But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
They are all fire, and every one doth shine.
But there's one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds onto his rank,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he....”
Shakespeare placed those wordsin the mouth of Julius Caesar as the dictator arrogantly dismissed a plea topardon Publius Cimber, who had been exiled from Rome. The merits of thatrequest mattered not at all; the only issue, where Caesar was concerned, washis primacy and the need to display resolution in all things, to “show it, evenin this: That I was constant Cimber should be banished, and constant do remainto keep him so.”
Caesar, in hisown view, wasn't a servant of Rome; he was Rome. He wasn't subordinateto the law; the law was an emanation of his sovereign will. He wasself-enraptured, self-fixated, megalomaniacal – in a word, presidential.
Barack Obama rarely indulges in public displays of dictatorialarrogance. He leaves it to underlings like Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, FBI DirectorRobert Mueller, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In testimony beforeseparate congressional committees on the same day (March 7), Panetta andMueller made clear the president’s view that his power to kill people is notsubject to congressional checks or legal restraints of any kind.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretaryof Defense Leon Panetta pointedly refused to recognize that Congress, not thepresident, has the constitutional authority to commit the United Statesmilitary to war overseas. Panetta provoked outrage among conservatives byclaiming that the UN Security Council or NATO could authorize militaryintervention abroad. However, less attention was paid to the fact thatPanetta’s formulation cut Congress out of this matter entirely – a logical andpredictable extension of the Bush administration’s claim that the president, inhis role as Grand and Glorious Decider, has plenary authority to wage warwherever he chooses, against whatever target he selects.
On the same day, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked aboutHolder’s claim – made before an audience of law students at NorthwesternUniversity a few days earlier -- that the president can order the execution ofAmerican citizens without trial or due process of any kind. Mueller wasspecifically asked if that applies to Americans living at home, as well asabroad. Heartlessly ducked the question by claiming he would “have to go back” andcheck if that was addressed in administration policy.
The president has not been granted the authority to orderthe assassination of anyone, of course. Doing so is (in descending order of seriousness)an act of criminal homicide and an impeachable offense. Or at least it would beconsidered as much by anybody other than those who subscribe to the perverseidea that the president is a figure who transcends the law, who “unassailableholds onto his rank,” irrespective of the moral nature of his actions.
This was the essence of Eric Holder’s detestable claim that apresidential kill order, made in secret on the recommendation of an anonymous, unaccountable panel of underlings, satisfies the requirement of “due process.” That vilenotion was reiterated by SenateMajority Leader Reid in a March 11 CNN interview.
Correspondent Candy Crowley, after reviewing Holder’sspurious distinction between “due process” and “judicial process,” asked Reid: “Doyou understand what that means?”
“No I don’t – but I do know this – the American citizens whowere killed overseas were terrorists, and if anybody in the world deserved tobe killed, those three did,” Reid said, his eyes bright with the murderous fanaticismthat burns away all critical thought. After all, if Reid retained the capacityfor skepticism he would wonder if 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulraham Al-Awlakireally “deserved” to be murdered while enjoying a barbecue at the home of afriend.
 |
| Evangelist for the Leader Principle: Harry Reid. |
Crowley, to her credit, persisted:
“Are you slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the UnitedStates President – whoever it may be – can decide that this or that U.S.citizen living abroad is a threat to U.S. security, and kill them?”
“Well, I don’t know what the Attorney General meant by theterm – I’d have to study it,” Reid said in a moment of equivocation before thecult conditioning re-asserted itself. “But I think the process is in place, Ithink it is one … we can live with….”
“Do you think the president should be able to make thatdecision … without going to court, without going to you all, without anything?”Crowley asked in one last attempt extract a clear answer from Reid.
“There is a war going on,” Reid recited, his face drawninto a sanctimonious smirk. “There is no question about that. He is theCommander-in-Chief, and there have been guidelines set. If he follows those, Ithink he should be able to do it."
At least some of Obama’s Republican critics are genuinelyhorrified by these assertions of unrestricted presidential power; some haveeven called for Obama’s impeachment, which would be an entirely appropriatecourse of action.
It should be acknowledged, however, that with the honorableexception of Ron Paul (and perhaps Rep. Walter Jones), no congressionalRepublican who served during George W. Bush’s administration has standing tocriticize Obama’s dictatorial abuses of power. The same is true of theGOP-aligned conservative punditocracy, particularly its talk radio auxiliary. Theneo-totalitarian tendencies that took root during the reign of Bush the Dumberwere lavishly fertilized by the diaper filling emitted relentlessly by thelikes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin and the glossyherd-poisoners at Fox “News.” They cultivated the seeds from which blossomedObama’s nettlesome regime.
 |
| Bless me, Dear Leader: A True Believer prays to Obama. |
During a campaignstop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania prior to the 2004 election, Bush told theaudience: ''I trust God speaks through me.” Some of Bush’s acolytes regardedthat self-description to be too modest.
"I've votedRepublican from the very first time I could vote,'' Gary Walby, a retiredjeweler from Destin, Florida, during a campaign appearance. ''And I also wantto say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the WhiteHouse.” A New York Times Magazineaccount of that exchange records: “Bush simply said 'thank you' as a wave ofraucous applause rose from the assembled.”
Every U.S.President since the abhorrent Woodrow Wilson has used the media to create a senseof “institutionalized awe.” One illustration of the Bush administration’seffort to propagate a global Leader cult was offered by an English-language textbookused by 16-year-old Pakistani students, which contained an anonymous poementitled “The Leader.”The poem's rhyming couplets, which extolled a transcendent figure whopersonifies every virtue, formed an acrostic for “President George W. Bush”:
Patient and steady with all hemust bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.
There is no ambiguity about theorigins and intentions of “The Road We’ve Traveled,” an Obama administrationcampaign film produced by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim and narratedby Tom Hanks.
Guggenheim is the Leni Reifenstahl of the Obamaadministration – a talented artist entirely devoted to the cult of the DearLeader. His17-minute pseudo-documentary promises to be a work of unalloyedLeader-worship in which Obama is wreathed in sanctity and hisevery deed is depicted in a heroic light. The clinching evidence of Obama's divinity, as portrayed in his work of cinematic worship, was the supposed courage he displayed in ordering the summary execution of Osama bin Laden, which was a precursor to the assassination of three U.S. citizens.
When CNN host Piers Morgan asked the filmmaker, “Whatare the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?” Guggenheim replied: “Thenegative for me was that there were too many accomplishments.” The only other“negatives” he could perceive resulted from what he called the “toxicenvironment” created by those who dare oppose the Dear Leader’s infallible willand transcendently noble purposes.
The Versailles court of Louis XIV, France’s self-described“Sun King,” included hundreds of sycophants and lickspittles who shamelesslysought his favor. In his book The GreatUpheaval, historian Jay Winik has described how some of them would literally fight each other forthe privilege of "presenting the chair for his daily `natural functions'.”
Guggenheim is the sort of personwho would fight for the privilege of hauling the king’s intestinal residue,which – he would insist – emits the enchanting aroma of fresh-cut flowers.
Louis XIV’s famous self-description was “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the state”). His final pre-Revolutionsuccessor, Louis XVI, offered a similar summation of his view of the law: “C’est legal parce que je le veux” (“It’slegal because I will it”). Royal absolutism of this kind, after being refinedin the crucible of revolution, was eventually remolded into the basic tenets oftotalitarianism – a system, Lenin said, that rested on “Power without limit,resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted byrules.”
Lenin would recognize in value of Holder’s sophisticaldistinction between “due process” and “judicial process” an effort to abolish any remaining legal limits on the lethal power of the State, as incarnated in the Dear Leader. He would admire theaudacity displayed by the Obama administration (as well as its predecessor) inasserting the unlimited power of the executive to kill, torture, and imprisonpeople at whim. He would covet the instruments of mass annihilation wielded bythe executive branch, and its equally destructive apparatus of mass indoctrination.And he might even spare a moment of incredulous pity for a population that isruled by such a system while clinging to the illusion of freedom.
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Dum spiro, pugno!
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