By Selwyn Duke
It has been interesting watching the response to the Honduran military’s recent ousting of its nation’s president, Manuel Zelaya. Barack Obama called the action “not legal” and Hillary Clinton said that the arrest of Zelaya should be condemned. Most interesting, perhaps, is that taking this position places them shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Venezuelan’s roaring mouse, Hugo Chavez, who is threatening military action against Honduras. Now, some would say this is an eclectic group — others would say, not so much — regardless, what has gotten them so upset?
Let’s start with what they say. They are calling the ouster a “coup” and
claim that Zelaya is still Honduras’ rightful president. Some of them say we must support
democracy. But they have said little, if
anything, about the rule of law. And
most of what they have said is wrong.
First, it doesn’t appear that
Sunday’s ouster was a military coup but a law enforcement action. It is not a military strongman who sought
extra-legal control, but Zelaya himself.
Here is the story.
Zelaya is a leftist, a less
precocious version of Chavez, sort of like the Venezuelan’s Mini-me. And, like Chavez, it’s seems that Zelaya was
bent on perpetuating his rule and increasing his power in defiance of the rule
of law. That is to say, the Honduran
Constitution limits presidents to one four-year term, and this wasn’t quite
enough to satisfy Zelaya’s ambitions. So
he sought to amend the constitution, which may sound okay, except for one minor
detail. Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal explains:
While Honduran law allows for a
constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the
president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national
referendum approved by its Congress.
But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on
his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The
Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the
military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.
The top
military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he
would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered
him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.
. .
. the president decided he would run the
referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military
installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had
his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.
However, like so many apparent
megalomaniacs, Zelaya greatly overestimated his popularity. The groundswell of citizen support he had
counted on didn’t materialize; thus, his law breaking could not be sanitized by
consensus making. The military then
arrested him, acting under orders from legitimate civilian authorities and in
defense of the rule of law. The good
guys won . . . at least for now.
Also note that the military
confined itself to its prescribed police action and is not running the
country. The new president is 63-year-old
Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. Moreover, elections are still planned for
this November.
And Micheletti enjoys wide
support, ranging from the rank-and-file to the those breathing rarified air in elite
institutions. As for Zelaya, while you
may not be able to please all of the people all of the time, he certainly seems
to have been able to displease them. He
not only alienated the Congress, Supreme Court, the people and the attorney
general — who also declared the referendum illegal and vowed to prosecute
anyone facilitating it — he is opposed by the Catholic Church and many
evangelicals as well. Really, no one
seems to like him.
No one, that is, but Hugo
Chavez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega.
Oh, and let’s not forget
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Tell me who your friends are
and I’ll tell you who you are, anyone?
In fact, Obama’s position is
striking. More than almost anything else
— almost anything — this dance with
the Devil reveals his true colors. Sure,
he was criticized over his handling of Iran, but even I will say there are two
sides to that story. After all, you
could make the case that overt support for the protesters would provide the
clerics and President Ahmadinejad with invaluable propaganda material. And Obama looked foolish when he paraded about
the world issuing mea culpas on
behalf of big bad America, but, hey, that’s a reflection of the standard
liberal America-as-villain narrative. I
don’t think it surprised too many people.
But, as bad as Obama has been, his position on Honduras occupies a
different realm all together. And I think
most fail to appreciate the gravity of what I will not even call a policy, but
an offense.
Obama has sided with a thug, a
man who — for completely self-serving reasons — sought to subvert his nation’s
constitution. Obama has sided with a man
who — like Pancho Villa on a cross-border raid — lead a mob in an effort to
execute this illegal scheme. And Obama
does this while paying lip service to democracy, even as he imperils it; he
claims to stand for freedom, even while supporting those who would extinguish
it. It is un-American. It is ugly.
It is, in a word, evil.
Yet it doesn’t surprise me. Some may think the issue is simply that,
although Obama despises Zelaya’s tactics, he is driven to support a fellow traveler. Others may think that Obama wants to support
a fellow traveler and is indifferent about the tactics. Neither analysis is entirely correct. Rather, Zelaya has certain tactics. Obama has certain tactics.
And they are largely the same.
In fact, they are shared by
virtually all leftists.
Ignoring the rule of law,
manipulating the Constitution, acting as if the end justifies the means . . .
. Sound familiar? This is standard liberal doctrine.
Examining this further, let’s
look at two comments Obama and H. Clinton made about Honduras. Obama said that the U.S. would “stand on the
side of democracy” and Clinton said, “we have a lot of work to do to try to
help the Hondurans get back on the democratic path . . . .” These comments reflect a common theme. There is gratuitous emphasis on democracy,
but what of the rule of law? What of
recognition that, technically, Honduras and the U.S. are not democracies but constitutional republics? We don’t hear much talk about these things
from liberals, and I have a theory as to why.
Of course, such comments are
often simply rhetoric, but they can reflect something deeper as well. Democracy, in the strict sense of the word,
refers to direct rule by the people.
Another way to put it is that it’s rule based on the people’s
whims. Now, liberals are relativists,
which means they don’t believe in Truth, in natural law, in anything beyond man
that determines morality. Instead,
relativism involves the idea that what people once called morals are merely
values, which, in turn, are just a function of a people’s consensus
opinion. It then follows that the
impositions of values known as civil laws cannot be based on anything outside
of man, either; they also are simply a function of opinion, be it the consensus
variety or that of those with clout. In
other words, liberals believe as the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras did,
that “Man is the measure of all things.”
Now let’s say you accept this. When constitutional mandates, or laws, then contradict
that “measure of all things,” that democratic
body, with which will you likely side?
This explains why liberals find it unfathomable that anyone would let “a
piece of paper” stand in the way of a popular — or politically correct — social
change. “Why, you have to be a simpleton
to let a law forestall progress!” is the idea.
And from their simplistic, shallow perspective it makes sense. If laws originate with opinion, anyway, why
would you let them stand in the way of the dominant opinion when the latter
changes?
Yet, in reality, liberals aren’t
any more beholden to popular will than to laws, as they scoff at it when it
contradicts politically-correct will.
And there is a good reason for this.
Liberals don’t view democracy as an absolute because there is no such thing
in a relativistic world, but they do at least view it. That is to say,
they know popular will is real but believe God’s will (Truth) is
imaginary. And what exists takes
precedence over what does not.
But in a world without
absolutes, what takes precedence over all?
Well, without any unchanging yardstick for making moral decisions —
without Truth to provide answers — liberals have only one thing to refer to:
Their mercurial master, feelings. But
whose feelings shall hold sway? They may
sometimes be those of the majority of people (expressed as “values”),
especially insofar as their feelings influence liberals’ feelings. But, then again, the dominant feelings might
also be those of most liberals’ favorite people — and the ones they fancy the
smartest — themselves. This is what
engenders the elitism that justifies trumping popular will; after all, liberals’
own feelings always feel more “right” to them than other people’s feelings.
Put simply, it’s a question of whose
will shall prevail, the popular, politically correct or personal? When man is the measure of all things, the
man in the mirror usually trumps your fellow man.
Speaking of feelings, one that could be instrumental here is fear. What I mean is, we all understand the power of precedent. And along with Chavez, Obama seems to dislike the idea of a military upholding its nation’s constitution and ousting a would-be tyrant. I wonder why?
© 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved
