independence day

I am a bit flummoxed today, confronted as I am with all kinds of news and takes on the news of the Cheney Bush Administration’s latest abominations in the face of history and the law. Mix that up with America’s birthday, and one cannot help feel the need to construct some sort of grand and sweeping metaphor that compares the people who put this country together with the ones who are tearing it apart. And, to top it off, this is my 500th post on guy2k, so the pressure to deliver some sort of blogospheric fireworks is enormous.

It being independence day, I can’t help but note with joy and relief that BBC reporter Alan Johnston was been released some 114 days after his kidnapping by “the Army of Islam, a shadowy militant group dominated by Gaza's powerful Dugmush clan.” Johnston’s safe return is perhaps a bit of a coup for Hamas and its leader, Ismail Haniya, but it is a bigger victory for all of those who worked to keep Johnston’s story front and center and those (including some in Hamas) who negotiated a peaceful and successful resolution to this hostage “crisis.”

And, it being Independence Day, I cannot help but think of the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”—and how absolutely twisted and tarnished that sentiment has become today. Twisted by the corporate, classist (and possibly racist) authors of the recent immigration “compromise” that sought to replace the poor, huddled masses with a select group of educated, vocationally skilled immigrants that could pass some sort of merit test, and tarnished by the xenophobic, hate-mongering (and certainly racist) right wing of the Republican Party that fought bitterly to stop the immigration bill from becoming law. I am actually glad that the compromise fell apart and this particular “reform” was stopped, but I am very disheartened by the fact that Republicans had to save the Democrats from themselves.

And, it being this day, I am thinking about our former colonial master, Great Britain, and their current problems with educated, vocationally skilled immigrants who were allegedly involved in the failed car bombings last week. I am amazed that the world seems amazed that educated and relatively successful men—in this case, medical doctors—would allegedly get involved with such a sinister plot. As if a degree and some money inoculates a person from feelings of oppression and alienation. And, has everyone forgotten that Ayman al-Zawahiri was a doctor from a solidly middle-class family?

And, it being Independence Day, I cannot help but think about our nominal president and his apparent declaration of independence from the Constitution, the rule of law, and the people for whom he allegedly works.

As Sheryl Gay Stolberg absurdly put it in yesterday’s New York Times:

President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man — a leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants.

The Times labeled this “reporting” “News Analysis”—which is what I guess gave SGS the ability to declare her independence from the facts. This story, and its hacktastic follow-up today, are key exhibits in the case that many beltway reporters have become lazy enablers, if not willing co-conspirators, in the orphaning of America’s founding principles. This “analysis” actually implies that the judge in the Libby trail somehow forced the president’s hand—presumably by adhering to the law—and Bush had no choice but to show “character and courage” (as Bill Kristol put it) and commute Scooter’s sentence.

Today, Stolberg (with the help of Jim Rutenberg and Neil Lewis), reports that White House Press Secretary Tony Snow had to fend off an “unruly press corps, whose members demanded to know why Mr. Libby had received special treatment.” What exactly was unruly? That they demanded straight answers to simple questions? I listened to that presser, and the only thing unruly was Snow’s grasp of the facts.

A free and independent (there’s that word again) press is, of course, one of the cornerstones of our democracy as envisioned some 231 years ago, but it is hard to tell if Sheryl Gay Stolberg is with the Fourth Estate or Vice President Fourthbranch.

And, again, it being Independence Day, I cannot help but think of the very document that started this whole crazy experiment in terra and terror.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[emphasis added]

Kind of makes you think, don’t it?

I hope that some small number of my first 500 posts have also kind of made you think. Happy Independence Day.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)