Facts are Stubborn Things

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

No better justice to President Barack Hussein Obama’s boast in the Washington Post of his political achievements can be done than to adapt portions of the Declaration of Independence to the subject of his accomplishments. Not all of the charges against George III in 1776 listed in Jefferson’s masterpiece are applicable. This charge sheet can also be leveled at Congress. I include only those offences which can be annotated. Call it not a parody, but a serious, appropriate, and well-deserved iteration.

The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

With artful disingenuousness, he promised Marxist tyranny during his campaign. Few believed him. Others were dumb-founded. Many applauded him, and voted for him. And the collectivists in Congress encouraged him, at the same time counseling him to soften his rhetoric so that it would seduce the impressionable and confuse but not frighten Americans. And, with the cooperation of his allies in Congress, he is delivering Tyranny. No one should be confused now. His politics are exclusively and demonstrably Marxist in theory and practice. Marx advocated dictatorship.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Notwithstanding his professed concern for the “public good,” Obama has not advanced it by refusing to recommend the repeal of all fiat regulatory law. Instead, he has acted to expand the scope of such law over virtually every private and public action of American citizens, injuring the “public good” while benefiting those who have a vested interest in such expansion.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

What else to call his many czars? How many committees will be created by the health care bill recently passed by the Senate, after it is merged with the House version next month? Their purpose is to harass Americans and eat out not only their wealth, but their rights, to make Americans deferential and dependent on their wishes and commands. Defenders and advocates of the health care bills assert that they have been created from the best of intentions. But any intention that relies on, force, compulsion, extortion, fraud, lies, and the confiscation of wealth and property necessarily results in evil.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

What are those “standing armies” today? The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury. The Federal Reserve system. The DEA, the SEC, the ATF, the TSA, the FCC, Homeland Security, and the rest of the alphabet soup of federal power wielders. Not one of which was created with the consent of the governed or of any state legislature. Are they not indemnified against responsibility for their destructive intrusions, powers, and actions? Are they not independent of and superior to what remains of legitimate civil power?

Is not the health care legislation “pretended,” that is, beyond the clearly worded constraints on government power in the Constitution? In point of fact, is not all welfare and regulatory legislation -- whether acts of Congress or recent amendments to the Constitution -- merely “pretended” legislation, assented to by Obama and all his statist predecessors in office?

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Has Obama not recently signed a law exempting Interpol from American law, thus subjecting Americans to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution? Was not one of the ends of the Copenhagen climate change conference this month to nullify American sovereignty in favor “global” law and to make Americans subject to alien and especially European jurisdiction? Was not Obama willing to surrender American sovereignty in the name of “global governance”?

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

This goes without saying. A “governed” people has no power or right of consent.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Obama has become the Government, and, as with any ambitious dictator or tyrant, any and every person who opposes his powers and policies would necessarily be outside of his protection, because he has implicitly or actively waged war against such Americans. The Constitution was created to protect individuals from arbitrary power, wielded by either the president or Congress. Obama is acting in an extra-legal and extra-constitutional capacity.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Obama has excited class warfare amongst Americans -- the poor against the rich, the claimers of entitlements against those in the productive sector who must pay for them, the retired elderly against the working young, the incompetent and lazy against the able and the ambitious -- and has endeavored to perpetuate this warfare by stealthily conscripting members of ACORN, the Service Employees International Union, and affiliated organizations such as MoveOn, in addition to his swarm of czars, as the enforcers to harass and intimidate the middle class and the rich.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

On the “high seas” of the Internet, Obama encouraged Americans to report to him “fishy” information or rumors about health care reform expressed or repeated by other Americans, and asked them inform on their friends, brethren, and fellow citizens.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

Through the summer and fall of 2009, hundreds of thousands of concerned and outraged Americans participated in dozens of massive “tea parties”; packed the “town halls” to express their displeasure with and opposition to health care legislation and other government invasions of their rights; caused dozens to Congressmen to sputter incoherently in reply to frank questions, or even to flee the confrontation; signed countless petitions to Obama and members of Congress to stop spending, legislating, and destroying their lives, livelihoods, and children’s futures; sent hundreds of thousands of faxes and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to their senators and representatives, and even to the White House, to express their opposition -- but their efforts were answered with indifference, insouciance and repeated injury, by Obama and by members of Congress.

Obama himself has not dared to face Americans or the press without “papering the hall” with friendly cliques, courtiers, and shills, in rigged and contrived “town hall meetings” and press conferences, and allowed no questions to be asked of him that would require honest, forthright, and revealing answers. His vaunted policy of “transparency,” given the facts of his means and ends, has necessarily been one of habitual obfuscation and brazen dissemblance.

A President, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Need any more be said about the character and agenda of Barack Hussein Obama? A free people does not need, nor does it seek, a ruler. Which are Americans to be in the coming years? A free people confident that their president is acting in their interests as free men? Or a people that needs a ruler?

Crossposted at The Dougout