Pure Gold: Obama Slams Bush for Expanding Executive Power

President Obama has made clear that he’s determined to continue pushing his “progressive” agenda, regardless of constitutional limitations on his power. He aims to have his way by issuing more and more executive orders.

The most ominous sign of possible things to come appeared on March 16, 2012, when President Obama signed executive order 13603 about “National Defense Resources Preparedness.”

This 10-page document is a blueprint for a federal takeover of the economy that would dwarf the looming Obamacare takeover of the health insurance business. Specifically, Obama’s plan involves seizing control of:

* “All commodities and products that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals”

* “All forms of energy”

* “All forms of civil transportation”

* “All usable water from all sources”

* “Health resources – drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment”

* Forced labor ( or “induction” as the executive order delicately refers to military conscription)

Moreover, federal officials would “issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources.”

Each government bureaucracy “shall act as necessary and appropriate.”

But more than previous national security executive orders, Obama’s 13603 seems to describe a potentially totalitarian regime obsessed with control over everything. Obama’s executive order makes no effort to justify the destruction of liberty, no effort to explain how amassing totalitarian control would enable government to deal effectively with cyber sabotage, suicide bombings, chemical warfare, nuclear missiles or other possible threats. It’s quite likely there would be greater difficulty responding to threats, since totalitarian regimes suffer from economic chaos, colossal waste, massive corruption and bureaucratic infighting that are inevitable consequences of extreme centralization. Such problems plagued fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, communist China and other regimes. Totalitarian control would probably trigger resistance movements and underground networks like those that developed in Western Europe during the Nazi occupation. Totalitarian control could provoke more political turmoil than there was in the Vietnam War era of the 1960s. There would probably be a serious brain drain as talented people with critical skills escaped to freedom wherever that might be. Canada?

There’s nothing in executive order 13603 about upholding the Constitution or protecting civil liberties.

Even if Obama’s 13603 were no different than previous national security executive orders, it’s more worrisome because it was issued by the president who rammed Obamacare and runaway spending bills through Congress, who racked up $5 trillion of debt and surrounded himself with hardcore “progressives” hostile to the private sector and America as we have known it.