"Ask your member of Congress: Will you defend the Constitution?"
--Art Levine, "10 days left to stop the Dems from caving on FISA," Huffington Post, a few minutes ago
I didn't vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 because he smiled with no mirth in his eyes and refused to repudiate Lyndon Johnson's war. I have never voted for a Republican and never will, but I'm proud of not having voted for Humphrey, proud of having written Gene McCarthy's name on my ballot. Most of us, most of us who read the Huffington Post, anyway, have lines we won't cross: Humphrey was on the other side of mine. Humphrey and his failed party. Rarely has a party deserved to lose more than the Democratic Party did in 1968, after all those years of stubborness and vanity and murder, after it turned its back on the Peace Movement and nominated a morally bankrupt and unapologetic hawk.
2008 is beginning to look like 1968 to me. I will have more joy in seeing the careers of these treacherous Democrats ended than in voting against the vicious, corrupt, venal, incompetent, deluded, altogether disgusting Republicans. The Republicans are what they are: the Republicans cannot deceive me or break my heart. The Republicans cannot ruin the country, utterly and forever, without the astonishing collusion of these Democrats. Yes, the Republicans can do an almost limitless amount of damage, but they can't perpetuate the bloody disgrace of their long majority without the acquiescence of their fellow-travelers across the aisle. I think there are many of us who will have the Constitution back, and the honor and integrity of our country, or we will have the liberating, energizing task of founding a new opposition party, one that actually opposes the greed, destruction, arrogance, and ignorance of the failed Republocrat party now in power. I think there are a lot of us.
If the Democrats do lose in 2008, that will surely be the end of the Democratic Party. And that will be a good thing, if they lose by continuing down this moronic path, if they lose because they deserved to lose. Then, out of that rubble, if the nation survives in anything like it's fundamental, 200-year-old promise and glory, we who care to preserve it will be released to begin again, to oppose the devils of the right and the worse little devils of the unprincipled middle with good, decent, honest, "small-d" democrats, men and women who are liberal--what a wonderful word!, real new leaders who are progressives.
"Our legislative advocates will work behind the scenes to press members of Congress to commit to key legislation to restore habeas corpus, close Guantánamo Bay, reverse the Military Commissions Act and fix the so-called "Protect America Act" that allows warrantless searches of innocent Americans. And, every time Congress acts - or fails to act - we'll mobilize our more than half-million ACLU members to take action. So, please, ask your member of Congress: Will you defend the Constitution?"
--Art Levine
I think there may be enough of us, enough sickened and horrified Americans who thought they had voted for change and who intend to have it, one way or the other, whatever moneychangers they have to throw out of their temple to achieve it. Enough of us to unceremoniously discard the people who lied to us and stole our votes, the feeble, compliant, contemptible "off the table" compromisers and enablers we somehow accidentally elected. We will all be waiting with a kind of furious joy to see how our party's Senators and Representatives answer the ACLU's urgent, fundamental questions, the last questions we may ever ask them.
Posted September 26, 2007 | 02:49 AM (EST)