Recently, Obama was attempting to justify his illegal executive actions by saying that “The American people don’t just want me standing around.”
It’s no secret that most Americans could use an entire course of civics lessons about how our government works. The shame is that Obama counts himself among them.
We have three branches of government to ensure checks and balances. This is one of the most prominent concepts behind our system of government. For Obama to attempt to take actions on his own simply because he doesn’t want to engage with or wait for our Congress is to miss the entire point of our system.
If Obama, or any President, decides the American people “don’t just want [them] standing around,” any action they take on their own is a step toward dictatorship, which America decidedly is not.
If Obama wants to accomplish something, he should be making his case both to the American people and to Congress and then working with them to accomplish that. If he can’t get Congress or the American people to agree, that is perhaps a sign that it’s not what people want. And if people don’t want it, then we don’t want him to pursue it.
Our system is designed specifically to prevent anyone or branch from acting alone. If only more people understood this there might be a stronger reaction against it.
Which brings me to Neil deGrasse Tyson. I just saw him speak recently at the Paramount Theater in Seattle. He made many great points, but the general premise of his speech was the importance of learning, knowing and understanding science and how far back we could step as a society if we don’t. He is an excellent advocate for science, as evidenced by his popularity and the popularity of his recent show, Cosmos.
Perhaps America needs a Neil deGrasse Tyson to evangelize for why it’s important for Americans to understand and pay attention to our system of government and what goes on within it.
America became a superpower largely because of our system of government and our adherence to a capitalist philosophy. Only now, people seem to have forgotten this and our working to embrace philosophies that have only ever failed over the course of history.
We’re allowing the embrace of socialism largely because people don’t understand the fundamentals of our government system and the tenets upon which our success was based. If we had a Neil deGrasse Tyson evangelizing for the importance of understanding our government, we may yet save ourselves.
The door is open. We just need someone to walk through it.
