"In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.
From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.
Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration."
Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, is who.
He goes on to say this, aimed more toward the buttons of the Right."Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a visiting professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.
This administration has expanded government - creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books - and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat."
I should add that the College of William and Mary is the oldest educational institution in the United States, predating our Republic's birth by centuries. It is not generally spoken of in the same breath with, say, Berkeley or Evergreen State University. Indeed, Virginia herself is hardly noted as a hotbed of radicalism, even in it's coastal regions.
One still finds only grudging acceptance of Mr. Lincoln's Federalist notions, which were seen then as entirely dubious from a Constitutional viewpoint. (As indeed is slavery, and I should point out that a noted Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, wished to explicitly rule out slavery. He was outvoted at the Constitutional Convention - by representatives from other states.)
Then as now, the principle of individual liberty is second in the hearts of many to the principle of individual prosperity at the expense of the freedom of others.
Now as then, liberty comes at a price, and regrettably, that price must be one that is supportable, philosophically, economically and politically. It is therefore the duty of all that love liberty for themselves to be as liberal as possible with those things that make Liberty Herself thrive; the potential for upward mobility, the flow of information, the suppression by argument and argument for those who would restrict the freedom of the few for the comfort of however many.
Liberty that depends on the consent of others is not liberty, nor is it freedom; it is either permission, or commandment.
tag: freedom, liberty, liberalism, Jefferson, Lawrwenc Wilkerson, radicalism, radical republic, constitution, constitutional, Bush, unitary executive, commander in chief
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