The decision of a single Justice in the Guantanamo/habeus corpus decision preserved our Constitution. That terrifies me.
The fact that four Justices would advocate suspending our guaranteed constitutional rights in the absence of war or insurrection is terrifying. This country is in a crisis that most people don't recognize. The problem is bigger and more extensive than political parties. The problem is the slide into being governed by corporatocracies--part of what Eisenhower meant when he warned us about "the military-industrial complex".
Here's how I think "5 to 4" arose out of a Media Monopoly, and some ideas about solutions:
What can we do to awaken a complacent people and stimulate their interest in their own future? Americans now remain ignorant and prefer to focus on sports or American Idol rather than watching CSPAN or taking to the streets in protest. Media leads them in that direction. Yes, I really think that Big Media wants politics to seem confusing or boring. They want the public to be watching the Lakers game while big corporations lobby Congress to pass laws that increase their own profits.
Politics is boring? Hah! For an example of something exciting, look at Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment against the President of the United States. There before Congress and the viewers on CSPAN stood an elected political leader formally accusing the President of the United States of being a liar who is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of our own citizens and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars of the people's money. Kucinich is asking his fellow congressmen and women to look at the evidence of criminal behavior and decide whether Bush is fit to hold that office. Murder, theft, conspiracy, lying, subverting the Constitution, betrayal of the public trust, cover-up, treason, those topics are certainly material for an exciting news presentation--especially with a little background to illustrate the evidence behind the charges in each article. The only thing I can see missing is sex, and that could easily turn up during an investigation looking at breaches in national security caused by welcoming a male prostitute disguised as a reporter into the White House on a couple hundred occasions.
Boring? I can't imagine being jaded enough to find all of that boring. So it's likely that the near absence of US Media coverage of Kucinich in particular and of politics in general is intentionally designed to keep our attention off the arena where corporations manipulate congress. We have to push hard to change the laws governing Media because the corporations like the status quo.
Until the mid 80's, media ownership was much broader than now. There were also laws mandating that stations present both sides of a discussion. We need to return to those laws, and to a broader ownership of media. It will be a vigorous fight to take our candy back from the bully.
We must push for public funding of political campaigns so that we can elect politicians who are not beholden to corporations and special interest groups. We must elect honest people to office who actually believe in and try to follow their sworn oath of office,
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.",
--- from the oath of office that all Senators and Representatives take
rather than putting party loyalty and financial gain above all else. And let's not forget that we must continue to root out corrupt political appointees who will still be there after the presidential election.
And while restoring the rule of law to this country, we'll have more work to do in rebuilding its financial house and paying off the mammoth debts incurred by the current administration. It's a huge job, and will take decades--but for me, it beats the alternatives.
Here's my vision of the future if we continue in the current direction--and it hurts.
We could live in a fascistic corporatocracy with huge public debt, limited individual rights, a small manufacturing base, massive unemployment, a laughable currency, high inflation, and a monstrous gap between rich and poor.
(And don't forget a perpetual state of war that helps the government keep its people in line by declaring dissidents "unpatriotic" or "disloyal", or worse.--ref. Orwell in his fictional? work, 1984.)
It's not difficult to picture an unhappy day in the future where international corporations bring manufacturing jobs back to the US because "labor is so much cheaper here compared to the rest of the world".
I hope it is not too late to make the major changes now that can help us to avoid the fate of being another failed empire like Great Britain in the 1950's, or living like Argentina, sentimentally with the faded elegance of former great wealth.
Electing better candidates is not all we need to do. We also need real public financing of political campaigns, de-monopolization of media, creating a broad interest in politics, and rooting out residual political corruption. In my opinion, all these need to happen simultaneously to save our democracy.
Maybe you thought that I forgot to put Universal Medical Care in my "wish list" above. Not so. I have doubts it would succeed without these other political changes leading the way.