by R. Lee Wrights
BURNET, Texas (May 11) – The most dangerous person in the world is the President of the United States no matter who holds the office. The president, whether his name is George W. Bush or Barack Obama, is the most dangerous person in the world because whoever the president is now wields unlimited and unbridled power. The very office of “President” has become dangerous because its power is now unconstrained, unchecked and unchallenged by anyone or any organization, inside or outside of government.
Not since the days of the Persian emperor Darius has any human being held such absolute and total power over life and death. If the president orders it to be done, it is done, and without question. The president can order attacks on sovereign nations, launch wars, tap telephones and read emails without a search warrants or court order. If that isn’t enough, the president can seize, imprison indefinitely or even summarily execute anyone anywhere, including American citizens, without a trial and without providing any evidence that the person is guilty of any crime.
To make matters worse, the president’s orders are followed blindly, without challenge and without question. Congress has totally and completely acquiesced to this usurpation of authority and power, indeed they have aided and encouraged it. The so-called news media have been reduced to servants, sycophants and cheerleaders for presidential actions. Most disturbing of all, the American people, whipped into a patriotic fever by complacent politicians and complicit media, holler and hoot their support.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president…is morally treasonable to the American public.”- Theodore Roosevelt
Lord Acton’s warning that “Absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” doesn’t adequately describe our present state. Nor does James Madison’s observation that the “accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the very definition of tyranny.” The American president not only has far greater power than anyone in human history, he has no rival, no legal, Constitutional, moral or political force willing to check him. This is what makes the president so dangerous.
The very concepts American’s have historically revered which set forth the essence of who we are as a people — justice, rule of law, due process, individual liberty, innocent until proven guilty, fair trial, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, — have been forgotten, cast into the trash, or worse yet misrepresented with disingenuous meaning to justify authoritarians.
Liberty now means submitting to whatever authority is imposed, whether it be a presidential director or the body groping of a TSA agent. Justice now means whatever the President of the United States says it means, including summary execution.
Anyone who dares challenge or question a pronouncement by the President of the United States can be called crazy. If the president claims that justice was done, when someone he alone determined was a perpetrator of mass murder, is killed, then anyone who questions that judgment needs to have their head examined, as President Obama told 60 Minutes. Anyone who speaks out against his policies risk being accused of providing material support to terrorists, an accusation that can result in seizure of their property and imprisonment without trial or court order.
Every American ought to be afraid — not of the terrorists, but of any elected official, most of all the President of the United States, who acts as if they have omnipotent legal or moral authority. We must be especially fearful of those who justify themselves with high-sounding rhetoric. It is a crying shame that the American people, as well as the rest of the world, must see the president as the most dangerous person on the planet.
America does not need a demagogue to lead us or a demigod to solve all our problems. America has had enough of war. We need a Peacemaker-in-Chief as well as a Commander-in-Chief. What our country desperately needs is a person in the White House who values the dignity and worth of every human being — no matter what their nationality, color, race or religion — and who respects that dignity and worth enough to leave them alone to live their lives as they see fit.
As president, I will follow the advice of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of war who knew the value of peace. He said, “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.” There always comes the day when a people see that they have no one left to turn to for help… except themselves. Let that day be sooner rather than later.
War is wrong. Vote for Wrights.
R. Lee Wrights, 52, a libertarian writer and political activist, is seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 must be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. To that end he has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states. Wrights is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and co-founder and editor of of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., he now lives and works in Texas.
Lee Wrights for President
Contact: Brian Irving, press secretary
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