Reply #17: "A Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell"

[pat_k]

As we challenge Members of Congress to defend the Constitution by impeaching Bush and Cheney, we must remember the lessons of the http://www.masshist.org/objects/2005july.cfm">"convenant with death and agreement with hell" (abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison) we made at our founding.

As the DC Dems blather about the need for "bipartisanhship" in Bush World, let's remind each other, and them, of the horrors that such political "give and take" gave us in 1787.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/winter/garrisons-constitution-1.html?template=print">Garrison's Constitution: The Covenant with Death and How It Was Made

. . .This did not surprise the Garrisonians, who understood that the Constitution was heavily influenced by slaveowners. The Garrisonians did not necessarily see the Constitution as the result of a deliberate conspiracy of evil men; rather, they understood it to be the consequence of political give-and-take at the Convention of 1787. . .

The price -- moral and material -- of that "convenant" can never be fully paid. (Reparations can't repair the damage, but perhaps it would force the nation to confront the truth head on -- but that crucial question is for another discussion.)

We have effected "repairs" to the Constitution itself through amendment, but the nation will always be stained by the fact that, in the same document that we established our most treasured principles and institutions, we violated those principles to enslave our fellow human beings within our newly founded nation.

Our "covenant with death and agreement with hell" serves as stark and compelling example of how low we can fall when we allow the dictates of our Constitution to be compromised or violated.

You would think that such a lesson, once learned, would never be forgotten, but apparently too many of us have forgotten it. We are seeing unbelievable horrors every day that Members of Congress allow Bush and Cheney to abuse and violate the Constitution to commit war crimes, operate their criminal surveillance program, and advance the interests of their tiny cabal at the expense of the rest of us.

We must stop tolerating the intolerable.

We are long past the need for "investigation." It is time for Members of Congress to draft Articles of Impeachment and make the case. It has been "time" for years. Continued and unnecessary delay is dereliction.