Obama Messiah

 If telling the truth is bad manners,
then we will have bad manners 
--Sabotage (1936) 

I'm from the government
and I'm here to help 
--Ronald Reagan 

Thank you, sir,
may I have another?
--Animal House (1978)
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President Obama says he will protect the American people, while concomitantly whittling our civil rights down to size. But who better to corral than Munchkins? Yet again, he is overreaching his job description. The President does not protect us physically; Job #1 of our Chief Executive is to protect and uphold the Constitution. 

Mr. Obama is co-opting the rhetoric of his erstwhile mentor Reverend Wright when he suggests he is our individual protector on this earthly plane.  Are we so cowed and puerile that we accept this power-grab, and then accept Attorney General Eric Holder as Obama's "Sin Eater", functioning as inmate John Coffey did in Stephen King's derivative story The Green Mile (appealing to the simple idea of one individual as repository and magnet for all sin?)

Do we hear the gospel lyrics, "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me" when we think of our President? If so, we may as well be in the land of the opium eaters.

We have an entire apparatus of government to handle the function of personal protection, to include the States, state-controlled police assets and their governors (unless you live in Florida.) Have we become so conditioned to paternalism that we find this perversion of duty to be a comfort? 

Protecting lives is a paltry exercise of authority compared to the concept of protecting our core values. A life without rights of privacy or fear from capricious and arbitrary imprisonment, or one in which the President can order secret prisons, renditions, kidnappings, assassinations, torture and aggressive wars is not free.  The life of a man in such a society does not need a protector.

That man is already safely ensconced in his cage of unfreedom.