Under what Power can a politician even have the HUBRIS to say they get to define what is our national soul? Certainly, not Biden (emphasis mine):
Last night, the same president who almost exactly a year ago disgracefully abandoned 14,000 Americans and tens of thousands of our allies to the Taliban decided to lecture the US on “the continued battle for the soul of the nation.”
Let that sink in for a moment or two.
In that speech, Joe Biden tried to take the high ground for democracy against authoritarianism — just a week or so after eviscerating the constitutional check on the presidency by claiming the executive branch has the authority to print and appropriate between $600 billion and one trillion dollars to transfer debt from Biden’s base voters to the rest of the taxpayers.
Let that one sink in for another moment or two. Especially after Biden described “the work of my presidency” as returning the US to the founding documents of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Joe Biden isn’t the solution for what ails the American soul. He’s not even really the main disease of what ails the American soul. Joe Biden is a demagogue who floated to the top of a morass that has been building for decades, and who only sees the problem to the extent that it benefits or harms Biden’s interests.
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….But even this is just a symptom of the problem plaguing the soul of America. Biden may not even be that far off of it, but he’s pointing his finger at the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The real problem plaguing America is a creeping authoritarianism that Biden is all too happy to indulge — when it suits him. But he didn’t start it, and to the extent he gets away with it, the blame doesn’t entirely fall on him.
That blame falls on Congress. It falls on a compliant media in bed with one political party almost without exception. And, to some extent, it falls on us.
Biden’s Academia bailout is a sterling example of Congress’ failure in this regard. Biden announced that he would appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air (even by the White House’s estimate) to pay off the student-loan debt. He didn’t say he was moving the money around from other programs, as Trump did with wall funding, which itself was certainly debatable in terms of constitutionality. Biden will just borrow the money on his own.
That is a grotesque violation of one of the Constitution’s checks on executive power. The Constitution grants the power of appropriation exclusively to Congress, which limits the executive’s ability to spend money to only tasks authorized by Congress. In a sane constitutional model, we wouldn’t be waiting for Republicans to “pounce” and find someone with standing to sue over this in court. The leaders of Congress would have immediately gone to the federal court to preserve their institution’s constitutional authority.
…And why do we produce authoritarians? Mainly because Congress has spent the last several decades ceding its political and moral authority to the executive.
-Ed Morrissey (Biden’s soulless screed a smokescreen for what really ails the nation)
When those that are supposed to be RESPONSIBLE for their Constitutional Powers to keep them safe from the other branches (or the other chamber) fail to do so, it is we that suffer the end result. It was thought that each branch would “jealously guard” its Powers from the others. Instead of being three branches, we’ve devolved our Government to being just two Parties that are displacing those branches in unconstitutional actions. Our Constitution is not built to handle this de facto situation regardless of what the de jure states – and almost anything can (and is) happening.
Instead of Constitutionally balanced, we’ve gone partisan warfare. Morrissey is right – until WE decided to set things right, it’s only going to get worse. Rome allowed its Executive Branch to take all of the power and its Senate just became partisan in bickering and essentially devolved to just flapping their gums, the Romans got their just desserts.
I’d love to say that we can learn from their mistakes but since we have an educational system that is devoted to not teach actual history (by invoking Woke mores and norms in judging ancient cultures – which is to say, not at all), I find it highly doubtful.
