WorldWatch

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC

By Orson Scott Card February 16, 2009

One Party Rule Forever!

Because the mainstream press refuses to see anything wrong in the Obama administration, even the most outrageous actions are given astonishingly gentle treatment -- if they get any treatment at all.

So of course we hear almost nothing about the coup d'etat that is under way in the White House.

People have been talking about a "historic realignment," but of course that is nonsense. Most Americans report mostly conservative viewpoints on most issues. That hasn't changed.

What will change, apparently, is how many voters the Obama administration can produce out of thin air to swing the next election. And as many elections as possible after that.

How is Obama going to accomplish this? He has just moved the constitutionally-required Census from the Commerce Department to the White House -- specifically putting it under the thumb of his political strategist, Rahm Emanuel.

The Census wasn't broke. So why is Obama fixing it?

Here's why it matters:

1. When the Census takes place in 2010, the results will be used to determine which states lose seats in the House of Representatives, and which gain. This also determines which states lose electoral votes, and which gain.

2. For many decades population has been shifting from the big northeastern states to the sunbelt. There is no reason to suppose that the trend is changing, except that California may join the ranks of states losing population this time around.

3. The states that losing seats and electoral votes have been mostly states that Democrats count on to deliver big chunks of their vote. The states that gain have been, as often as not, those that deliver their votes to the Republicans.

Of course, as liberals move from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, they bring their voting habits with them, and some states that used to be solidly Republican are now swing states. But this is not enough for the Democrats.

Remember, the Democratic Party is the one that tried to steal the 2000 presidential election by a highly selective recount in Florida; and when that didn't work, the solidly liberal Florida supreme court selectively nullified any election law that might prevent the theft of the election. Only the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to this openly partisan attempt at election theft.

Well, they're at it again. In a nation that is almost evenly divided between Left and Right -- with a slight lean, most of the time, toward the right -- Obama and Emanuel already have the tools that will allow them to do to the country as a whole what was attempted in Florida.

This will be done by the use of statistical manipulation based on highly doubtful premises.

We have been hearing for years about how the homeless, the poor, and illegal immigrants have all been "undercounted" in the census. Either they can't be found -- or they hide from census officials.

Since these groups tend to vote for the Democratic Party, naturally Democrats have been very concerned to make sure these people are counted in the census.

How many of them are there?

Millions, say some.

We have no idea, say the honest.

"But if we don't count them, then the states that bear the biggest burden of dealing with the homeless, the poor, and illegal immigrants don't get their fair share of federal dollars and programs!"

Here's an idea -- adjust those dollars and those programs to target those states.

But no, the Left wants to go after the Census itself. They want to "adjust" the Census by adding "estimated" numbers of uncounted homeless, poor, and illegal immigrants.

This is functionally identical to the practice of the old Democratic Party machine in Illinois, where dead Democratic voters in Chicago turned out in large enough numbers to counterbalance all the Republican votes downstate.

Now it won't matter how many voters there are. If the Census has been jimmied to give Democratic-leaning states more congressional seats and more electoral votes than the actual count of real people would justify, the Democrats will have their "historic realignment" without having to actually persuade anybody new to vote for their candidates.

And Obama has set himself up to rig all future American elections, not through any democratic process, but by fiat. Just like a dictator.

Remember how, when the Patriot Act was passed, we were flooded with outraged stories in the press about how Americans' rights were going to be trampled on?

None of it came true.

But now we have a genuine attack on the roots of the Constitution and the principle of counting only people who can be proven to exist when apportioning the House of Representatives. It's a naked grab for power. It's a coup d'etat.

And the so-called freedom-lovers in the Leftist media are absolutely silent about it.

If Bush had put Karl Rove in charge of the Census without so much as asking Congress for permission, the howls and screams would have been deafening. Obama does the identical thing ... and the freedom-loving Left is fine with it.

Because they don't love freedom. They just love having their views prevail, without regard to democracy or human rights.

And just in case the American people might hear about this naked power grab by Obama, the Democratic Party hasn't given up yet on their effort to apply the Fairness Doctrine to radio -- and only radio -- so that they can selectively kill free speech and press freedom where it will damage only Republicans and Conservatives.

The Democratic Party has demonstrated, time and time again, their absolute hatred of Democracy. They hated Bush for bringing democracy to Muslim countries that used to sponsor terrorism. They hate it when Americans who disagree with them use their Constitutional rights to speak out for their viewpoint.

And, most of all, they hate democracy when it leads to their losing power. The years of Republican control of Congress made them so insane that they obviously have vowed: Never again.

No matter how stupidly those ordinary Americans vote, they're going to fudge the Census so that Democrats will always keep the White House and the House of Representatives.

If this is allowed to stand, we will never have an honest Census, or an honest election, again.

What can we do?

Lobby your state governments to file suit in the Supreme Court, challenging the right of the President to control the Census.

And if that doesn't work, lobby your state legislatures to call for a new Constitutional Convention in order to pass a Constitutional Amendment that requires that the Census be conducted by an independent agency, which is allowed to count only living people who are actually located and named, with no "estimates" and no fudging.

Obama and Emanuel and others involved in this coup are counting on the media to sweep this under the rug, so that Americans won't get all agitated about something as dull as the Census.

So don't let yourself get bored or distracted. Your vote is about to be discounted. Your most basic freedom as an American -- the right to vote and have a real chance at changing things -- is being taken away.

Check with your friends in Mexico and Cuba and the old Communist bloc about how much they enjoyed generations of one-party rule.

Because that's what Obama decided to try for in his first month in office.



