Reply #7: Crossing the Rubicon....

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A teacher of mine sent me this. He get's to Caesar about halfway.

Dear Senator Leahy,

I write to you in hopes that the reception you gave to the
proposed appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General
in your usual courteous and civil manner in no way indicates
that you, and I hope your Senatorial colleagues, will not go
to the greatest possible lengths to reveal to the American
public the nature of the Bush administration's contempt for
the rule of law.

As I am sure you know, this proposed appointment is a direct
shot across the bow, an 'in-your-face' political move to
carry out smoothly the program of secrecy- in-the- name of
security that Ashcroft began and that is the hallmark of an
administration that believes its mission, its existence, is
co-extensive with what is right for America. By nominating a
man who has asserted that the President has the power to
suspend the rule of law whenever he --and he alone -- claims
national security demands it, he throws us back beyond all
that the Declaration of Independence and its legal ancestors
brought to America. To make this nomination immediately
after an electoral victory but after a Supreme Court's
recent rejection of this view should be astounding. By now,
however, no one should have any illusions that this
administration believes that its ends justify any means to
achieve them. I need not rehearse the actions and character
of the Bush administration: you know them, Senator Jeffords
knew them, your fellow Democrats and a few Republicans know
them. The question is when and where to draw the line.

Let me say what motivates this letter, what depths of
feeling lead me to fear for the Republic. A life-long
Democrat, I spent the Sixties in Ann Arbor and Cambridge, a
fervent opponent of the Viet Nam War. Yet in those hotbeds
of cultural and political upheaval I never once uttered the
word
'fascist.' I thought my friends who did were callow and
ahistorical. And today I do not believe that Bush and the
cabal that controls him think of themselves as in any way as
incipiently fascistic, though I have no doubt that the
Oliver Norths and other bully boys would quickly come
forward if
the times 'demanded' it. What I do believe is that the
Administration in conscious and unconscious ways has been
laying the groundwork for the kind of authoritarian society
it may honestly believe is in our interests. Again, you know
what's happening is wrong, and the question becomes, when
does the noble art of compromise in politics have to give
way to a stand on principle? Bush, a hollow man into whom
has been poured every dark and poisonous strain in American
culture, has not hesitated to make everything he wants a
'principle.' He has pursued these things far past the point
of civility, yet we liberals have gone along: we survived
Reagan didn't we? He will not be stopped by asking, as
Joseph Welch did with McCarthy, Have you no shame? He has
none, he has been assured of his righteousness.

I do believe this nomination is as deliberate in its shape
and timing as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. Caesar
believed he was about to assert an illegitimate but
necessary power to save the Roman Republic. Indeed, he did,
by becoming the lawful Dictator Perpetuus. Likewise the
Weimar Republic was saved by utilizing its emergency powers
for the executive in a time of crisis. One hesitates to be
apocalyptic I this manner: who wants to be called paranoid?
But, again, you know by now that nothing is beyond the
dreams of this Administration. How and where to stop it? If
we had a
responsible press we might get a nightly television
juxtaposition of the Gonzales torture letter and the
resultant Abu Graib photos, say as many as we had of
Monica-at-the-rope every time Clinton's name was mentioned
for a year (10,000 times?). Failing that, it seems to me
that the Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor are being
called to account. It is with great sorrow that I say that
if this man's views are allowed to prevail due to some sort
'courtesy' to a President's wishes, or worse, that maybe
all will come out right, or we need to compromise yet
again..., then when, if ever again, will history say we had
the statesmanship we needed when we needed it? America had a
Know Nothing Party more than a century ago. After the 2004
election I think we have a majority that could be called the
I Don't Want to Know Nothin's. Who is going to stand up for
those who believe that it's only the truth, and the
knowledge of it that will us free?

Ruefully, but sincerely yours,