So, the question is, was this the intent all along? Was the war (against Iraq, not against the 9/11 terrorists who had nothing to do with Iraq and is a whole other kettle of fish) a pretext to put all these totalitarian measures into effect? Was the religious right-wing desire for Taliban-like control of the populous to be implemented under the guise of safety and security, just like Hitler promised the Germans? If not, funny how it’s ending up that way.
The President We Were Warned About
George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the “foreign entanglements” that George Washington feared would destroy our experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
With the “war on terror,” Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the “terrorists” will always provide a convenient shadowy target. That’s just the “continual warfare” that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war — the very issue now at stake in Bush’s battle with Congress.
In his “Political Observations,” written years before he had served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever.
“In war,” Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, “the discretionary power of the executive is extended … and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.”
#41 oh the horror! democrats will have laws requiring you to use more efficient light bulbs (waaaa!), live a healthier lifestyle (waaaaa!), not have dogs proven to kill little children on the streets (waaaa!), and drive cars that reduce our dependence on foreign oil (waaaaa!) — they might even improve the bridges, and god forbid actually clean up pollution! (god help us!)
meanwhile, the republicans pass laws that allow you to be tortured without trial, without evidence, without even so much as phone call, just like they do in red china — aren’t you proud?
edit: above post for #40, iGlobalWarmer
#41-grog
:sarcasm:
You mean we still have some freedom? I thought that the Patriot Act outlawed our freedom. Don’t you know, it’s not patriotic to say anything against Bushco, Inc.? Now it may even be against the law.
Torture, is good. Who needs evidence, they’re Muslims, and all Muslims want to kill us.
If you “have nothing to hide,” why care about tapping your phone?
Don’t you know that USAG Alberto “Going, Going” Gonzales said that Habeas Corpus isn’t necessarily guaranteed in the Constitution, and is “quaint?”
Hey, if you don’t like this country, don’t try to change things, just LEAVE!
:/sarcasm:
Uncle Dave just in case you might read this you are a complete ass – you should know just as well as I that this exercise in trying to control everything is simply Globalism being implemented, if you don’t understand this you are simply too wrapped up in the Democrat versus Republican obsolete political lines – it’s changed now it’s basically Globalism versus Nationalism – there is no real left versus right anymore.
We’re heading towards a Global serfdom and it’s idiots like you that can figure this out – it’s a race to the bottom of the economic life style and the Democrats are just a interested in outsourcing out economy as the Republicans and with out a Middle Class there will not be Republic or Democracy, if you’d read any history you would understand the implication of what’s happening
Uncle Dave. Yup. You’re a complete ass.
Hey !!! don’t ask me why, but if traaxx says you are, well that is good enough for me. And if anyone is an expert on being an ass, that would be traaxx. If there is anything he excels at, it is being an ass. He is, as most everyone knows, THE complete expert on being an ass.
Now, he could have suggested you are a dip-dork. Traaxx is also pretty good at that too, but not an expert. He could have used the term dipshit, but hey, … . There is that old standby put down, George W. Bush, but I don’t think even traaxx thinks that low of you. James Hill and iHotAir(YOY) might worship you but they are a different story.
Nope, I have to admit that an expert like traaxx, knows his assholes. Hey, not just the hole either, but the whole hole. And surrounding territory. And contents. Traaxx is an ASS man. Yup, he can really identify with an ass. And he is capable of getting up close and personal.
But then again, traaxx has been wrong before. So maybe, just maybe, because what the eff do I know, he may have you confused with someone who actually gives a crap.
#44 – traxx, it will probably surprise you but I completely agree with everything you said there. Except, of course, the part about me being an ass. As usual, people like you like to make ass-umptions about me, and are wrong. I’m totally opposed to much of what the Democrats want. I’m totally opposed to much of what the Republicans want, too. Both are currently run by idiot extremists who live in an ideological, theoretical, rhetorical world completely divorced from reality.
In other words, as a practical realist who wants the Federal government to be able to help people who are truly in need to get back onto their feet and become productive again rather than toss them away and pay for prisons, etc later, who wants government to have no say in our personal lives (ie, shouldn’t be involved at all in gay marriage issues, abortion, drugs war, etc), only wants government involved in business affairs when those affairs go over the limit and harm people and the environment and takes unfair advantage, and who wants the Feds to only take over from the states or private industry on things that are national in scale or simply are national-type things (military, interstate issues, etc) and for rare projects that states or industry can’t do alone because of cost/size (eg., the original interstate highway program), I’m fucked.
Having said all that, weighing the negatives of both parties, at present, without significant change, I would vote for a Democrat over a Republican. They will still fuck things up, but at least they are leaning in the direction on a number of issues in the way I want and don’t support a number of issues I oppose that Repubs want. But ultimately, we all are going to lose, one way or another. I think our downfall as a country has become inevitable as we split farther and farther apart.
#40: Let’s have another Republican voted in who wants to tell us what we can and can’t do with out bodies, who we can be married to (a religious issue, not appropriate for a government to regulate), which corrupt, corporate buddy of theirs our hard earned tax money has to go to, WHAT we can smoke, and so on. Just like a totalitarian government like, say, the old USSR. Then we’ll change the flag to a field of red with a hammer and sickle on it.