RUSH: Thomas Sowell, Investor’s Business Daily: ‘Is U.S. Now on Slippery Slope to Tyranny?’ Get the way he starts this piece: ‘When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, 
leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ‘Useful idiots’ was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
‘Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive. In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current [regime] in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it. The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies. Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation?’ This is the BP shakedown he’s talking about.
It says that nowhere in the Constitution that the president has that kind of power. ‘And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people … Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP’s oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated. But our government is supposed to be ‘a government of laws and not of men.’ If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it. But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without ‘due process of law,” and by demanding $20 billion in a shakedown you’re taking BP’s property without due process. Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
‘With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution. If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in constitutional government. And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a ‘crisis’ — which, as the president’s chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to ‘go to waste’ as an opportunity to expand the government’s power. That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
‘When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country’s wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard’s restrictions on the printing of money. At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law ‘for the relief of the German people.’ That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others. If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
‘The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP’s money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed ‘czars’ controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are. Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the ‘useful idiots’ of our time. But useful to whom?’ Well written, Thomas Sowell. People say that I was defending Joe Barton when I said, ‘Please don’t apologize’ because he accurately described what happened. There’s a larger issue here, and that’s our way of life, it’s our constitutional form of government. And it is under assault each and every day.
Power grabs like you can’t believe. Today on health care, yesterday on health care, last month on health care. Automobiles, insurance, homes, mortgages, you name it. It’s all being done for the good of the people in a down economic period, which is being amplified and exacerbated by the very policies of this administration to continue to wreak havoc and chaos throughout our society. So while people want to focus on the petty, ‘Look at Limbaugh defending Barton! Wow, this is a godsend for the Democrats.’ No. It’s standing up for the Constitution, standing up for the American way of life. It is a principle thing, as F. Chuck Todd of people got right in discussing my motivations. It’s a principle thing. Sowell is right. We’re watching freedom evaporate and erode every day right in front of our eyes, and I don’t think people — even the majority of people who oppose Obama’s policy — really think it’s that. They just think he’s some incompetent boob.
There was a blog today by a guy name Roger Simon (and there’s a bunch of Roger Simons, I’m not sure which one this is) of Pajamas Media, claiming Obama’s bored. He doesn’t like the job, he may quit or retire, not run for reelection but he really doesn’t enjoy the job. He quoted or cited his inept energy speech last week, said he had slumped shoulders, really didn’t want to be there, and his point was: It’s very, very bad no matter who the president is if you got somebody who doesn’t want the job. Now, with all do you respect, I think Obama loves his job. I think Obama is having the time of his life. I think Obama loves drilling moratoriums. I think he loves confiscating one-sixth of the US economy in taking over health care. I think he loves getting even with this country. I think he loves punishing this country!
I think he adores the opportunity to cut this country down to size, because I know that he was raised and educated to not like nor approve of this country. I think Obama salivates every day at the opportunity he’s got, and he doesn’t have to work very hard at it because nobody’s holding him accountable. So he can go play golf, and he can complain about the BP CEO in a yacht race. He can go watch baseball, he can go walk the beach, he can go watch soccer, and everybody says, ‘It’s good that our president takes time away to keep his juices recharged.’ Obama knows he doesn’t have any serious opposition in the watchdog-accountability media. He may be bored, but if he’s bored it’s with how easy all this destruction has been. A year and a half, folks! The liberals have been trying to do for 75 years what Obama has accomplished in 18 months. He’s got to love this! Of course he wants to be president! He loves this McChrystal business.
It was Stephanopoulos and Mike Allen Politico today which got this whole McChrystal, Rolling Stone piece rolling, and d they take their orders from Gibbs. They wanted this Rolling Stone piece out there. They wanted McChrystal on the chopping block. They wanted it to appear Obama’s being dissed so he can once again assert his authority, have his loyal allies stand up for him and defend him: ‘How dare people speak out against our Dear Leader?’ and, of course, predictably a number of Republicans, media people have joined the fray supporting Obama, criticizing McChrystal. In the meantime, all that happens, it’s a giant distraction from the judge putting a stop to the offshore drilling moratorium. Don’t you think that he loved it today to go out there and basically say, ‘Screw 2014, we’re going to implement health care today, and I’m going to start setting it up in the executive branch.’ This is not the action of somebody who doesn’t like his job. This is somebody who’s figured out how to destroy this country or totally remake it — while playing golf, while watching soccer, while drinking bushwhackers, while walking the beach in Hawaii! What’s not to like about this job from his perspective?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: If I may, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to expand on the Thomas Sowell piece, The Road to Tyranny and expand on my own monologue, too, on Obama hates the job? Destroy the country in 18 months, what? I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep at night I’d be so excited, if that was my objective with all the success I’m having. Of all of these things, the most dangerous attack of all on the US and the world by this administration is not the assault on the economy or on the financial systems, not the assault on our social mores or culture, or the political framework, or religious traditions, they’re all bad, but the daily unraveling of our legal system on which rests the stability of the entire world. Obama’s war on the greatest legal system of all time seems to be escalating every day in some new way. And that is one war that he loves.
And you asked me, Snerdley, why don’t they use the courts and make it look like the legal system’s — because of this judge in Louisiana. They don’t own all the judiciary yet and this judge has ticked them off like you can’t — you don’t stand up to Obama this way. This is the kind that gets his attention. This judge, who does he think he is, McChrystal? Is Obama going to summon the judge to the Oval Office? I wouldn’t be surprised. The unraveling of the legal system. Look, folks, Sowell got 
something right. To simply go in and take $20 billion of BP’s property, their cash is their property, just as much as a drilling rig is, and to go in there and confiscate it as he no doubt did is an abject violation of the US Constitution and thus law. And there’s another story confirming apparently that Obama is actually planning on using an executive order to grant blanket amnesty. And they were going to deem health care to be passed, even when it hadn’t.
So it is clear that the rule of law and the Constitution, which is what keeps this country together and separates it from the rest of the world is under assault by this administration because it gets in their way, and don’t forget, we warned you about this during the campaign, they don’t like the Bill of Rights. They look at it as a set of negative liberties. The Bill of Rights doesn’t say what the government can do. The Bill of Rights says what the government cannot do, and they don’t like that. So there’s a story today, too, about Obama with a new health care Bill of Rights. There’s no such thing as a health care Bill of Rights. But he’s just going to implement one. British Petroleum was looted. I’m sorry, BP, the new name. And they were donors! They gave Obama a million dollars. They are for cap and trade. They are not his enemy on the surface. Just like we see in the Third World whenever they have a crisis, Hugo Chavez confiscates oil companies, Obama confiscates BP’s — just loots ’em. It’s the rule of law being torn apart.