Our Elective Despotism

American Thinker

by: Lawrence Sellin

There  are many things obvious to ordinary Americans that cannot be mentioned publicly  in the polite political company of the Republican and Democratic establishments  or among their press agents in the mainstream media, who obligingly pirouette  around the truth.

For  example, both the Republican and Democratic establishments are composed of  hopelessly corrupt, procrastinating control freaks, who seek fame and fortune  through over-spending money they didn’t earn and enthusiastically crushing any  spontaneous outbreaks of democracy among U.S. citizens, for example, the Tea  Party.

Thomas  Jefferson warned us of the danger of “elective despotism:”

“They  should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in  this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the  heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when  they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human  nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced  by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before  they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the  fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have  entered.”

Unfortunately,  the wolf is already in the fold.

Taking  the rhetoric up a notch from Jefferson, Israeli historian J. L. Talmon coined  the term “totalitarian democracy,” a political system in which lawfully elected  representatives rule a nation state whose citizens, although granted the right  to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of  government.

If  you do not think the United States has become an elective despotism, think  again.

One  of the most honest and courageous members of Congress in decades, Rep. Allen  West (R-FL), is about to become a sacrificial lamb of the collusion between the  Republican and Democratic establishments in the state of  Florida.

And  what is West’s crime? He is an independent thinker and a rising star of the Tea  Party movement.

The  Republican establishment hates the Tea Party because it has the audacity to  suggest that American citizens should have a voice in their  government.

Led  by Mitt Romney’s spokesman, Representative Will Weatherford, the Republican  legislature in Florida is about to push through a re-districting plan, which would redraw the boundaries of Allen West’s  22nd Congressional District to include far more registered Democrats and put  West at an even larger disadvantage than he was previously.

Under  elective despotism, the government is transformed from one based on traditional  values, articles of faith and the support of individual liberty into one in  which social utility and political expediency take absolute  precedence.

Having  no allegiance to the principles upon which America was founded, Barack Obama,  aided and abetted by the political establishments and the mainstream media, is  in the process of dismantling our Constitution and fulfilling his promise to  radically transform the country.

In  his State of the Union address, President Obama did not present a plan for  restoring America, he left a suicide note.  Obama, the Democrats and their  allies in the mainstream media are in the final stages of a self-destruct  sequence, while the Republican establishment passively sits by America’s  deathbed watching President Kevorkian deliver the poison.

Mitt  Romney, the chosen one intended to bring balance to the Republican Force, touts  his business experience as a credential for the presidency. Unfortunately,  political, not business decisions are made in Washington, D.C., and those  decisions are no longer constrained by the Constitution and the rule of  law.

It  is corruption of our political system, not just financial corruption that is the  single, most important issue of the 2012 election.

The  arrogance of political establishment has only gotten more brazen since 1993,  when Lewis H. Lapham (“A Wish for Kings”) wrote:

“The  politicians dress up the deals in the language of law or policy, but they’re in  the business of brokering the tax  revenue, and what keeps them in office is not their talent for oratory but their  skill at redistributing the national income in a way that rewards their clients,  patrons, friends and campaign contributors.”

Examples  of the corrupt status quo:

–  More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are  millionaires.

–  The median wealth of a U.S. Senator in 2009 was 2.38 million  dollars.

–  Insider trading is legal for members of the U.S. Congress — and they refuse to  pass a law that would change that.

–  The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the  percentage of millionaires in the general population.

Regarding  the crisis of our current national debt, put simply, unconstrained spending by  the government is the product of unconstrained corruption in the  government.

Here  is another political heresy: the emperor has no college  records.

Yes,  I have the temerity to believe that Barack Hussein Obama should be thoroughly  vetted before the 2012 election.

We  know far more details about Gingrich’s marriages, Romney’s mutual funds, Paul’s prehistoric newsletters and the voting  block made up of Santorum’s children than a bare minimum of facts that we need  to know about the current Occupier of the Oval Office.

The  time has come for the American people to commit political blasphemy by showing a  healthy irreverence towards the political establishment and the status  quo.

“Cowardice  asks the question ‘Is it safe?’  Expediency asks the question ‘Is it  politic?’  But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’  And there  comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic,  nor popular, but because conscience tells one it is right.”-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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