Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.: “Time to declare Congress in rebellion”

**Posted by Phineas

Because they’re acting like seceding states, or something.

Really, this isn’t parody; the idiot really said it.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate β€œstates in rebellion.”

Jackson called for full government employment of the 15 million unemployed and said that Obama should β€œdeclare a national emergency” and take β€œextra-constitutional” action β€œadministratively” β€” without the approval of Congress β€” to tackle unemployment.

β€œI hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past,” Jackson said. β€œHe’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional.”

β€œPresident Obama tends to idealize β€” and rightfully so β€” Abraham Lincoln, who looked at states in rebellion and he made a judgment that the government of the United States, while the states are in rebellion, still had an obligation to function,” Jackson told TheDC at his Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.

β€œOn several occasions now, we’ve seen … the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe … in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000 β€” that’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five-year program. For another $104 billion, we bailout all of the states … for another $100 billion, we bailout all of the cities,” he said.

There are so many levels of mind-boggling stupidity in this that I don’t know where to begin. “Congress in rebellion?” Um, excuse me, Congressman Jackson, but Congress is a coequal branch of the government and not subservient to a monarch. Under the Constitution (Article 1, Section 1. Try reading it.) it is Congress that has sole law-making power and that includes refusing to pass bills it doesn’t like — including another guaranteed-to-fail Jobs Bill Stimulus Porkulus program.

“Extra-constitutional action?” Seriously? You’re suggesting that the president become a dictator and appropriate money himself, bypassing Congress and Article I? Congressman, let me remind you of your oath:

β€œI, [Jesse Jackson, Jr.], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Of course, that oath is mandated by Article VI, so I guess it’s irrelevant since you want to suspend the Constitution.

And let’s not even dwell on the odious insult and historical illiteracy inherent in comparing legitimate legislative opposition to secessionists seeking to defend slavery. Don’t bother with economic nonsense that makes up this clown’s “program.” (Bryan Preston points out the huge flaws in the latter.)

No, what really jumps out is that this jackass (and son of an even bigger jackass) is yet another example of anti-democratic Democrats, such as North Carolina’s Governor Bev Perdue, who suggested calling off the next congressional elections. (Click through for even more examples.)

This is the fundamental contradiction that lies at the heart of the progressive elites who dominate the Democratic Party (and their Big Labor and MSM allies): for all their lip service to the Constitution, our founding principles, and the “American Way,” they really don’t like democracy. As historian Steven Hayward wrote recently when talking about liberal anti-democrats:

At the core of β€œProgressivism,” as it was called then and is again today, was the view that more and more of the business of individuals and society was best supervised by expert administrators sealed off from the transient pressures of popular politics. So at the same time that Progressives championed β€œmore democracy” in the form of populist initiatives, referendum, and recalls, they also developed a theory deeply anti-democratic in its implications. As the famous phrase from Saint-Simon had it, β€œthe government of men is to be replaced by the administration of things.” But this undermines the very basis of democratic self-rule. No one better typifies the incoherence of Progressivism on this point than Woodrow Wilson, an enthusiastic theorist of the modern administrative state who couldn’t clearly express why we would still need to have elections in the future. In Wilson’s mind, elections would become an expression of some kind of watery, Rousseauian general will, but certainly not change specific policies or the nature of administrative government.

And now that popular democracy has gotten in their way, Democratic leaders yearn for “administrative experts” — bureaucratic dictators.

Glenn Reynolds thinks Jackson should resign over this. Resign, hell. “Representative” Jesse Jackson, Jr., should be brought before the House and expelled for violating his oath.

There is a deep, deep, political sickness at the top of the Democratic Party, and it’s up to us to make sure they never have the reins of power again until it’s cured.

LINK: theΒ YidWithLidΒ and I think alike.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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