[sphinx]

A lot of things that we would have considered almost unthinkable -- well into fictional range -- have become thinkable in the last few years. Obama is a red diaper baby and movement leftist, the kind who in college years considered himself a revolutionary, and possibly still does today. He is a product of one-party Chicago, he is not attached to the forms of competitive two-party democracy, and he does not concede the legitimacy of a democratic opposition.

Do I think Obama would simply disregard a court order? No. That is not an accusation that I would make regarding anyone in American politics today. But it is not inconceivable. There are those on the left who argue that our formal democracy is a sham concealing oppressive structures of power, and that it would be a legitimate revolutionary act to overthrow bourgeois democracy by forcing it to drop the charade and respond forcibly to attempted usurpation.

Which brings us to Salvador Allende and Chile, which up until Allende had been South America's model democracy. Allende won a plurality in a three way race but did not have a legislative majority. He ruled in defiance of the Chilean legislature, and then defied the Chilean courts. At that point, he was a acting as a pure dictator. Then the army stepped in. And Allende remains a leftist hero.

[Paladin2]

Do you want your omelet or not? ;-)