Liberty, Death, and Politics as Usual

[LunaSea]

What SHOULD have been said at the Hayden cotillion...

(My SO watched the evening news and lit off on a rant so good,
I convinced her to write it down so I could share with you)



The confirmation hearings of a “place holder” for the head CIA position….

(…who is a token military appointee designed to offset the perception that all the brains in the military think the administration is wasting time, lives and money in a lost adventure to benefit Halliburton and plunge the nation into an unrecoverable spiral of debt and ineffective international interaction….)

…may not be the most choice venue for getting up on one’s hind legs and saying no, but if not now, when?
The dems seem to be acting like modern feminists….too polite and too afraid to lose what little they have to say anything except “No, no…that’s ok; at least I cannot be committed to an institution against my will by my husband; I don’t really need to be considered anything but a uterus bearer.”
I digress.
It is just that I am constantly wondering why the dems just sit and watch and miss the chance again and again to engage the enemy of the people who sit in the seats across from them and next to them. Many, many, opportunities float by without a word.
Beautiful moments that beg for the attack which the ‘pubs wouldn’t miss for the second. The dems have exactly zero to lose by standing up. Why are they trying to position themselves with the 3% of the voting population who thinks Hitler was right but just didn’t go far enough? That still leaves a huge number of us that don’t agree and in that vast number they could find 3% who would turn out to vote on any single element of the party platform that didn’t seem meaningless…like, the right to privacy in the form of the government staying out of medical decisions (you know, cancer treatment, death with dignity, abortion, choice of chemical refreshment, micro-chipping the back of your neck, listening to your conversations with your friend from Pakistan or your erectile dysfunction doctor).
I mean, the weapons grade anthrax attack on the Democratic side of the house was a while ago….I cannot help but think……….

Whilst interviewing the general who would be super spook,
where was the democrat with the spine who should have taken a turn in questioning
and said something like the following:

“With all due respect to my fellow senators, I beg to differ with our esteemed colleague concerning life and liberty.
It is not ‘you have no liberties if you are dead’ but rather,
‘Give me liberty or give me death’.
When I think on the lives lost in the twin towers,
the blood drenched floor of the pentagon,
the brave souls who fought terrorists over the fields of Pennsylvania,
I am reminded of another revolutionary idea embodied in the words
‘The tree of liberty is watered with the blood of martyrs’.
The people who gave their lives that day,
and those who continue to do so wherever an American citizen serves,
at home or abroad,
in whatever capacity,
deserve a brave, honorable, and steadfast government
that serves the people steadfastly,
rather than seeks to rule and consolidate power for itself.

Does the present body believe for one second that those brave people who gave all could rest easy knowing the current course of events threatens the very foundation of all that was won through bloody revolution, civil war, world war,
and constant military preparedness?
I think not.
If you want security, practice justice.
If you want peace, practice charity, diplomacy and fairness.
If you want respect throughout the world, do what is hard not what is easy.
We either are the best and the brightest and we can do what is necessary within the law while preserving liberty and justice for all,
Or, we are not.
If we are not, then we have no business opening our mouths in any setting to correct the behavior and practices of others.

This exercise in the invasion of privacy and the chilling of speech by the gathering of communication records without specific suspicion and without a warrant is nothing more than gathering data on one’s political enemies and isn’t about ‘national security’ at all.
These activities again put the lie to and expose the deep hypocrisy resident in these halls with regard to our intents and purposes wherever we have stretched the hand of military might across this globe.
Either we act on what is in the Constitution about liberty and freedom from governmental encroachment in our fundamental activities or we become the very heart of what we claim to despise.
When we return home on recess, having been well compensated for representing the people, I refuse to go to my constituents and say ‘It’s ok as long as you haven’t got anything to hide.’
I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Not an oath to defend a political agenda.
Not an oath to defend a political party.
Not an oath to protect my job security.
Not an oath to protect the citizenry from all physical harm with no regard for the cost to the fundamental principles that make us a nation.
I swore an oath to defend the most important document ever conceived by humanity, designed for the insurance of the domestic tranquility while providing for the common defense.
And so did each of you.
This basic restraining order on power provides for a separation of equal powers of governance and is intended to protect the minority.
The majority of us will never need to test the contents of the document.
The Constitution is specifically formulated to protect those who are scorned and feared by those who have power and are within the mainstream of societal behavior.
It was crafted over many, many years, binging together the cumulative wisdom of
8 millennia of western thought and wisdom
by men who knew people who had been held in dungeons and tortured;
many deprived of their possessions and good names;
some deported from their country of birth;
some executed on the public square in ways that would have made the Romans blanch for speaking unpopular, even scary, revolutionary things.
The last time I looked, the Earth still revolved around the sun, but that, too, seems likely to come up for debate given the lack of any opposition to current trends.
The Constitution and the separation of powers within it isn’t supposed to be re-defined on a whim and with the stroke of a pen for the benefit of one time and one place and one group.
The Constitution is not to be temporarily suspended during times of national crises.
It is precisely during these threatening times, above all others,
when every jot and tittle of the Constitution should embedded in our minds and actions. We, who purport to safeguard the citizenry of this great nation, should have the entire depth and breadth and history of the Constitution emblazoned upon our hearts.

To stand by repeatedly as this administration and this august body shirk again and again from our duties and responsibilities goes beyond ‘business as usual’ to rise to the level of arrogant, self serving evil and I will not sit silent and complacent as precedents are set to reverse years of hard won battles to affirm the citizens’ right to be left alone by their government. To end, my heart lies with yet another call to duty in the phrase ‘He who will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot is a fool and he who dares not is a slave’. When no one of opposing faith dare speak, all is lost.”

But no.
No one said anything remotely resembling that.
They all just sat so polite and “saved” their powder for the “real fight”.
Yeah; like yelling in traffic.
Please.
I want these ‘pubs stopped.
Every chance, every moment, every second, the dems should be “speaking truth to power”.
Each and every one of them; each and every opportunity.
They need to recast the language and they need to define a philosophy that is exactly the opposite of the real ‘pub agenda. The pubs are all about the absolute sovereignty of the corporation over the individual. Start there. And every single time the opportunity arises to say “Look! The emperor has no clothes!” they should scream it again and again. Next time chimpy goes running up the twin towers swatting at pesky “leak mongers” , the opposition ought to invoke the martyrs of liberty image and wipe the ‘pubs’ faces in it like they are little dogs misbehaving.
Of course, who paid for the dems to be there? Oh, the same corporations? My bad.

[Sydnie]

1. Kicking it up! n/t

[LunaSea]

2. kicking

to encourage her to write some more!