He is a president, not a king.
-Sen. Russ Feingold December 17, 2005
We've long resisted asking you [The Founding Fathers] for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. ...[But] we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.
-Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams, Amistad (1997) (emphasis mine)
People like Bill Kristol and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher really need to follow the Ari Doctrine: "All Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do."
Do they really understand what their comments are suggesting?
Are they so enamored with this President and the power they think they are holding with him that they cannot even see that they are literally supporting the descriptions of a dictatorship right here in this country?
Bush's blatent admission of this secret spying program clearly violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and John Aravosis of AMERICABlog, in a post directed to right and left gun-nuts, explains why this should scare all Americans, left and right:
So if Bush is allowed to ignore the Constitution and federal law so long as we're at war with terror, that pretty much means forever.
Once the government has the unfettered right to take away any and all of your rights at whim, those right are already gone and rendered meaningless. If the government has the right to obliterate the protections in the Bill of Rights by presidential fiat, with no judicial oversight and in clear disregard of the law of the land and the will of our elected representatives, then those rights no longer exist. Period.
The Bill of Rights is gone. It no longer has any power to protect the absolute rights of citizens against an overzealous government. Yes, you may still have your guns, you may still assemble peacefully in the town square, you may still run a newspaper, but you no longer are guaranteed THE RIGHT to have a gun, the right to assemble, or the right to a free press because President Bush just told us that any and all rights under the Constitution exist at his will. Thus those rights, as enumerated in the Constitution, are no longer absolute checks on government power as the government has decided it can overrule those "rights" in secret, unchecked, and at a whim. They are no longer rights at all.
...snip...
In the end, the time to get worried about your rights isn't when they come for your guns, your megaphone, or your printing press. It's when your government establishes the precedent that permits it to ignore the protections already in place - protections that guarantee you your guns, your speech and your press. The precedent has now been set, those protections have now been dismantled. But hey, like I said, even an actual repeal of the 2nd Amendment doesn't NECESSARILY mean the government would come knocking on your door to take away your guns, so I'm sure none of you pro-gun folks object to an actual repeal. All that a repeal would do is take away the absolute protection for your right to bear arms, it wouldn't necessarily immediately take away your arms.
Well, the same thing is happening here: George Bush just took away the absolute protection of your rights enunciated in the Bill of Rights. It doesn't necessarily mean he's going to act on the new power he's suddenly seized. But are you really willing to sit back and wait to see if he does?
The slope has always been slippery, but once you fall over, it will be very difficult to go back to how it was. There is a reason why "unconstitutional" has always been a very powerful word in our government institutions: once you have a serious violation of, or revocation of rights protected under, the Constitution, unless action is taken to repair that violation, the rest of those rights are subject to similar action. I have always been a big First Amendment activist as far as free speech goes, because I knew that once somebody subjugated one's right to say or express something, then everybody's similar rights could be questioned.
We are a nation of laws and vast intrepretations of them, but our interpretations have historically been to the benefit of the American people and the expansion of their freedoms, rather than the restriction of them. The freedoms listed under our Bill of Rights and further Amendments to our Constitution are indefinite, not until 2076. There is no finite end to them.
The President, however, has come out and said that not only did he execute this spying program (that any legal scholar can conclude is a violation of the Fourth Amendment), but he plans to continue it and further violate the Bill of Rights for the duration of the War on Terror, of which Bush declared over a year ago that it could not be won, and will likely be (by his interpretation) a neverending war.
Rights that are infinitely guaranteed to all American citizens versus violations of those rights for an infinite period of time. These two cannot logically nor legally co-exist. One has to go.
And this is where we find ourselves today.
Kristol and Rohrabacher are so ignorantly and arrogantly short-sighted that they do not see the gravity of the situation here. This is not about Democrats vs. Republicans. It's about opening the door to dictatorship (who could be a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Communist, etc.), the very thing they decry today, and the only sole justification they have for every argument regarding the Iraq War ("we removed a vicious dictator"). You either knowingly protect the freedoms of this country and its basic principles regardless of political affiliation, or you knowingly throw them away for whatever reason. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
The future of this nation and what it will become hangs in the balance by what we do from here on out. It is up to us to determine what kind of country we will have for ourselves, for our children, and our children's children.
Which brings me back to why I printed that Amistad quote at the top. Those last few words are pivotal, so pivotal I'll reiterate them: "Who we are is who we were." Our lawmakers from years past relied on what our Founding Fathers wanted and bestowed upon us. To this day, we constantly remark upon and quote them in our speeches, our blogs, our articles, our laws and our intrepretations of them. Why? Because we revere them and what they gave to this country. We revere in the genius of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the checks and balances installed by these men more than 220 years ago.
We also revere in Abraham Lincoln and what he gave to this country and African Americans more than 140 years ago. We revere in FDR and what he offered this country's downtrodden, poor, sick, and wounded 70 years ago. You're seeing a pattern? Who we are is who we were.
Precedents are set to shape the course of the future of this country in its laws, its social fabric and its culture, whether it is Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, or even Marbury v. Madison. If our nation, through our media and elected officials, feel that such an unlawful abuse of power is acceptable, then that will set a precedent that I doubt we will ever truly erase. I and many others have openly proclaimed at times that this is no longer a government of, by and for the people, but we have never had any true distinct proof of that. This abuse of power will cease all doubt and be the definitive proof we can lay at the feet of our Constitution, of which at that time will truly be nothing more than "a goddamned piece of paper."
America, whether we like it or not, has a choice to make, a future to establish. What we all do from here on out will determine the fate of our democracy and whether we can lay claim to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's time we define once and for all how important our Bill of Rights and Constitution are to us, our freedoms, this country and its principles.
Who we are is who we were, and who we will be is who we are now.