It’s not just that this, the Bush administration, has engaged in a systematic effort to undermine our Constitution and diminish our freedoms. It’s not just that the great experiment in liberty that is America has been subverted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their partners in now-documented crimes. It is that, unless we act now, November is not the end but a darker and dirtier new beginning: the foundation of the police state has been built over eight years but it is up to us to make sure that the next eight don’t see the walls going up around us.
A President Palin will carry on the work of suppression that this cabal has set in motion. She has recycled the Bush-Cheney lies already linking 9/11 to Iraq; she has roared to throngs that it is shameful for Obama to want to read the prisoners in Guiantanamo `their rights’, as John Adams put his life and career at risk to do for other hated prisoners of his own day; she is being given the same soundbites that George Bush used in 2000, the same speechwriters are crafting her metaphors (`America’s heart will be on display’) and the same damn Bush-Rove stylist who so brilliantly restyled Katherine Harris from a grownup Florida mallrat into a subdued neutral-lipsticked stateswoman, who styled Condi Rice and Karen Hughes, has restyled Gov. Palin as well.
And make no mistake: the elephant in the room is the very dangerous and life-threatening form of melanoma the presidential candidate on the right is suffering from. Cheney-Rove are banking, sooner or later, on a clear-shot Palin Presidency. And President Palin, if you decode the signs, has been chosen as the cosmetically-soothing Trojan horse for the same thugs who have plundered our treasure, crushed our freedoms and murdered four thousand brave young men and women over the past eight years. Hello, America? This is how a police state works: they change the `president’; they don’t change the gang in power. All over the world, dictators and tyrants choose `presidents’ and hold elections; they just make sure, as Mark Crispin Miller of NYU is documenting fiercely as he focuses on voter suppression and fraud, that their guy or girl is sure to win. If McCain-Palin win, there will be no bulwarks left – none – against the subversions of our liberties.
If Obama wins, we are not out of the woods. His win will stabilize the system of checks and balances that is now collapsing – long enough for a much-needed citizen revolution to restore true freedom. But he will need our movement to drive his hand. History clearly shows that no leader, no matter how idealistic, fails to abuse power if unchecked power is his or hers. Without our mandate, how will he – or any future President – resist the temptation to read the strategy emails of the opposition before they have left their computers; read their speeches and listen into their embarrassing or incriminating phone conversations, for leverage; or physically beat, imprison or intimidate the protesters on behalf of the opposition, as protesters were beaten, imprisoned and intimidated in St. Paul? Obama will need us to force his hand to restore true liberty.
For all these urgent reasons, I am thrilled to announce that the American Freedom Campaign, the grassroots democracy movement we founded to fight for liberty, helped launch a campaign to urge the presidential candidates to address constitutional issue tomorrow, September 17. That happens to be Constitution Day in the United States.
This transpartisan campaign was put together this week by the passionate citizens of the AFC, the World Resources Institute, and the Liberty Coalition. They were quickly joined by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Human Rights Watch, Common Cause, the conservative Rutherford Institute, the Republican Policy Caucus, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and more than 30 other organizations.
These groups explained their simple goal in an advisory [pdf] sent out last week.
The organizations are calling on presidential candidates from all parties to describe their commitment and ability to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" as the next president. These groups recognize that presidents exercise a great deal of discretion and flexibility in interpreting the Constitution and that abuses of constitutional rights and safeguards can have significant harmful effects on the American people's lives. It is therefore essential, they assert, to understand where candidates stand on constitutional rights and the separation of powers prior to their election. These groups also believe it is the responsibility of the media to inform the public about the candidates' positions on constitutional issues and to press the candidates for their positions if they are unknown.
At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, we cannot let our candidates remain silent on this issue of primary importance to our nation. We must know whether each candidate will continue the practices of the Bush administration or commit to restoring our system of checks and balances. Will he treat Congress like a co-equal branch of government or will he continue to value executive power over the Constitution? If we do not know the answers to these questions ahead of time, we will literally be taking a chance on the future of our country.
I need you to speak up today. If you have a blog, echo the call for the candidates to commit to the Constitution on Constitution Day – or any day thereafter. If a candidate -- from either a major or "third" party -- is coming to your town, head to where he or she will be and ask that candidate to address the Constitution. And if you just have a minute, go to the American Freedom Campaign Web site and send an email to the presidential candidates: will you or will you not, McCain, Obama, and others support our system of freedoms?
Together, we can fight for our democracy and demand respect for our Constitution. The founders were far more radical than we have been taught. And they would have counted on us to demand an answer – or to throw the goods we are being offered into Boston Harbor.