Over the Fourth of July weekend President Beijing Billy issued an
Independence Day message. Among the many ironies surrounding Clinton’s
supposedly wonderful “performance” in China, and the fawning Republican
praise it has received, I was particularly struck by the
characterization of our rights that occurred in the President’s
statement.
“We have all benefited from the wisdom of our nation’s Founders, who
crafted a blueprint for democracy that has served us well for more than
two hundred years and continues to inspire newly independent nations
around the world. We are all heirs to the rights articulated in our
Constitution and reaffirmed by courageous men and women of every
generation who have struggled to secure justice and equality for all.”
It sounds good at first, but there is a dog that isn’t barking. What
is missing?
What we actually celebrate on the Fourth of July is the document that
states the principles on the basis of which the Founders acted. It is
the Declaration which states the principles of moral justice which were
respected by the genius of the Founders in the way that the Constitution
was crafted. And yet Beijing Billy didn’t say anything about the
Declaration of Independence in his statement, implying that it is the
Constitution that we celebrate on the Fourth of July.
Now, why would he do this? Either the president is totally ignorant
of history and really thinks that we celebrate the adoption of the
Constitution on the Fourth, or he is trying to redirect Americans to
accept the view that our rights come originally from the Constitution. I
think he wants us to forget that the great document we celebrate on the
Fourth tells us that our rights come from a source higher than any
constitution or any other work of human hands, that they come from God.
And it is in light of that higher source and authority, our Creator,
that all works of human hands, including the Constitution, are to be
judged.
But this doctrine is deeply embarrassing to today’s crop of leaders
— from China to the Clinton White House and, apparently, on into the
Congress. Even our Republican politicians seem increasingly unwilling to
insist that politics is about principles and noble goals. They seem to
agree with Clinton that politics is about getting and holding on to
power. This debased love of power is characteristic of the Clinton
heart, and may be characteristic of the Clinton Era. The despots in
Beijing and their student in the White House dearly want us to forget
that our rights do not come from constitutions, but from the Hand of
God.
And fresh from an invigorating visit with the masters of the power
game in Beijing, President Clinton has apparently now decided to move
ahead with a strategy of governing on the basis of executive orders. In
direct violation of the Constitution, he is simply assuming to himself
the function reserved by the Constitution to the legislative branch.
Such government by executive order is dictatorship. When he substitutes
his own actions for the legislative process, President Clinton is
destroying the Constitution.
No wonder King Bill forgot to read us the Declaration. After all,
that document contains the following two embarrassing reasons justifying
revolution against his predecessor on the throne: “For abolishing the
free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing
therein an arbitrary government … so as to render it at once an
example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into
these colonies; For taking away our charters, abolishing our most
valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our
governments[.]”
Details of this quite conscious adoption of the strategy of open
executive tyranny can be followed in Joseph Farah’s reports here at
WorldNetDaily.com. I want to focus on the question of why the President
and his ambitious courtiers seem so confident of success. One might
expect a more vigorous resistance than the near-total Congressional
silence that has so far greeted Clinton’s ambitious plan. After all, if
the Congress doesn’t assert its prerogatives, its members of both
parties will have cooperated in the surrender of the only purpose for
which Congress exists.
We can’t keep the Republic if we allow the essential powers of the
branch of government containing our elected representatives to be
usurped. And when the President legislates by fiat, the legislative
branch of the government is effectively digested by the executive,
reducing the people’s representatives assembled in Congress to an
impotent side-show. This is the road down which Bill Clinton now
confidently plans to take us. Why would he think he can get away with
it?
Well, why would he think that he can issue an Independence Day
statement that omits mention of the Declaration of Independence?
Clinton’s swelling ambition has been fed by the many people who have
given him the impression that it doesn’t matter whether he breaks all
the rules, as long as he is popular. He thinks that even his opponents
have signaled their willingness to forget our national principles of
justice, as long as those principles are replaced with a stylish,
popular, and effective use of power. And as he basks in the vacuous
Republican praise of his shameful visit with the Chinese dictators, who
would expect him to read the signs any other way?
Like so many tyrants before him, Clinton smells the surrender of a
people tired of defending its liberty. Like tyrants of all ages, he
senses the yearning to put off the burden of freedom as the sign that a
once-proud people is tired of being wedded to principle, and is ready
for a fling. Clintonism is perhaps the uniquely sappy form that American
fascism will take in its cute, courting phase. But the moment of
complete seduction could actually be much closer than we think.
For Clinton thinks that we are all impressed now. And it must appear
to him that the Republican leaders are particularly impressed. Watching
the ease with which his impersonations of moral firmness in China have
dazzled our supposedly conservative leaders, I’m starting to think that
we have entered the era of despotic theater in American politics, when
we are to rise up with our President’s smiles and go down with his
frowns, just as if we were the servile audience of a despotic superstar.
Apparently this is the mentality that is supposed now to characterize
the American people — the slavish mentality that yearns simply to see
our glorious leader perform. Is this who we have become?
Living under the heel of a tyrant can have its moments, I suppose.
But who knows how long Newt will continue to find him “charming”? We
might receive, for now, a kind of reflected glory as we watch him lob
his thunderbolts of executive order from on high. Of course, we will
give up some things, and perhaps quite soon. We will give up the dignity
of knowing that our choices have fundamentally influenced the direction
of our life and community. We will give up the power to choose a path in
our own life that makes sense. And we will give up the right to take
moral responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our country’s
future.
But in exchange, every now and again, we will get the smile of the
tyrant, and his loving hand granting us some bureaucratic boon or other
— at least at first. Is this a deal we are willing to make?
This is the certainly the seduction that the American people face.
Bill Clinton has openly announced that he intends to slip out of the
order of Constitutional government and into something a little more
comfortable for his ambitions toward us.
And, like any good seducer, Clinton has scrupulously avoided
reminding us of the real sources of love in our life — he knows that a
deep look into the principles of the Declaration of Independence would
remind us of who we are, and teach us just what kind of man he is.
Bill Clinton’s omission of the Declaration in his Independence Day
message is a sign that he knows perfectly well what would break his
seducer’s spell. True friends of American liberty in the days to come
will oppose the Clinton power grab not only with Constitutional
argument, but also with the more fundamentally powerful appeal to the
Declaration, which teaches us that we have a duty to our Creator to
respect ourselves enough to send this base man packing before he takes
further liberties with Lady Liberty.
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