Obama's Lawless America

Daniel Greenfield

Obama chooses not to defend DOMA in court. His attorney general tries to deflect a congressional investigation into his office's Black Panther cover up by playing the race card. Congress passes laws which it does not read. A Federal judge rules that inaction is also a form of action. What all these have in common is that they are symptoms of a lawless society.

When most people hear "lawless society", they picture anarchy, but that's not actually the case. All societies have laws of some sort, but where a lawful society is governed by its laws, a lawless society is ruled by power. In a lawful society, the law applies to everyone. In a lawless society it does not apply to those who are in power. Obama began his term in office by setting up an infrastructure of czars to implement policies without legislative oversight. It was an ominous move, and a predictable one. And it didn't end there. In an ethical administration, the Attorney General serves as a watchmen. In Obama's Administration of 40 Thieves, he was bound to be the ringleader. The pick of Eric Holder, a key Clinton Administration Pardongate figure, meant that the attorney general would lead the cover up of any administration scandal.

Additionally new offices were created with ill defined duties to reward supporters. These new office holders jockeyed for power with established cabinet members. Corruptocracies are built like the leaning Tower of Pisa, a peak at the top and a shaky structure underneath. It wasn't long before overlapping powers led to a convoluted chain of command, with infighting and scrambled signals. The lack of law in a corrupt system leads to chaos. While the lack of law benefits the corruptocrats, it also impedes their effectiveness. A corrupt system is greedy, but ineffective. It uses law to control others, but it is not ruled by any law.

There is talk of calling another Constitutional Convention, but when the political system does not respect the existing Constitution, then the problem is not a matter of closing the legal loopholes through which entire freight trains have been driven in the night (e.g. the Commerce Clause), but to restore respect for the law. And by the law, I don't mean every single piece of confetti tape spewed out by numerous legislatures and executives at every level-- but the structure itself.

How do you remodel a house, when the management insists that it's not a house, but a tepee, a carnival, an office building, a launch pad or an apple orchard or anything that suits them at a given time. A lawful society depends on an understanding of the relationship between government and the governed. But in a lawless society, the parameters of the relationship are redefined at the whim of those who govern.

The Living Constitution is a relationship constantly being redefined not by law, but by the will of those in charge. The pretext of change has been employed to dismantle a system of laws, and replace it with rule by fiat. And now under the banner of Hope and Change, there are no more laws, only decrees. Liberal judges scrambling to justify the absurdity of the ObamaCare Mandate are forced to search for retroactive justifications for it. When the legal justifications for a bill are such a mess that a judge's defensive ruling becomes a philosophical debate about the nature of action and inaction, then we are only one step away from convening courts to judge animals, as was done in the Middle Ages.

Every defense of the mandate revolves around the unworkability of ObamaCare. For the sake of preserving it, legal novelties have to be trotted out. Liberal judges cover up for bad lawmakers with leaning towers of logic. Because congress did not use its mind, judges must claim that the government can regulate the mental activity of the public. All this in the wake of a financial crisis which went down the same way, with "too big to fail" incompetence getting covered up by people who knew better, but were determined to keep the system going anyway. Liberal pundits claim that the financial disaster is proof that we must regulate Wall Street-- but who will regulate a government that is behaving the same way?

Everyone knows the Emperor is naked. And the media won't stop throwing invisible cloaks over him. Obama has become their "Too Big to Fail", the messiah they invested everything into with nothing to show for it. And ObamaCare has become his centerpiece achievement. And if one of Clinton's judges must rule that by not buying a product you are participating in a commercial transaction, to protect that crystal chandelier of achievement, then that is what she'll do. The law be damned.

In its spare time, the media speculates how many people knew that Madoff's financial program was unworkable, when all of them know about a much bigger and much more unworkable program. And are part of the cover up for it. The reason the debate doesn't happen, is because they can't afford one. The cards are right in front of them and all they can do is keep bluffing their way through a bad hand. But they aren't alone. Both Democrats and Republicans have their own set of bad cards. Both are bluffing each other. And when the game ends, so does the country.

This wouldn't happen in a lawful system for the simple reason that lawful systems are also truthful systems. The law is a test, not just of adversarial prowess, but of functionality. But when there are laws, but no law, then the laws exist to conceal the underlying lawlessness.

Legislation is used to cover up the faults of the legislators. Two sets of books are covered up with a third. And a law forbidding anyone from even mentioning it. A crisis is dealt with by a round of fingerpointing, and the best fingerpointers get into power just in time to blow their turn at the next crisis. Crisis management becomes a test of public relations and an opportunity to loot the treasury in the name of fixing the crisis. Reforms never happen, because that would mean identifying the actual problem. And the problem is the system itself. Their system.

Both parties agree more than they disagree. The chief thing that they agree on is the need to preserve their own power, to pile new laws over old laws rather than strike at the heart of the dilemma. The big questions go unasked because they are too dangerous. Dangerous not to those who are under the law, but those who make the laws. The lawless men who make laws for all. But do not bind themselves by them.

Can we reform government is not the question. We can reform it in the same way that we can take a vandalized house, slap a little paint on it, oil the hinges, tinker with the plumbing, and then lean back and accept congratulations for a job well done. Even if it means that the house will just fall down a little later. That is the kind of reform that our politicians are very good at. But we don't need to reform government, what we must do is restore lawful government. You can only slap so many fresh coats of paint on termite ridden walls before the whole structure with its new white walls come crashing down.

The Obama Administration has set a new standard for lawlessness. Not in disobeying or disregarding, but in displaying outright unawareness of it. To the liberal legislator, the Constitution has become no more relevant than the Magna Carta. Placing limits on authority is irrational to him, as it defeats his chief notion of what the purpose of government is, to provide services and keep the people from harming themselves through their own ignorance and vulnerability. In the legal sense, they do not see themselves as public servants, but as caretakers of the public. They see themselves as no more bound by the laws they make, than parents are bound to follow the curfew they set for their children.

This is where the constant redefining of the relationship between government and the governed has brought us. To rule through a two tier system by a breed that sees itself as legislative Eloi scrambling to rein in the gun-loving and bible-keeping Morlocks. Elitist petty tyrants who assert their authority in our name, but without regard to our wishes. Their elitism justifies tyranny. Law becomes a means of reigning us in, while giving them free reign. And as in any system, where the ruled are not considered to be on par with the rulers, either morally or mentally, the laws which apply to the ruled, do not apply to the rulers.

Elitism means entitled privilege. Beneath the veneer of self-sacrifice beats the lawlessly progressive heart, always on the lookout for new layers of authority and new means of control. And the luxuries of office are justified by their self-sacrifice. To fancy yourself morally superior is to possess the right to treat others as moral inferiors. To take what is theirs in the name of your grand cause. And thus lawlessness becomes law. The relationship between government and the governed becomes that of predator and prey.

Welcome to Obama's Lawless America.