Signs of Decline

Guantantmo Bay transcripts released recently tell just how far our standards have declined. We are holding men as terrorists whose only known crime was possession of a Casio digital watch or wearing olive drab clothing. The majority of the men there were brought in for bounty, not captured on any battlefield. We have tortured farmers and aid workers in the name of freedom and justice. We rounded up a bunch of bystanders in Afghanistan and put them in prison without access to counsel or the right to confront their accusers. Our Government considers this right and just.

Strangely absent from the transcripts are mention of any of the "big fish". Those have been "rendered" to other facilities such as the prison on Diego Garcia or third countries who believe torture is right and proper in the name of peace and security.

We edge toward dictatorship in the constant shrill cry against an "activist judiciary." I don't hear anyone complaining when they uphold the new dictatorial powers such as warrantless espionage or repeal of habeas corpus but let them uphold a woman's right to abortion and they're legislating from the bench. Sandra Day O'Connor, not the most liberal of women, recently compared the outcry against an independent judiciary favorably to some of the last century's most infamous dictators. That's the first order of business, get the judges on your side. Once there's no independent judiciary, there's no one to stand in the way of the majority party and its rise, or decline, into absolute power. Leaders of the Republican party are infamous in their threats against judges who do not rule in their favor, witness Tom Delay's outcry against judges in the Terri Schaivo case. Delay called for impeachment of judges who ruled, correctly, that the Government had no business in the Schaivo family's affairs. This edging toward totalitarianism is another sign of the decline of our country.

While we violate our own principles and become the enemy we are fighting, our Congress debates raising our national debt ceiling to 9 trillion dollars. That's thirty thousand dollars, the cost of a new car, for everyone in America, man, woman, child, citizen or illegal alien. Even as they debate the must-pass resolution - the effect of not passing it would be a default on our debt and probably a foreclosure by China - they debate cutting taxes for their core supporters, the rich and powerful. Thus Republican Washington supports the American dream, by putting each of us further in debt while making their constituents richer. And still they spend.

Even as he calls for tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush goes to his pet retirement home, a gated community in Virginia, to tout his drug company welfare program, the prescription drug benefit. He should go to Maple Manor where patients lie in their own feces due to short staffing or talk with Claire Morgan (name changed), whose drug bills went from zero to four hundred dollars a month under the byzantine regulations and pitfalls of the Bush drug plan. The architect of this monstrosity wants to reform social security to a plan that would enrich his investment banker buddies as a captive audience of the entire nation pays into a securities fraud. So we value our citizens in the era of Republican control of government.

Republican Washington is owned by those who made it, the wealthy contributors to their campaigns and the lobbyists who line their pockets. Yet the Republicans are unable to govern themselves as witnessed by the case of Tom Delay. Censured twice for ethics violations, he got his friends to change the rules, essentially pulling the teeth of the weak ethics commission. As a result, there have been no efforts on the part of Congress to police itself. Only the indictments of Jack Abramoff and others have shed light on the corruption that is our Congress under Republican rule. Yet they take no meaningful action. There is no talk of publically funding elections or of eliminating corporate donations from elections. There are token offerings such as no free lunches or keeping lobbyists out of the Congressional gym. The Republicans got into power on the back of this system and they have no incentive to change it. It feeds their campaigns and their fortunes. The people it doesn't serve is us, the people of the country.

These are signs of the decline of the American republic.