Soapbox

Dieu et mon Droit

We live in scary times.

It is scary to think that our sons and daughters may one day be drafted to fight a war- and the reason why doesn’t matter to half of the country.

It is frightening to know that Asian nations now hold half of the U.S. Treasury bonds out there, and if China should need to call in our debt, we cannot pay it.

It is frightening to see civil rights and free speech protections marching backwards into the 19th century, and to know that the man largely responsible for that regressive policy will probably appoint 3 justices to the Supreme Court.

It is scary when you do all you can to try to prevent all this from happening and get called a nut-job and a sore loser when the defeat comes under a cloud of suspicious circumstances.

It is downright disturbing when the Attorney General of the United States of America, the man charged with upholding the laws of the land and protecting the rights of all Americans, states that no judge should disagree with the president.

John Ashcroft said yesterday that “activist judges” are endangering this country when they rule against the President’s positions on treaties and conventions: things like saying he should not imprison people secretly for years and never charge them with a crime. They should not interfere with the President’s “constitutional authority to make decisions during war”, he declared.

Let’s be clear about this: he is basically saying that our president, (who is not even a lawyer, let alone a judge) should be considered infallible in times of war, and none should disagree, even if he violates the Constitution. Doesn’t this mean that all a president has to do is start a war and he has issued himself a blank check? And apparently it doesn’t matter if he lied to start the war, either!

Well heck- Clinton should have just started a war somewhere and he might never have been impeached!

Sadly, this is not really new. Republicans have been branding “activist judge” anyone who rules against their repressive, discriminatory and even un-constitutional policies. “If you don’t agree with our methods, it couldn’t possibly be because we’re wrong: it’s because you’re helping the terrorists! And anyone who doesn’t believe in witches is a witch!

It is in this climate of infallibility that I move that we change to motto of this country to something more along the lines of that of the British monarchy:

“Dieu et mon Droit” :
God is my Right

because it seems that King George the Second is to be granted the divine right to rule! Then we can make him a paper crown out the Constitution and go our merry way into the past.