The rule of law is essential to free debate and liberty.
Obamacare begins in full January 1st, and things are heating up. There’s going to be a lot of blogs and arguments both for and against the new health care bill over the course of the next months, and there’s no sense clogging up the web with another one, but I would like to talk to readers about what the President said a few years ago in an interview with FOX news.
He said he wasn’t much interested in the process and that it really wasn’t all the important. To quote:
“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate,” Obama said.
That’s too bad Mr. President, because America is a nation of laws, and it is ALL about the process. It’s this attitude that allows illegal aliens to flow freely across our border, and abuse the power of government with the IRS and the Department of Justice. It’s this attitude of “I’m more important that you” that lets you make comments about people ‘hiding behind their guns and religion’. Your eastern intellectual liberalism is showing Mr. President.
Let me explain to you why it IS important.
Over the last few years, many of the rules of Congress have been hamstrung by rules changes, done by both the Republican and the Democrats. Rules to limit filibusters. Rules to limit the power of the minority in Congress. Rules to limit debate.
Rules like that were intended to do exactly what they do accomplish- to stymie the efforts of the controlling party to create a one sided government that would become overreaching in its authority and power. This is a GOOD thing, not a bad one. It was intended so that Congress could not change laws or the rule of law without the general consensus of most of the population that it was a good idea to do so. It was designed so that at least 60% percent of the states would have to think it was a good idea to make major changes to the law of the land. This is what the ‘process’ is all about- to protect the rights of the minority, and the rights of the people over the tyranny of the majority and of the party in power.
This nation has always been a nation of laws. We used to laugh at the small dictatorships and petty kingdoms around the world, and say ‘oh that can’t happen here’ because we are a nation of laws and rules. Rules to keep the powers of government in check. You learned about it grade school- it was called ‘check and balances’, so that even if a single party controlled all three heads of government, the minority could still bring over reaching laws to a standstill. So that the voice of a single human being could still bring an unjust law to a stop.
That’s right- the value of the individual was put in high esteem over the rights of the mob.
This is what our country is all about, Mr President; the rights of the individual. The rights of the individual over the right of government. When you talk about the unimportantance of process, you talk about the unimportantance of the individual. You talk about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the many. This is the axiom of Marxism, not of freedom.
Your comment speaks volumes about your thought process. You believe that the end justifies the means, that in the end, your precious health care bill is more important than the rights of individual liberty and the rule of law.
You’re not the first to think this way. I’m sad to report that people on both sides of the aisle in the past have thought this way, that their agenda was more important than the rule of law, and so they swept away rules and protections in doing so. That is how we get into these messes, where we get new laws enacting a major and sweeping expansion of government services, and indeed, power and control over people who, by and large, do not want it. This is how the scandals with the IRS and the DOJ got started.
As the highest officer of the law of the land you should have known that, and said to America, “We are going to do this by rule of law, and that we must respect the process our country was built upon”. But you see, that’s not in your character is it? No, you wanted socialized health care. You twisted the arms and bribed those who did not see it your way, and shamefully, many in Congress succumbed to their own greed or fears to vote your way. You bullied, you made deals, your bribed and you cajoled Congress, rather than said “Here is what we need to do and why”. You used the power of the White House in ways that would have made Nixon cringe.
Pretty soon everyone around you acted the same.
And ‘your’ way is an appropriate term, since its clear the majority of Americans, while wanting much needed health care reform, disagreed that this health care bill was best solution.
But all is not lost, because you see you aren’t smarter than the ballot box.
The health care debate will have its final word in November 2014, and then we will see how the rule of law once again will prevail over the far reaching arm of the White House.
