Summary: The scandals have Washington aflame, almost as much fun for the imperial courtiers as starting a war. Last month was the great North Korean crisis. Soon their attention will turn to something else. More important than this trivia is our reaction to these revelations.
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It’s back to the future for America!
We are reliving the 1970s, with the revelation of government surveillance programs run against political dissidents and minority groups. This challenge came first to the greatest generation. They grew up during the Depression, fought fascists, and brought America through the Civil Rights conflicts that closed the wound opened in April 1861. They were not men and women to allow the Republic to fail on their watch.
The Greatest Generation then passed the Republic into the care of the Boomers, for whom even the routine operation of the Constitutional machinery has proved too burdensome.
Now it’ s our turn to face a similar challenge, since our reaction to 9-11 has plunged the Republic into crisis. Articles of the Constitution fall like ten pins. Government power grows like crabgrass. Frequent use of agents provocateur by the police and FBI. The Executive wages war on leakers and whistleblowers (six prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act), which has inevitably evolved into an attack on the press.
Now, four decades after Nixon’s resignation, betting is open on these questions:
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(1) Are these scandals on the same scale as those unveiled during the 1970s? (The post 9-11 legislation and Court precedents might make similar actions now legal, de jure or de facto)
(2) If so, will we have the equivalent of the Watergate and Church hearings to investigate these affairs — and inform America?
(3) If so, will the public care about this news? Will we force punishment of those responsible — and push through reforms for the future?
My guesses are Yes to #1, Maybe to #2, No to #3. Post your answers in the comments.
Next year, when we know the winners, they will receive the applause of a grateful nation.
For More Information
Important:
- The guilty ones responsible for the loss of our liberties, 11 September 2010
Recording our eroding rights. One by one they go away:
- An Appalling Threat to Civil Liberties and Democracy, 8 August 2010
- Cutting down the tree of liberty, 9 September 2010 — Government secrets trump fair trials.
- Let’s gaze upon the corpse of the Fourth Amendment, 12 October 2011
- Another bill before Congress pushing the USA further into the dark of endless war, stripping away our liberties, 28 November 2011
- An important article to read about another example of the fading rule of law in America, 29 December 2011
- How to Fund an American Police State (aka Weaponizing the Body Politic), 5 March 2012
- Our leaders explain that we’re sheep. Our role: to obey. Rebel sheep will be imprisoned or destroyed., 7 March 2012
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