L’etat? C’est Moi!

amnestyI’m at a loss for words to describe what happened to our country last Thursday and have been trying to come to grips with it. Unfortunately, last night’s events in Ferguson, MO, are overtaking us and thus am caught on the horns of a dilemma. Therefore, until I collect my thoughts on last night, I will direct you to a more eloquent writer to describe the Constitutional crisis that President Obama caused last Thursday with his Executive Action. Please take the time to read Patrick J Buchanan’s commentary. As for now all I can say is that we have crossed the line from Republicanism to autocracy. (Didn’t we fight a revolution to ensure that political power would be diffused among three separate but co-equal branches of government?)

P.S. In retrospect, George III doesn’t look all that bad.

P.S.S. For those who criticize the autocratic powers of the current Russian president, a little humility is in order.

Buchanan: Rogue President

Source: Buchanan

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan

Asserting a legal and constitutional authority he himself said he did not have, President Obama is going rogue, issuing an executive amnesty to 4 to 5 million illegal aliens.

He will order the U.S. government not to enforce the law against these 5 million, and declare that they are to be exempt from deportation and granted green cards.

Where did Obama get his 4-5 million figure, not 2-4 million, or 5-7 million? Nowhere in law, but plucked out of his own mind, as to what he can get away with. Barack Obama just felt it was about right.

Thus does our constitutional law professor-president “faithfully execute” the laws of the United States he has twice swore to uphold?

Our rogue president has crossed an historic line, and so has the republic. Future presidents will cite the “Obama precedent” when they declare they will henceforth not enforce this or that law, because of a prior commitment to some noisy constituency.

We have just taken a monumental step away from republicanism toward Caesarism. For this is rule by diktat, the rejection of which sparked the American Revolution.

The political, psychological and moral effects of Obama’s action will be dramatic. Sheriffs, border patrol, and immigration authorities, who have put their lives on the line to secure our broken borders, have been made to look like fools. Resentment and cynicism over Obama’s action will be deeply corrosive to all law enforcement.

Businessmen who obeyed the law and refused to hire illegals, hiring Americans and legal immigrants instead, and following U.S. and state law on taxes, wages and withholding, also look like fools today.

Obama’s action makes winners of the scofflaws and hustlers.

Bosses who hired illegals off the books will also receive de facto amnesty. La Raza is celebrating. But, make no mistake, a corrupt corporate crowd is also publicly relieved and privately elated.

Immigrants who waited in line for years to come to America, and those waiting still, have egg on their faces. Why, they are saying to themselves, were we so stupid as to obey U.S. laws, when it is the border-jumpers who are now on the way to residency and citizenship?

When the world hears of the Obama amnesty, millions more from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East will be coming. And if they cannot get in legally, they will walk in, or fly in, and overstay their visas.

Why not? It works.

That this action will be as much a part of Obama’s legacy as Obamacare is certain. The unanswered question is how the Obama amnesty will be remembered by history.

His aides think that it will be seen as a second Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps.

But with this amnesty Obama takes custody of and responsibility for the entire illegal population. He is the patron saint of illegal aliens. And for what they do, he will be held accountable, as was Jimmy Carter for the Marielitos Castro sent and Carter welcomed.

If the amnestied illegals contribute to the drug trade and violent crime, that will be Obama’s legacy to his country. If they turn up disproportionately on the welfare rolls, exploding state and federal deficits, that will be Obama’s legacy.

If this amnesty is followed by a new invasion across the border America cannot control, that, too, will be Obama’s gift to his countrymen.

One wonders. Will poor and working class blacks and whites, Hispanics and Asians, welcome this unleashed competition from the amnestied illegals, for jobs where the wages never seem to rise?

In the four decades before JFK, the nation had a pause in legal immigration. During that pause, the Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, Greeks and Slav immigrants who had come in from 1890-1920, and their children and grandchildren, were fully assimilated. They had become not only U.S. citizens, but also identifiably American.

The Melting Pot had worked. We had become one nation and one people, almost all speaking the same language, and steeped in the same history, heroes, culture, literature and faiths.

Today, in 2014, after an influx of perhaps 50 million in 50 years, legal and illegal, no longer from Northwest Europe, or Europe at all, but Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, of every race, color, creed, culture and language we seem less a nation than some mammoth Mall of America. An economy, but not a country.

Running in 2008, Obama said he intended to become a “transformational president.” With this decision, he succeeds.

He has accelerated and ensured the remaking of America. Now when the wives and children of the illegals arrive, and their extended families apply for and receive visas, and bring their wives and children, we will become the Third World country of Obama’s dream, no more a Western nation.

But then the community organizer did not much like that old America.

Comments

  1. For the party that likes to grab hold of the family values argument.

    Swing and a miss.

    The Republicans blew a big opportunity. Obama’s legacy will be Hillary winning with the Latino vote. She was already popular with them. This was like icing on a cake for her.

    What really bothers me the most is our Congresses of the past 25 years are all gutless. And I don’t mean the Republican majority ones-I mean all of them. And then we wonder why Presidents take unilateral action on immigration.

    If anyone is disgusted, it should be us for our votes for Congress. Deporting 10 million people ain’t gonna happen.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Hillary’s election is already cooked into the books. The Oligarchy will divide the Republican vote in 2016 like they did in 1992/96. As for the Latino electoral “juggernaut” that is mostly a fiction. Sure, they will vote for the Party that hands out the goodies because their role as the new Underclass is to replace and/or augment the existing African-American one. Especially since abortion and incarceration are causing the black share of the population to decrease.

      There will of course be an interesting bifurcation in the Hispanic vote with those who self-identify as white voting more and more Republican. We saw this happen this year in Texas where 56% of Hispanic males voted for the GOP. (Some of this of course was because Abortion Barbie proved to be an abysmal candidate who had nothing but good looks going for her.)

    • What really bothers me the most is our Congresses of the past 25 years are all gutless. And I don’t mean the Republican majority ones-I mean all of them. And then we wonder why Presidents take unilateral action on immigration.

      I do agree with you there.

      A the time the Constitution was proposed, Patrick Henry—who was a leading voice against the replacement of the Articles of Confederation—warned that under the Constitution there is really nothing to stop the president from seizing absolute power except for his own self-limiting good will. That is bad enough, but when the Congress willfully cedes its (theoretically) co-equal power, there is no recourse whatever.

      I truly believe that things would be different had the 17th Amendment never passed, but we would have gotten here eventually anyway.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Using Lincoln as a benign precedent is not helpful. Among his many egregious actions was throwing people in jail at will, suppressing habeus corpus, clasping a Democrat Congressman (Vanlandingham) in irons and exiling him to Canada, making war upon sovereign states, and so on. Admittedly, he justified his actions because he was putting down a “rebellion” but his excesses in pursuit of this cause were so unpopular and shocking that they caused every other president following to tread lightly in this regard. Only FDR approached such audacity with his internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens to concentration camps in WWII. At least the US was legally at war in this respect (Congress having declared it.)

        • I agree. I have done a lot of research on Lincoln and his blatant disregard for law really set the stage for all the bad presidents that followed.

        • Anonymus per Scorilo says

          Only FDR approached such audacity with his internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens to concentration camps in WWII. At least the US was legally at war in this respect (Congress having declared it.)

          The Romanian WWII dictator Antonescu did the same to the Jews in Bessarabia (present-day republic of Moldova), and Romania was also legally at war with the USSR. Nevertheless, being at war was not considered a justification, and the internment of the Jews from Bessarabia was one of the main reasons he was declared a war criminal and shot.

          Of course one can argue back and forth, that Romanian camps had a higher death rate than the ones where the Japanese were interned, or that Antonescu only put in camps the Jews who were not Romanian citizens, while FDR also put in camps the Japanese-Americans who were US citizens, etc.

          But none of these arguments diminish the monstrosity of these actions, and the fact that one should avoid at all costs giving one man the power to do such things.

          • George Michalopulos says

            APS, I was being extremely charitable to FDR in this case. If anything, your analogy only solidifies my point about the dangers of absolutist Executive power.

      • Michael Bauman says

        Ages, yes we would have. It started with John Adams and has grown increasingly worse with every succeeding President. The 17th Amendment was inevitable once the Populists gained political power and the interpretation of the Constitution became less and less about what it was established to do and more and more about what ‘the people’ could get out of it.

        We are living in a tyrannical oligarchy. The “Republican Congress” will do nothing about the ACA or immigration or anything else because the fix is in.

    • The GOP could have encouraged its more conservation faction to unite on immigration. They did not and Obama had no other choice than to take action to combat this inaction that was taking place over a year. Idf they don’t like it, they can Pass A Bill, as he said. Boehner has done more damage to the country than any other politician on this issue.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Again, please see my response to Dan Fall above. We have a Constitution. It mandates the separation of Powers. Ends don’t justify the means. Someday there may be a Republican president who decides to privatize Social Security on his own. Or build a wall across the Rio Grande and police it with soldiers who are given orders to shoot on sight anybody crossing the border. Thanks to Obama’s illegal act, there would be no legal recourse against him.

        • It is within every president’s power to defer enforcement, as Obama did. Other presidents have done it, as well. This was a humane act of kindness for millions of people with children here living in constant fear of deportation. If the GOP thinks it is against the constitution, let the impeacement process begin, but I doubt the GOP will be that foolish.

          • George Michalopulos says

            Well then why not destroy our borders and invite everybody in?

          • George Michalopulos says

            Actually, according to Obama himself, he claimed on many occasions that he did not have that power at all. Was he lying then or is he lying now?

            • Obama said after his legal team reviewed everything, he found that he did have the legal power. There was no lying, George. Numerous previous presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have exercised executive authority in immigration issues.

  2. Dan–I normally do not criticize you. But, this time, I have got to tell you that you are blind to the facts of the case, as they say. I do not know if you are ignorant or because you choose to make a purely political point. One does not have to agree with Buchanan’s bottom line to see that the President decided to make a 180 degree turn from his previous, firmly-held position that he does not have the Constitutional authority to do what you think that he can do.

    • And of course this time I have to tell you that you are blind to the facts of the case. In reality, the actions Obama actually ended up making (versus what he might have liked to have seen done) with the executive orders of last week are not in fact out of the bounds of legislatively granted powers to the executive of setting immigration policy and enforcement, nor are they some kind of strange historical aberration.

      Whether or not they are wise policies to enact or good politics is certainly fertile ground for discussion. But if Congress wanted to block the actions Obama actually made they would have had to pass legislation to change the laws stripping him of the ability to do so. Needless to say, you aren’t going to hear that detail coming out of the right-wing noise machine.

      In this particular instance saying it is a “Constitutional Crisis” is absurd, but demagogues like Buchanan can just do their thing because they know the useful idiots will just regurgitate it without a moments reflection or investigation as to whether or not it’s true.

    • Well, actually Carl, I never said anything about the Constitutionality bit. I only commented about the politics. And the main point I make is our Congress never wants to do zip.

      To then wonder why actions have been taken by Presidents or complain is silly.

      Obama is a much craftier politician than he is a leader. His Ferguson speeches prove it well.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Mr Fall, to say that “Congress never wants to do zip” is tendentious as well as false. Congresses from 1789 to today have done much –probably too much–in the way of legislation. In the arena of immigration “reform” they passed Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986 for example.

        Regardless, the ends don’t justify the means. Not only was Obama’s executive amnesty unconsitutional, it was a horrible piece of law putting us on a glide-path to Third World status.

        • I meant the Congresses haven’t done zip on immigration and for 28 years per your own citation. In those 28 years; the influx of Mexicans has been huge. In more general terms, the Congresses fail to do anything politically difficult. A good example would be raising taxes to fund foreign wars. How the Congress went along with the ACA is perhaps an irony, but I’d rather not go there. The third world bit I don’t agree.

          My contention has always been make em pay taxes like the rest of us. Not too complex a wish.

          • There was bipartisan support for an immigration bill and Boehner never brought it to the floor for a mote, so he would not offend the far-more conservative base of the GOP. He made this happen himself. Since maybe that action in 1986, there has not been much substantive action on this issue. I hope Obama goes even further in the next two years to help the other millions of people, if the GOP finally does not wake up to reality.

            • George Michalopulos says

              Ends don’t justify the means Timothy.

              • In this case, these particular ends do justify the means when you have a constipated congress ( I love that!) that does nothing. At least this might stir Boehner to take actions on presenting a more comprehensive bill. As Obama said, Pass A Bill.

            • George Michalopulos says
            • When comprehensive immigration reform failed under the Bush administration, with Democrats controlling the House and Senate, it was because of Democratic opposition. There is a reason why Obama didn’t try to do it when Democrats were in control of Congress in his first two years in office — not even during the lame-duck window after the 2010 election. The truth is that this has enough opposition among voters from Democratic leaning voters that a critical mass of Democratic legislators who are in competitive elections don’t want to vote for it and the Democratic party didn’t want to own it. The reason that this Democratic Senate was willing to pass it was that they could let the GOP House hang themselves with it. When Dems were in control of the House for 4 years, they didn’t. This isn’t political rocket science.

              The President basically just said, if Congress doesn’t do what I want, I will just do it anyway. Future Republican Presidents could have fun with that precedent — further shredding the Constitution and moving us toward an elected autocracy.

              The question will be whether Obama will personally own this action (rather than tbe entire party, as has happened with Obama’s general unpopularity) and whether Democrats who need to can successfully distance themselves from it

  3. George–Regarding your comment, “P.S.S. For those who criticize the autocratic powers of the current Russian president, a little humility is in order,” Why? I oppose both Obama and Putin for what I think are cogent and consistent reasons and it would be hypocritical of me to apologize for my dislike and fear of Putin.

  4. Does anyone really care that much about someone else’s “legacy”? Except for a few political junkies, I doubt it.

  5. Bishop Tikhon Fitzgerald says

    There goes that Devil, Obama again!!!!
    Who does he think he is, the Republican Abraham Lincoln, using executive action like the Emancipation Proclamation to get around a constipated Congress?

    George, I’m saving your incredible characterization of Mrs Clinton. Why even Arianna’s The Huntington Post refers to her as”The Nothing Candidate!” Have you checked the odds in Las Vegas? I didn’t think so.

    • Tim R. Mortiss says

      Lincoln realized perfectly well that the Emancipation Proclamation was purely a wartime measure, applicable only to “reconquered” and occupied Confederate territory, which is exactly why he pressed for the 13th Amendment. He never claimed any other or broader legality for it.

      That analogy won’t work.

      I agree that there is nothing inevitable about Hillary as the Dem nominee.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Tim, your point about Lincoln is spot-on. Regarding Hillary being the “inevitable” nominee I must disagree. If it were up to the rough-and-tumble world of electioneering, there is no way that Hillary would be the nominee. She’s a horrible politician, lacking all of the retail political skills of her husband or anybody else for that matter. A true ideologue with a sense of entitlement.

        Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is bereft of a decent bench at this point and therefore, the war-mongering Oligarchy will jigger the primary process to her advantage. If the Republicans remain united they will beat her like a red-headed stepchild but I am confident that a split along the likes of Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party or Ross Perot’s Reform Party will be engineered as well to get her to the 271 Electoral votes needed. (I mean, really, who is the Democrat politician out there who has national name-recognition outside of Joker Biden?)

    • The constipated Congress-that is awesome! Thanks for the chuckle.

  6. Michael J. Kinsey 1380805 says

    Does the Obama, Caesar wanna be declaration, simulate the actions of the historical Caesar? No longer a republic is what this proves. And the Republicans want this power for when they win (???) the office. The only question left is, wither the Republican will use fiat presidential power to further globalist agendas or attempt to strengthen the Constitution, humane citizen rights, especially the right to life. Absurdity, to use the fiat power is to destroy the republic. It is much easier, and standard procedure to get the current president by the short hairs, and further globalist agenda through the power of the office, which in now almost absolute.. Freemason, CFR, ect, ect ,Buchanan is doing the standard, in your face, declaration of the 1% occult oligarchs. They always tell you, up front what their going to do. Otherwise, why build the Georgia Guidestones, and warn everybody. He is subtle, to appear as if he favored a government of the people, by the people and for the people. In a way he does, but just the people he knows who attend Bohemian Grove shindigs.

  7. Michael J. Kinsey 1380805 says

    If this fiat power stands, the US president will be in a political position to enact by fiat, in collusion with the IMF, World Bank, Basel Banking, and the UN, the mark of the beast. This being the small hope offered of financial stability after the devastating collapse of the world economy which will occur with the fall of the dollar and bursting the derivatives bubble. 2 quadrillion dollars is an impossible amount, and numbers won’t lie for you like politicians will.

  8. Michael J. Kinsey 1380805 says

    I choose to strive to serve God alone, I was always improvised, dispute the fact I was married to a granddaughter of Allen Dulles CIA chief. I do know the mentality of these elitists, first hand. Her father was president of Bankers Trust of Zurich, tied to the hip to Basel Banking. He was a total Ba–ard.Her maiden name is Clover Dulles Jebsen, I do not lie.about this.

  9. Sad. Sick. Accurate. I pity our grandchildren.

    Obama has always told us what his plans were. He wrote them down and told us why. Now he’s doing what he said he’d would do.

  10. Haven’t read all the foregoing,but what else would Bababa do, just shoot to kill all the kids and others who cross our ‘borders’? Pleas answer

    what would Obama do/ Just order shoot and kill all who cross our borders, kids and all? what would you Monopsytes go?

    Jim of Olym

    1

  11. Michael Bauman says

    The ability to respond to protect our borders has been compromised by putting short-term economic interests over national interests, political ideology, apathy and the sheer number of people coming. Obama did not start the problem nor did Bush.

    There comes a point when no matter how much economic, political and military power a country has they are unusuable once the country has lost its shared sense of itself.

  12. Michael J. Kinsey says

    Obama knows his time is short. His options are outrageous misuse of the presidential office, or an even more outrageous refusal to step aside/ Gun confiscation is the globalist unholy grail, which would ensure no effect resistance to the mark of the beast. As the Holy scriptures says. Who can fight the beast.? Might be a most interesting time, the next 2 years. I have no doubt he has the will and the arrogance, but may rethink the possibility of success. A time of trouble. yea. The time of trouble mentioned by Daniel, perhaps.

  13. I don’t know where to post this-but if you all want to know what is going on . . .

    http://www.saintcatherinesvision.com/

    Ordination of the Deaconess—

    • Depressing. Not that the idea of restoring deaconesses in specific circumstances is completely invalid — it is not.

      As has been noted before, even ostensibly good or neutral thing can be bad when the timing and context are wrong. And the societal context and timing for this does not bode well at all.

    • And endorsed by the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops. Photos with Met. Savas. Lovely.

  14. ChristineFevronia says

    Wow! I had no idea there was this movement to ordain deaconesses in the Church today. I opened the pdf version of the statement on this website you provided, Colette, and I read through the service of ordination. As a female in the Orthodox Church today, I have never dreamed, wished, or even had an inkling of desire to stand in the Holy Altar. To read that the deaconess would take the Chalice that holds the Body and Blood and place it on the Holy Altar, well… I just can’t quite fathom it.

    I question the timing and the motivation, just like Edward does above. I wonder how far it will go?

    • I can’t fathom it either, probably because the order of deaconesses died out more than a millennium ago, and because there has been nothing that has happened in the Church that suddenly makes the restoration of deaconesses a burning need, except perhaps for the setting of a women’s monastery.

      Quite the opposite — in the context of one heterodox body after another breaking down and (always by stages) introducing the ordination of women (the Church of England just broke down and is going to start consecrating women as bishops), this is a terrible time to reintroduce deaconesses, since it sends a “we’re heading that direction, too” signal to clergy and laity alike. I know that Orthodox are fond of saying “but we’re different!” But the activists don’t think so, and they are very good at what they do.

      All of this — the language of exclusion vs. inclusion, etc. — mostly reflects an incorrect and worldly understanding of holy orders. Being a bishop, priest, deacon, subdeacon, or reader is not something that one “gets to do,” lording it over others. It is a position of servitude to the Church, and the positions that exist today are ones that the church has determined are needed — for instance, doorkeepers are no longer a minor order in the Church because there are no longer any restrictions on where catechumens or penitents can stand.

      The fact that some men who are ordained act like their positions are a reason for arrogance rather than for humble service is not a reason for women to wish to join them in their errors.

    • Christina, Phillippa,

      It is unsettlling-and I am not opposed to reinstating the deaconess, but not in an ordained role. The feeling of this seems all wrong. I would rather take small steps in that direction not one big one and overstep. Maybe because it’s too much it won’t go anywhere. . . .

  15. Also for anyone interested-

    Classes, lectures and retreats all focusing on iconography–

    See byzarts.com

    +Jonah is giving a lecture with Frederica Mathewes- Green in Jan.