In these patriotic days of remembrance between Memorial Day and D-Day, perhaps we should give ample thought to why so many Americans made such heroic sacrifices – defense of freedom and opposition to tyranny, the bastions of American heritage.

 

Such thoughtfulness is surely appropriate given our current situation – a congress ignoring its constitutional duty to serve as check and balance to a president’s tyranny of executive orders and erratic behaviors. That leaves only a Supreme Court reluctant to deal with political issues as the final safeguard.

 

After leaving the White House as chief of staff during Donald Trump’s first term, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly described the president as a “person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.”

 

In such circumstances the role of the congress as a check and balance on executive power becomes critical. The following passages suggest the consequences of inaction, something our congressional delegation should heed.

 

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Founding father Benjamin Franklin recommended this phrase to be the motto for the Great Seal of the United States.

 

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy (immigrant invasion?),” cautioned James Madison, our fourth president and renowned father of our constitution.

 

“The Fifth Amendment (includes due process) is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized,” former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

 

“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail,” said founding father Samuel Adams.

 

“Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion,” said our first and greatest president, George Washington.

 

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent,” said Edmund Burke, proclaimed founder of the social and cultural philosophy of conservatism.

 

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice,” said Baron de Montesquieu, 18th century political philosopher and proponent for separation of powers as set forth in our constitution.

 

Crawford is the author of “A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.”