If civil freedom, including religious freedom, is the relative absence of restraint and the restrainers (those charged authority to uphold the law) are to be constrained by a constitution, then when the constitution is ignored freedom is necessarily jeopardized.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time this current President has done such, nor is it an entirely accurate description. The executive branch can defund enforcement of a penalty for breaking a law. So, President Obama could simply state that the offering of old plans for a year would not be blocked. The real problem is that he has remained unchecked by congress on numerous similar occasions previously and there is not sufficient support in congress to enforce appropriate penalties on the executive branch.
This era is a remarkable parallel of the Roman Republic. Rome had a constitution, which like Britain’s was unwritten. gradually the restraints and checks were whittled away by the power hungry and the greedy. Eventually after many proto-dictators like the Gracchi,
Marius, and Sulla, they got Caesar, who chose to rule by “executive order” Caesar was killed but it was too late. Our constitution has been undermined almost from the time it was written. From the alien and sedition act, to Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, ad infinitum.
DD,
Good point. Fallen man is the problem. Given, arguably, the best system of gov’t and constitution the world has seen guarantees nothing.
At the close of the constitutional convention, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded,
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Pogo of the sixties comic strip lore,
“We have met the enemy, and he is us…”
Cue the gospel of the kingdom!
“He can’t do that!”
How long has it been since that mattered?
“Recovering the Republic’s Constitution”