“(With) today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all practical purposes, there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. It’s a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law even including the supreme court of the United States.”
Throughout his address, Biden underscored the gravity of the moment, emphasizing that the only barrier to the president’s authority now lies in the personal restraint of the officeholder. He warned vehemently against the prospect of Trump returning to power, painting a stark picture of the dangers such an outcome could pose.
You have discovered the great fallacy, the presumption that democracy and freedom are the natural course of things: they are not. Every single inch of it we have was taken by force from kings and dictators, and they’re always waiting in the shadows for their opportunity to take it back.
The peace dividend created by the end of the cold war has unfortunately made an entire generation of people who believe this fallacy, this is one of the glaring reminders that it’s not true. Democracy and freedom are things that must be actively maintained in perpetuity by everyone who wants them, we must be ready and willing to use all four boxes of democracy (soap, ballot, jury, AND ammo) to defend it for the rest of our lives. We must educate, we must vote, we must nullify unjust laws, and we must arm ourselves, because at the end of the day, violence is the one enforcement method that everyone is forced to listen to. It doesn’t matter how right you are if the other side has more people willing to kill and die for their cause than yours does, so we better damn well make sure that’s not the case.