Obama’s disastrous presidency represents a fork in the road. We can turn back, toward limited government, division of powers, and individual liberty. Or we can plunge forward, into egalitarian autocracy. At the rate Obama is laying waste to the foundations of our government, we may not have three years to make the decision. Already Forbes is calling for impeachment:

Since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has changed it five times. Most notably, he suspended the employer mandate last summer. This is widely known, but almost no one seems to have grasped its significance.

The Constitution authorizes the President to propose and veto legislation. It does not authorize him to change existing laws. The changes Mr. Obama ordered in Obamacare, therefore, are unconstitutional. This means that he does not accept some of the limitations that the Constitution places on his actions. We cannot know at this point what limitations, if any, he does accept.

The ObamaCare fiasco has made clear that Obama believes he has the power to alter laws at will, in open defiance of the Constitution. If we let this stand, we are no longer a constitutional republic.

The main responsibility the Constitution assigns to the President is to faithfully execute the Laws.

But if a law does not comply with Obama’s left-wing ideology, like the Defense of Marriage Act, he openly refuses to enforce it.

His contempt for Congress has been made plain:

He has repeatedly made clear that he intends to act on his own authority. “I have the power and I will use it in defense of the middle class,” he has said. “We’re going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with or without Congress.” There are a number of names for the system Mr. Obama envisions, but representative government is not one of them.

Likewise his contempt for the other major brake on executive power, the Supreme Court:

In an act of overbearing hubris, he excoriated Supreme Court Justices sitting helplessly before him during the 2010 State of the Union address—Justices who had not expected to be denounced and who were prevented by the occasion from defending themselves. Mr. Obama condemned them for restoring freedom of speech to corporations and unions.

His administration has a history of ignoring Supreme Court rulings it doesn’t like, as with provisions of the Voting Rights Act found to be unconstitutional and the standard to be used for “sexual harassment.” If the Supremes find against his practice of making “recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess, he is likely to ignore it again.

The shocking fact is that our whole system of representative government depends on it being led by an individual who believes in it; who thinks it is valuable; who believes that a government dedicated to the protection of individual rights is a noble ideal. What if he does not?

Mr. Obama is moving our government away from its traditional system of checks and balances and toward the one-man-rule that dominates third world countries.

Anyone in Washington who hasn’t been corrupted to the point of no longer believing in this country has a duty to defend our system of government.

Surely, rejection of the Constitution is grounds for impeachment and charges should be filed. In addition, there are many other actions that Congressmen can and should take—actions that will tell Mr. Obama that we have seen where he is going and we will not let our country go without a fight.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government had been created. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”

We are losing it. If Mr. Obama’s reach for unprecedented power is not stopped, that will be the end.

If we let America as it was founded die on our watch, the shame will last to the end of human history.