Going Silently Into That Lame Duck Good Night?
March 9th, 2008Not Without A Fight
“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There (was) never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
- John Adams
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
As Home Box Office prepares to run its series on United States founding father John Adams beginning March 16, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book John Adams by David McCullough, perhaps this is a good time to reflect on where democracy stands on two of the film’s key lynchpins: The Boston lawyer’s reverence for the rule of law and his commitment to personal liberty.
Is American democracy over and done with, on the verge of collective suicide?
Or is there a chance to ring a little more liberty out of this great experiment before it collapses like the holy Roman Empire?
As they say in journalism school, there are two sides to every story.
If left to the ravages of King George and his religious supporters who have no problem with the idea of being led by a royal family who derive their power from God, we can kiss this democracy goodbye.
But as we are seeing at ballot boxes across America, there is a resurgence of “hope” in the turnout for revolutionary presidential candidate Barack Obama. Young Democrats are turning out in record numbers to vote for the first Black man in American history to have a real shot at the White House.
But King George will not go silently into that lame duck good night.
President George W. Bush continues his ignorant drive to destroy democracy in the name of creating a great empire to dominate the world. And it is profoundly ironic that he has fooled the masses in one of the most anti-federal government states in the union in the quest to destroy the rule of law and personal liberty in one fell swoop of history.
While Bush was browbeating Congress this past week to codify into law the most sweeping violation of individual liberty and privacy in the nation’s history by continuing to push for unlimited executive branch powers to spy on Americans, his loyal servants in the U.S. Justice Department in Alabama were trying to run raids on the Statehouse to arrest any viable Democrats in future elections.
While people across America are rising up against King George and fighting against the war in Iraq and the destabilized economy by voting in record numbers for Democrats, in Alabama, the people and the press seem to blithely go along with the hostile takeover of the government by Federalist Society lackeys.
As a student of great contradictions in society, this is one of the most confusing of them all. How can the people who voted so many times for George Corley Wallace now support a federal takeover of the Alabama Legislature?
If an American president had tried this in 1970, a hundred thousand people would have shut down the State Capitol in Montgomery with their protests. But today, the working class population of Alabama is so lulled into slumber by the contradictory rhetoric that they have laid down their arms and gone to sleep.
Bush campaigned on the same anti-federal government platform as George Wallace. When he took over the White House on the basis of that campaign, he immediately began to consolidate executive power like no president in American history.
This is so true that the so-called “liberal” New York Times ran a piece in the Sunday paper under the headline: Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy.
Affirms his legacy? Give us a break.
I say fuck King George - and his legacy.
Where are the people of America and Alabama who will stand with me and John Adams against his legacy? If you are with us, affirm it with your comment below.
“Trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
- John Adams, 1772
March 9th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
It may be that the blatenness of the GOP onslought is so overwhelming, ordinary Alabamians just can’t react to how the Rove-Riley-Canarys-et al machine is crapping on the constitution and constitutional rights. And, it may be that the GOP combine senses that the day is coming when they are going to be exposed - when Riley et al are in the dock, pleading for mercy, not justice, so they’re fighting like cornered rats.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
How are ordinary Alabamians to even find out there’s something wrong with what’s going on, when the local press and broadcast media won’t report it?
I stopped by a local party of ordinary Alabamians last night for a short while. The Siegelman case came up. But few there have read the accounts here or at Harpers.org, so they are in the dark. They don’t understand how it is even possible that justice could be so political. It is hard to fathom, I guess - until someone you know is at the other end of the injustice stick.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I too am struck by how many of my friends and co-workers are essentially clueless about what our government has been doing to subvert both the rule of law and the political process. I am also amazed that these same people will not call or e-mail their elected representatives to express their opinions on whatever subject is at hand. Outrage is useless without expression!
I often sent e-mails to Bud Cramer, Shelby and Sessions. Bud always responds even though I often disagree with him. Shelby and Sessions, more often than not, how their arrogance by ignoring me.
Which leads me to the dead campaign by Vivian Davis Figures. Why can’t we find someone to mount a credible campaign against Sessions?
March 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
There’s a brain drain going on…
I guess the talent pool is small. And who would want to run if you face indictment?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Another testimony to Adams was his 54-year marriage to Abigail (hell, he was married as long as I’ve been alive) and her reminding him to “remember the ladies” while working on the Declaration of Independency. Sadly, he was not as pleased about his two terms as VP telling Abigail: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
As president he had to deal with the war between the French and British and his refusal to accept bribes from French Foreign Minister Talleyrand is legendary. Imagine today our Supreme Ruler confiding in Congress that he had been offered a bribe? Better, yet, admitting to accepting one.
As much as it will be fun to see the HBO Miniseries it will sadden me to be reminded of the sacrifices these brave men made to build America. I suspect they would collectively be rolling in their graves if they weren’t mere dust now.
However, we should never give in to the tyranny we will face if all our liberties are stripped away and right now people, we are on the verge of losing them all.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:18 am
See the Telescope section on the news page. Atlantic Monthly has an interesting survey on the state of democracy around the world.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:59 am
You can thank Greenspan for the timidity of the flock. He was right when he declared that “a certain amount of economic uncertainty is a good thing” to paraphrase badly. How can someone who’s barely making their mortgage and barely holding onto their jobs dare to rock the boat? If one bad decision can cause you to lose everything, how can you risk standing up to power?
A comfortable middle class led to the unrest of the 60’s, when young adults fought vocally for equal rights etc., against conservative entrenched power. Conservatives HATE what happenned in the 60’s. A comfortable middle class that gets TOO comfortable leads to unrest, when people question authority and react en masse to injustice rather than tentatively clinging to their shrinking portion of the american dream….
To keep americans docile and servile you must convince them to spend as much as they can (our priority, according to GWB)so they stay on the edge and are effectively OWNED by their corporate debt holders. So much for liberty.
March 10th, 2008 at 9:36 am
It’s a sad commentary, but if they don’t wake up and fight, it’s going to get much worse before its has a chance to get any better.
Those safe little jobs at corporate newspapers aren’t going to last much longer either, so if there are liberal reporters working for those news chains, perhaps they should consider rising up about now and fighting a little harder to tell the truth…
March 10th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Ask around among your friends and see who’s actually read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Even among Baby Boomers, putatively better educated than generations since, it’s only a minority. Some years back, a poll was done to discover what Americans thought of the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights.
When given verbatim reading of one or another of the first ten amendments — minus identification of where it came from — a surprising number either thought the protected right shouldn’t be protected or, worse still, thought it was somehow communist.
Is this because most people are inherently stupid?
No, the answer lies in our culture. Americans are exceptionally poorly educated, thanks to our government monopoly elementary and secondary school system. Results include a culture that places more importance on American Idol and the personal life of Britney Spears than on American government and the daily abuse of power by the executive and Congress.
In fact, with the general ignorance of the Bill of Rights, most Americans would likely not notice most of their rights being taken away.
If it were not for a small minority of libertarians and civil libertarians, both major parties, and their special interest group allies, would have long ago scrapped the Bill of Rights. They’ve been chipping away at it furiously over the years, especially during the last eight, but consistently for several decades.
Ultimately, it will require a change in culture, a rejuvenation of widespread interest in how the government works and how much power it has, to change this state of affairs. The “progressive” solution of giving government even more power will result, eventually, in autocracy just as the ancient Roman Republic ended, as several democratic Greek city states ended, and as the French Revolution ended.
Our culture - with amnesia about what happen last year, much less last century or a couple of millenia ago - has to change if we want to stop a headlong rush into a new age of imperial autocracy followed by a new Dark Ages.
But for the moment, we seem quite unconcerned about it all.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I’m here and I will stand with you and John Adams!
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I must say you have really hit the nail on the head on the Alabama problems and what is happing to the citizens of the united states in Alabama. I was a victim of the disgusting officials, federal and local state goverment the amount of pain they had inflicted on me and my family was a discrace adding to my diabilty , I was vitim of politics, I have written many many emails to Alice Martin pledding and begging for help and to no avail were never answered, I first thought that it was that I was a Yankee in the south, I never seen it comming, I could not go to any federal or state official for help even though I tryed. my rights were stomped on and my name smeared though the mud to say the very least, now I guess George Bush thinks that I should just suck it up , I feel gang raped by the same united states that my entire family served and fought for my freedom and liberty. yes I do agree that they would be rolling in there graves to see what they were fighting and died for.what happened? why does Bush think he has the right to do this to me and my family, How am I to live with what was done to me.? I am still under there thumb I can’t get the social security that I deserve still fighting 3 years now. I have two chronic pain diseases that they made worse.no one cares that this was done to me.I went to the FBI , they said that they are there for bank robbers, went to the united states attorneys office spoke with a few assistants they said that they were there for the President not me. I wrote a few republican [my big mistake] I went to the federal court to press criminal charges and they said that I couldn’t press criminal charges on the officals that violated me the united states attornys office does that, so I filed for civil to seek some sort of justice and that was threw back since the court clerk said that 1983 was a criminal and not a civil code, I am not a lawyer nor even finished high school, I am a disaled white american in need of justice. believe me I AM STANDING WITH YOU.. WILLING TO FIGHT TO THE END TO GET OUR RIGHTS AND UNION BACK THAT WE SO NEED.thats in a nut shell theres way too much to write. I am sure that I am not the only one out there that has been perscuted by our own justice system. Barbara Back