29 October 2006

"Road to Delusion"

Niall Ferguson in today's Telegraph.co.uk:

"We're not leaving," Mr Bush told Republican congressmen seven months later, [after the 2004 election] "[even] if Laura [his wife] and Barney [his dog] are the only ones who support me."

According to Woodward, Mr Bush once complained bitterly about the difficulty of finding a reliable Iraqi to lead the new democratic government in Baghdad. "Where's George Washington?" he exclaimed to his chief of staff, Andy Card. "Where's Thomas Jefferson? Where's John Adams, for crying out loud?"

This is a question many Americans have been asking themselves about their own leadership deficit, as the debacle of Mr Bush's second term has unfolded.


and asking, and asking, and asking...

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. George Washington in his Farewell Address

Justice? Habeaus Corpus? Patriot Act? Waterboarding?

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. Thomas Jefferson

Honest friendship? Peace? Commerce? Iraq?

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. John Adams in a Letter to Thomas Jefferson on February 2, 1816

Power unchecked? Power as a source of being right? Power to right wrongs?


Washington, Jefferson and Adams would be leary of Mr. Bush. He has led the US into a quagmire and placed it near the brink of disaster. They would be aghast. James Madison would fall in apoplexy. [See the Federalist Papers.]

"Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us do our duty as we understand it." Abraham Lincoln at the time of America's bleakest moment

The current regime in Washington takes the opposite view: might makes right.

When will the US get back on the right track? When will the design of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, backed by the courage of Lincoln to hold the country together at the cost of brother against brother, be taken to the next level of democracy in evolution?

just asking...

Source: Telegraph.co.uk with thanks for the heads up to Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish

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