What Do We Stand For?
Americans traditionally thought of their country as a "city upon a hill," a "light unto the world." Today only the deluded think that. Polls show that the rest of the world regards the United States and Israel as the two greatest threats to peace.
This is not surprising. In the words of Arthur Silber: "The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for."
Addressing his fellow Americans, Silber asks the paramount question, "Why do you support " these horrors?
His question goes to the heart of the matter. Do we Americans have any honor, any humanity, any integrity, any awareness of the crimes our government is committing in our name? Do we have a moral conscience?
How can a moral conscience be reconciled with our continuing to tolerate our government, which has invaded two countries on the basis of lies and deception, destroyed their civilian infrastructures, and murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women and children?
The killing and occupation continue even though we now know that the invasions were based on lies and fabricated "evidence." The entire world knows this. Yet, Americans continue to act as if the gratuitous invasions, the gratuitous killing and the gratuitous destruction are justified. There is no end of it in sight.
If Americans have any honor, how can they betray their Founding Fathers, who gave them liberty, by tolerating a government that claims immunity to law and the Constitution and is erecting a police state in their midst?
Answers to these questions vary. Some reply that a fearful and deceived American public seeks safety from terrorists in government power.
Others answer that a majority of Americans finally understand the evil that Bush has set loose and tried to stop him by voting out the Republicans in November 2006 and putting the Democrats in control of Congress—all to no effect—and are now demoralized as neither party gives a hoot for public opinion or has a moral conscience.
The people ask over and over, "What can we do?"
Very little when the institutions put in place to protect the people from tyranny fail. In the United States, the institutions have failed across the board.
The freedom and independence of the watchdog press was destroyed by the media concentration that was permitted by the Clinton administration and Congress. Americans who rely on traditional print and TV media simply have no idea what is afoot.
Political competition failed when the opposition party became a "me-too" party. The Democrats even confirmed as attorney general Michael Mukasey, an authoritarian who refuses to condemn torture and whose rulings as a federal judge undermined habeas corpus. Such a person is now the highest law enforcement officer in the United States.
The judicial system failed when federal judges ruled that "state secrets" and "national security" are more important than government accountability and the rule of law.
The separation of powers failed when Congress acquiesced to the executive branch's claims of primary power and independence from statutory law and the Constitution.
It failed again when the Democrats refused to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, the two greatest criminals in American political history.
Without the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, America can never recover. The precedents for unaccountable government established by the Bush administration are too great, their damage too lasting. Without impeachment, America will continue to sink into dictatorship in which criticism of the government and appeals to the Constitution are criminalized. We are closer to executive rule than many people know.
Silber reminds us that America once had leaders, such as Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed and Sen. Robert M. LaFollette Sr., who valued the principles upon which America was based more than they valued their political careers. Perhaps Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are of this ilk, but America has fallen so low that people who stand on principle today are marginalized. They cannot become speaker of the House or a leader in the Senate.
Today, Congress is almost as superfluous as the Roman Senate under the Caesars. On Feb. 13 the U.S. Senate barely passed a bill banning torture, and the White House promptly announced that President Bush would veto it. Torture is now the American way. The U.S. Senate was only able to muster 51 votes against torture, an indication that almost a majority of U.S. senators support torture.
Bush says that his administration does not torture. So why veto a bill prohibiting torture? Bush seems proud to present America to the world as a torturer.
After years of lying to Americans and the rest of the world that Guantanamo prison contained 774 of "the world's most dangerous terrorists," the Bush regime is bringing six of its victims to trial. The vast majority of the 774 detainees have been quietly released. The U.S. government stole years of life from hundreds of ordinary people who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and were captured by warlords and sold to the stupid Americans as "terrorists."
Needing terrorists to keep the farce going, the U.S. government dropped leaflets in Afghanistan offering $25,000 a head for "terrorists." Kidnappings ensued until the U.S. government had purchased enough "terrorists" to validate the "terrorist threat."
The six that the United States are bringing to "trial" include two child soldiers for the Taliban and a car pool driver who allegedly drove Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban did not attack the United States. The child soldiers were fighting in an Afghan civil war. The United States attacked the Taliban. How does that make Taliban soldiers terrorists who should be locked up and abused in Gitmo and brought before a kangaroo military tribunal? If a terrorist hires a driver or a taxi, does that make the driver a terrorist? What about the pilots of the airliners who brought the alleged 9-11 terrorists to the United States? Are they guilty, too?
The Gitmo trials are show trials. Their only purpose is to create the precedent that the executive branch can ignore the U.S. court system and try people in the same manner that innocent people were tried in Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany. If the Bush regime had any real evidence against the Gitmo detainees, it would have no need for its kangaroo military tribunal.
If any more proof is needed that Bush has no case against any of the Gitmo detainees, the following AP News report of Feb. 14, 2008, should suffice: "The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to limit judges' authority to scrutinize evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay."
The reason Bush doesn't want judges to see the evidence is that there is no evidence except a few confessions obtained by torture. In the American system of justice, confession obtained by torture is self-incrimination and is impermissible evidence under the U.S. Constitution.
Andy Worthington's book, "The Guantanamo Files," and his online articles make it perfectly clear that the "dangerous terrorists" claim of the Bush administration is just another hoax perpetrated on the inattentive American public.
Recently, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity issued a report that documents the fact that Bush administration officials made 935 false statements about Iraq to the American people in order to deceive them into going along with Bush's invasion. In recent testimony before Congress, Bush's Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor, Condi Rice was asked by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., about the 56 false statements she made.
Rice replied: "I take my integrity very seriously, and I did not at any time make a statement that I knew to be false." Rice blamed "the intelligence assessments," which "were wrong."
Another Rice lie, like those mushroom clouds that were going to go up over American cities if we didn't invade Iraq. The weapon inspectors told the Bush administration that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as Scott Ritter has reminded us over and over. Every knowledgeable person in the country knew there were no weapons. As the leaked Downing Street memo confirms, the head of British intelligence told the British cabinet that the Bush administration had already decided to invade Iraq and was making up the intelligence to justify the invasion.
But let's assume that Rice was fooled by faulty intelligence. If she had any integrity she would have resigned. In the days when American government officials had integrity, they would have resigned in shame from such a disastrous war and terrible destruction based on their mistake. But Rice, like all the Bush (and Clinton) operatives, is too full of American self-righteousness and ambition to have any remorse about her mistake.
Condi can still look herself in the mirror despite 1 million Iraqis dying from her mistake and several million more being homeless refugees, just as Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, can still look herself in the mirror despite sharing responsibility for 500,000 dead Iraqi children.
There is no one in the Bush administration with enough integrity to resign. It is a government devoid of truth, morality, decency and honor. The Bush administration is a blight upon America and upon the world.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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The people ask over and over, “What can we do?”
Simple, petition the 7 or 8 Imperial Electors to elect the next Holy Roman Emperor. All else will follow. The Laws of the Roman Emperor -The Justinian Codex should be the basis in helping re-establishing the Old Westphalian Order and at the same time helping to destroy the modern godless and immoral laws that the world is now plagued with.
You have no other means in bringing about any Change for the common good. Read your Dante.
The people ask over and over, “What can we do?”
One thing Paul Craig Roberts could do is seek the Presidential nomination of the Constitution Party so we can deny it to Straussian, neocon, Lincoln Cultist, pro-war, pro-intervention Alan Keyes.
I have heard his name tossed around as a potential candidate.
I have heard his name tossed around as a potential candidate.
To clarify, I mean PCR. Keyes is definitely a candidate. Ugh!
You're Doomed? It was a privilege to play with you all...
*Begins playing his Violin as the entire Orchestra sinks with this Titanic*
Mr. Roberts quote “city upon a hill,” first made famous by the Christ and then by Jonathan Edwards and Ronald Reagan, among others.
As Dr. Wilson points out in his From Union to Empire, there is a vast gulf between Edward's quote of the Christ and Reagan's quote thereof. Edward's quote reflected a Puritan sentiment of being an exclusive community trying to create for the elect there of sans the "strangers" a "paradise" on Earth, perhaps in itself heresy enough. Somehow this "Puritan zeal to paradise" outlasted its Christian context and became a secular messianic cause and calling transferred onto the notion of American exceptionally, which was humble enough in that it was but a recognition of our good fortune (God's grace) to be in a unique time and place to do something quite different - perhaps good, but also with the potential for doing things quite bad. However, "exceptionally of fortunate circumstance and hard work in the framework of a moral compass" was itself changed to mean "exclusive," "superior," and "unfailing." This is how Reagan meant it: off to rid the world of evil and to promote democracy by whatever means necessary. Of course, Reagan did not represent this Puritanical "noble cause." Lincoln, Wilson, FDR and almost every President since has hidden some rather nefarious schemes thereunder.
I would also note that our "Founders" did not give us our liberties. We had them and had asserted them in many ways long before those whom we have come to label our "Founders" were even born.
I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Roberts that one of the "roots" of our current malaise lies therein that we have made our "Founders" into gods and that the candles which light a city on a hill have become the torches of war which we pursue with arrogance and hubris: after all our elites, their interests groups and the government, and not the Christ and His Church, are the "light of the world" and "he who is not for us is against us!" The blasphemous formula for a demon, is it not - a counterfeit claiming to be the Authentic!
Paul Craig Roberts for President! That would rock!
I try to look on the optimistic side. Perhaps the current economic and financial crisis will bring the US global empire to ruins before a military catastrophe does the same thing. An impoverishment which will strip the US establishment of its demonic war machine and national security apparatus and strip the American consumers of their Chinese toys and gadgets will be much less costly to the US and to the world than the devastation of nuclear war. Of course, as long as you have emperors like Bush or his likely successor McCain, nuclear war cannot be ruled out.
We need someone to step up to the plate and run as a third party candidate who has the money to run enough television commercials so the public knows they have an authentic chance. We need a paleoconservative Ross-Perot-like figure in other words.
Whatever we do, we have to break the two party "system", and we need to regulate the media in some way as to not allow big corporations to gobble it all up. We really need for several paleoconservative millionaires to pool their money like the neo-con Murdoch did, and start a broadcast channel or TWO. The republic is simply misinformed, thats how these people keep getting elected.
We stand for today, frankly speaking, a *completely subjective "I" as if there is freedom in that and not predponderantly instead fantasy and delusion.
And this stand is in error.
Although we are free to stand like that, (I would say free to 'believe' that.) Except it's so close to the bone these days, it seems like it has slipped back into being a subconscious motivator like auto-pilot and no longer at the level of a conscious belief.
So, we here at this site (along with the rest of the world) can now see how dangerous this has become.
And especially today when this new pre-disposition is coupled with the expectation that a very narrowly defined mathematical principle in behalf of modern science and experimentation (as useful as a practical tool, if in a much larger and well rounded or real awareness of Being human, it may be) but in that very narrow sense, we *expect therein is a safe and reliable ground for absolute truth and safety.
In other words the current reality is that we are immature and fanciful at best (and deluded at worst) at the level of the personal / "I". While on the other hand fixated on instant gratification from the products that technology via this very narrow area of science provide. And that's ALL we know; as if therein resides the be all and end all of the absolute [safety] we seek.
That's obviously bad news. If it were actually possible and sustainable it might not be bad news-?-except perhaps as a moral concern. If it were only good for us tribally speaking, and bad for everyone else. Except the really bad new is that it's not possible.
So what's the good news?
Well, in reality (in ontology) *before the "I", the whimsical albeit deadly serious personal "I", prior - the actual character of the ego is there too & first as a part of larger Being. ... IF we still had a watchdog press this original part of each of us would be yelping. Because that original and vital part understands that it is a part of the whole and incapable of continuing in errancy for too long and still survive, endure, prevail etc. And, it knows this without even relying on arbitrary or authoritative sources or leaders although the latter can assist in the knowing as well. As the Greeks knew the only *reason we can be taught this is we know it already.
HOWEVER since to the contrary the press is highly concentrated and also deluded in this case ("in on it" as it were, whether they realize it yet or not)...Most of the rest of us i.e. the inattentive majority (and it's not their/our "fault") aren't yet aware. "Huh? Whah? Really?"
But it's latently therein prior to the fanciful "I" we're dealing with and talking about here today, the character of the ego is there first also as a part of Being.
ALEJULIA ! ALEJULIA! Can I get an amen?! ... but I guess the clock is ticking. Will the EVIL Democrats impeach the Evil Bush & his wife Cheny-?- Before it's too late? !?! AND will you pay me-?-to teach you more of what you already know?!
If the US wants to promote democracy in the Middle East then why is it so friendly with its leadership. I dont see NED supported conferrances holding meetings with oppostion opponents and media in these countries, they dont finance internet sites attacking the regimes in Paris, etc, and I have not seen Washington set up lobbies or debates on how democritise these nations exept for Iraq and Iran that Isreal does not like.
These nations like Qatar are nothing more than a US colony were they become a US protectorate in exchange for hosting US bases and sign lucaritive deals with US companies.
If we were really interested in "democracy" anywhere, we would ease ballot restrictions on minor parties here at home.
How many parties were on the Iraqi ballots after we "speard democracy" there? Hint, it was a whole lot more than two.
"Simple, petition the 7 or 8 Imperial Electors to elect the next Holy Roman Emperor. All else will follow. The Laws of the Roman Emperor -The Justinian Codex should be the basis in helping re-establishing the Old Westphalian Order and at the same time helping to destroy the modern godless and immoral laws that the world is now plagued with."
Lex injusta non est lex--and so there can be no doubt that the present world order is illegal. The question then follows of whether an unobserved law (human, of course, not divine) is really a law?
(Don't get me wrong; I agree with you.)
"I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Roberts that one of the “roots” of our current malaise lies therein that we have made our “Founders” into gods and that the candles which light a city on a hill have become the torches of war which we pursue with arrogance and hubris"
Mr. Peters, if memory serves me right, is a Southern Protestant. I just have to say it is extremely refreshing to hear these words from one of their number.
"I try to look on the optimistic side. Perhaps the current economic and financial crisis will bring the US global empire to ruins before a military catastrophe does the same thing. An impoverishment which will strip the US establishment of its demonic war machine and national security apparatus and strip the American consumers of their Chinese toys and gadgets will be much less costly to the US and to the world than the devastation of nuclear war."
I wouldn't be optimistic about that. Having spent a nice chunk of my childhood in deracinated suburban Nillaland west of the Mississippi, and having encountered my peers from many other parts of the country with the exception of certain places in the upper Midwest (there weren't a lot of non-suburban Southerners at my university), I really believe survival may prove impossible when the only life and livelihood that most Americans know--artificial, wasteful and exurban--or are capable of engendering suddenly becomes impossible to support.
I also believe that Chinese hegemony is much more evil than American hegemony, as bad as the latter is.
Finally, an economic collapse does not write off the possibility of nuclear war. The weapons are still there, the war machine will likely as a practical matter fall long after, not before, our bloated and commercialised social security/medicare system due to being far less expensive, and if America is in the hands of bloodthirsty leaders who are willing to project rage upon Russia and China for the country's woes when they have us cornered, there could be plenty of sentiment for launching those missiles.
It has always seemed to me that the first order of business in any program of reform is to destroy the Republican party. Its only function (besides taking care of the bankers and politicians) is to absorb and disarm all decent tendencies in the American body politic. Let us hope that Bush has begun its disintegration and M,cCain will complete it.
Ditto Clyde Wilson post #13 ... even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.
Let's destroy them if possible under God - let's go all the way if that's what He wants to see (as commitment)... until the wheels fall off and Burn.
I don't even 'know' what it's about... but I'll stand in line to see or read clyde in anything...
I'm with ya'Almighty (the one above Clyde)... you call it. !
Strange how people who suffer together have stronger ties than those who are most content...
Hang on to me baby - and let's hope the roof stays on? -R.Z.
Chilton Williamson recently talked about the need for another major political party, I've heard one blogger talk about finding more politicans of paleo persuasion among Democrats and Dr. Wilson describes the need to dismantle the GOP.
All three of these notions are correct but the question is how does one get it done? U.S. poltical parties have always been about different groups and interests working together for at least ONE common cause if not two or three even if they despise each other. Ideology has nothing to do with it (which explains why the GOP favors bankers and other financial interests as Dr. Wilson correctly explains). One could find politicians of paleo persuasion coming out of the more populist Democratic Party but the party leaders and fundraisers make it difficult to keep such tendacies (as Jim Webb is finding out the hard way). The only way a major third party could spring forth is if elected officials (and their financiers) coalesce to form one.
Perhaps the way to go is to build a faction within either major party (right now the Paulians within the GOP have the lead) and if they are blocked from taking over, then breaking out on their own and bring in groups and politicians from other parties to form a new one (Phil LaFollette tried to do this with the Progressive Party in 1938 but the Depressions and Franklin Roosevelt prevented this).
@15: The strange thing about American politics is that while there are so many barriers to the formation and election of new parties, in recent decades third-way movements can and do form as personality cults. We saw this with George Wallace, Ross Perot and to a more blurry extent Patrick Buchanan. Ron Paul may not have had a chance at winning, but his *could* have been a similar case were it not for his campaign's serious blunders.
@16NGPM
The problem now is the establishment of a genuine 3rd Party as a 3rd party might be set up as they fell there position in the Republican party might be threatened and we have more of the same. Would you really support a 3rd party that is created by bloomberg and is aligned with the likes of Leibermann.