During the last five years, the United States has been stumbling along the edge of a precipitous cliff. At the bottom of the drop lies the redistributionist, egalitarian, government-directed society toward which Obama and his minions have been driving us since 2009. In fact, we have been marching almost continuously toward that cliff for a century. There have been several periods (under Wilson, FDR and LBJ, specifically) during which the march was accelerated. And, sadly, only two epochs (Coolidge, Reagan) in which it slowed down (and even retreated slightly). But Obama has cranked up the engine again and the march is almost complete. It is my purpose here to identify the thrust that will finally push us over the edge.

Some have argued that the United States has already fallen off the cliff. It is asserted that a century of metastasizing government, judicial usurpation, congressional abdication to the federal bureaucracy and its regulations in lieu of Constitutional law, fiscal profligacy, media compliance and the near total decay of traditional moral values have combined to indeed destroy our Constitutional Republic. Those who argue thus claim that the Republic has been replaced by a ‘soft’ tyranny marked by crony capitalism, forced equality, class warfare, government control of the economy, abrogation of American Exceptionalism, evisceration of the military and a signal lack of individual freedom. This might be so.

Or perhaps, despite our pell-mell rush toward the collectivist nirvana envisioned by the Obama acolytes, we have not yet reached socialist heaven and there is still time to rescue the American experiment. The rise of the Tea Party in 2009-10 gives hope that the spirit of liberty still beats in the American breast. Since then, despite the reelection of our “transformer-in-chief,” conservatives have made substantial gains in state and local elections around the nation. Furthermore, polls seem to indicate that more and more Americans are awakening to the true message of BHO: exchange liberty for equality and fairness; nationalize the health care industry and many other segments of the American economy; emphasize the historic wrongs committed by the US and atone for them by surrendering our place as a world power; convert our Constitutional Republic into a Euro-style, nanny state; denigrate Western Civilization and Christianity; elevate Islam and third world cultures; and retreat back into a cocoon of “safe,” predictable social equality.

Is it too late? Have we passed the point of no return? Many think that we have. And even if not, Obama still has three more years to complete the shove off the cliff. Moreover, he has telegraphed the weapons that he intends to deploy in order to seal the deal. Before I quickly review them, let us note that he has already fired many arrows from his quiver, too many of which have hit their mark:

• Dodd-Frank, which is crippling American business and helping to convert the major financial institutions of America into public utilities.
• A wasteful and ineffective stimulus that only heralded his massive deficit spending, which has pushed the debt to frightening levels that portend a cataclysmic financial meltdown.
• Unconstitutionally creating law via executive fiat in flagrant disregard of his constitutional responsibilities as President.
• Packing the courts and federal bureaucracy with fellow travelers who pursue a hard left agenda.
• Shutting down the country’s fossil fuel enterprises (via stopping the Keystone pipeline, denying permits to drill on federal lands and off shore, and failing to reinvigorate the nuclear energy industry) and promoting government-sponsored corrupt “clean” energy enterprises.
• Obamacare! Need I say more?

The concluding act of his transformative presidency – especially if the Dems capture the House – will include:

• Common Core implemented, augmented by universal pre-K, universal College education and in general, a federal takeover of the entire public education system in the US.
• Cap and Trade.
• Gun Control.
• Card Check.
• Enhanced taxation of the “wealthy,” accompanied by sizeable minimum wage increases and other redistributionist schemes to promote his utopian world in which no one is poor – even if no one is rich.

But the weapon that will kill us, bury us, and ensure the destruction of the American Republic is immigration reform. I’ll explain why momentarily but first: why is the ‘reform’ that is currently under consideration morally, politically and historically wrong? The proposal is effectively to grant amnesty to all illegal aliens in the United States and bestow on them citizenship. No one knows the exact number of beneficiaries. The usual estimate is 11-15 million, but some believe it could be 20 million or more. To grant this amnesty is immoral because:

• It rewards lawlessness instead of punishing it.
• It penalizes law-abiding aliens who played by the rules and patiently waited their turn to gain residency and citizenship by lawful means.
• It smacks of insanity – you know, when you do the same thing repeatedly expecting different outcomes. We did this already in 1986 and it backfired horribly.
• It encourages and rewards exactly the wrong kind of immigrants – instead of ambitious, well-educated, entrepreneurial types, we invite and pamper uneducated, often law-breaking, unskilled peasants.
• It weakens the status of English as the language of the land.

It is hard to imagine anything more self-destructive and unwise. But of course, those two adjectives accurately describe much of the Obama hard left agenda. Why is it immigration reform that will finally throw us off the cliff? In short, the plan to install and enfranchise more than ten million virtually assured leftist voters will permanently tip the electoral scales in the US and guarantee the election of far left presidents for decades to come. Even the Democrats make little attempt to refute this assessment. One wonders how any Republican could embrace this plan. When we implemented essentially the same plan about 30 years ago, we did so with a much smaller number. Nevertheless, that mistake certainly played a role in altering  presidential elections. The presidency was considered almost a lock for the GOP from 1952 to 1992, when the White House was in GOP hands for 28 of those 40 years. Since then, the GOP has lost five out of the last six popular presidential votes. Legalizing 10-20 million leftist voters will cede  total control of the Oval Office  to the hard left and it will also flip the Congress permanently to the Dems. Then you can kiss the Republic goodbye.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative