Obama Agonistes

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published a political novel about a charismatic presidential candidate, Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, with a gift of “orgasmic oratory” who runs on a populist/socialist platform and who promises to lead the country out of its current economic crisis if elected – which he is.

''I want to stand up on my hind legs,'' he writes in Zero Hour, his widely read pre-election book, ''and not just admit but frankly holler right out that...we've got to change our system a lot, maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally, not by violence)....The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by dumb shyster lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates.''

Once in office, Windrip appoints his friends to high offices, his economic policies are a disaster, his numbers don’t add up, and his Supreme Court appointees are “surprisingly unknown lawyers.” He convinces Americans that a crisis is brewing in which “powerful and secret enemies of American principles” threaten their freedom and that they should “bear with him” as he deals with the crisis.

He demands that Congress amend the Constitution to give him “complete control of legislation and execution,” which Congress refuses to do, whereupon Windrip declares that a state of martial law exists during the “present crisis” and he orders the arrest of more than a hundred Congressmen. Step by step, President Windrip establishes himself with dictatorial power,

Lewis’ tale seems so far-fetched that we would say it can’t happen here, which happens to be the title of the book – It Can’t Happen Here.

Or could it, maybe in a different way?

A little-known bill, the benignly named “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act,” is being rushed through Congress which would put a kill switch in Obama’s hand if he declares a “national cyber-emergency.” At his sole discretion, Obama could disconnect private-sector computers, Internet service providers, and search engines from the web for up to 30 days.

Let’s think the worst, which is a good starting point when the federal government is involved. Critics of the bill say it is so broadly worded that Obama could use it for political purposes and to plug whistle-blowing websites like WikiLeaks. Recent crises show the Obama White House will push the Constitutional envelop in using executive power. What’s to prevent our thin-skinned president from silencing cyberspace criticism if this bill becomes law? We could be confronting the biggest threat to First Amendment rights since the Republic began.

After a year of study, the Obama FTC is recommending new taxes to help the struggling newspaper industry in the Internet age. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the print media is favorably disposed to Obama and the Democrats, whereas the Internet hosts bloviating bloggers (like me) who aren’t so friendly to them, would it? The FTC would like cell phone users to contribute 3% of their monthly cell phone bills and tax 5% of the purchases of computers, iPads and Kindles to help support newspapers and traditional journalism. Oh, and while they are at it, the Obama FTC wants to tax websites, like Drudge, because they get their headline links from the fossilizing print media. Is there a constitutional imprimatur for one free speech medium to subsidize a competitive medium?

George Bush’s unconstitutional $168 billion invasion of our private enterprise system got the Republicans so thoroughly thrown out of Congress that the survivors were too impotent in number to halt the $862 billion equally unconstitutional invasion launched by the Democrats. The Obama stimulus was supposed to keep unemployment below 8%. It is now 9.9% and has been above 10%. Not enough stimulus, says Obama, and asks for another $200 billion under the laughably titled “American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act.” By reckless spending, Obama is shaping the lives of future generations – long after he is out of power as the chief executive.

By what constitutional authority did Obama fire the CEO of a private company – General Motors?

By what constitutional authority did Obama expropriate $20 billion from the shareholders of a foreign corporation – a matter that was indisputably in the purview of the American civil justice system? I’m not an apologist for British Petroleum or the other owners of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Their property damaged our property and they must set things as right as they can be set. But in a constitutional democracy there is a right way and lots of wrong ways to do things. Obama chose the wrong way. Was it to show that he was a tough guy or was it a brazen revelation of his ideology?

During the visit of Mexican President Calderón, Obama not only stood by as a foreign head of state criticized Arizona’s new immigration law, but also he agreed with him. Obama frequently forgets that he was elected to represent America to the rest of the world, and the belief that, paraphrasing the post-revolutionary naval hero, Stephen Decatur, “My country right or wrong, but my country” seems to stick in his craw. The Obama White House has now confirmed that it will sue Arizona for passing a law that is a clone of the unenforced federal immigration law. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this week found that 58% of Americans support the Arizona measure, and 42% do so strongly. A Rasmussen poll shows 56% oppose the DOJ challenge while only 26% favor it. For whose benefit and on whose behalf is this federal lawsuit being filed?

When Obama was elected to bring “hope and change,” our country was strangling on Chicken Little economic hysterics and unemployment. Rather than focus on this, Obama tried to make the case that the real crisis was healthcare, squandering a year to force through an unpopular hijacking of the American healthcare system, a provision of which is a mandate that obligates free citizens to use their private funds to buy a product some are disinclined to buy. What language in the Constitution empowers the government to require this?

In Tuesday night’s oil spill speech, Obama chose the Oval Office for the first time since taking office. It has historically been the venue from which presidents make their most solemn pronouncements. Reagan used it to deliver his “touch the face of God” speech following the Challenger accident, Bush used it on the evening of the 9/11 attacks, and Nixon used it to announce his resignation – his 37th Oval Office speech.

Obama has a propensity to characterize certain events as a “crisis” in order to leverage his transformation of America into statist socialism, and his Tuesday night speech was no exception. His language was salted with martial synonyms descriptive of the struggle he sees himself called to lead – Obama Agonistes, Obama the Struggler. He spoke of “the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores” and promised that "we will fight this spill with everything we’ve got.” Warning that “there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done” he proceeded to “lay out for you what our battle plan is.”

Free societies are messy disorganized things. People are busy with their own lives, pursuing their own agendas, investing themselves in things that are important to them. The Struggler wants to change society because, in his view, the current status quo isn’t right. His task is to get citizens on a war footing, to support his vision for replacing their messy disorganized society with the superior society he has in mind, and – most importantly – the Struggler has to restrict their freedom to resist his purpose.

Too harsh? Paranoid maybe?

Let’s look at his oil spill speech. Of its almost 2,700 words, fully one-third of them – the final third – were devoted to his stalled cap and trade agenda. The “logic” or his argument was structured as a deductive syllogism intended to lead the audience from fact to fact to the “logical” conclusion that we should stop dithering and embrace “green”, to wit: “… this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” AND “… for decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered … we have talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels … we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires” THEREFORE “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.”

There isn’t space here to anatomize Obama’s specious argument, but the assertion that the days of cheap oil are numbered is conditionally false and his assertion that “… we consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water” is patently false. There are 23 million acres in Alaska that the federal government has declared off limits and we have one of the longest coastlines of any country in the world. We have enough fossil fuel reserves to supply all of our needs for 200 years but environmentalists prevent access to them.

Images of the Deepwater Horizon spill will remain on TV screens for months. Rahm Emanuel’s infamous advice, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste – and what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before” has been served up in gift wrap. The spill will mobilize Obama’s congressional troopers and provide cover for them to ram through yet another costly and unpopular intrusion into the lives of Americans. A Harvard University study says the price of Obama’s ‘’green agenda” will be $7/gallon gas. Minority House Leader John Boehner revealed this week that the White House has told the Senate to resume work on the stalled cap and trade bill after the July 4 break and to be prepared to conference the bill in a lame duck session after the midterm elections. That means regardless of the gains Republicans may make in November, Democrats who lose their seats this fall will have one more chance to create Obama’s brave new world.

It can’t happen here? Well, it seems to be.