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Promising to Protect What They Disdain
In a National Review article today, Jim Geraghty pretends to be surprised by President Biden’s lack of interest in the limits placed on his power by the Constitution: “The president begins his term by taking an oath before God and his country to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” When I read that, I chuckled reflexively and my first thought was, “No, Jim. No, he didn’t.”
We’ve spent decades teaching American children that God is not real, and America is not a good country, and neither are worthy of our sacrifices, or even our respect. Then we act surprised when someone takes an oath before God to protect the Constitution and then immediately ignores both of them, and does whatever he wants. Why would we expect anyone to uphold an oath to a phony God or an oppressive Constitution? When leftists say they mean to “fundamentally transform America,” they’re not kidding.
How can we combat this problem? By voting for people who do believe in God and who do respect our Constitution. And that worked reasonably well, until we changed our system of voting to a system that uses mail-in ballots, drop boxes, vote harvesting, counting votes behind closed doors over the course of several weeks, not requiring ID to vote, etc. As our left has become less loyal to America, and more aggressive with radical leftism, election integrity has become even more important than before. Because if the left can choose leaders who are loyal to someone other than the American people without exposing them to elections with American voters, then the game will be over. Perhaps it already is. I’m not sure.
But it’s upsetting to me that when Mr. Geraghty mentioned President Biden’s oath of office, I laughed.
It’s not that Democrats are disloyal. It’s that they’re loyal to something other than the American Constitution. At least they’re open about it now, I suppose. You have to admire Rashida Tlaib’s honesty in the picture above – she makes no effort to pretend to be loyal to America. And today, with our media, that’s not a problem. Which is a serious problem.
President Reagan generally stood in front of American flags, to remind everyone of who he was loyal to. President Obama found it necessary to pose in front of symbols of his own making. It may seem superficial, but it’s an important distinction. Because unless they take oaths to themselves, they won’t care what they’re promising.
The left views God and America with contempt. Their actions are not disloyal. They’re just trying to fix systems they view as flawed. They view their open disloyalty to flawed systems as signs of virtue, not treason.
If you think this is getting bad, just wait. They’re getting more open about their intentions all the time. Reagan wanted to be clear who he was loyal to. Now, so do Democrats – and it’s not America.
Oaths work only if the person taking the oath has some degree of integrity already, and only if he is swearing to something he has enormous respect for.
Expecting a dishonest narcissist to protect and defend what he openly disdains is not optimistic – it’s irrational.
President Biden and his fellow Democrats will do whatever they like. They will not be constrained by oaths made to the Bible or the Constitution. Obviously.
And today, with our media, that’s not a problem. Which is a serious problem.
Published in General
Reagan has been gone for a long time and I sometimes forget how long, so I don’t know where I read that the thing that surprised people was that he actually meant what he said in public. He said the same things in small groups, effectively in private. Most seemed to think he was just putting on an act to get votes from the people Obama called bitter clingers. He wasn’t.
Nor is Biden. He appears publicly to be a borderline stupid, unprincipled, avaricious, ambitious, and completely self-centered jerk. I have a feeling his private self matches his public self. If not for the CoC, I’d state what I really think.
Of all the problems you accurately listed, the voting process is the most critical. Don’t know how many states are going to duplicate the Covid ballot fraud gatherers but hopefully less corrupt today and people actually have to have signatures on a mail in ballot verified. Focus will be on Maricopa County in Arizona, Fulton in Ga. and Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Just win those three legitimately and R’s might win. Maybe a long shot.
Suppose Biden does invoke the 14th Amendment as his justification for issuing more debt that the current debt ceiling set by Congress allows. Because he does not have the right to do so, is that actually debt of the United States? In other words, why couldn’t some future administration refuse to pay these newly issued notes/bonds etc. since they were not properly issued, they do not need to be re-paid? Or for that matter, assuming a unified Congress under one party or the other, why couldn’t they hold these debts do not need to be re-paid? If I were a buyer of these bonds, I would be very concerned that the prospect of “free money” would encourage some politician to steal the bond money by saying it is not, actually, an obligation of the US. When markets begin to understand that, the rate of interest on new bonds will expand.
Can you say “Constitutional crisis?”
Good post. I had some related thoughts in my 2009 post He’s Just Not That Into Us. It is specifically about Obama, but has broader applicability.
Good post, but insufficiently cynical.
If you think this is getting bad, just wait. They’re getting more open about their intentions all the time. Reagan wanted to be clear who he was loyal to. Now, so do Democrats – and it’s not America.
Expecting a dishonest narcissist to protect and defend what he openly disdains is not optimistic – it’s irrational.
President Biden and his fellow Democrats will do whatever they like. They will not be constrained by oaths made to the Bible or the Constitution. Obviously.
And today, with our media, that’s not a problem. Which is a serious problem.
Great work , Good Doctor.
But if I might say, these words above hint at the more intractable problem – that is to say with most Democrats this dishonest narcissism and a complete approval of downright lying if it seemingly helps the Democrat position is not a problem. Buried fundamentally between the growing animosity across the now cavernous partition divide is a fundamental disagreement on the value of honesty and integrity . It is very difficult and not very wise to trust a liar.
Just remember, David French and Bill Kristol pushed Biden to “save democracy”. Biden has shredded the constitution and constantly creates discord.
Well, Democrats (and 99% of Republicans) don’t disdain the federal debt, it’s what helped get them elected. To Geraghty’s point, it seems like anything in service of the narrative is fair game, which is why we get such tortured discussions around what a commerce clause allows us to do, or not do.
So it’s fairly easy to justify doing something that’s literally outside of the Constitutional prescriptions, in service to the narrative (more gov’t is always good so let’s spend more money, and anything that stops spending is bad). What Democrats don’t like is that debt service is finally starting to crowd out the smaller slice of discretionary budget spending, so instead of reining in spending, they want to just issue themselves another credit card.
We are all fools if we think the fix comes from inside the institutions that have built this madness, and saddled us with the consequences.
Rashida Tlaib: Lipstick on a pig . . .
Cynical as I’ve become, I was shocked to read yesterday that apparently the [Democratic] governor of North Carolina unilaterally declared a “state of emergency” to try to prevent the state legislature [Republican enough that it could override a veto if all Republicans vote together] from passing school choice legislation. [I don’t understand the mechanism of how a “state of emergency” is supposed to nullify or to prevent legislative votes, but just the fact that the governor would say this is amazing.]
On the surface, that act by the governor looks like a complete repudiation of the very concept of representative government that is the foundation of the United States, and that was presumably part of the oath of office the governor declared upon being sworn in.
I’m not sure why I’m still surprised by the blatant cheating of the left.
But still – that’s astonishing…
That wasn’t kosher.
Not only that; it’s an insult to decent pigs.
Because it is against your nature so you can’t emotionally empathize.
Didn’t we just go through a lot of states of emergency? Does anyone know of a dictatorial takeover that didn’t come about through a state of emergency?
I’m thinking of Metallica’s song Sad But True . . .
Ancient cultures that took honor seriously may have had many gods but never a god of expediency. That god is who swamp weasels have in mind when they take the oath.