One Snake-Oil Vendor Calls out Another

The editorial board of the New York Post does a yeoman's job of totting up the many king-like past transgressions of Democrat Presidents against the Republic, in the wake of the most recent protests against Donald Trump.

A sample:

Obama lost, often at the Supreme Court. That didn't stop him.

Nor did it stop President Joe Biden, who became infamous for ignoring Supreme Court decisions.

When the Supreme Court said that extending a COVID-era moratorium on evictions would be unconstitutional, Biden just did it anyway.

The same when the Supremes told Biden he lacked the power to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt.

Democrats didn't protest against Biden acting like a king. In fact, they encouraged him to go even further.

The protestors, whose demonstrations notably included anti-American chants and flew flags of hostile regimes, well deserved to be called out for their inconsistencies.

On top of that, Americans are fairly warned:

So when it comes to "no kings," Dems aren't just accusing Trump -- they're falsifying their own history.

The truth is that Democrats cheer authoritarian behavior -- as long as they're in charge.

Let them back into power, and they'll prove it once again.

It is too bad that that is essentially the whole message, which evades the similar damage Donald Trump does to our Republic every day.

When two men sell poisonous snake oil, the fact that one calls out the other does not mean his product is any better, and yet that is the gist of this editorial.

In better days, the writers would be well aware of and open about the similarity, and of the alternative of working to free our nation from any and all tyrants. They would exhort their side to do better. The Founders, many Christian, for example, were well aware of the tyranny of religious authority -- and yet they did not squabble among themselves as to which religion to make official. They deprived all religions of secular power instead.

Today, there is no such exhortation, but to not "let them back into power," at a time when universal suffrage is under blatant attack and the leader being protested against openly undermines the legitimacy of past elections while working to rig future ones. This is dangerously close to endorsing a dictatorship, as, surely, one would keep the President's political enemies out of power, as if they all deserve to be.

The solution to the problem of a too-powerful Presidency isn't to stick with the proverbial devil you know or to make that devil even more powerful, but to work to exorcise imperial power from the Presidency so neither "side" can abuse it.

-- CAV