Beginning in the 1820s, Georgia began a campaign to exterminate the Cherokee Nation by force and removal. The state annexed Cherokee land, and Georgia led the way in pressuring Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act.

A minister by the name of Samuel Worcester was ministering on Cherokee land. Georgia eventually passed laws that made it “illegal” for whites to live on Cherokee land and extended Georgia’s territory into Cherokee land. Worcester didn’t leave. He and others were arrested by Georgia “police” and sentenced to four years of hard labor.

He appealed his sentence, and the US Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s extension laws in Worchester v Georgia.

Writing for the majority, John Marshall opined that the Indian nations were “distinct, independent political communities retaining their original natural rights.” Marshall declared that the Cherokee were a nation inside the nation and that treaties were signed protecting those rights. Marshall said that the Cherokee had the right to live where they chose.

But President Jackson disagreed. Urban myth has Jackson saying: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” What he actually said was just as tyrannical: “The decision of the supreme court has fell stillborn, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.”

By refusing to enforce what the Supreme Court found unconstitutional, Jackson was the first president to act as a proxy king. He refused to abide by a Supreme Court decision.

In an op/ed published in The Hill on Saturday, Jonathan Turley has again raised his voice to point out that if the left got its way, we would be in the grips of tyranny. We are creeping dangerously close to witnessing a president acting as a proxy king and, like Jackson did 185 years ago, simply ignoring the court and refusing to enforce the constitution he swore to protect and defend. Turley writes:

In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.” Thus, in light of the court’s bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation.

The use of the affirmative action case is ironic, since polls have consistently shown that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states, such as California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in college admissions. Polls further show that a majority support the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.

America cannot function unless the three branches of government operate as they were intended. Congress passes laws, and if they comport to constitutional mandate, they are enforced by the executive branch. If they are not constitutional, the Supreme Court must strike down those laws, and the executive branch is mandated to abide by those decisions. What the president cannot do is simply act as a proxy king and ignore the Supreme Court.

Yet, here we are. That is what men like Tushnet and Belkin want and why they are dangerous. It isn’t just their opinions that are dangerous; it is their wacky call for tyranny to go mainstream and be disseminated and taught to others as an acceptable means to an end. Less than three years ago, Donald Trump was president, and men like Tushnet and Belkin were calling Trump a tyrant. Yet they clamor for a president they “like” to act as one, to be a dictator without a moment of reflection. If a modern president acts like Andrew Jackson and simply ignores the court and, thus, the Constitution, we would no longer be a republic; we would be ruled by a tyrant.

But Biden has already done that. Turley illustrated how Biden has already ignored the Supreme Court and ignored the advice of legal experts. He searched for and found a palace court jester willing to tell him what he wanted to hear.

America is on the edge of a cliff. We are in an actual constitutional crisis. One caused by a cabal of palace partisans who want to abandon the Constitution, but only when it suits them. They have told a doddering would-be king what he wants to hear, and he has listened.

Turley closed with:

This is what Tushnet has advocated in “taking the Constitution away from the courts.” Once the courts are removed from constitutionalism, however, we will be left where we began centuries ago: with the fleeting satisfaction of popular justice.

And tyranny.