{"id":19107,"date":"2013-02-20T11:49:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19107"},"modified":"2013-02-20T11:49:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:49:53","slug":"its-a-valid-concern-you-have-to-admit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/20\/its-a-valid-concern-you-have-to-admit\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s a valid concern, you have to admit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Fleming<\/a> has a minor, niggling concern that we should pay some attention to:<\/p>\n

I believe I have noticed a problem with President Obama\u2019s declaring that he can blow up Americans with drone strikes without due process.<\/p>\n

Stick with me here; this is a bit of an esoteric argument. Now, like most people, I celebrate every time Obama obtains more power. Now he can do whatever he feels needs to be done for the country and not be burdened with getting the approval of his lessers first. So the more powerful the presidency, the better for us all. But I had a terrible thought: What if one day we get a bad president?<\/p>\n

For instance, take this power to kill Americans with drones. No one worries that Obama will abuse such a power \u2014 I mean, we\u2019re talking about a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for existing. It\u2019s not like he\u2019s ever going to use that power to blow us up (though, according to his lawyers, he legally could\u2026 and if he did, we\u2019d just have to assume he had really, really good reasons). But just imagine if that power wound up in the hands of a president like George W. Bush. He\u2019d probably blow up people with the drone all day, thinking he was playing a video game (\u201cI\u2019m gettin\u2019 me a high score!\u201d). Or worse yet, think of handing Dick Cheney that power. He\u2019d most likely declare a unilateral war on kittens and puppies, blowing them up from the sky and then collecting the tears of children for some evil Halliburton project.<\/p>\n

And the power to incinerate people isn\u2019t the only power I fear could fall into the wrong hands. Like, what about the new authority the government has under President Obama to force people to buy things? That\u2019s great for Obama to have, because he can force people to buy things they really do need to buy, like health care (and maybe in the future other things we all should really have, like hybrids or his memoirs). But think of what could happen if a president not as enlightened as Obama wielded such a power, backed by a Congress full of Republican troglodytes? They could make us all buy AR-15s or Big Gulps or Bibles or other dangerous, awful things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Fleming has a minor, niggling concern that we should pay some attention to: I believe I have noticed a problem with President Obama\u2019s declaring that he can blow up Americans with drone strikes without due process. Stick with me here; this is a bit of an esoteric argument. Now, like most people, I celebrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,57,13],"tags":[158,668,463,149],"class_list":["post-19107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-humour","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-georgewbush","tag-parody","tag-uav"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Yb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19108,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19107\/revisions\/19108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}