Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The Means Will Defeat the Ends

Here's my take on Trump's Constitutionally questionable executive order to legislate COVID relief package: 

1) Executive orders are meant to be used to effectuate legislation and not to legislate. It's not good when any POTUS exceeds executive boundaries, which he is doing with this executive action. 

2) It is "politically smart" to act in the face of legislative inaction, and in this case Trump is outmaneuvering the left who are leveraging a national economic crisis for political gain. It's politically smart but that doesn't make it right.

3) Cutting the payroll tax is NOT a war on Social Security. THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY LOCK BOX. The government NEVER lets social security payments to go unpaid. Trump is not robbing social security and the Democrats are engaging in misinformation to manipulate the public when they say he is. Case in point, Obama passed cuts the payroll tax while President but he wasn't accused of stealing from social security. Everyone knows the payroll taxes are just taxes. 

4) The Democrats are once again acting hypocritically. President Obama signed several (understatement) Constitutionally questionable executive orders -- at the very least not in keeping with the purpose of executive orders in similar manner as Trump is doing now -- and then Democrats have nothing but praise for Obama. Because of the way that the Obama Presidency expanded the use of executive power through executive order, the Democrats have no card to play against Trump's use of that very same tactic. They enabled the abuse of power by showing no restraint when they were in office and giving up the high ground; if they ever had it to begin with.



5) The Republican defense of Trump's executive order is hypocrisy. The Republicans and Conservatives spent eight years in opposition to Obama's self-proclaimed executive rule by "pen and phone." The Republican party groaned when the Obama Administration put the balance of powers on life support to the universal applause of every elected official on the left side of the isle. Republican senators spoke out in grand Constitutional principle against such use of executive power and warned that America would never be the same. They were right, and now they will defend Trump for taking full advantage of the death of divided powers.

In short, it may be a shrewd political move on Trump's part, he may be winning the political chess game, but it isn't a good thing for the American system... BUT, who really cares about that anymore? It would seem nobody does, not on the left or the right. The only reason anyone on the left is mad is because they've been outplayed with their own "house rules" and the right has decided to play the game with Democrat house rules rather than stick to the principles of the Constitution. The right says they want to save the Constitution but apparently the only way to do that is win at all cost, even at the cost of ignoring the Constitution. It's the ends justify the means concept. 

We have an impasse, the left and the right have very different ends. The left wants to tear down the American system and replace it with a socialist or communist state. The right has long fought for the preservation of our Constitutional Federalist Republic and free market economy. Gradually the right has lost sight of the fact that the end they seek requires very different means then the ends the left desires. For leftist, weakening the Constitution to win political power enables their objective, but sadly when the right decides that we have to play the game the leftist way, we will discover that the means will certainly defeat the ends of our cause.

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