Back to Basics

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque has a must read article today... It reflects (more coherently and eloquently) my own post from yesterday and reiterates that our Constitution, in itself, contains all the elements that our nation needs to protect itself.

Presidential Tyranny Untamed by Election Defeat (also on Truthout )

What we, as the American people must do- is force our "Representatives" to fully realize this and take the necessary steps to take us back to, as Floyd puts it, "the double helix of law and power".

Like the two entwining strands of the double helix, law and power form the genetic structure of government. Law is nothing but empty verbiage without power to back it up, enforce it, embody it. And power without law is nothing but a mad ape, baring its teeth, thumping its chest, raping and beating where it pleases, taking what it wants: a bestial thing, born in the muddy swamp of our lowest, blindest, rawest biochemical impulses. Disconnect these strands and things fall apart, as Yeats says; the center literally cannot hold, and the blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world.

Please read and re-read the entire article. The most important piece of the puzzle (to me) is for us to understand that our nation has been threatened by far more in the past than we are now. In the time of civil war, our government, like today, removed Habeus Corpus, and dismantled our own rule of law in order to increase its power. Supposedly this was to help us defend our country, but in the end, it did not do so. And even then, in 1866, our courts ruled against a government that was overstepping the very important boundaries set forth in the constitution:

This is what the Court decided: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence."

Last month many of us celebrated a great victory over the party who has so foolishly undermined our constitution once again. And, make no mistake- it was a great victory for the American people to show their discontent with the methods and the madness of the Republican party. But the victory- was just one battle, and not the war...

The hope of a return to at least a semblance of Constitutional government rests on the Democrats' newly-acquired majority. It is perhaps a mark of how very desperate the nation's condition has become that this particular group of national Democratic leaders could actually inspire hopes for substantial change. Their record over the past five years has been one of accommodation, cowardice, confusion and weakness.

Floyd makes some very important points, although sounding a little defeatist (in my opinion) at the close of the article.

Where then is the end of the downward spiral, the "widening gyre" as law and power spin farther and farther apart?

It is only simple sanity to ask. Glutted with our "victory", we temporarily took our eyes off the prize as some of the Democrats (Pelosi comes to mind) moved speedily not for justice or law, but for economy of movement into a Centrist stance. She (and the rest) need to understand that we will not settle for simply a changing of the guard in Washington! The end of the spiral is when those in the Democratic party realize that the American people did indeed give them the reins, but for a specific purpose- and that is to move us back to Constitutional law. We will not be pushed around by the right wing media as they try to downplay the need for accountability amongst the politicians who brought us low.

We stood strong against the Neocon machine. We will stand strong against the Democrats that we put in power. If they fail, they will be removed from office, just as we removed the Republicans. We, The People, have stopped the war against Iran (so far). We are not as powerless as some of these politicians like to believe. It is up to US- to drive our so-called representatives to do what needs to be done.

UPDATE: Welcome to everyone who came here Via Mike's Round-up and Crooks and Liars!