[lit-ideas] An American Revolutionary Speaks!
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 22:46:00 +0900
The subject of this message is a line I thought I'd never write about
Lewis H. Latham, author of the Notebook column in Harpers magazine.
But in the January 2007 issue, I find an author who reminds me of the
Founders, the revolutionaries who fought for independence then
authored the Constitution. I commend these strong words to you.
"If the Congress can muster enough courage to exercise the power
entrusted to it by the Constitution, the record won't have much
trouble speaking for itself.
"1. A foreign war conceived as a means of advancing the Bush
Admoinistration's imposition on the American people of a
not-so-benevolent despotism, the army sent to fight and die not for
the defense of the country but for a corporate dream of commercial
empire.
"2. A government that tortures people classified as enemy combatants,
denies their right to hear all the evidence bearing on their
confinement and arrest, forbids their resort to petitions of habeas
corpus.
"3. The administration's systematic plundering of the Federal Treasury
on behalf of its accomplices in the arms and construction trades.
"4. The National Security Agency directed to monitor, without first
obtaining a court order, any and all telephone and email traffic
suspected of carrying the germs of terrorism.
"5. The president's use of 136 signing statements since he took office
to exempt himself from the rule of more than 1,000 federal laws.
"The sum of the evidence warrants the impeachment of President George
W. Bush on charges comparable to those brought by the declaration of
Independence against the "long train of abuses and usurpations"
attendent upon the monarch of George III."
There is the voice of someone who loves the Republic more than he
fears for his safety, who knows what Patrick Henry meant when he said,
"Give me liberty or give me death."
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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