The Face of Tyranny
By Alan Caruba
The history of civilization dating back some five
millennia is one of unrelenting tyranny, rapaciousness, arrogance, and
stupidity. The players and the places changed, but the slaughter was
unremitting, the suffering broken only by occasional brief periods of peace,
good weather and crops. For most of the past, war, famine, and disease killed
most people.
During the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, he contemplates
taking his own life, saying “There's the respect that makes calamity of so long
life--for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the
insolence of office…”
This list of woes neatly sums up the times in which we
live as Americans endure many of these same abuses from a President who seems
to enjoy displaying his contempt for them. He has plunged the nation into the
highest debt in its history, is using the government shutdown as a crisis to
divert attention from recent failures, and is flirting with a national default
that would create domestic and international havoc…all while blaming the
Republicans, the real end game.
As an October 3rd Wall Street Journal
editorial noted, however, “House GOP
leaders also insist they don't want a default, and they've already passed a
bill to prevent it—not that the media have paid any attention. First sponsored
in 2011 by California Republican Tom McClintock and Pennsylvania Senator Pat
Toomey, the Full Faith and Credit Act is essentially an insurance policy
against miscalculation. Their bill certifies that U.S. sovereign debt will
always be repaid, on time and in full.”
It is
beginning to dawn on a lot of people that Barack Obama is the face of tryanny,
a man for whom the Constitution, the democratic process and its need for
compromise, exist only to be spurned.
Any President
who is happy to preside over closing the White House to public tours, who
authorizes placing barricades around Washington War Memorial that is normally
open 24 hours a day as well as the Normandy, France D-Day cemetery where our
soldiers are buried, is more than merely heartless, but represents a level of
evil intent never before seen in anyone who has held that office.
The closing of the Normandy cemetery reminded me that history records that resistance to such tyrants has given rise to the rights of those they governed. The brother of England’s Richard the Lionhearted, John, had inherited the throne and through his incompetence in 1203 had lost Normandy, the last remaining possession in Western France the English had conquered.
The ill will
that his barons felt, in part from the constant taxation John imposed, led them
to renounce their allegiance to the crown of England. In 1215 they assembled at
Runnymede, a water meadow on the Thames and presented John with the Magna Carta
that spelled out their rights and those of all Englishmen, protecting them and
their property against arbitrary arrest and confiscation without due process of
law.
King John was
actually fortunate. History records that rulers who acted ruthlessly were often
assassinated or beheaded. It was commonplace.
The history of
the United States records that the colonists, British subjects, had enjoyed
self-rule for easily a century before the British crown, George III, seeking to
replenish the treasury in lieu of having fought the French and Indian War in
1763 on behalf of the colonies, imposed the Stamp Act in 1765. It evoked such
resistance that it was repealed and replaced a year later with the Townshend
Acts that imposed taxes on paper, paint, glass and tea imported from England.
They were followed by more resistance and led to an altercation on March 5,
1770 that killed a number of citizens and became known as the Boston Massacre.
For a list of
what Americans had come to regard as usurpations of power by the king, one need
only read the Declaration of Independence.
By then, the
governing of the British empire had spawned a bureaucracy that was not only
large, but “appallingly inefficient” noted historian Nathaniel Philbrick in his
book, “Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, a Revolution.” After the Boston Tea Party,
the king sent a flotilla to seal off Boston Harbor and increased the army in
America. By then, George III was in no mood to negotiate.
President
Obama has said he, too, does not intend to negotiate with the House of
Representatives, constitutionally the body of government empowered to authorize
all expenditures for the maintenance of the government.
The House has
sent any number of proposed measures to keep the entire government funded, but
has also expressed its wish to defund or delay the implementation of the
Affordable Care Act which is widely unpopular. Against the protest of millions
it was imposed solely by the Democratic Party when it controlled both houses of
Congress.
Modern-day
Americans have been enduring what many regard as acts of tyranny and have begun
to regard the President as not merely incompetent, but bent on a course of
action to destroy the nation. This is the stuff of revolution.
© Alan Caruba,
2013
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| Addendum To Matthew Slater's Will compiled by Norman E. Hooben |
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An open letter to President Obama
Dear President Obama,
You strike me as the sort of man who spends a lot of time staring at his
own reflection. I wonder, what do you see when you gaze so admiringly at
yourself? What image do you find in that mirror of yours? Let me guess: a
graceful Greek god with a golden crown, draped in luxurious robes, perched on a
giant, magnificent throne atop a mountain in the sky? You see a throng of angels
singing your praises and masses of subservient peasants prostrated before you,
trembling with fear and awe? You see a man who is more than a man, and a
president who transcends the presidency; you see a historic figure of immortal
importance?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, and I can’t blame you, Mr. President. By all
accounts, you’ve always been an arrogant, haughty narcissist — and that was
before you became president. Your supporters and your enemies may argue over
whether you descended from heaven on the back of a Pegasus, or were birthed from
the bowels of Hell to bring about a Biblical apocalypse, but they both agree on
one thing: you are a figure of great significance and immense power. You are
either the anti-Christ or the Second Coming, with no room for anything
in-between. Surely, this talk might cause even a humble man to slip into a state
of vanity and pride, so I can only imagine what it must do to a man such as
yourself, already so aloof and so conceited.
That’s why I’m writing this letter. My impression of you is quite
different, and it has only been solidified by your performance during this
shutdown/Obamacare debate. I find you to be a very small man, Mr. President. Far
from larger than life, you are petty, frivolous, pathetic; sneering and pompous
but also trifling and narrow. I don’t mean to dismiss or underestimate the
damage you have done to this nation — it has certainly been profound and lasting
— but I want you to know that your legacy will not be one of grandeur and
brilliance; it will be the legacy of a shameless, desperate bully. Both your
opponents and your proponents hoist you up as a world leader with a grand
vision, whether benevolent or malevolent. I, on the other hand, believe you have
the vision of a temperamental two year old. You simply want to feel like you’re
in control; you want to “win,” you want everybody in the room to pay attention
to you, and you’ll stomp your feet and whine until you get your way. You govern
like a coddled toddler; it’s inappropriate to pejoratively refer to you as a
“dictator,” but only because it lends you a certain unwarranted credibility. I
think you wish to be a dictator, but instead you’re just a bumbling bureaucrat;
easily replaced and even more easily forgotten. You have the ethics of Genghis
Khan, but the leadership skills of Michael Scott. This is why we are forced to
witness the spectacle of, for instance, our president brazenly threatening to
invade another nation for no reason, only to clumsily abandon the idea after
being publicly spanked by Putin.
Your legacy, Mr. President, will be defined by small, shameful things, as
your presidency has been primarily a succession of small, shameful things. The
platitudes you spouted during your campaign — the theatrics, the pomp, the hype
— have all faded. Replaced by the scheming partisan machinations that have come
to define your tenure.
Every president has a moment that encapsulates their time in office; your
moment, Mr. President, happened this week. Sure, future generations will look at
you with mockery and scorn because of bigger scandals — Benghazi, the IRS
targeting conservatives, Obamacare, the birth control mandate and your attacks
on religious liberty, spying on journalists, arming terrorists overseas, Fast
and Furious, the green energy scams, the bailouts, your support for infanticide,
the billions you’ve given to the abortion industry, your cowardice in refusing
to address the Gosnell murders, your reckless exploitation of the Zimmerman
trial, the out of control deficit spending, your refusal to enforce immigration
laws, the massive expansion of the Welfare State, the lies, the broken promises,
etc — but I think, in an understated way, what you’ve done this week is a better
microcosm of your entire reign.
I’m not just referring to the fact that you are peddling the lie that
“Republicans” have “shutdown the government,” when, in fact, they have attempted
to pass several bills that would fund the government. Mr. President, you tell
these fables to the trained seals in the media and your voting base, but you
know damn well that any American with a capacity for critical thought will
roundly reject this absurd narrative. YOU have chosen to “shut down” the
government because you have made Obamacare the ultimate priority. You have said,
“Obamacare or nothing,” and then accused Republicans of being the “hostage
takers.” They are holding the government hostage by trying to fund it? What a
silly idea. But then, you are a silly, ridiculous president. Speaking of which,
this takes us right to your defining moment: barricading memorials and monuments
in a ploy to win an argument.
Comparatively insignificant when stacked up against your war crimes and
constitutional infringements, but it is nonetheless an apt illustration. The
Lincoln Memorial is just a giant statue. There isn’t any reason why people
shouldn’t be able to look at a statue during a government shutdown. In past
shutdowns, the memorials were open, with only the information centers closing
down. The Lincoln Memorial has never been completely closed off from the public
until now. You have decided to spend money to block and guard open-air
monuments, when it would be cheaper, require less staff, and be less onerous to
simply leave them be. Is this some sort of bizarre punitive measure against the
American taxpayer?
Infamously, you even attempted to stop WW2 veterans from visiting the WW2
memorial. That memorial is mostly privately funded, and is open 24 hours a day.
You SPENT MONEY to physically guard the monument from a group of elderly war
veterans. This is truly unprecedented. We have had horrible presidents in the
past, but none quite so shallow, cheap and contemptible. You tried to close down
Mt. Vernon, which is privately funded, but had to settle for closing its parking
lot — even though the parking lot requires no immediate on-going maintenance or
surveillance from any federal workers. Did you have to shut down the Normandy
cemetery and memorial? Are we saving money that way? I doubt it.
It’s the same game you played during the sequester, and it comes as no
surprise to those of us who pay attention (which means it came as a surprise to
a large number of people). Rather than leading like a statesman, you hide in the
shadows; scheming, conniving, exploiting. You emerge only to make hyper-partisan
speeches, with rhetoric best left to Democratic talking heads on afternoon cable
news shows. Far from being a “new kind of politician” (as you were advertised),
you are the most political politician this country has ever seen. You are
political to your core, in your essence, at an atomic level, and so you are
unable to offer any direction or clarity when the nation needs it most.
Sometimes, Mr. President, the affairs of this nation require a man, not a
politician, and it is during those times that you are especially useless. You
don’t have any interest in fixing our present crisis because you’re too busy
finding ways to keep a busload of 90 year old war veterans from looking at a
memorial.
Closing down parks, monuments and memorials just to score political points
is hardly your most insidious deed, but it’s certainly one of your pettiest.
That’s why it stands, ironically, as a monument of its own. If we ever build a
statue of you, Mr. President, you won’t be triumphantly holding a flaming torch
like Lady Liberty, or standing authoritatively with a look of determination,
like the MLK memorial. No, it will be a statue of you pulling the wings off of a
fly, or spitting in someone’s orange juice. It will show you in your essence, as
monuments are meant to do. It will show you as a petulant, skulking, juvenile
bully. It will you show you as you are.
And we’ll make sure it’s always open, especially during a government shut
down.
Sincerely,
Matt Walsh
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The following by Storm'n Norm'n
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