On DKos, I tend to be rather reserved in my interaction with the community. Politics is something I am engaged in, but I always feel somewhat a step behind in grasping it all. However, when something evil rears its ugly head and tries to grab me, I find myself unable to stay reserved.
The revelation that our King made unilateral decisions to spy on American citizens without warrants has chilled me to the bone. What has made my spirit even more frosty is the people crawling out from the woodwork to defend Bush and prooftext the FISA statute to show that what Bush was doing is just nifty and swell and sunshine.
Then, at the end of the argument, the emotional bomb is dropped:
"Bush needs us to sacrifice some of our civil liberties to protect us from terrorism."
Yes, that's right, dear friends. It is better for us to be alive than for the priciples of the Republic to survive. Your life trumps the U.S. Constitution.
What an absolute betrayal of our Founding Fathers and Mothers, people who risked certain death by fighting the Redcoats, signing the Declaration of Independence, or calling the King a tyrannt. Their lives were important, but not as important as securing liberty for an upstart nation that had little, if any, chance of surviving a war with the British.
Still, they did it anyway. Now, in 2005, we have a King who stands before the people and says that everyone will be safe if we just let him do what he wants to do. He is supposed to be the shining knight on the white horse who saves us from Osama bin Laden. All he needs from us is to accept that the Constitution may need to be set aside.
After the King says this, his blind followers champion his cause and repeat the mantra that your life is so important and precious that we have to understand the law, the foundation of the Republic, and the very document that our founders labored over for years are not as important as your safety. After all, it is just your rights.
Oddly, I was taught to admire people like John Adams (my personal hero), Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin because they were willing to die for what they believed. Patrick Henry was immortalized by his pronouncement to "Give me liberty or give me death."
My, how times have changed. Now, liberty must be set aside because dying for what you believe in is so 18th century.
At least some of us, however, still cling to the old beliefs - the idea that the blessings of liberty are worth dying for; that we don't give up our Constitutional and Civil Rights because the King wants to be a hero.
The King and his followers believe their lives are too important. So let's cut to the quick and call them what they are:
Cowards.