Do We Even Have A Republic Anymore?

 

The idea of a republic is that the people, through their representatives, get to make the laws that govern the country, but it appears that’s no longer a thing. What if you made a law, and no one enforced it? Is there even any point to the exercise? And if we can make all the laws we want and not have them enforced except in the limited manner that the people hired to enforce them choose, are we even a free country?

Well, it appears that our garbage elite does not think so, and it’s ecstatic about it.

Remember that dancing scroll on Saturday mornings, if you are of a certain age, and how it sang its ode to the democratic process? “I’m just a bill,” it yodeled. The whole premise is that folks we elect go through this rigorous process of review and analysis and, after much work and debate, it pumps out a bright, shiny new law. The underlying assumption is that this actually matters, that when we make a law it gets treated like a law and not a suggestion.

It’s all a lie.

Let’s just get past the sausage-making part. There is no legislative process anymore. A bunch of congressional poobahs gather in a Capitol Hill office – now behind layers of concertina because our elite fears the American people – then they decide what outrageous garbage the latest omnibus will contain, and then they trot it out to the floor for a vote before anyone can read it, much less meaningfully debate it. Bill the Bill is no longer the sleek little document of Schoolhouse Rock fame, but a bloated, diabetic fattie waddling about while taking puffs from an oxygen bottle.

Debate a bill? Are you nuts? Hell, then people might find out what’s in it.

But let’s assume we do get a law passed. And assume the president signs it. That bill becomes a law and here we are. We got a law we wanted. Yah!

So what?

Our elite has decided to take upon itself a sneaky little veto of its own and to just not enforce laws it doesn’t like, or even worse, to selectively enforce laws against its political opponents. You know, you and me.

Take immigration, please.

You know, it’s illegal for foreigners to come into our country without us inviting them. There are laws, lots of them, that say that’s not allowed. And the laws further say that illegal aliens are to be rounded up and shipped home. I took high school civics back about the time Reagan was in his first term and apparently stuff has since changed, but according to my civics class, the president is supposed to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Of course, our president is a wizened old dust puppet and if what he’s doing is faithful, then by that standard Bill Clinton is staying home playing Go Fish with Felonia Milhouse von Pantsuit instead of scamming on half-hammered cougars at his local Ruby Tuesday’s.

So now, apparently, it’s totally fine to ignore laws the elite doesn’t like even though they are laws that our representatives enacted. In the case of immigration, that means just order all the little executive branch functionaries not to function. So, suddenly, everyone from Tijuana south is heading north. Effectively, the laws our reps made have been repealed. Except you and I never got a say in that repeal. We said – and we know we did because it’s a law – that we didn’t want this. But, somehow, now it’s cool to ignore the law – that is, the manifest voice of the citizens – and instead effectively make a new and different law without all the hassle of asking us what we think.

This kind of changes the nature of America, doesn’t it?

Oh, these defenders o’ democracy won’t put it like that, even though it is exactly like that. Remember, they always have an excuse when they breach a norm. Just like book banning and speech suppression – see, they are fine in this case because the Suess being suppressed or the people being gagged are bad. So, it’s fine.

In the case of undermining the entire premise of a democratic republic, the excuse is that they aren’t changing the law but exercising “discretion,” as if Founders thought it would be a genius move to allow the people we hire to run things have the discretion to completely ignore us and consistently do the exact opposite of the law our representatives passed. Or the elite just doesn’t like what we decided, and since we’re knuckle-dragging Jesus gun people who don’t understand how there are 643 genders, we have no moral right to self-determination. It’s easy to ignore the demand of the citizens if you effectively make them non-citizens.

Welcome to America 2021, a nation that drives its legitimacy, to the extent it retains any, by acting with the consent of the governors. There are a lot of ways to describe a country where the powerful make political decisions without the input or consent of the governed, but “democratic” is not one of them.

“Democrat” is, though. For all their endless, tiresome political voguing about Muh Democracy in theory, they sure don’t seem to like it much in practice. And that’s a problem, because why should any of us respect, obey or otherwise defer to a government that Nadlers on the governed?

Are you a bit perturbed that the law changes without you getting a say? I am. I find it vexing, so very vexing, not least of all because I swore to defend the Constitution and did so for 27 years and it might as well have been written on Charmin.

And it gets worse. 

Sometimes the law gets enforced selectively. And guess who they select to apply it to? Comey and McCabe are running around getting paid though they treated the law like a Scat Francisco hobo treats the sidewalk. But the feds can’t apply the law hard enough against the Trump folks. The Antifa and BLM scumbags got their charges dropped but the Capitol Hill folks – who we now know our media and political betters lied about when they called them murderers – are getting the whole library thrown at them.

Look at all the fascist “campaign finance laws” the Democrats are trying to pass. Oh, they’ll get enforced – against us. There is 0% chance they will ever get enforced against other Dems.

So, do we even live in a Republic anymore? We don’t get to make our own laws. Our betters effectively make them for us. What is written in the United States Code means nothing if it is not enforced, and we don’t get to have laws we like enforced. It sounds like we are now something, but a “citizen” is not it. 

One thing is for certain, though. This is not sustainable. And the elite seems to sense this can’t go on without a massive backlash, judging from how they cower from the American people behind soldiers and barbed wire. If you break the social contract with red America, if you decide to withdraw from the Constitution, you better be prepared to find someone else to feed, fuel, and fight for your regime. Count us out.

Do We Even Have A Republic Anymore? by Kurt Schlichter (townhall.com)