Our Constitutional Republic Has Suddenly Become a Fascist Tyranny

The other day Glenn Beck had a panel discussion, mainly about midterm elections, and polling, and related things. But in that discussion he asked the question, “Do you believe we are still living in a constitutional republic?” The answer all four gave was "No." Steve Deace added, “The social compact is broken.” 

If we’re no longer a constitutional republic, then our government has been overthrown. How did that coup happen? And when? And a whole lot of other questions. I think the answer is similar to a Hemingway quote about how you go bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We’ve been fighting against tyranny for a long time. We had the best thing going in the history of the world. And yet, almost since the beginning there have been hidden (and not-so-hidden) forces, cabals, groups, ideologies, factions that have wanted to wrest control back from the people and place it in the hands of chosen-behind-the-scenes elites.

Despite our long resistance, we are now a country in which regular citizens can be arrested for disagreeing with the ruling powers. Recently we had two examples of political arrests related to pro-life issues.

In Pennsylvania

On September 23, 2022, the FBI conducted a SWAT raid at the Philadelphia home of Mark Houck, a pro-life activist. (Epoch Times story here.) A year ago, while he was doing his usual sidewalk pro-life work, along with family, a pro-abortion escort (a person who escorts the abortion seeker inside to keep her “safe” from pro-life people) came the 100 or so feet from the facility and zeroed in on Houck’s 12-year-old son, getting in his face and yelling profanity at him. Houck, as a normal father, stepped in to protect his son. In the single shove, the 70-year-old pro-abortionist fell down. Police investigated and found no need for criminal charges. There was a civil suit, but the complainant didn’t show, and the case was dismissed. 

FBI agents arrive at a home,
photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via GettyImages, found here

A year goes by. Then suddenly the feds have 15-20 armed SWAT agents make the arrest at the home, in front of the wife and children. The charging documents—to which Houck has pled not guilty—claim Houck hit the man twice—intending to imply aggravated assault, which the facts of the case do not bear out. They also claim he violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, but if that had been so, the pro-abortionist would not have had to travel 100 feet down the street to accost Houck’s son. By the way, there was no one to escort—or block—during the altercation.

Americans should not feel safer.

In Tennessee

In Tennessee last week, Paul Vaughn was arrested at his home by FBI agents yelling and banging on the door with guns drawn. There were children in the yard, getting ready to get in the car for a ride to school, and other children in the house. Vaughn surrendered, thinking that was the quickest way to de-escalate the situation. His wife, who had been at the back of the house, took video of the officers taking her husband in their vehicle, with arms drawn on him, refusing to give a reason, show a warrant, or provide ID.

They drove Vaughn about an hour’s distance away to process him for the arrest. It took a fair amount of time for his lawyers to even ascertain what the charges were. They were concerning a pro-life sit-in that took place on March 5, 2021, a year and a half ago. Again, the were using the FACE Act law, claiming he had conspired to block the entrance to a facility.

The thing is, he wasn’t even there that day. His role was as mediator between the group and the local police. He informed the police of the planned protest and asked what the group needed to do to make sure it remained as peaceful and legal as possible. He passed the information on to the activists, telling them that they could be arrested on misdemeanor charges, which the eleven protesters decided was worth it, and is what happened. The entire thing remained peaceful. Many of the protestors were elderly and harmless. But the DOJ is now claiming Vaughn was a “conspirator”—as if a peaceful sit-in ages ago is an imminent threat of domestic terror.

They released him after processing, leaving him without a phone or wallet, and no transportation home.

The arrest of this father for a misdemeanor crime in which he did not participate should not make you feel safer.

FBI agents refuse to explain why they were 
arresting Paul Vaughn, from his wife's video

Here is the Epoch Times story, which includes the wife’s video. 

Glenn Beck gives additional details in this video. 

Coincidentally, there have been multiple attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, churches, and other places—with no charges filed. And of course no SWAT team raids.

New Executive Order to Spy on Americans

I don’t mean for this to be simply about the pro-life issue. It just happens that these two happened one week after the other. Let’s add into the mix the many political prisoners being held, charged, and prosecuted for the dangerous threat to the country of walking through the capitol building when invited in by police. Then add in a number of people who have questioned the 2020 election, such as Mike Lindell, being followed on vacation and arrested and having his phone seized. I’m forgetting the names of others they have done this too. There’s quite a list.

Now let’s add this little detail: Biden this past week quietly gave an executive order granting himself more spy powers.

Here is the executive order. 

title page of the executive order,
image from the White House website

Here’s a worrisome part:

(C) The President may authorize updates to the list of objectives in light of new national security imperatives, such as new or heightened threats to the national security of the United States, for which the President determines that bulk collection may be used.  The Director shall publicly release any updates to the list of objectives authorized by the President, unless the President determines that doing so would pose a risk to the national security of the United States.

What does this mean? The President gets to decide on new reasons for collecting this mass data on citizens. We should feel comforted that the Director of National Intelligence must immediately apprise us of any such updates—unless the President tells him not to. So, everything is at the whim of the dictator/president.

Most of the executive order deals with foreign threats, things we hope our government is staying aware of to keep us safe. It’s just that mixed in there are things like not going along with the government line on elections, for example. Or doing something to government property, which, as we can see from the Jan. 6 ridiculousness, could be construed any way they may choose.

And this executive order comes from the man who was VP during the administration that spied on candidate Donald Trump, and carried the spying over to when he was a sitting president, and used the trumped-up, paid-for fake accusations to try to remove him from office. So that’s who we’re supposed to trust to “minimize any impact on privacy and civil liberties”?

Americans should not feel safer.

Joshua Philipp discusses this on Crossroads. 

At this point we are holding out hope that the November Midterm Elections will be clean enough, so that we have one final chance to recover our constitutional republic from the fascist tyranny it has become—so gradually, and then so suddenly.

The Unconstitutional Executive Order

Unconstitutional: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Apparently the president thinks it means, "Something I'm not willing or politically ready to do at this time, but is subject to change on my whim."

There are collections of video of Obama saying, at least a couple dozen times, that acting on his own to change immigration law is unconstitutional (example below). Then, of course, he did that just last Thursday, claiming this was clearly within his power. Was he lying or misinformed before? Or is he lying and misinformed now. Since the Constitution hasn’t changed in the interim, it isn’t possible for him to be right on both sides.

 

 

There is also a chart going around comparing how many executive orders each president has enacted per year. FDR was by far the most extreme, enacting around 290 per year—for more years than any other president, to boot. George W. Bush has fewer (about 36 per year) than Reagan (about 47 per year). Obama is only slightly lower than George W. Bush, at 33-ish.

But this is the wrong question. Of course it is legal for a president to give executive orders. The purpose of an executive order is to direct the people working under him as to how to execute the laws duly enacted by Congress. Executive orders are meant to be procedural. And they must be simply a way to see to the carrying out of the laws; they cannot change the laws or create new laws.

Much has been made about the executive order by Reagan to allow for amnesty back in 1981—which was a directive on how to go about executing the decision made by the democrat-led Congress. There isn’t an issue with the legality of that executive order—although plenty of people can see that the failure to close the border as promised simply invited more of the illegal immigrant problem, rather than resolving it.

The question for last Thursday’s edict isn’t whether the president has the right to give an executive order; he does. The question isn’t whether he can act on immigration policy; he can, as Reagan did. But only as Reagan did—following the law as defined by Congress, following the Constitution.

If you have a president, say Reagan, who uses executive orders liberally but perhaps not even a single time for any purpose but directing the executive branch in how to keep the law, then you have no executive order problem. Then, suppose you have another president, say Obama, who less frequently gives executive orders but often as an edict to create law rather than to follow laws set by Congress, then each of those offenses is breaking the law. Party doesn’t matter. The policy itself—along with its efficacy or intent—doesn’t matter. The color of the president matters not a whit. What matters is the breach of the law.

The president cannot act extralegally. He cannot make law. We do not live in a monarchy, dictatorship, potentate, banana republic, or any other tyranny. We live in a constitutional republic. We have a written law granting only limited enumerated powers to the federal government, so that our God-given natural rights are not infringed.

Can a president act beyond those enumerated powers? Presidents have. This president does. But not legally. Presidents have typically gotten away with exertion of power beyond what is granted depending on their popularity. That is not the case now. This president isn’t popular. His policies are not popular. His edicts are notably unpopular. He acts in the face of those negatives.

So the next question is, How do we react, to limit the damage of his acting beyond his authority in direct conflict with the limits guaranteed in our Constitution?

The constitutionally designed response is impeachment. But, despite his lack of popularity or approval, he does have media control, so the fear in the hearts of congressmen is significant. Impeachment is time consuming, and takes a sizable measure of focused energy and political capital. It’s not going to happen when this man has only two more years in office.

So, the additional steps are to stonewall the illegal acts. Defund anything that relates to executing his orders. Targeted defunding—not just refusing to agree to a continuing resolution to keep spending as the president sees fit, as an alternative to shutting down the government. One advantage of now having a GOP Senate is that we can actually pass a budget—something the democrat-led Senate has failed to do every single year. It’s easier to target spending in an actual budget, so that’s a good thing, if the Congress will have the stomach to do their job.

Additionally, Senator Ted Cruz is suggesting that no political appointments should be approved until the president rescinds his illegal orders. He should not be empowered by sycophants who will act on his orders in contrast to law. Interesting idea. I hope it works.

There are also lawsuits. Texas Attorney General (and Governor-elect) has already filed a lawsuit based on the significant damage to the state caused by the president’s insistence on a porous border. It may be that courts can suspend the immediate enactment of any illegal order. I’m also in favor of states taking on the role of border enforcement when the federal government fails—and then find ways to charge costs to the federal government for whatever it costs each border state. I don’t think such a system has been found yet. Texas is taking money out of its own budget to defend the international border.

While mostly we’re talking today about the illegality of using an executive order to make law, we can talk briefly actual immigration policy. The answer is relatively simple, if not easy. It could already have been done by an administration serious about a solution: close the border (funding was supplied almost a decade ago, but not used for that purpose); make it impossible for illegals to work here or to get social benefits here—thus ending any incentive to come here illegally. Any costs for medical care, incarceration or deportation of illegals should be billed to the home nation that the illegals will be deported to—costs could be deducted from foreign aid, or specific tariffs on imports from those nations until debt is paid. That’s a side issue, but the intent is to stop those nations from encouraging their citizens to come here and send dollars home.

There’s no need to wait to improve the bureaucracy; make it a smooth and efficient process to come here legally. There is nothing stopping the executive branch from doing its job better immediately. Resolving bureaucratic red tape would change the dynamics of the argument from the start. There is no need for “comprehensive immigration reform” in order to improve the process.

What the president and others mean by “comprehensive immigration reform” has been, and continues to be, naturalize illegals with the intent of creating more dependent citizens who will vote democrat. While there is reason to feel sympathy for those caught up in the useless-bureaucracy-combined-with-porous-border up until now, the solution for individual cases cannot be handled until the border is secure and the bureaucracy is fully functioning.

One indicator that the president isn’t persuading the public to his way of thinking is this Saturday Night Live skit, going viral, a parody of the Schoolhouse Rock “I’m Just a Bill.” Enjoy.

 

Gun Non-Violence

As one who loves our Constitution, I have strong feelings in favor of the 2^nd Amendment. I don’t write about that issue very often, because there are many others who are more clearly laying out the issue than I can. But the onslaught since last month, along with the president’s unprecedented 23 executive order yesterday, merit some comment.

Here are the two main points:

·       The main purpose of the 2^nd Amendment is to guarantee the God-given right for individuals to protect themselves against attack—from any (Spherical Model) southern hemisphere attacker, either from the chaos side, as criminals are, or from the state tyranny side, either foreign or domestic.

·       The only purpose of an executive order is to direct federal employees in the manner in which they will enforce duly legislated laws; the executive branch does not have power to make laws for individual or all Americans.

One of the best things I’ve read in the past month is a 13-part essay by my Facebook friend Shawn Rogers. He does have a blog, with a small part there: www.sbrogerstx.blogspot.com. But to get the full essay, you’ll need to “friend” him and start reading in the last half of December 2012. One article he recommends a piece by Larry Correia, from December 20, 2012, called “An Opinion on Gun Control.” It’s a very long but worthwhile piece (18 pages, about 10,000 words). This part comes after you’ve scrolled down a ways (links are from original):

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop….

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

Unlike the DOJ (I’m referring to the Fast and Furious debacle), I am in favor of keeping guns—of any kind that will shoot even a single bullet—out of the hands of violent criminals. That is already the law. So it’s puzzling why it would take four full years before this president finally mentions to his employees that they should enforce that law.

I am also in favor of keeping guns out of the hands of the criminally insane, even if they haven’t yet committed a violent crime. But doctors are not employees or agents of the federal government, and any directive to them is an overreach. And, as with all power overreaching, the unintended consequences bring about almost exactly the opposite of the stated intended result. If people thank that simply going for treatment for a mental illness, either for themselves or for a family member, could result in forfeiting their 2^nd Amendment rights, that discourages people from seeking treatment, resulting in more untreated mentally ill.

While I appreciate having a criminal data base, so that background checks can be quick and thorough, I am against any federal database identifying law-abiding citizens who own guns. There is no Constitutional reason for such a database, but it does hold the potential of laying the groundwork for the federal government to move ahead with an incremental encroachment on our civil liberties.

I appreciate the Texas response to the president’s overreach, pointing out the hypocrisy. I also appreciated the Wyoming response, to arrest any federal agent who attempts to enforce federal gun laws in that state. A growing number of states have responded that they will nullify any attempt by the federal government to infringe on the 2^nd Amendment rights of citizens within their states. In addition, various US Congressmen, such as Rand Paul, are putting forth legislation to nullify those 23 executive orders, defund them, and press the Senate to file a court challenge to them.

Standing up against tyranny is exactly what the 2^nd Amendment is about, so that’s what I like to see.

That being said, one of the interesting things I came across this week was Glenn Beck’s suggestion on Monday that there is a better way of standing up against tyranny than shooting any federal agent that shows up to take your guns. Resist, but don’t attack. (The full video clip is below.) I’m reminded that Ghandi spent a number of years in prison, when the government was in the wrong to put him there. It may be that, before Americans have a moral right to violently respond, a number must first be willing to say no, stand firm, and suffer even wrongful incarceration, to prove the wrongfulness of the tyranny—which is something best thought of in the calmness of theory before any of us must face it in reality.

 

 

Executive Disorder

There seems to be some misunderstanding about what an executive order is. In short, it is an order by an executive to carry out (that is, execute) the duties of that role. It doesn’t sound that difficult to understand.

In the federal government, with powers carefully separated, an executive doesn’t make law, but carries out the laws set forth by acts of the legislative branch. So this week when President Obama made an executive order to offer some sort of legal status to grown children of illegal aliens, that wasn’t accurately an executive order at all; that was a law change by fiat—not a power we have granted to the executive branch.

Back in the early days of the country, one of the first orders by the executive, President George Washington, was to place an order for a set of dishes to be used at state diplomatic dinners. Diplomatic relations with foreign dignitaries was a role required of the executive branch, so it seemed reasonable. And when the funding for the order came before the legislature, which had power over the budget, Congress granted funding for the request.

Over the decades, executive orders were mostly policy statements to the various specific departments directed by the executive. These aren’t laws. They aren’t even regulations. They are policies and procedures that are intended to meet the objectives of the law.

But over the decades, particularly recent decades, Presidents have pushed the boundaries. Back in President Truman’s day, the Supreme Court pushed back. Truman tried to put all steel mills in the US under federal control. The Court saw that as making law and disallowed it. Which put future presidents on warning, and since then they have mostly cited the law they are supporting when making executive orders.

Executive orders have been used to fight wars without the formal declaration of war, but in those instances Congress has followed up with authorization. It was seen mainly as a timing issue of immediate military needs.

Problems began to mount in the last few decades when the executive branch granted power to regulatory agencies, with intrusive legal authority that never passed through Congress. One of the “causes” of executive order overuse has been contradictory laws and regulations. The US legal code is pretty convoluted—even incomprehensible to the non-legally trained public. And that leaves a lot up to interpretation. Executive orders have been used to direct policy during a particular administration, in a way saying, “While I’m in office, we’re going to interpret the law this way.” Or maybe just saying, “We’re going to focus enforcement here with limited time and resources.”

Rather than the executive branch interpreting and then picking enforcement priorities, a better solution would be to insist on clarity in the code, but we’re not likely to get that in the short run. Real arguments come when the president’s policy simply disagrees with the law, so he uses executive orders to circumvent the law or simply ignore it.

An example would be Obama’s ending the Mexico City Policy, thus authorizing taxpayer funds to be used for grants to international groups providing abortion services. That was done his first week in office. A couple of months later he removed restrictions on taxpayer funding for  embryonic stem cell research (research that, by the way, continues to produce zero successes, while non-embryonic stem-cell research continues to make headway; it’s about wanting to sacrifice embryos more than it is about advancing science.)

In the current administration “executive orders” are simply a maneuver to exert power when Congress hasn’t seen fit to grant it. There’s even a catchy name for this “program”: “We Can’t Wait.” It combines executive orders, regulatory rulemaking, and recess appointments to avoid needing Congressional approval before doing whatever Obama wants to do. Note that all the czars appointed by the president are extra-constitutional, so none of the regulations put forth by any agency headed by a czar should be given authoritative weigt. And pretending that Congress is in recess during a weekend shows “he won’t wait,” but it hardly illustrates Congress as the roadblock he claims.

Shutting down an executive order, at least in this day and age, is difficult. Congress can overrule, but requires a supermajority. Even cutting off funding is more difficult than it ought to be. And a Supreme Court ruling requires a lawsuit by someone who can show damage from the action, and time for the issue to work its way up to the Supreme Court.

So Obama orders at will, with a “what are you going to do about it?” arrogance. The quickest, simplest approach is to vote the president out of office, and toss out all his executive orders along with him.

Which means, executive orders are arbitrary and temporary—bad things when you’re dealing with a society that functions by the rule of law. As Thomas Sowell explains this week, anyone who comes forward and claims their parents are illegal aliens risks making that known when the Obama rule could disappear within the year. And who is going to hire a newly identified suddenly legal alien, putting in the training and investment needed for a new employee, if there’s a risk the next year of being charged with hiring illegals?

If the change had been through congressional debate, those questions might have been answered. The arbitrariness would have been eliminated before a rule became law. There are reasons to wait for Congress. In general, the less Congress does, the better off we are.

But Obama “can’t wait,” or maybe can’t be bothered with details like the Constitution. He prefers being an autocrat. This executive does a lot of ordering, but what he creates is disorder.