"...do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

"For the good of the Air Force, for the good of the armed services and for the good of our country, I urge you to reject convention and careerism..."
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Maxwell AFB, April 21, 2008

"You will need to challenge conventional wisdom and call things like you see them to subordinates and superiors alike."
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, United States Air Force Academy, March 4, 2011

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Citizens Claim America is Dead - Our Freedom Assassinated

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Reagan, economist and co-founder of Reaganomics, and former editor/writer for The Wall Street Journal, wrote in an article yesterday entitled The Day America Died, which begins with, "September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated."

His article ends with:

Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government’s "righteous intent" in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as "it doesn’t serve our interests."

Voting has no effect. President "Change" is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is "the most disastrous president in our history." Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him. To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.

Justin Rainmondo, author and one internet anti-war activist, recently wrote in an article Assassins of Liberty, with this similarly dreadful conclusion:

The assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki sets an important precedent, one that will go down in our history as a shameful moment, a turning point, when the policy of endless war empowered the President to kill his own countrymen without benefit of trial. Any American, whose “preaching” purportedly “inspires” a terrorist act is now fair game for our Praetorians. The first time we take out an American citizen on American soil, on the mere suspicion that he may be a “terrorist,” our legal eagles will point to the al-Awlaki case as justification. That a citizen of this country may be put on a list that marks him for death, without public trial, seals the doom of our old republic. Obama’s partisans hail his great “victory,” while their neoconservative rivals do the same – and there is no one left to wonder what has happened to the Constitution.

As America enters a period of travail, when the prospect of economic and civil turmoil becomes all too real, this precedent is terrifying. That the President may order the death of an American without due process of law means that the concept of law is no longer operative: it signals the end of the America we knew, and loved, and the beginning of … something else.

As public servants, our oaths to the Constitution are essential for defending America. I hope those of us who serve will re-dedicate ourselves to the promises we made before God and the American people. When we in government obey the rule of law, even when inconvenient, perhaps we can change the minds of these two writers and others who feel that America is dead and gone. While I am very worried about my country, unlike the authors above I believe it's not too late for the greatness of America to be restored. It will just take the best among us forsaking our comfortable distractions, remembering what it means to be an American, and then rescuing the nation we the People created.

No comments:

Post a Comment