The president’s men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
Andrew P. Napolitano
The Washington Times
5/23/2013
A few weeks ago, President Obama advised graduates at Ohio State University that they need not listen to voices warning about tyranny around the corner, because we have self-government in America. He argued that self-government is in and of itself an adequate safeguard against tyranny, because voters can be counted upon to elect democrats (with a lowercase “d”), not tyrants. His argument defies logic and 20th-century history. It reveals an ignorance of the tyranny of the majority, which thinks it can write any law, regulate any behavior, alter any procedure and tax any event so long as it can get away with it.
History has shown that the majority will not permit any higher law, logic or value — such as fidelity to the natural law, a belief in the primacy of the individual or an acceptance of the supremacy of the Constitution — that prevents it from doing as it wishes.
Under Mr. Obama’s watch, the majority has, by active vote or refusal to interfere, killed hundreds of innocents — including four Americans — by drone; permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants; bombed Libya into tribal lawlessness without a declaration of war so that a mob there killed our ambassador with impunity; attempted to force the Roman Catholic Church to purchase insurance policies that cover artificial birth control, euthanasia and abortion; ordered your doctor to ask you whether you own guns; used the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate outspoken conservatives; seized the telephone records of newspaper reporters without lawful authority and in violation of court rules; and obtained a search warrant against one of my Fox News Channel colleagues by misrepresenting his true status to a federal judge…
…The reason we have the due-process safeguards imposed upon the government by the Constitution is to keep tyranny from lurking anywhere here, much less around the corner. Due process is the intentionally created obstacle to government procedural shortcuts, which, if disregarded, will invite tyranny to knock at the front door and sneak in through the back. Justice Felix Frankfurter warned of this 70 years ago when he wrote, “The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.” That was true then, and it is true now.
Do you expect the Department of Justice to cut constitutional corners against you?
The complete article is at The Washington Times.
