Ex America
There is a painted sign after all. Today the United States of America “entered Imperium.”
Pat Lang:
The republic effectively ended today with the signing of the “Military Commissions Act.”  This law made into a farce the “Great Republic” as Winston Churchill described the United States. The forms continue but the substance is gone.
Also
If you watched Generals Hayden and Pace who were artfully positioned behind the sovereign at the signing, you saw a lot of blinking. They know what they have done, and so does Senator Warner.
IOZ:
Defenders of the Democrats say: Well, the congressional Democratic leadership knew that there weren’t sufficient votes to sustain a filibuster, so what was the point? I say: That’s precisely the point. There weren’t enough votes to sustain a filibuster. Consider that. Consider what that means: a payroll deduction more important than feedom from arbitrary imprisonment.
As always, all of this play-acting is designed to fulfill the only real objective these “moderate, independent-minded” GOP Senators have — to self-servingly cast the appearance of independence and to distance themselves from the administration’s grossest failures and excesses while, simultaneously, remaining blindly loyal and doing everything possible to enable those same failures and abuses. Over the last five years, particularly when it comes to policies ostensibly justified by The Terrorists, the Senate has fully acquiesced to the dictates of the White House. They have neither stopped nor meaningfully limited anything. And at the epicenter of this disgraceful record of Congressional abdication has been this group of “moderate, independent GOP Senators.” Nobody has done more to enable the worst aspects of the extremist Bush agenda than they have.
I suppose I owe everyone an explanation for why, believing that the country I was born into has become today something other and insupportable, I will vote for Democrats and keep living where I am, working every day, coming home at night and blogging about my favorite TV shows. The main reason is a profound and possibly inappropriate sense of inertia. But an important subsidiary reason is that these things are absurd, ridiculous. And in unfree polities absurd things are valuable in themselves.
Comment by schwa —
October 17, 2006 @ 11:29 pm
- Jalal Toufic
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 18, 2006 @ 6:15 am
“I suppose I owe everyone an explanation for why, believing that the country I was born into has become today something other and insupportable, I will [...] keep living where I am”
Grandparents. They live here, they aren’t going to move.
Comment by Charles Dodgson —
October 18, 2006 @ 8:28 am
Well, that makes a few American Senators going the way of their Roman forbears under the emperors. But this isn’t the first instance of this kind of servile aberration in American history — and I’m not just talking about the Adams Alien and Sedition acts, but the subsequent Sedition act passed under one of my least favorite twentieth-century presidents, Woodrow “holier than thou” Wilson. The old America is not a lost cause yet — but talking as if it is does not help…
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 18, 2006 @ 9:03 am
Likewise, Charles. We’ve got one world-class genocide and chattel slavery in our history, and we don’t have them now. The temptation to believe in the lost Eden, the Fall from which there is no return, is a mistake. There is trouble now, but it can be cured.
Comment by Jennifer —
October 18, 2006 @ 10:44 am
There is trouble now, but it can be cured.
It can be, but that doesn’t mean it will be. If I were single I would have left the country already, but things are not so bad that I’m willing to leave behind the man I love.
Comment by Pyesetz the Dog —
October 18, 2006 @ 7:42 pm
Recently I finally got “provisional approval” from Immigration Canada. That same day my wife was diagnosed with cancer, which makes her ineligible to immigrate. So I am now “medically quarantined” in the States because nobody wants to take a (cured) cancer patient as an immigrant. I’ve been trying to exit from the USA since 2002, but it’s been one ridiculous low-likelihood event after another keeping me here in this Science-forsaken country.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
October 18, 2006 @ 7:43 pm
I’m with Neel and Charles. There is a tendency for people to believe things are worse now than they have ever been. This is because we weren’t alive or can’t remember then. Some examples: Folks who think the threat posed by Al Qaeda today is more serious than that posed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Think the press is biased? Read some papers from the second half of the 19th century, particularly during election season. Remember when an entire race of people were legally disenfranchised? And what about those kids these days?
Do we have problems? Sure we do. Is this a bad law? Yep. But moving away isn’t the answer. This is more a call to action than a signal to leave. If you love the country and believe it is on the wrong path, vote accordingly. If that doesn’t work, civil disobedience may, albeit slowly.
I still believe in America, and believe the country will right itself, even if it takes a while. If I’m wrong, I’ll turn out the lights behind y’all.
Comment by anodyne —
October 18, 2006 @ 11:18 pm
And what about those kids these days?
“Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 19, 2006 @ 11:38 am
In the Chinese dynastic model, the initial establishment of order as a new dynasty’s founder demonstrates he has the mandate of heaven is easier going than the later reform of that dynasty when it’s fallen into corruption and is at risk of losing the mandate. In theory a dynasty could renew itself again and again, as virtuous emperors replace foolish or wicked ones, but in practice, enough bad rulers in a row and heaven withdraws its mandate, the dynasty collapses, and someone else gets the job of establishing justice and order.
I think this is basically true in practical moral and ethical terms.