From ‘Compromise’ to Chaos
By Greta Scriboni
The rhetoric in Washington becomes more hysterical with each passing day. In January, Congress’ actions resembled The Keystone Cops, or a remake of a Marx Brothers movie. By March, our elected officials took on the mood of vigilantes – calling for AIG executives to commit suicide, proposing 90% taxes on a select group of American citizens, declaring the power to break legal contracts, and demanding authority to assume control of privately-held companies.
Now, as April approaches, I understand that there is nothing funny about what is happening to our America. Now, I realize, Washington is becoming something much more sinister and terrifying. On a daily basis, those of us who are watching see the images of destruction – a voyeuristic reality show starring Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Christopher Dodd, and a cast of thousands, including big business, union leaders, ACORN, Wall Street, and the antagonists of the story, the adoring mass media.
If you believe that all the world is a stage, then Washington has become the Theatre of the Absurd. And like that theatre, we do not want to watch, but we cannot look away. Our Lady Liberty is crying out from the corners of small towns, from military families, from immigrants who entered the country legally, from corporate executives who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and from small business owners who bet everything for that one thing, the American Dream.
Where has our America gone? Will we resign ourselves to endless government tyranny? As we watch, we feel the lifeline of a Republican form of government slipping away. If we wait too long, it will be gone from our grasp, and we will be left with the faded remnants of a country, like a life taken too soon.
Believe me, fellow citizens, when I say that the chaos in Washington is intentional. We have heard the Obama administration state that, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” We’re told that, out of this chaos, will come “change.” And while we pay attention to the chaos in one hand, the sleight of the other hand is diminishing our constitutional rights and leaving us with a shell of a nation, founded on platitudes and socialist doctrine.
Now is the time for action. Now is the time for cool heads, great thinkers, and protectors of the constitution to speak up. Our government representatives must exert common sense, capitalist values, and patriotism. We must embrace conservative Democrats and encourage moderate Republicans to stand with their conservative counterparts. Raise your voices and put your backs into it. This is America – we can do anything!
*Editor’s note – Mrs. Scriboni’s reference to a “Republican form of government” does not refer to a government run by Republicans. Article 4, Section 4, of the US Constitution states, “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” There is a great deal of confusion about this, and I’ll be doing a column about it in the future. For now, the simple explanation is that a pure democracy is mob rule. Whatever most people want becomes law. In a Republic, the people don’t have the right, nor the ability, to convey to the government any right they don’t personally possess. For instance, in a pure democracy, the people could vote for the government to seize property to have it redistributed to themselves. If the majority prevailed, the government could do this. Conversely, in a pure Republic, this could never happen. Since the people individually don’t have the right to seize the property of others, they also cannot convey to the government the ability to seize property. More to come on this in a later newsletter.