This is my article that was published in the Kentucky Kernel on the 22nd of September under the title: Presidential Czars not just Obama's, Have historical presence.  It can be found on the KY Kernel website here.
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I feel that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately responding to and correcting falsehoods and misrepresentations about President Barack Obama and his agenda.  Today will, unfortunately, be no different.  From the tea party protesters at the National Mall, to cable news, and yes even on our own campus, a series of lies and misconceptions as well as outright vitriol has been spreading.

I have heard, personally, from people on campus who believe that President Obama is creating a “secret army”, whose purpose seems unclear to me. As I was told, though, I should open my eyes and realize that it’s happening, or that he already has a secret “SS” in Georgia to silence dissidents.  While I believe it takes a very special kind of crazy to actually believe some of this downright stupidity, I do think it’s important to address some of these matters, and let me be clear, I’ll be writing today on the assumption that we’re all intelligent enough to set some of these issues aside without addressing them. If you’d like me to tell you why the President isn’t a Nazi or anything like Adolf Hitler, I’d be happy to do so. So long as the conversation takes place in a padded room where you can’t hurt yourself.

The one issue that I have heard everywhere is that of presidentially- appointed czars.  It is also the one issue that I believe is worth my time and effort to address, because I can understand why some people might be led to believe some of the misconceptions of czars.  If all you hear is Glenn Beck’s notion of what czars are and what they do, then you may very well believe it.  The problem here is, as it is with many of Mr. Beck’s positions, these ideas are simply wrong.

As a bit of research for this article I decided to go straight to the source of a lot of this madness, Fox News.  More specifically, I made sure to catch a few episodes of the Glenn Beck show, although I must admit I haven’t been able to make it through an entire episode yet but I have made it past the halfway point a couple times and that should count for something.  There is a very clear distrust among some over the term “czar”, what it means, and what kind of accountability these czars have.  Unfortunately for those who are trying to make these arguments for political or media gain, these issues are ones that exist only in the minds of people like Mr. Beck.

President Obama is not the first to create czar positions or to rely on their advice.  The idea of executive branch czars is hardly a new one. The first czar positions were created in the 1940s during the Roosevelt administration and some of which were created at the behest of Congressional Republicans.  They were actually created, in part, to help ease the public’s mind about the pressing issues of the day.  The term czar was chosen to make the public feel as though there was a strong person at the helm, capable of steering America in the right direction.

It was under the Reagan administration that the Republican Senate created the position of a national “Drug czar”.  President George W. Bush appointed some 40 individuals to 36 different czar positions. As a point of comparison President Obama has 31 executive appointed czars.

Another often used argument against czars is that they have enormous amounts of power that they may wield completely unchecked and unaccountable to anyone.  On its face, this is absurd.  These czars are appointed by the President and are, therefore, accountable to the White House; they are not authorized to make a move without the consent and backing of the administration. Let me make it very clear, Czars report to and serve at the pleasure of the President.

To those of you who are also fed up with the lies and hate-mongering being propagated in America today, I as always invite you to come out to a College Democrats’ meeting.  We meet every Monday in room 211 of the Student Center.