing those sentiments.
Congress was set up the way it was specifically with the intention of impeding the actions of government, and precisely with the idea of foiling a demagogue like Obama. And yet we have a frighteningly large minority of our people who feel that should be all jettisoned in order to unleash one individual to do whatever he thinks he should, as long as he can cloak it in terms of “the greater good.” And a number of you who are reading this are thinking, “And what’s so bad about that? We elected him, and so this is just democracy in action.”
How is this different from the way Hugo Chavez operates? Or Vladimir Putin? Or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Research that question, you complacent people, and get back to me with an answer. How does this differ from how these elected despots operate? Don’t they all claim to be acting “for the greater good?”
