Thanks for the warning, but it's not exactly timely, is it?
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says President Obama's continued use of the executive order "brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship."
"That is arrogant," Paul said of Obama frequently using the executive order function as of late. "It is flaunting the Constitution and the whole principle of how we're supposed to operate. The idea they can just do this and take over the legislative function and brag about it -- and Congress does nothing and the courts do nothing about it, it's very, very bad."
I'd argue that we've lived under a near-dictatorship for a long time, at least under one of the main conditions of such a rule: We have largely lost control over what government does. Executive orders are a part of it; Obama may use them more often than his predecessors, but they've been used to circumvent the Congress and Constitution for a long time. Another part is the entrenched bureaucracy that survives administration to administration, "enacting" laws that affect us all by merely writing a few lines in the Federal Register. Another part is the earmark. Another part are federal laws that don't even pretend to follow the Constitution, and justices who find things in that document that don't exist. Another part is an incomprehensible tax code that is as directed at running our lives as it is raising money. Another part . . . oh, I could go on and on.
And the saddest part is that we've aquiesed in our own subjugation, even invited it. You know the hoary political warning about those who would trade liberty for security deserving neither (attributed variously to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams).
And here's another quote:
Alexander Tyler said about the fall of the Athenian Republic: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy
