Why are we beginning to look more and more like a totalitarian centrally planned state: Progressives want it that way

Feed Me, Obama, Feed Me: The Plan for Food Dependency

By John Griffing

What does any would-be tyrant need in order to gain control over the lives of citizens? Three things come to mind: martial law, socialized medicine, and food dependency.

In at least two of these categories, President Obama has already succeeded.

Martial Law

By way of executive proclamation, President Obama has secured for himself the power to declare martial law in the event of a national "emergency," real or contrived, and without the accountability typically required by the Posse Comitatus Act and the Nation Emergencies Act of 1976.

This is the legacy of the "conservative" Bush administration. National emergencies have now been transformed into power-grabbing devices thanks to the virtually unnoticed National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 51.

NSPD 51 empowers the president to co-opt all state and local government authority in the event that he declares a national emergency. This is a self-declared power not subjugated to the National Emergencies Act of 1976 as in previous directives.

President Obama quickly went beyond NSPD 51, signing an order creating a "Council of Governors" who would be put in charge of declaring martial law. The directive is in direct violation of Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. This "Council of Governors" answers only to President Obama.

In October of last year, President Obama declared a national emergency in the midst of the much-hyped swine flu crisis. This declaration was largely overlooked. By combining his October declaration with the provisions of NSPD 51, President Obama can now be considered virtually uninhibited by Congress and free to flip the switch at any moment.

Socialized Medicine

Whether or not Republicans achieve repeal, a precedent has been set. It is unlikely that the full damage of ObamaCare can be completely undone without Republican control of the White House. The U.S. government can now dictate the coverage and benefits of most Americans -- i.e., those on Medicaid, Medicare, and SCHIP, which together account for thirty percent of the population. In addition, government can punish Americans without insurance with unconstitutional fees and fine employers who refuse to provide every single employee with premium health benefits, making economic recovery unlikely.

In previous articles, I have explained the deadly dimension to ObamaCare as currently construed, demonstrating the serious potential for the mass destruction of human life on the basis of erroneous factors like "hospital readmission." Who will challenge federal officials with health care at stake? Who would seriously suggest that health care will not be used as a political weapon? When the government has all power and no accountability, it has very little reason to use that power responsibly. Accountability is what makes the American model work. But accountability is removed with ObamaCare.

The one area where elites have been so far reluctant to venture is food. Food is the stuff of life. Control over food would mean direct control over the political decisions of average Americans. The elites have slipped the slope, passing legislation that will give federal bureaucrats jurisdiction over food "production" -- i.e., who produces food, what kinds of food are produced, and in what quantities. However, this is not a debate about food regulation or food inspection. What is taking place is in fact a coup d'état, with dinner tables as the strategic weapons.

Food Dependency

The greatest tyrants in history have used food as a method of control. To state the obvious, people must eat to live. By controlling the flow of food to people who side with the political intelligentsia, rule is established. People may challenge tyranny when they have meat on the table. But who in their right mind would bite the hands of their benefactors (so called)?

Meet the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a new legislative proposal designed to centralize control over food stocks to protect Americans from "terror."

The motive may indeed be to protect the food supply from the actions of terrorists, but what about acts of government terror? Can centralized control by the government protect the people against the whims of human nature? This question is not being asked by those so in favor of surrendering control of food to an entity that cannot even manage a budget, much less an oil spill or other natural disaster. Now we are to believe that this same inefficient, broken entity can guarantee the safety of our food? Something stinks, and it smells like government cheese. Usually when people ask for power, it is because they want power, regardless of the stated motive.

What good, for example, can be gained from removing the right of Americans to grow their own food, as several of the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act do? The Ninth Amendment arguably guarantees this and other unenumerated rights. The Ninth Amendment reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

To clarify, how can the rights to life, liberty, and property enshrined in the Constitution exist without the ability of citizens to attend to bodily needs -- i.e., sustenance?

The FSMA doesn't merely wrest control of the food supply from citizens. Dangerously, the FSMA proceeds to transfer U.S. food sovereignty to the WTO, with one provision reading, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the U.S. is a party." This provision is significant, since the WTO draws all its food safety standards from the controversial Codex Alimentarius, which is thought by some to be a vast postwar scheme to control the world's population by means of food. The bottom line vis-à-vis food is that Americans lose control, and foreign bureaucrats gain control.

Even if the alleged motive were legitimate, the FDA already inspects food imports, albeit quite poorly. The federal government already possesses the necessary power to thwart terrorist contamination of the food supply. This proposal, then, is not really about protecting food, but instead about controlling food -- and by extension, controlling Americans. We must resist while the fruits of the field are still here for the picking.

President Obama is willing to shut off the water in a small town in the heart of America's agricultural center. Might he be willing to stop shipments of food to politically opposed states?