The Crits, Obama, and our Constituition

Have you ever had a new boss who, excited about his own newly-acquired authority, decided every thing your company did for years wasn’t the way he would have done it, so he started to implement changes?

I have.  The guy was fresh out of college, and it was a relatively small company.  Our group of employees were tight-knit, we found a rhythm that worked, we were proud of our successes, and worked together on solutions to problems.  I remember one of the ladies used to get visibly upset when the new boss told her that she was going to have to change the way she did things, because, he suggested, she was not doing them the right way.

But the truth was, he didn’t like the way she did it.  Her way was not overly time-consuming, it got the job done, and it made sense to her.  That was not good enough for the new boss, and after a while he seemed to delight in antagonizing her, using her as an example of how not to react to him.  Little snide remarks about her organization, asking if she was able to get certain tasks done without ‘messing things up’ and being ‘backwards.’  It was humiliating for her, and soon her job, which she used to love to come to, became a prison.

I think of her when I watch this President.  Under his newly acquired ‘authority’ he belittles America in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  And his way is not better, it is more costly, and it takes away your autonomy.

It is a difference in managerial philosophy, that also pervades the personality and training of the person in charge.  It is a leadership style, and there is a drastic difference in the morale of the employees, and in the case of this President, the people.

America was founded upon the rights of the individual.  I’ve always thought about that, and I carried it over to business.  I didn’t care how people decided to get done what they needed to do for the day, as long as it was done, and done well.  I took it as a compliment when someone told me she liked my style, that I, “treated her as an adult, not a child.”  And that is the central theme to America’s founding, is it not?  Are we to be treated as if we do not have the ability to make decisions for ourselves?  Is there some reason why, other than because the boss doesn’t like the way I do things, that I cannot be allowed to try?  If in fact, I were a child and did not know better, I could understand that I would need guidance, but since I am an adult, am I not free to choose?  My natural reaction to this President’s authoritarian attitude have centered around  feelings of ‘who do you think you are?’ and ‘I left my father’s home 20 years ago.’

I didn’t know in 2009, when I wrote those thoughts on forums, that they were actually written about over 200 years ago.  Alexis de Tocqueville described a nation in which the civil society collapses, in Democracy in America,

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.

I looked the quote up from Ameritopia-The Unmaking of America, by Mark Levin, because I remembered that passage meant something.  The observations by Tocqueville in 1840 predicted the nation as it is today.  If you are struggling with understanding how great our founding was, and want more information in a short, easily understandable book, read my review of Ameritopia and go out and get it.

So when CBS ran a segment on getting rid of the Constitution, I read the transcript, and looked up the tin-foil hat constitutional law professor.

Louis Michael Seidman is a constitutional law professor from Georgetown, “ a widely read constitutional law scholar and major proponent of the critical legal studies movement.”

The Critical Legal Studies movement was started in the 1970′s to, among other goals, use legal argument to cause social justice, under the theory that laws created under the American Founding were unjust, out dated, and offered to serve the few rather than the many.  Crits contend that the law is politics, and politics is the law, meaning that whatever the whim of the party in power shall be law, and through concerted effort in institutionalizing social justice,  can one day weld law and politics together.

Under the knowledge gained by taking his courses, thousands of under-educated youth can parrot his beliefs.

Seidman said during his segment on CBS, “I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it’s really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie.”

By stating so nonchalantly that ignoring, or worse, working against the Constitution, is being an American, he shows how deliriously ignorant he is of the genius of the founding.  He went on to say, “We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.”

First, the founding of America does not rely on the country as it existed back then, it relied on the laws of nature and nature’s God.  This insignificant law professor is saying that a government based upon the free will and natural rights of the individuals within it is not timeless.

You cannot seriously, with frank honesty expect me to accept this Crit theory as anything more but an attempt to go further back than the founding of this nation, into the abyss of serfdom and darkness.  However, this is not just one law professor in one school.  Crit theory, although a widely unorganized movement, touched our President, and it is clear to any honest observer that he is putting the theory into law.

‘Law is politics, politics is law.’

To illustrate further, take the ruling just handed down by the D.C. Circuit on the recess appointments to the NLRB.  Yes, my friend Mark Levin was involved in that case too, in which the Court accepted Landmark Legal’s argument that Obama acted unconstitutionally.

As a result of a lawsuit filed against Obama, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reprimanded Obama by saying he did not have the power to make the three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board because the Senate was indeed technically in session and not in recess, which is a prerequisite for legitimate recess appointments.

So, what does the administration have to say to that?

MR. CARNEY:….But the decision is novel and unprecedented.

QUESTION: Jay, following up on that question, what — without going through next steps if you don’t want to talk about that — what does this mean for you guys? What does it mean for the NLRB appointments? And what does it mean for other recess appointments like Richard Cordray?

MR. CARNEY: Well, the case that was — the decision that was put forward today had to do with one case, one company, one court. It does not have any impact, as I think the NLRB has already put out, on their operations or functions, or on the board itself. It has no bearing on Richard Cordray. And we, as I said, strongly disagree with it.

Many translate that response as, “The King does not agree,” and they don’t plan on obliging that particular court.  But it really goes along with Critical Legal Theory, law is politics.  The rule of law means nothing, the Constitutional argument found within the Constitution is whatever the party in power says it is.

The fact is, our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence were magnificent, in that limited government was the only way a human being could be free.  Free to choose for ourselves what life we would live.  If the nation gives up on the Constitution, powerful men, such as Obama will decide everything you do, how to do it, the laws and punishments for stepping out of his perceived ‘proper’ way of doing things.  Not to mention, that if you are perceived to have been given some advantage by birth over the perceived disadvantage of another, you will be disadvantaged by a law given by your new ruler.

The founding documents stand for the belief in ourselves to do good.  Just as the new boss could not allow my co-worker to do her own thing, to use the process that most made sense to her to finish her tasks, this theory of existence by Seidman is just as extreme.

Tocqueville goes on to describe the reaction of the people under the collapse of society,

It is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the troubles of living?

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting; such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I declare that no man has the power to subordinate my freedom to his rule.  My co-worker could have quit, rather than try to stay in her job with the snide boss, but he moved on to bigger and better things, like most unqualified jerks.