It’s the best way to bring about a kindly form of liberal fascism, you see. And if representative government gets in the way, well, the answer is to bracket representative government in order to remove that particular impediment to statist Utopia.
It is, after all, for our own good — and if the voters keep voting wrong, what choice is left us, really?
Roll Call, “Allies Urge Barack Obama to Go It Alone on Causes”:
Important parts of President Barack Obama’s political coalition — Hispanics, the gay and lesbian community, and women — are looking to the White House to act on its own via executive order given that their issues are going nowhere in Congress.
The White House so far has resisted executive orders on the DREAM Act and discrimination by federal contractors as it continues, publicly at least, to push for legislation that appears doomed.
But Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill suggest it’s time to reconsider that cautious approach — and they say the White House is taking another look.
“You’d have to say that the last year and a half of tea party dominance in the House has been a very unproductive period, and they’ve been unwilling to take and even consider some of these issues, so I can understand the frustration of many people on the outside and the dilemma facing the White House,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “I wouldn’t rule it out. … The president needs to consider taking action by executive order when Congress will not respond to a major national challenge.”
Allow me to quickly and efficiently parse this language: special interest identity groups who can’t get their preferential legislation past the representatives put in place by voters are going to attempt to leverage their support for Obama into Executive Orders that will effectively circumvent voter will and impose — tyrannically, fascistically — special interest legislation on the rest of us.
Because that “tea party dominance,” you see, isn’t an expression of the voter’s will but is rather an illegitimate impediment to whatever “major national challenge” the left asserts; it follows, then, that in order to implement the policies a recalcitrant Congress won’t allow — that is, Congress is blocking what is on its face morally demanded, supported as it is by the righteous left, whose very goodness is guaranteed by its political designation, and whose legislative desires are therefore de facto good, coming as they do from those whose political designation marks them as good and moral — the President is left with no choice but to get his King on and simply decree that laws that can’t pass Congress will be implemented on his own executive authority.
Don’t blame him, though: the Framers really did fuck up by setting up such an adversarial system — and honestly, what’s a well-intentioned leftist to do when the rubes won’t vote in their own best interests?
Several liberal lawmakers […] say Obama would help his constituencies by acting more on his own.
“Slow isn’t working,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), a liberal who has long complained of a too-cautious White House. “These groups need to know that there is support for them. The time for not ruffling feathers is past. It’s not worked. It’s time to ruffle feathers and show the people that support this White House that he supports them.”
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “We would far prefer that they move forward and vindicate people’s rights as soon as possible.” He noted that when Obama came out for marriage equality, it helped, not hurt, and that his base would like to see more.
“You can have tepid support or you can have enthusiastic support, and we can use all we can,” Ellison said.
It’s not a question of progressives voting for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, it’s a question of them voting at all, advocates of a more aggressive White House said.
In other words, we worked hard to elect a friendly fascist, and we expect him to act like one. Or else we can’t guarantee voter turnout.
— Or, if you prefer, “that’s a nice Oval Office you got there Mr President. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
But don’t worry: if the left pushes through by fiat what it can’t pass through the people’s representatives, it’s only because they are standing athwart the backward mob yelling “civil rights!” That’s what good men do.
And really, who doesn‘t want to allow for civil rights?
Racists. Or homophobes. Or xenophobes. That’s who.
– Or, if you prefer, “that’s a nice Oval Office you got there Mr President. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
Louis Farrakhan pointed out that when Malcolm X betrayed them, they dealt with him in their own way, without cracka getting involved. So maybe Obama needs to watch his flank.
His left flank.
“. . . a new status quo . . . ”
It will be pleasing to give the Democrats novel lessons on the meaning of status quo [ante], how hope and change can reflect interesting evolution on such sempiternal visions in heretofore unimagined ways. Brace for it, throwbacks!
This is the point in The Road to Serfdom where the planners call for a strong man.
I don’t have a fully formed thought here but I’m going to toss it out there anyway.
These legislators arguing against their own power is surreal. Group ideology trumping individual interest.
This isn’t what you’d predict from public choice theory or competitors jealously guarding their power as envisioned in the Federalist Papers.
So, is this direct evidence of a complete corruption of the American experiment or is it that this is how dead-enders act before they’re swept away?
“So, is this direct evidence of a complete corruption of the American experiment or is it that this is how dead-enders act before they’re swept away?”
Damned good question bh. Really good. We should think about it.
against their power are surreal
Harry Reid has been acting to cancel the Senate altogether. I guess there’s big payoff in the end. We just aren’t privy to what it is.
Just throwing thoughts out to that end, without having thoroughly churned them yet, and in this instance keying off your fortunate repetition/correction, perhaps we might say they find the powers they have insufficient to the powers they desire?
I shall ponder it over a burrito, sdferr.
And, yeah, Jeff, the stuff we’re not privy to makes it quite a bit harder to figure out.
Thinking on that formulation however [“powers they have insufficient etc”] would seem to indicate the original design had achieved its purpose, hence the idea of a “complete corruption” would be contradicted. If the formulation holds, the designed constraints, that is, seem to retain their strength insofar as the powers granted aren’t of themselves equal to the powers desired, indeed, keep getting in the way of the attainment of the desired. So we’d be left with indications more about the persons doing the desiring, or their character, than with the design, if we’re to seek a burden of fault or causation.
But perhaps there is more wrong with the formulation than I see.
Have to admit Limbaugh’s epithetical phrase for Queen Barry is good. COTUS used to stand for Constitution of the United States. Now it stands for Celebrity of the United States.
? ooh ooh ooh…we’ve gotchyo’ back…?
“I wouldn’t rule it out. … The president needs to consider taking action by executive order when Congress will not respond to a major national challenge.”
Now, if a Republican had said this about a Republican president…
On the other hand, this may in the future be said with respect to a Romney presidency, should he decide to establish some new monstrous bureaucracy like Bush did with the DHS, and neanderthal conservatives in the House refuse to play nicely.
Remember, though, it’s not Tyranny. They’re just forcing us to understand.
It’s not surreal at all. The unstated premise of such an assumption is that they care about the legislature –as such.–
They don’t. It’s a ceremonial club for the privileged, distressingly like the Senate in the later Western Empire. So long as they have their riches and access to the ear of the Emperor, it’s all good.
Cicero wept.
Obama’s allies want him to be more like that cowboy, Bush?!?
Imagine that!
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)… noted that when Obama came out for marriage equality, it helped, not hurt, and that his base would like to see more.
Keith, that darkness around you is the oblivion inside your own colon. Remove your head.
Obama received 95 percent of the support from African-Americans in North Carolina in the 2008 election, compared with just 5 percent for Republican nominee John McCain.
In PPP’s May (2012) poll, Obama received 87 percent of the African-American vote to Romney’s 11 percent.
All of Obama’s numbers with African-Americans are sliding. His approval rating is down from 86 percent to 77 percent. Romney’s favorability, meanwhile, has doubled from 9 percent to 18 percent.
http://bit.ly/KFt7xF
Ellison meant his white progressive base, George.
C’mon man, everybody knows even black Democrats take the black vote for granted.
Ellison meant his white progressive base, George.
Yes. I forgot for a moment that Obama is a white black, like George Zimmerman is a white hispanic. So he’s just pandering to his white half. He is now pandering to his black half with that latest campaign spot, “We’ve got your back.” The one that has a soundtrack like a blaxploitation softcore film from the seventies.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is a Muslim. How does he square that circle or is he hinting at his apostasy?
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is a Muslim. How does he square that circle or is he hinting at his apostasy?
His god is not named Allah, but Leviathan.
Yes. Corruption and decadence.
The current phrase for our moribund republic’s form seems to be “clientelism.” Plain and simple, gubmint run by factions devoted to stealing from others to give to the voting clients of those factions holding power.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
? Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexander Fraser Tytler, probably.
Or is it both? It’s definitely the former and I sure hope it’s the latter too.
Yes, I might have posed a false choice, Ernst.
What do you think de Tocqueville would make of Wisconsin voting against raiding the treasury (along with other similar movements across the land) or the public’s desire to see Obamacare repealed, George? What do we make of former Soviet clients moving smartly in the opposite direction? What do we make of the Latin American Chicago Boys?
Further, how is this notion of inevitability different than Marxist historicism?
No fate but what we make.
SMOD laughs at your pathetic belief in self-determination, like one laughs at the antics of a toddling child.
I guess I’m not sure why we’re here discussing these things at all rather than just eating, drinking, and being merry if there’s a predetermined outcome.
OT: Why are we buying arms from the filthy Ruskies? The same arms (“attack helicopters”) that are being sold to Assad. Boeing can’t build an attack helicopter if we need them?
Where the hell’d you hear that leigh?
I thought the helicopters were purchased to give to Afghanistan, but who knows why? Is is just because it’s cheaper to supply them with what they’re already used to driving or something like that?
Keith, that darkness around you is the oblivion inside your own colon. Remove your head.
George Orwell wins the thread.
We’re buying them for the Afghan Air Force in the hopes that they’ll be able to maintain them.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/pentagon-devil-helos/
They’re much less complicated than ours and they’re familiar.
The one that has a soundtrack like a blaxploitation softcore film from the seventies.
Known primarily by the funk-ay waka-chicka, long may it wave.
That makes as much sense as buying them up so that the Assads of the world can’t buy them (think urban gun “buyback” programs) I guess.
They’re much less complicated than ours and they’re familiar.
Thanks, Pablo and all.
Ernst, Hillary was on teevee accusing the Russians of selling these helicopters to the Syrians. She is a very muddled speaker and said something about us selling these same helicopters to Afghanistan. My question was about us being an arms broker of foreign made goods. I guess I misunderstood what she was garbling.
No point in giving the Chinese an Apache to reverse engineer. Make ’em steal one the old-fashioned way, I says.
That too, Ernst.
If Etch-A-Sketch were to pledge, with his name signed in blood, that upon taking office as president he would rescind every single EO issued since January 20, 2009 — that would force me to give my wife permission to vote for him in November.
Not that she would refrain from it if I withheld permission, but…
Add a “No more Tsars” clause in there and I’ll feel better when my husband votes for him.
You’re a couple of cheap dates.
A largish segment of the population coming to the realization that federal fantasy financing is killing the economy = TEA Party dominance
For all the credit taken by Clinton and Newt for running a few years of surpluses, it’s useful to recall that none of that would have ever happened if there was not a strong general consensus among the voting population at the time that enough was enough with the deficits. As soon as we stopped paying attention, they went right back to taxing the unrepresented.
Breaking: No new trial for John Edwards.
Here’s some of that prog direct action: Name names you evil health-profiteers.
Okay, okay. He’ll also have to bring me a beer and a sandwich.
I can make myself a better sandwich. He can paint my house.