Will Barr support the Constitution?

In recent days, the House Judiciary Committee vot­ed to allow President Trump to deport American cit­i­zens. Every Republican mem­ber of the com­mit­tee vot­ed in favor of this pro­pos­al. Thomas Massie is the Republican Kentucky Representative for the Fourth District, which spans the top of the state from Boyd County (Ashland) to Jefferson County (Louisville).

Massie has been in office since 2012 and, upon enter­ing office, took the fol­low­ing oath (in part): “I do solemn­ly swear (or affirm) that I will sup­port and defend the Constitution of the United States…that I will bear true faith and alle­giance to the same…”

One can only won­der how it’s pos­si­ble to sup­port and defend our Constitution while being in favor of send­ing American cit­i­zens to either live in some for­eign coun­try or to be impris­oned there. More impor­tant­ly, why should a President be endowed with such pow­er?  Think of the times in world his­to­ry when a sin­gle indi­vid­ual has been endowed with such power.

If cur­rent con­di­tions were to pre­vail under this expand­ed judi­cial pow­er, would an American cit­i­zen have any more recourse to a legal hear­ing than is now avail­able to non-cit­i­zens who are rou­tine­ly round­ed up and sent away?

We are present­ly rely­ing on our court sys­tem to inject rea­son­able­ness, san­i­ty, and pro­tec­tion into this process.  If those inter­jec­tions are ever removed, no cit­i­zen will be safe from peremp­to­ry depor­ta­tion, even for innocu­ous utter­ings against the gov­ern­ment.  This admin­is­tra­tion is already toy­ing with uti­liz­ing pro­vi­sions of the out­dat­ed Alien and Sedition Act, which was last used dur­ing World War I to silence objec­tions to that war.

It is hard to admit—and will be vehe­ment­ly denied and char­ac­ter­ized as hyper­bole by those sup­port­ing the excess­es of the Trump administration—but this coun­try is rapid­ly fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Nazi Germany.  It is so easy to look at the his­to­ry of that régime to see the sim­i­lar­i­ties, not just in this hor­rif­ic pro­pos­al but in numer­ous actions that have tak­en place in the last three months while unfet­tered pow­er has been giv­en over to the Executive Branch. Hundreds of thou­sands of Germans left that coun­try, either force­ful­ly or by neces­si­ty, after all their prop­er­ty had been either destroyed or con­fis­cat­ed by the state.

One has to ask why so many of our rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­tin­ue to refuse to see what is hap­pen­ing right under their noses.  Maybe it isn’t that they refuse to see the indi­ca­tors.  Maybe it’s just that they are delib­er­ate­ly attuned to them, long­ing for a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that may even­tu­al­ly place itself in a posi­tion to keep itself in pow­er regard­less of the will of the people.

The “We Resist” move­ment is the largest such move­ment since the Vietnam War, but its suc­cess will depend on remov­ing from office those who so cav­a­lier­ly relin­quish American rights to a dictator.

Voters in the Sixth District need to remain vig­i­lant about how Representative Barr votes on this pro­pos­al, should it ever emerge from the Judiciary Committee and be pre­sent­ed as a bill before the House of Representatives. His vote will sure­ly shed light on his suit­abil­i­ty as a US Senator. In fact, it would be enlight­en­ing if he were to make a pub­lic state­ment against this pro­pos­al and declare his unequiv­o­cal oppo­si­tion to it.

But don’t hold your breath.