by Mark J. Fitzgibbons
As reported at The Daily Caller, in one of President Obama's campaign speeches this week he said that "Republicans are 'in favor of a no-holds barred, government is the enemy, market is everything approach.'"
This comes from the man who in a speech to Latinos once referred to Republicans as "the enemy."
Constitutional conservatives, who decry big government more than establishment Republicans, consider tyranny as the enemy. Government that increasingly violates the Constitution under Republicans or Democrats is, in measure, increasingly tyrannical.
Obama's government is the biggest violator of law in our history. His very methods of governing, which include bypassing Congress's constitutional authority to make law, actually show contempt for the Constitution and the American rule of law.
By executive orders, Mr. Obama both violates the law against his own American-citizen "enemies," such as Catholic institutions when it comes to abortion and birth control, and grants unlawful privileges for his supporters or potential supporters, such as his immigration amnesty order this week.
HHS Secretary Janet Napolitano called the latter not amnesty but "deferred action," and "an exercise of discretion." Yes, that's the same Secretary Napolitano who put veterans and opponents of abortion and illegal immigration on her terrorist watch list in 2009. Yet they wonder why they're increasingly seen as the enemy?
Congress won't pass the DREAM Act? No problem. Who needs the consent of the governed or their elected representatives?
By the scope and consistency of their lawbreaking, the Obama administration is Public Enemy Number 1.
Government, however, is supposed to protect us against lawbreakers in society. We need government. Conservatives understand that government per se is not the enemy.
There is no need to remind constitutional conservatives about James Madison's quote from Federalist 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Instead of controlling itself, however, government has become the biggest and most pervasive lawbreaker in America.
Nearly everything bad that government does seems to be exponentially worse than the bad done in the private sector. Think JP Morgan's losing $2 billion in private investments is bad? Fox Business uncovered a JP Morgan report disclosing that public pension plans are not under-funded by just $1 trillion, but by $3.9 trillion.
If one's definition of "enemy" is someone trying to do you harm, then of course government is perceived as the enemy. But whose fault is that? Government is harming our liberties and our economy. Is it the fault of those who state the case against government, or is it the fault of lawbreaking government? The further we get away from the Constitution as the law that governs government, the greater the sense that government is the enemy of the people. It need not be that way.
The fact is that government no longer treats the Constitution as law binding it. As a result, government not only violates the Constitution with greater frequency and even more contempt, but government bureaucrats violate the very laws they enforce that are subordinate to the Constitution.
The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, violates the Clean Water Act and other laws the agency is charged with enforcing. It's not just the EPA. In my experience, every government agency I've dealt with has violated laws that they are charged with enforcing.
The backlash by the Tea Party and constitutional conservative movements is not just about lawbreaking by the Obama administration. It's about defeating Republicans who are constitutional lawbreakers, or who through their passivity refuse to enforce the Constitution on government. The Obama administration's contempt for the Constitution highlights what passive and lawbreaking Republicans have wrought. Big-government Republicans were like the gateway drug to Obama.
Those in government who want Americans to stop thinking of the government as their enemy should focus on stopping government's violating the law.
Mark J. Fitzgibbons is co-author with Richard A. Viguerie of The Law That Governs Government: Reclaiming The Constitution From Usurpers And Society's Biggest Lawbreaker
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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