Why de facto government (tyranny) is replacing the Constitution

Alan Keyes

In my WND column, I apply the logic of America's founders to the constitutional issue raised by Obama's refusal to defend the DOMA signed into law during the Clinton era. Like the partial-birth abortion ban from roughly the same period, the law may have been a political ploy, intended to provide cover for elitist faction politicians (Republicans and Democrats) who wanted to have a vote they could cite as proof of their support for "traditional" morality. It allowed them to do so without taking a forward position on the issue of gay marriage that would expose them to attack from the elitist forces pushing to eviscerate the God-endowed rights of the natural family.

Obama's pretended change of heart (actually, as Michael Gaynor points out, a reversion to type) signaled the launch of what is intended to be the elitist faction's decisive offensive against the natural family's God-endowed rights. This offensive is the culmination of the decades-long effort to erode the nation's allegiance to the self-evident truths upheld in the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the truth that, as the Creator of human nature, God determines the natural rights of all humanity.

By acknowledging the Creator as the arbiter of justice in human affairs, the Declaration set aside the then still prevalent claim that the de facto superiority of the powerful gave them the natural and unchallenged right to rule over all the rest. It made clear that, in God's will, power alone is not the standard of right. It articulated, for purposes of human government, the understanding that allowed each and every human being to claim the sanction of God's authority for those actions, necessary for their good and that of all humanity, which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them to undertake.

With this understanding, the Declaration emboldens the relatively weak to stand firm against abuses perpetrated by those who are relatively stronger. When the latter disparage, thwart, usurp, or despoil activities entailed by God's endowment of justice, the Declaration reminds us of the rights to which all who bear the title of humanity have equal claim. Thus emboldened by their consciousness of right, the weak may be moved to stand together, and by their common stand of righteous conscience transform their relative weakness into superior strength, sufficient to repel the abuses perpetrated against them.

In practical terms, this common stand of righteous conscience is the origin and method of governments which derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. For it represents the common impulse to righteous action, rooted in the affirmation of God's authority. That affirmation creates circumstances which make it necessary for the powerful few to take account of the will of all the rest, rather than simply imposing their own will upon others, as they are disposed to do. It allows those who are governed by conscience (their consciousness of God-endowed right) to check and constrain those who are otherwise inclined to govern without regard to God or conscience.

Readers who are willing to ponder and meditate upon this observation will inevitably realize that the moral understanding expressed in the Declaration of Independence is the sine qua non of republican self-government. Destroy the moral understanding that emboldens the people, and you destroy the motive for united action that is persistent enough to allow the people who are relatively weak to maintain the community of strength required to keep a cabal of the relatively strong from simply imposing their rule. Government by the consent of the governed (i.e., those who are governed by their consciousness of God-endowed right) constrains the rule of gangsters who would otherwise govern with no consciousness but of their own powerful will.

As I point out in my WND article, because of its power to impeach and remove officials serving in the other branches of government, the U.S. Congress is the only branch to which the Constitution gives the power to force an alteration in the composition of the other branches. Thus, when constitutional disputes arise among the branches of the U.S. government, the legislative branch is the one especially empowered to arbitrate them, but only when the community of strength from which the government derives its powers is at its peak, so that a sufficiently large majority makes impeachment and/or removal feasible.

But in the absence of a due regard for good conscience (i.e., the will to follow the God-endowed inclinations the voice of conscience articulates), the community of strength that constitutes the just powers derived from the consent of the people falls prey to the manipulation of material passion and fear. The powerful obviously have greater resources with which to undertake such manipulation. A de facto government of powers without regard to justice replaces the government of just powers derived from the consent of the governed. This fulfills the expectation expressed in William Penn's famous dictum: "Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."

It is no mere coincidence that with respect to all the most important issues of the nation's life right now, de facto government is replacing constitutional government as the order of the day. The root cause of this is exemplified by the fact that when the President refuses to enforce a law made pursuant to the Constitution, the members of Congress respond by appealing to the Supreme Court. The Constitution vests Congress with the power to discipline the President. What sense does it make for Congress to seek such disciplinary action from the Judicial branch, which has no power to act without the President's aid? The constitutional obligation to hold the President accountable for dereliction of duty clearly follows the responsibility for impeachment and removal. The U.S. Constitution gives that responsibility to Congress, not the Supreme Court.

It's disingenuous to object that there is, at present, not a sufficient majority in the U.S. Senate to remove Obama from office from his dereliction. The GOP has a sufficient majority to initiate and secure impeachment. The process of doing so would give the Republicans in the House repeated opportunities to convince voters of the gravity of Obama's offense and its grave consequences for the survival of America's constitutional, republican form of government. The interim elections would then test the effect of their efforts, giving the people the opportunity to rise in defense of the God-endowed rights of the natural family.

The GOP leadership refuses to mobilize the Constitution's provisions in this regard because they do not in fact believe that it is vital to defeat the elitist faction's assault on the natural family. More and more, the GOP elitists are joining in that assault, even though it involves openly abandoning the stand for God-endowed natural rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence. In coalition with Obama, the GOP leaders are in fact working to procure the formal, final, and complete abrogation of the Declaration's principles, and with it the de facto overthrow of America's constitutional self-government. Without a political vehicle to represent Americans determined to uphold the Declaration's God-acknowledging principles, this nefarious coalition will succeed. Such a vehicle would, like Noah's ark and the cross of Jesus Christ, signify our total reliance upon the justice, mercy, and providence of God. And in this time of its greatest spiritual peril, that reliance would be our de facto prayer, calling upon His aid on behalf of our faltering nation.