I, Loyal Citizen of the Republic, 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.
This is the Congressional Oath of Office that every member of Congress swears. Remember its importance, the weight it carried? I wonder if it is nothing but a bunch of ceremonious words when I read that Congress today abdicated its responsibility to uphold the Constitution. What's worse is that they plan to make legal these flagrant violations of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitition. Support and defend, my ass!
America is slowly wising up, but by the time we recover, it may already be too late. The difficulty to repair the damage that has been done will be made almost insurmountable when having to deal with a cult that comprises more than 1/3rd of all Americans. In addition, we have no idea who will lead this country of ours down the road - I mean, could any of you have thought that in 1984 we would be experiencing something like this with our leaders today?
If anything, Republicans today have shown that they are short-sighted cowards, the very people that folks like Patrick Henry and the other Founding Fathers would have, literally, fought to the death in their fight for freedom from England and tyranny. But what is more depressing is that their actions will one day be met with dire consequences, not just for them but for all of us.
There is such a thing as a slippery slope, and when you lean too far, it's all downhill from there. To refuse to hold our President accountable for his knowingly illegal actions and to then proceed to make them legal by taking a chunk out of the Constitution is to guide our country downhill on that slope. They may think that they are being good Republicans, loyal to the party, but that thought is obscuring the tragic reality that they have now offered on a silver platter what I cannot recall a Congress before doing:
The ability for a President to be unconstrained by the law. Folks, that is the definition of a dictator. Go ahead and look it up.
Now, I know plenty of people that say "oh come on, there is no way that we will have a dictator in this country, you're talking crazy." Perhaps. Perhaps we won't have a dictator, per se, in this country following the next presidential election, or the one after that. There is always the possibility that the good will of the American people won't allow such a thing to take place. But...that does not mean that it legally cannot be done.
Let me say that again: it does not mean that it legally cannot be done. Why? Because this Congress, the 109th Congress of the United States as history will show, passed into law (to be signed by the President) the legal loophole that will allow any future President to bypass any law he or she so chooses. This law violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and with a stacked right-wing Supreme Court, it will likely be ruled constitutional. So, in other words, this law will give any future president the legal ability to commit illegal activity.
The Founding Fathers understood one thing: the fallability of man makes it too much of a risk to give so much power to him. That's why Congress, made up of multiple men and women, has the power the Founding Fathers authorized it in the Constitution. Because as the fallability of man suggests, it becomes increasingly unlikely that a President will want to simply relinquish the new authority he or she has been given. If there is one uniform trait that all humans have is that we are all addicted to power, and when we get it, we will do whatever it takes to hold onto it, even if it means destroying the one thing we love or care about the most. It can be anything - your job, your home, your wife, your children, your friends, the law, your country, your own life.
I'm young enough to where I may indeed experience in my lifetime the moment when the President assumes ultimate authority over all persons and actions. Some of you may be wringing your hands thinking that all will be fine if the future dictator president is a Democrat or even a liberal. I'm not. I don't care if the President is Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Fascist, Liberal, Communist, Libertarian, Fundamentalist, or whatever - the last thing I want to see in this country is any President assuming dictatorial powers. It goes against everything that Americans here and abroad have fought and died for and what my cousin will so be fighting for too.
And on a side note, one has to wonder how members of our armed forces will feel if our President assumed dictatoral powers? Would they continue to defend this country even if it no longer followed the principles they and millions of servicemen and women were sworn to protect? Would we as a nation be left without an army and only the national police force that Bush so desperately wants to create? Or worse, could these servicemen turn their weapons toward our nation's capital and engage in a military overthrow of our government, possibly even leading this country into another dictatorship, this time under the control of the military? Do you see how crazy this thing could get? All because some thin-skinned, yellow-bellied politicians in Washington who are afraid of this President decided to break their oath of office and not hold this President and Administration accountable for their actions.
It is quite amazing how far our public officials and citizenry have fallen since this nation was born 230 years ago. Ben Franklin's words of wisdom no longer have a foothold in today's America. The very fear that he and the other Founding Fathers fought against is living rampant in today's citizens and public officials. Let's all admit one thing: the only thing that electing a Democratic Congress in 2006 and a Democratic President in 2008 will do is attempt to stop the bleeding, not kill the infection that continues to grow. It's going to take a lot more than just that to really heal the body America. It is not impossible to do, but as we carry with us the thought that the President at any day now could utilize dictatorial tools thanks to our current Congress, the task at hand has just been made that much more difficult.