Americans should tolerate no president invoking “the will of the people” to sanctify his crimes.
Since late 2020, President Joe Biden has invoked “the will of the people” dozens of times to sanctify his power, including arbitrary decrees that were illegal or unconstitutional. Biden’s invocations did not prevent his re-election campaign from being terminated behind closed doors on Sunday by Democratic Party donors and leaders. Though Biden is being shoved off stage, the “will of the people” will continue to be invoked to raze limits on presidential power and trample the Bill of Rights.
Biden’s rhetorical machinations ignore the lessons from ideological clashes in the 1700s between Americans and British over the doctrine of representation. Biden, like most modern American presidents, reflects a radical redefinition of democracy stemming from Jean-Jacques Rousseau—a change that helped turn the French Revolution into a bloodbath.
Conflicts between the American colonists and British rulers reached a fever pitch in the 1760s. The Sugar Act of 1764 resulted in British officials confiscating hundreds of American ships, based on mere allegations that the shipowners or captains were involved in smuggling; Americans were obliged, in order to retain their ships, to somehow prove that they had never been involved in smuggling—a near-impossible burden. The Stamp Act of 1765 obliged Americans to purchase British stamps to be used on all legal papers, newspapers, cards, dice, advertisements, and even on academic degrees. After violent protests throughout the colonies, the Parliament rescinded the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act, which announced that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” The Declaratory Act meant that Parliament could never do an injustice to the Americans, since Parliament had the right to use and abuse the colonists as it chose.
Many American colonists believed that, for them, British representative government was a fraud. The “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms,” issued by the Second Continental Congress on July 6, 1775, a few weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill, highlighted the crimes of the British Parliament. (The Declaration of Independence, issued almost a year later, concentrated on King George III as the personification of British abuses.) The Declaration, written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, complained that “the legislature of Great Britain, stimulated by an inordinate passion for power…attempted to effect their cruel and impolitic purpose of enslaving these colonies by violence.” The Continental Congress demanded to know, “What is to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a power? Not a single man of those who assume it, is chosen by us; or is subject to our control or influence.”
Hellbound and Down 