BARRICADE GOVERNMENT IN AN UNRECOGNIZABLE AMERICA

           Sometimes writers like me stop themselves and pull back from publishing an especially harsh description because, on second thought, it may have an extreme or exaggerated ring to it --  at least when considered from the standpoint of readers who don't share one's core premises or assumptions.

            But the Obama administration's grotesquely overbearing and perverse behavior in connection with the so-called federal government shutdown has nullified any justification for such delicate scruples or rhetorical restraint.  The simple facts of the government's malfeasance are so extreme in themselves that merely relating them amounts to a harsh indictment.  And the indictment extends not just to Obama and his senior political appointees, but even to the legions of mindless, overbearing drones in the ranks of the so-called civil service who are so enthusiastically implementing the lawless directives to "close" and barricade facilities that require no government expenditure or activity to "open" in the first place. 

            The growing list of arbitrary and petulant closures of both government and non-government facilities and sites by Obama's minions under the guise of the purported shutdown authority has been well-documented elsewhere -- and grows increasingly offensive and outrageous by the day.  See, e.g. "The List:  Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain" at breitbart.com (Oct. 7, 2013).

              Essential Government Servants Performing Complex Shutdown Operations

            Mad with a lawless power derived from deliberate distortion of the limitations on spending required by a lapse in appropriations, the administration and its agency goons have:

            -- ruthlessly barred entry to otherwise open-access public memorials (including the WWII and Vietnam Memorials) that require no government involvement or expense to "operate" in the first place --  because they just lay there in the open air, and are not "operated" by anyone;

            -- gratuitously barricaded roadside pullover spaces to prevent American motorists from stopping to view scenic views and memorials like Mt. Rushmore;

            -- perversely blocked riverside bike paths that neither require nor receive any federal government involvement or oversight at any time;

            -- brusquely evicted elderly couples from their privately-owned homes that happen to be located on public lands;

            -- brazenly blocked privately-owned campgrounds in New Hampshire from operating during the prime Fall foliage-viewing season;

            -- forcibly shut down a private business on the Blue Ridge Parkway that, as with similarly oppressed private properties, neither requires nor receives any federal government service for their operation;

            -- closed beaches on Cape Hatteras to surfers, fishermen, and anyone else who has the temerity to approach the vast Atlantic Ocean from public land;

            -- and, in a leap of lunacy that could only be made by this administration and its bureaucratic enablers, have actually purported to close one (and probably more) of God's bays and waterways to navigation by free Americans.

            Not since the megalomaniacal King Canute ordered the ocean to stop short of high tide has authoritarian hubris extended to such grotesque extremes.  Barack's Barricades may yet place him alongside the delusional Canute in the infamous annals of governmental lunacy.

            It has been long apparent that Obama himself is an arrogant, power-mad, leftist tyrant who smugly employs presidential power not for the general or national welfare, but for his own twisted political objectives and for the benefit of those groups and constituencies who provide mindless and monolithic support for him and the Democrat party.  But in his exploitation of the "opportunities" provided by the necessity of minimizing government services during the current appropriations shortfall he has descended to unprecedented depths of petulance, arbitrariness, and malice.  And the hordes of government drones and dragoons who are so arrogantly and vigorously enforcing his lawless and arbitrary directives are descending with him.

            It takes a whole village of 21^st Century totalitarians to abuse government authority and curtail the people's liberty to the grotesque degree that we have witnessed in the wholly unnecessary barricading of the streets, rivers, paths, parks, memorials, monuments, and parking lots of this nation under the false flag of a bogus government shutdown.  And the hordes of the federal bureaucracy – especially such egregious drones as the Barricade Battalions of the National Park Service – have provided Obama with the bureaucratic legions he needed to implement his vision of Government-by-Barricade. 

            No one resigns in protest -- or even takes the minimal risk of declining to enforce the government's lawless blockades and forcing it to wade its way through the morass of civil service protections and procedures that make strong discipline for such infractions virtually impossible.  The Spirit of '76 is not to be found in the cubicles of Obama's comfortable and compliant bureaucracy.

            The Obama-minions' perversion of the government spending restraints that are occasioned by an appropriations gap is unprecedented and utterly arbitrary.  The legal restraints necessitated by the Anti-Deficiency Act -- and by the simple principle that the government cannot incur expenditures absent appropriations to fund them – do not require, or even authorize, the government to bar access to public lands and places where no government operations or expenditures are necessary to permit or oversee such access in the first place. 

            Still less do those laws and principles require or authorize the government to incur novel expenditures, or to employ agency personnel, in order to prohibit and prevent citizens from entering public places, or using public paths or waterways, that otherwise lay open for all to use under the open skies of America.

            Indeed, the shutdown measures adopted by Obama and his federal minions are actually violating the very laws and principles they purport to enforce.  They are incurring government expenditures that are not only "nonessential," but improper and ultra vires.

            A primary example is the government's perverse and arbitrary placement of thousands of barricades to block access to parking lots, curbside pullovers, roads, bike paths, and open-air facilities like the World War II Memorial.  Popular access and use of these places and paths requires no government action or expenditure whatsoever; in short, on a normal day, when the government is operating under full appropriations, the government doesn't need to spend a penny, or do a thing, to enable the public to access and use these facilities.           

            And yet, at the very time when government expenditures must be limited to what is essential, the Obama administration spends funds and employs agency personnel on facilities that are not only nonessential, but which would otherwise require not a penny or a person for their operation – and all for the purpose of thwarting the very purpose of those self-maintaining facilities, namely, the enjoyment and use of the people. 

           In short, in the name of enforcing the Anti-Deficiency Act, this perverse government orders unprecedented and unnecessary expenditures that actually violate it.

            And just when one decides that the government's shutdown abuses could not possibly get any worse – they do get worse.  We now learn that the National Park Service – the same shameless Obama-drones that are blocking individual American citizens from entering parks, bays, memorials, and in some cases even their own homes and businesses on the false authority of the shutdown – has just agreed to grant preferential access and use of the otherwise "closed" National Mall in Washington to a horde of illegal immigration advocates.  As just reported in the Washington Examiner:   "Organizers for the 'Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform' were spotted Monday setting up a stage and equipment on the National Mall for the rally which will take place on Tuesday." See Washingtonexaminer.com (Oct. 7, 2013).  So the national parks that are locked and chained shut for ordinary American citizens are opened for whole hosts of amnesty-advocating leftists, undoubtedly including thousands of illegal immigrants.

            Not only are the Obama administration and its bureaucratic drones perverting the reasonable restrictions necessitated by an appropriations lapse to impose lawless restrictions and prohibitions on the freedom and movements on Americans, they are implementing their pernicious policy in a manner that discriminates in favor of Obama's political allies and favorites.

            The whole grim fiasco unreels like one of those Grade B horror movies that are sensationalized with ads that warn, "Be afraid, be very afraid."  Only this time the ads would have it all wrong.  The only proper response to this fiasco is, "Be angry, be very angry."  And make your anger felt in Washington.