How Far Gone is the US?

National Journal this afternoon published an execrable piece of bootlicking. In a short editorial, Jill Lawrence proclaimed that:

Rand Paul’s drone filibuster, while admirable as an expression of principle, took place in a theoretical world of civil liberties. Presidents operate in the real world of Americans under continuing threat – just ask President Obama or George W. Bush – and their top priority is to avoid terrorist killings on their watch.

As is usual with Big Government's sycophants, Mrs. Lawrence has things completely backwards. The erosion of civil liberties is a practical, everyday reality, while terrorist attacks are the theoretical possibility. How many rights have Americans given away since 9/11, all for the Sisyphean quest for complete security? The right to travel, the right to bear arms, the right to be safe and secure in our persons and possessions, and every other God-given right that is supposed to be recognized and protected by the government is under attack, each and every day. The only terrorist attacks we might face are those resulting from blowback from the United States' continuing meddling overseas. And yet our leaders imagine themselves as the protagonists of "24," making excuses for torture and unchecked murder both at home and abroad.

Mrs. Lawrence ends her piece by stating "let's not tie our presidents' hands." I can't think of a statement that is more ludicrous. Of all government officials, the president's hands are those which are most in need of tying. It is precisely because the executive is the one person who can bring the enormous power of the government to bear that his exercise of that power must be strictly limited and severely counteracted in the event that he oversteps those limits. The Founding Fathers knew as much, which is why they sought to check the power of the federal government, setting up a set of checks and balances among the federal government, state governments, and the people. But so much of that framework has, not surprisingly, been eroded away over time as the people gladly gave up their liberty in order to suck on the government teat. Have we reached the point of no return? I sincerely hope not, and the wave of young people joining the liberty movement does give some cause for optimism.

But reading articles like this makes me wonder if I'm in 1930s Germany. The embracement of the police state and the "it can't happen here" mentality is so entrenched, and especially among people in Washington, that it's sickening. Politics has always been the exercise of war by other means, but normally politicians have taken great care to hide the unseemly bits from plain view. Nowadays the façade is being stripped away more and more every day and revealing the naked aggression and deadly consequences of political decisions, yet so many in DC continue to treat politics like a game. As long as Team A beats Team B and makes Team B look bad in the press, it's mission accomplished and damn the consequences. They'd rather gloat that "their guy" won the election than challenge his dictatorial policies. And by the time George Bush IV begins to use those policies to eliminate his domestic enemies, it'll be too late for them to stop anything.

To people such as Mrs. Lawrence I have but one thing to say, quoting the great Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!