For many of us whose family members escaped the oppression of totalitarian regimes to come to a country where the law of the land wasn’t subject to the whim and caprice of a single man, last night’s exhibition had a surreal quality to it. We witnessed a form of the authoritarianism from which our relatives had fled.

To be clear, Obama’s action, no matter how imperious, in no way equates with the edicts of those despotic regimes. Yet it’s precisely because Obama’s edict was issued in a democratic republic that makes it so appalling. Talk to emigrés of a certain age from, e.g., the former Eastern Bloc, and they’ll grab you by the arm and warn, “Friend, don’t even begin to let your country go down this path. We’ve seen this movie before. Trust me, the plot stinks and you probably won’t like how it ends.”

It doesn’t matter that Obama’s actions were cheered by millions, or that his supporters ridicule as hyperbolic the concerns of his critics. And it matters little that he claimed, in Orwellian terms, that humanitarian impulses drove the edict. It matters even less that his administration proffered a tortured legal rationale for his actions. After all, each of these things usually happens in the very first scene of that movie the emigré​ warned you about.

What matters is that rather than discharge his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” our commander-in-chief engaged in a blatantly lawless usurpation of domestic power never before witnessed by any American alive today.

Montesquieu cautioned, “There can be no liberty when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body of magistrates.” From his serial rewrites of Obamacare to his casual nullification of duly enacted immigration laws, the president seems intent on putting Montesquieu’s claim to the test.