In writing about his beloved Cuba, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo asserts that "totalitarianism is as much about tyranny as about [the] manipulation of time."  He knows only too well how the Castro brothers have destroyed the hopes and dreams of the Cuban people for more than a half century.  And now in a devastating blow and under the guise of rapprochement, Barack Obama continues to support this communist tyranny.  And the Cuban people continue to suffer and weep for true freedom. 

While sadly, we Americans continue to squander it.  A 2013 poll revealed that "40 percent of Americans said the First Amendment 'goes too far' and 56 percent of Americans refused to support a right to say things that are racially offensive (47 percent refused to support a right to say things that are offensive to religious groups)."  In fact,

. . ."only a bare plurality of Americans, 38 percent to 36 percent, opposed laws criminalizing 'hate speech' thus highlighting that the "First Amendment is on very shaky footing." 

It is particularly alarming when any attempt to muzzle political speech occurs because as James Madison opined "the right of freely examining public characters and public measures, and of free communication among the people thereon . . . has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right."

It bears reminding that one of the first acts of Obama's presidency was to return the bust of Winston Churchill; in retrospect it is clear that in an obscene and perverse twist on Churchill's famous 1940 World War II quotation about the Royal Air Force that "[n]ever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" that never in American history have we had a President who has done so much with so few to harm so many.  Obamacare has hurt millions and each day more damaging news about this travesty emerges in the form of the following:

• Over 130 million Obamacare termination notices
• Obamacare tax forms adversely impact students applying for financial aid
• Obamacare will worsen the U.S. doctor shortage
• As of May 18, 2015 at least 50 changes to Obamacare via unconstitutional means occurred
• As of February 2015, "53 percent of ACA eligible adults who remain uninsured cited cost as the main reason" 
• Millions of Americans have lost income as a result of being made part-time workers

Consequently, "a law that will cost $2 trillion over the next decade is unable to fulfill the one promise reform advocates still admit to making on its behalf." Thus, "Obamacare’s last claim to legitimacy has vanished."  Furthermore, ". . . adding insult to injury, millions of . . . people will be forced to pay fines for failing to buy health insurance coverage that Obamacare has rendered unaffordable."  John Goodman gives further evidence of "How Obamacare Is Ruining Health Insurance" when he notes that "[t]he health insurance market is changing. And the changes are not good. Even before there was Obamacare, most insurers most of the time had perverse incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. But now that the Affordable Care Act has completely changed the nature of the market, the perverse incentives are worse than ever."

In fact, Obama of record ego-and-narcissist tendencies "reckons his revolution will be one in a series, an unending series generated by progress or history itself."  Obama epitomizes what Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 1.

. . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearances of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

And so Victor Davis Hanson can ask "[w]hat happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders? Usually, the answer for those leaders is to seek more coercion and less liberty to force people to think progressively."

And "to the extent that Congress is still tempted to make laws, it does so primarily on behalf of the expansion of the administrate state" and this expansion "cannot be understood to be within the letter or spirit of constitutional government." As a result,                      

"America's future well-being is threatened today by a federal government characterized by a stunning lack of discipline, as it piles up debt at an unsustainable rate."  It was rather prescient that James Madison warned of "the enactment of policies, usually encouraged by demagogic leaders, that threaten 'the rights of other citizens, or . . . the permanent and aggregate of the community.'"  Under Obama, American debt has ballooned to unconscionable levels so that ". . . one generation is dispossessing the generation to come."

The passage of time continues to work to Obama's advantage, be it about ISIS or languishing veterans.  Hence, as Betsy McCaughey wrote in February 2015 "President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million 'Choice Cards' that supposedly allow vets to see a doctor outside the delay-plagued system. Obama’s budget tries to snatch the $10 billion allocated for the Choice program and allow it to be spent however VA top administrators want. It’s a sickening betrayal."

No matter how often his lies and manipulations are exposed, Obama and his minions spotlight some phony racial or gender-related issue.  This insures that the sycophantic press will focus on this issue and ignore Obama's courting of dictatorial regimes and the ongoing scandals of NSA, IRS, and Benghazi.  Obama counts on a dulled public to forget the law-breaking which he has become so famous for, be it through Hillary Clinton's machinations or his own unconstitutional orders. 

This man and his coterie have no shame, even when Judicial Watch produces documents with headlines revealing that the "Obama Administration Knew That al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance" in addition to the fact that the "Administration Knew Three Months Before the November 2012 Presidential Election of ISIS Plans to Establish a Caliphate in Iraq; [and the] Administration Knew of Arms Being Shipped From Benghazi to Syria" More to the point, why does the "Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda?"  It would appear that Obama wants to islamify America as he completely ignores the plight of Christians fleeing the butchery of jihadists.  In 2010 via executive order he allowed 80,000 Muslim immigrants into the United States. Why," one asks "is Obama importing Muslims whose religion permits them to mutilate little girls? Furthermore, while ISIS continues to recruit jihadists, Obama names Rashad Hussain, a terror-supporting Islamist" to the United States Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.  Talk about the fox in the chicken coop -- Hussain has "long been involved with various Muslim Brotherhood fronts." And, of course, Obama refuses to acknowledge the Islam in ISIS or any other jihadist group.

In fact, as noted by Cherson and Molschky, "so intent [is Obama] on increasing Muslim immigration, [that he] has eased restrictions on asylum seekers with terrorist ties. Apparently, if their terrorism is 'minimal' it’s ok, and they will still be welcome in America."  This change, announced in the Federal Register, "will allow some individuals who provided ‘limited material support’ to terror groups to be considered for entry into the U.S.” 

In true tyrannical style Obama makes no secret of his ardent desire to control the media that attempts to expose him. Because Obama operates under secrecy at every turn, we can better understand what Alexander Hamilton meant when he wrote in Federalist No. 1 that "[t]he consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity" such that they "will not disgrace the cause of truth."  But when we have a serial liar at the helm who mocks the "idea of liberty and property" it means Americans have to work that much harder to push back against this anti-human spirit.

It takes one who has lived under tyranny to immediately see its contours.  Cuban dissident and patriot Pardo writes, "[n]ow President Barack Obama can choose to extend his helping hand to the oldest Latin American dictatorship. Or he can consider if the Cuban people deserves to endure our apartheid until the last of the Castros manages to remain in power without consulting anyone (except maybe Obama himself)."

Reading Federalist No. 9, one would be hard pressed not to immediately think of the constant race baiting and class warfare from this administration, i.e., Ferguson, Baltimore, Occupy Wall Street. It is necessary that "a firm union  . . . be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the states, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection."  Instead, Obama has, as James Madison wrote in Federalist 10

". . .  inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to co-operate for their common good."

Will Americans finally awaken to the last 6 1/2 years of Obama's depressing and destructive trajectory, and hearken to Reagan's promise to future generations: "Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done.  We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith?" 

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com