It allows George W. Bush, and future Presidents of both parties, to declare any American and foreign citizen an “enemy combatant” and imprison them without due process of law.  It will also allow George W. Bush, and future Presidents of both parties, to interpret international treaty obligations, such as the Geneva Conventions, and ignore them as the wind blows, allowing what no euphemism or rape of language can disguise as being torture.  It does not take a genius to know that our own soldiers will now be treated with equal barbarism when they are captured in the endless wars our “leadership” is determined to wage with our sons and daughters.  It also suspends habeas corpus, the cornerstone of civilized governments since 1215.  These powers are unprecedented in American history and are quite literally the end of our American Republic.


When we wake up on Wednesday, October 18, 2006 we will live in a different country, and a much lesser one.  A nation that has slipped back into a time ruled by despots -- and the apathetic daze under which occurred is a sorry indictment of every level of our society – a power hungry and miserable President who will go down in world history as the worst man who ever had the privilege to head this great former Republic; a pathetic and revolting Congress bloated by corrupt millionaires disconnected not only from the common American, but common human decency and morality; an ignorant and philosophically bankrupt populace who are more concerned with the winners and losers of reality television shows than the violent destruction of the constitutional representative democracy in which they once lived.  

Oh, your routine won’t be any different.  You will get up, go through your motions, head off to school or your job, come home, eat dinner, catch some TV, go to bed, and get up and do it all again.  The roads won’t be gone.  You’ll still pass the 7-11, McDonalds, and Wal-Mart along your route.  Your school or office building will still be there.  Your friends and family won’t change.  Nothing will seem different.  But the soul of your nation will be gone.  It will be a thing of the past.  It will be a black and white photograph on yellowing paper of your great grandparents that you discover in a box tucked away in the corner of the attic.  Though you may not recognize their faces, and the dress and atmosphere may seem quaint and provincial, you still gaze on it with a strange familiarity – a connection that you feel in your bones that transcends time.  You wonder about them, and strain to understand how you are no different than they were.  That their lives followed the same pattern as yours.  They had the same hopes and dreams, and suffered the same highs and lows as you do.  Now, however, the connection has been severed.  

Future generations will look back at us as strangers.  No amount of effort will be able to resurrect the values and contributions our Republic has made to civilization.  We’ll just be some tragic mini-series on state run television as an example of a foolish time defined by individual liberty and a profound belief in the necessity of justice and equality.  More importantly, all of the progress we have made in perfecting our deeply flawed nation will be gone, and the ambition to become a better society that has defined us for over two hundred years will be no more alive than the dinosaurs.  It will be as if American democracy and the banana republic born on Wednesday, October 18, 2006, are forever separated by a great stormy ocean that will accept no vessel on its waves.  No amount of words, or venom, or passion, or anger can stress how monumentally important and incredulously ignored this murder is.  The Bill of Rights is dead.  Like a slow drip that floods and destroys an opulent mansion, the United States of America does not exist any longer.  

Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the “founding fathers” had created.  He famously responded, “A Republic – if you can keep it.”  We have failed our founding fathers.  We have failed our Constitution.  We have failed our country.  We have failed the world and the future of the world.  We have lost our Republic.  No matter what steps we take from this day forward to restore it, we will never be the same.

 TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed