Conservative columnist Diana West returned to Frank Gaffney’s show, Secure Freedom Radio, where the two agreed that President Obama is going to gut the Constitution in order to bring about a “dictatorship.” Gaffney pointed to an op-ed by Louis Michael Seidman which criticized the Constitution’s “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions,” and then connected Seidman to…Obama. How you might ask? Well, they are both constitutional law professors, Gaffney explains, so they must share the same views on the suitability of the Constitution in today’s society and both support “a kind of post-constitutionalism.”
West agreed with Gaffney’s claim that Obama is putting Seidman’s take on the Constitution into practice and went on to argue that he is undermining the rule of law and promoting “totalitarianism.” Gaffney also warned that “freedom of speech” is “very much on the line.”
Gaffney: There’s a kind of betrayal being proposed at the moment, it’s been quite formally now advanced in the form of a column that’s getting a lot of attention but less formally it seems to be the practice of the Obama administration, a kind of post-constitutionalism. Louis Michael Seidman who is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, the profession that of course our President had prior to entering public life at the University of Chicago, it was entitled back in December 30, 2012, “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.” Do you think, Diana West, that’s in fact what we are doing now increasingly in the government of the United States under President Barack Obama?
West: Yes, I do. I think that this is another evolution that has been a long time coming; this is not a brand new development. However, the boldness and the frontal assault of such a notion is going to increasingly gain currency and what we are actually doing is watching the disillusion of rule of law and the increasing elevation of the rule of men, by men I mean women as well, but in terms of a rule of a person who is not bound by the law. This leads to dictatorship, it leads to totalitarianism, it leads to the end of liberty. It’s a terrible development and it’s dire. I can’t overstate the seriousness of this notion gaining currency, particularly in law schools. This is a tremendous threat and unless our legislators, unless our pundits, our people, our town halls, our tea parties get involved in such a matter it is going to sweep us over.
Gaffney: Not least, and this is an area I know you’re following very closely Diana West and we will discuss with you again in the weeks to come in 2013, the effect on some of our most fundamental freedoms. For example, freedom of speech, the ability to have this kind of conversation where it might give offense to Muslims, is very much on the line.
