As is often bemoaned by scholars, genuine classical education in American schools is virtually non-existent. Whereas 100 years ago, university students learned Greek and Latin, today, remedial math and English instruction is the norm.

Yet, if people had a glimpse of Solon who lived approximately from 640-560 BCE, they would take to heart his warning about the "Signs of Dictatorship."

The power of hail and snow springs from a cloud,

and thunder from the fire of lightning.

Strong men destroy a city, and a tyrant

enslaves a people through their ignorance.

A ship once out of port is hard to capture:

know this now before it is too late.

Near the end of his life, Solon warned the citizens that Peisistratus, the general in the final war for Salamis and leader of northeastern Attica, was becoming tyrannical.  Yet Solon's warnings were ignored -- in fact, the people dismissed them as the ravings of a madman.  Solon responded with "[a] little time will show the citizens my madness. Yes, will show, when truth comes in our midst."  And, indeed, he was proven correct when Peisistratus did show his true tyrannical colors.

Barack Hussein Obama consistently flouts American law, disregards the separation of powers, and seemingly could not care less about the swirling scandals surrounding him.  As of May 2014 there have been 23 executive alterations of Obama's own Affordable Care Act.  Chris Conover at Forbes highlights the egregious and unilateral changes to Obamacare when he explains that "[t]he Constitution and its carefully crafted system of checks and balances matters. If President Obama disagrees with a statutory provision enacted into law (and that he signed!), the proper course of action is to go back to Congress and get the law changed."

In addition, Obama flouts federal immigration law and enacts the Dream Act, thus bypassing the Congress.  His latest maneuver of bringing in illegal immigrant children and dumping them all throughout the United States is deliberately endangering the country's security as well as the health of all Americans.  He is using these children as pawns in his never-ending abuse of power.

In 2006 as a state Senator, Obama asserted that "No President is above the law." But as the American people have learned to their dismay, Obama lied -- yet, again.

Obama bases his leftist ideology on the notion that nothing is fair in America because true equality does not exist.  Obama demands this leveling of the playing field because in his worldview everyone should be the same and America is fundamentally an unjust country. When all are made equal, then human characteristics of envy, resentment, and feelings of inferiority will simply disappear.  And, as with everything else that Obama does, he has perverted the idea of equality.  Barry Goldwater asserted that "[e]quality, rightly understood as our Founding Fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism." 

We are getting dangerously close to total despotism under the rule of Obama because disingenuously while he claims that all should be equal, he decides who should establish the rules for this equality.

In his book entitled A Splendor of Letters, author Nicholas A. Basbanes reminds us that "[i]n the totalitarian world of [Orwell's] 1984, a morally corrupt government maintains absolute power by systematically depriving its subjects of their identities and by denying them any hope of a cultural legacy."  Obama and the left constantly distort and ultimately wish to erase the wonder of America and its amazing successes.  Consider the deliberate fostering of historical illiteracy in this country.

And, now in America "we have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity.  We are plodding at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse."  Now the EPA is warning that it will garnish wages of alleged polluters putting yet another stranglehold on businesses such as the coal industry.

Cuban dissident Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo describes the

real men and women who cannot live normal lives in their birthplace, since their whole existence is disrupted day by day -- and decade after decade -- by the perverse nature of a regime never elected by my people, by the propaganda machinery and the impunity of the political police, in a despotic version of socialism that, as in any totalitarian State, starts by abolishing private property, only to end up destroying private life as such, harassing citizens whether or not they become aware of the power of the powerless and decide to bear witness to their own reality.

Are we heading down this road as well?

One need only look to the socialist failure of Greece to see how socialism and entitlements (to make it fair for all) have led to an economic meltdown.  In fact, "Greece was spending beyond its means by injecting cash into a public-sector system that wasn't in turn producing anything of real value on which it could then turn a substantial profit."

Yet, in the land of Democrat control, Americans do find themselves at the mercy of "those who seek to live [our] lives for [us]... who seek to elevate the state and downgrade the citizen."

But people are resisting this totalitarian surge.  At Freedom Works, Deneen Borelli and concerned citizens from Chicago discuss the "high unemployment, failing public schools, and crime" in this community. They assert that "... liberal policies have failed to help the Black community, ... [and] Blacks are questioning the political establishment and are seeking fresh alternatives to reverse the downward social and economic spiral."  During the 8-minute presentation one gentleman states that "Obama has become the deadbeat Black President" to the Black community.  In fact, Obama is directly linked to Rahm Emanuel -- leading to the horrific conditions of the Black community in Chicago.  There is an acute anger and clear-eyed acknowledgement that the Democratic Party, while pretending to be friends to the Black community, has deliberately continued to keep this community in tatters via government entitlements instead of true empowerment.

No matter what Obama the messiah may say, he is "simply demanding the right to enforce [his] own version of heaven on earth."  Yet, time and again, such leaders "are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.  Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.  Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality."

In 2008 Obama showed his true colors to anyone who was really paying attention.  He continues to flip the bird to America by his daily effrontery to the law. We have an evil miasma emanating from this White House. This President's ongoing lawlessness and the concurrent lack of will by the Republicans to use the power of the purse is rushing us headlong into total tyranny. 

Andrew McCarthy asserts that "we must create a political environment where the President has to feel some political pain when he's lawless."  There has to be a powerful groundswell from the American people to publicly cry out that Obama has "gravely breached the trust" of the people.  Without pause, Obama deliberately and "willfully undermin[es] the Constitutional rights of the American people that he is sworn to preserve, protect and defend." 

Until we truly understand that Obama's lawlessness will lead to the complete dismantling of our rights, we will not be able to keep our liberties from being ravaged.  Once this pattern of lawlessness becomes entrenched we can no longer "continue to be a republic under the rule of law."  Rather "we will be subject to Presidential whim" and abuse by any future leader of any political party.  This is the true legacy of Obama unless we take up the gauntlet and fight back and never let up.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com