It Ain't For Free

[unhappycamper]

It Ain't For Free
by David Michael Green | Jun 29 2007 - 9:29am

Jefferson once famously offered that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

I am just enough of a bleeding-heart Pollyanna to hope that there are periods when real reform can be achieved without sacrifice on that scale, and just enough of a realist to know that there are then those other moments in history.

It's difficult to see which we're in now, but I suspect we'll have a pretty good idea within a year or two. Americans are sickened by the policies and the character of their leadership, such as it is. That much is now as clear and free of obstruction as is the space between George Bush's ears. But what follows from there is far less apparent. Are these same Americans prepared to make even the smallest of sacrifices, let alone give the blood Jefferson thought necessary, for the purposes of restoring the freedom and democracy they read about in their ninth grade civics texts? And with conservatives in ever-expanding numbers now joining the ranks of those disgusted with BushCo, could the country even agree on remedies for the current malaise, even if we can all concur on what we don't want?

The central insight of the Founders was that woven into human nature, for at least enough people to give the rest of us worry, is an insatiable will to power. Unmitigated, unchallenged, really powerful power. While Western societies may have spent half a century or so lulled into believing that that gene had finally and expensively been excised from human DNA once and for all, we are nowadays daily and sadly reminded of the eternal prescience of Jefferson, Madison and their generation.

They, of course, never met Dick Cheney. But they would recognize him instantly. If the man weren't so dangerous he would be hilariously laughable. His latest claim justifying his complete secrecy, his complete lack of oversight, and his completely unchecked power is that the vice presidency isn't actually an executive branch office (except, of course, when it is claiming executive privilege to guarantee secrecy, lack of oversight and unchecked power). I mean, I don't even know where to start satirizing that one. It's just such an amazingly absurd assertion. If Cheney claimed that he wasn't actually a human being, and therefore not subject to the laws of the land, it would be hardly less preposterous. In fact, given the absolute absence of humanity found anywhere in the vicinity of this creature, it would be rather more believable than the insane notion that the vice presidency isn't part of the executive branch.

Okay. Let's just get it out there, then. This is the guy for whom the Founders wrote the constitution. This is the man who would be king.


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