(President Obama: Pool Photo/Getty Images)
At
the end of the 18th century, there were two great Western revolutions —
the American and the French. Americans opted for the freedom of the
individual, and divinely endowed absolute rights and values.
A
quite different French version sought equality of result. French
firebrands saw laws less as absolute, but instead as useful to the
degree that they contributed to supposed social justice and coerced
redistribution. They ended up not with a Bill of Rights and separation
of powers, but instead with mass executions and Napoleonic tyranny.
Suddenly,
once-nonpartisan federal bureaucracies have become catalysts for
fundamentally transforming America. Often-ideological bureaucrats have
forgotten their original mission. NASA might do better to ensure that
our astronauts are independent of Vladimir Putin’s Russian rockets
rather than claiming that its primary mission is to reach out to the
Muslim community.
Intelligence
directors vie with one another to please superiors with fatuous but
politically correct analysis. Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper assured us that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely
secular. CIA director John Brennan once termed a now-emerging Islamic
caliphate as “absurd.” Former Director of Homeland Security Janet
Napolitano once warned that returning veterans and right-wingers were
the chief domestic terrorist threats, not Islamic jihadists.
The
IRS has lost its nonpartisan reputation by hounding perceived
ideological enemies. It no longer abides by the historic standards —
transparency, rapid submission of documents, honesty — that it demands
from those it audits.
The
role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once was to enforce
federal statutes established by Congress and signed by the president.
Border-patrol agents were not supposed to become agents of social change
to nullify settled laws by noncompliance.
Almost
immediately it was clear that the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in
Benghazi, Libya, was a preplanned attack by an al-Qaeda terrorist
affiliate. But that truth did not fit the re-election narrative that
al-Qaeda was on the run.
In
response, public servants such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fabricated preferable scenarios — in
service supposedly to a good cause. Suddenly, right-wing video maker
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was to be blamed. He alone had incited ordinary
Libyans to spontaneously riot — a useful teachable moment for the
administration to muzzle such reactionary firebrands.
The
Justice Department was supposed to be blind in matters of class, race,
gender, and religion. Yet, under Attorney General Eric Holder, if
selective non-enforcement of elements of the Affordable Care Act,
immigration statutes, or conduct at voting precincts might further
perceptions of social justice, then the law was often ignored.
Why
would the Federal Aviation Administration shut down flights to Ben
Gurion airport in Tel Aviv — the most secure in the world — because of
one stray rocket? Hamas leadership hailed the Obama administration’s
move as proof that their aerial barrages were shutting off Israel from
the Western world.
In
contrast, the FAA has not yet stopped U.S. flights to and from Liberia
and other West African countries, the source of the Ebola-virus
epidemic. Is it more dangerous for Americans to have open travel to and
from Israel, or to and from Liberia?
What has happened to the Secret Service?
An
intruder bounded onto the White House grounds, entered the White House,
and bowled over a Secret Service agent. A former felon, fully armed,
climbed into an elevator with the president of the United States. Shots
were fired at the White House. Agents were caught soliciting prostitutes
while on duty in South America.
Official
stories change to fit larger agendas. One day the White House has full
confidence in Secret Service director Julia Pierson, the next day she is
gone. One day leaving Iraq was the president’s stellar achievement, the
next day someone else did it. We are at war and not at war with the
Islamic State — both a manageable problem of some jayvees and an
existential threat. The Free Syrian Army is both a fantasy and plagued
by amateurs and yet the linchpin of our new strategy on the ground
against the Islamic State.
We
are back to the daily revisionism of the Affordable Care Act, keeping
and not keeping your doctor and health plan, with deductibles and
premiums going down and going up.
Stopping the fracking of gas and oil on federal lands is good, but so is the cheaper gas that fracking brings.
Once-nonpartisan
federal agencies are now in service to the goal of changing America
from cherishing an equality of opportunity to championing an equality of
enforced result.
Our
revolutionary inspirations are now Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, and
Maximilien de Robespierre, not the Founding Founders.
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