For almost eight years, the United States has been ruled by a president with the mantra of “We can’t wait for Congress to do its job, so where they won’t act, I will.” During his 2014 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama told both houses of Congress of his decision to go it alone in areas where they refused to act according to his satisfaction. One would think an announcement in such blatant violation of America’s tripartite system of checks and balances would elicit an outcry or at least shocked silence. Instead, the floor of the room erupted into thunderous applause.

It really looked like America’s congressional lawmakers were delighted at the notion of a president usurping the checks and balances at their expense!

In the months following his historic announcement, President Obama went on to modify various provision of the Affordable Care Act with barely a pretense of legality. He launched a military campaign in Libya without congressional approval. He appointed high-level “czars,” evading the constitutional requirement that the Senate confirm high-level government officials. He even unilaterally enacted new legislation on immigration reform via executive order.

President Obama has been unapologetic about his record of executive overreach. During the summer of 2014, in a speech in front of Key Bridge, the president taunted his critics: “Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So sue me.”

Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few legal minds at the time warning of the danger behind this executive power grab. “The center of gravity in our system, our three-branch system, is moving and we’re creating this all-powerful presidency, this type of über-presidency,” he told Sean Hannity in an interview. “The key to a Madisonian system is that nobody has enough power to go it alone, that was the genius of James Madison. But we’re seeing the rise of a new model of presidency, and I believe that supporters of President Obama will rue the day when they stay silent in the face of this kind of concentration of power.”

America has moved into a dangerous era where the only constraints on presidential power are political, not constitutional!

Political Backlash

With the 2016 presidential election looming, the front-runner for the Republican nomination is reality tv celebrity and real-estate developer Donald J. Trump.

During a speech Mr. Trump gave at a Super Tuesday rally, a reporter asked him about how he would deal with Congress as president. In light of the dangerous precedents President Obama has set for the U.S. presidency, Mr. Trump’s response was especially sobering.

“I’m going to get along great with Congress,” he said. “Paul Ryan, I don’t know him very well, but I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him. And, if I don’t, he’s going to have to pay a big price.”

Instead of trying to return America to constitutional principals and the rule of law, it seems that a huge portion of the Republican Party has decided to fight fire with fire.

Instead of trying to reverse the concentration of power into the office of an über-president, Republicans plan to use that power for their own agenda.

Why else would someone nominate a man who is publicly promising to use tactics of demagoguery to circumvent constitutionally elected members of the legislative branch?

It seems Congress wouldn’t be the only organization “to pay a big price” if Mr. Trump is elected. At a rally in February, Trump vowed revenge on the U.S. press, promising to enact strict libel laws if elected. “I’ll tell you what, I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met,” he said. “They’re terrible. … I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

Such a promise is reminiscent of when the Obama administration’s Department of Justice illegally monitored the phone lines and e-mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen.

Right-wing Populism

It is easier to understand the radical worldview of President Obama. He was a democratic socialist in his youth, so his authoritarian tendencies fall in line with his ideological upbringing.

Analysts have been puzzled, however, by the ideological mixture of Donald Trump. He is described as a man of the far right due to his hard-line stance against Hispanic and Islamic immigration. Yet polls show his strongest base of support comes from liberal Republicans and “blue-dog” Democrats.

In a Los Angeles Times editorial, Dan McLaughlin points out that Mr. Trump has a lot more in common with the right-wing populists of Europe than with the traditional American conservative movement. He has little regard for the constitutional principles of limited government, federalism and the separation of powers. He has supported socialized, single-pay health care. Plus, he seems to prioritize economic protectionism over the principle of free-market economic conservatism.

In short, Trump looks to be combining far-right nationalist sentiment with left-wing economics. This is a stunning development in American politics. It isn’t so strange in Europe, however, where populist politicians commonly espouse violent nationalism combined with radical socialism. This is the same ideology as Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen and Victor Orbán.

Even the terms “right-wing” and “left-wing” are of European origin. After the French Revolution, those who supported the pro-Catholic, pro-feudalistic, pro-monarchist old regime sat on the right side of the Estates-General in Versailles; those who supported secularism and democratic socialism sat on the left side of the chamber. In the century that followed, right-wing politics became associated with monarchism, while left-wing politics became associated with socialism.

America’s founders crossed the Atlantic to escape such political division. They established a political system that elevated the rule of constitutional law above the willpower of individuals, regardless of whether those individuals were right-wing monarchs or left-wing demagogues.

The term “right-wing” was rarely used in American politics until the 1930s. Once President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition started adopting left-wing socialist ideas, the media started referring to those who opposed such ideals as right-wing, even though American constitutionalism had nothing to do with the monarchist and fascist movements of Europe.

It now appears that the rule of law has been undermined in America to such an extent that the 2016 presidential election is shaping up to be a contest between democratic socialism and national populism!

Coming Violence

President Obama, along with Democratic Party candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, has been criticized for stirring up racial hatred for political purposes. Mr. Obama recently met with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson and praised him for efforts “to take America to new heights.” McKesson recently gained notoriety by teaching a class at Yale on how looting is a legitimate form of protest.

Senator Sanders also tried to use the race card to help his political campaign by claiming America was founded on “racist principles” during a speech he delivered at Liberty University. Hillary Clinton used the same type of rhetoric when she claimed that racism was behind the Republican push to block President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

Such claims are not made to appeal to the rule of law; they are made to stir up emotions and get groups of people to support the political agenda of a particular politician.

The Trump campaign, instead of appealing to the Constitution and the legal process to resolve disputes, is now resorting to the same divisive rhetoric so often used by the Obama administration.

Last February, when a protester tried to disrupt a Trump rally in Los Vegas, Mr. Trump told the crowd that he’d like to punch the protester in the face as security guards escorted him to the door. “You know what I hate?” Trump said. “There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches, we’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher.”

Instead of appealing to the role of local police, or to the rule of law, Trump has taken the stance: Fight violence with violence.

As Peter Beinart points out in an Atlantic editorial: “The United States is headed toward a confrontation, the likes of which it has not seen since 1968, between leftist activists, who believe in physical disruption as a means of drawing attention to injustice, and a candidate eager to forcibly put down that disruption in order to make himself look tough.”

An Appeal to the Rule of Law

The trouble with both democratic socialism and national populism is that they appeal to people’s emotions, trying to get a class of people to support a popular leader instead of a legal framework.

British historian Paul Johnson wrote an article published in the Sunday Telegraph of Dec. 26, 1999 (emphasis added):

The rule of law, as distinct from the rule of a person, or class or people, and as opposed to the rule of force, is an abstract, sophisticated concept. It is mighty difficult to achieve. But until it is achieved, and established in the public mind with such vehemence that masses of individuals are prepared to die to uphold it, no other form of progress can be regarded as secure. The Greeks had tried to establish the rule of law but failed. The Romans had succeeded under their republic but Caesar and his successors had destroyed it. The essence of the rule of law is its impersonality, omnipotence and ubiquity. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere—kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse—that was the grand lesson of antiquity.

The grand lesson of all history is that once the habit of disregarding legality begins to spread, the rule of law begins to collapse. The end result is always the tyrannical rule of men!

Yet it seems that the leading presidential candidates on both sides of American politics are campaigning on a platform of authoritarianism and class warfare. The Democratic Party is trying to use the new powers of an über-presidency to circumvent Congress and enact socialist reforms, legal or not. Now, large swathes of the Republican Party are giving in to the same temptation to use popular support as an excuse to ignore legality.

It is said that in the summer of 1787, a woman named Elizabeth Powel approached Benjamin Franklin as he exited the Constitutional Convention. “Well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” she asked. Dr. Franklin’s reply: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

The republic has not been kept. It is now in grave danger of descending into civil war between feuding political factions that no longer care about any sort of law or constitution.

God does not blame Barack Obama or Donald Trump or any other politician in the way many political commentators do. The American people have sinned and turned away from God. Like Greece and Rome before us, we have allowed the rule of law to collapse. As a result, we will receive the tyrannical rule of men!

We must see what is happening in America as God does. In the end, these nation-destroying problems are actually correction from God to help us see our sins and repent of them. The spirit of lawlessness that has taken hold in America can only end in the erosion of our freedoms. Only after we realize that there is no freedom without law will God be able to teach us the way to true peace, joy and prosperity!