That's not the sort of thing that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution would be thinking or feeling. They would be standing fast on their convictions and moving forward with their actions. I wonder, though, if they thought about the following possibility:
Elliot D. Cohen: Impeach Bush and Cheney Now, Before They Declare Martial Law
There is presently a serious possibility that America will come under martial law before the 2008 presidential election and be irretrievably turned into a totalitarian state. If this happens there won't even be a free election in 2008....
In my recent article, This Summer, will America Officially Become a Totalitarian State?" I presented the following facts:In May 2007, Bush posted a national continuity policy to the White House Web site that bypasses Congress and puts him in charge of all three branches of the federal government if there is a "catastrophic emergency" -- vaguely defined to include anything from a destructive hurricane to a terrorist attack. This leaves democracy in America dangling on a thin thread of chance that such a "catastrophe" doesn't happen.
On Wednesday [July 11], Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said he has a "gut" feeling that Al Qaeda will launch another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland sometime this summer. Chertoff's "gut feeling" comes on the heels of the latest National Intelligence Estimate [NIE], which maintains that in the past year, Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure and has grown stronger along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Elliot D Cohen via buzzflash.com
I made reference to this in a what's going on here (part XXV)... post on May 21, 2007. At that time I asked:
If I'm not mistaken, isn't this called martial law? Isn't there absolutely no mention of it in the US Constititution? Hasn't it been understood for the last two centuries+ that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus, though it never has. Didn't President Lincoln suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War and hasn't Czar George, in effect, done it with his war on terrorism? AND didn't the Supreme Court in ex parte Milligan (71 US 2 [1866]) declare that what Mr. Lincoln did was unconstitutional?
Looking over my posts since that one, I noticed that I did take a bit of a downward trend since then. I'm wondering, at the moment that I am writing these words, if somehow unconsciously that post may have triggered it?
Who really knows?
Yes, I think we need to be concerned. Yes, there are strange unknown things afoot. Yes, the naysayers as well as the conspiracy theorists are working overtime. Yes, caution is really necessary. We have to trust that there are enough sane people in the government who believe that it is important to keep the beliefs and work of the Founding Fathers alive and working.
I was reminded in writing this of Frank Herbert's Dune series of sci-fi books. There is a faction in the series known as the Bene Gesserit. They are viewed as witches in the series because they manipulate people and their thoughts. They had this prayer or adage they used that was very important to the protagonist in the series, Paul Muad'Dib Atriedes:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
and again in the words of Frankline D. Roosevelt in his first Inaugural Address:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
I wonder if we've really come very far since FDR spoke those words on March 4, 1933?
just asking...
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