[Anyone] from another American Patriot:

[Thos Myers]

No Joy This Fourth Of July

"A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a
Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." ~ Declaration of
Independence
I've always enjoyed the Fourth of July.
It's summer, it's a festive holiday about celebration -- not mourning or
remembrance -- and, as a military Veteran, it has been a time to feel good
about whatever miniscule role I've played in maintaining our country's
strength and freedom.
But I'm going to skip the barbeques and just go to work today. I do this
because the state of my country under the reign of George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney and their entire cabal of crooks and non-patriots, leaves me with a
feeling so hollow and barren that I simply cannot use drinking a beer,
eating a hot dog or watching fireworks as a soothing balm.
With Bush's effective pardon of Scooter Libby on Monday, he has once again
acted on behalf of the American people with no regard for what the people
actually want. Poll after poll has shown that Americans still cling to a
belief in equal justice under the law and that letting Libby off the hook
on perjury and obstruction of justice charges in the outing of a covert
CIA agent is horribly wrong. But that doesnt stop Bush from doing whatever
he damn well pleases to help his cronies and appease his political
benefactors.
The overwhelming majority of the country now also knows the truth of the
Iraq occupation and made clear in the last election what is expected of
our leaders in ending that disaster. The American people know that the
White House cooked the intelligence books to make a bogus case for war
against a country that posed no threat whatsoever to the United States and
by far most Americans want us out of Iraq as soon as possible.
It is the same thing with the way most of us feel about the promise held
in the science of stem cell research and the huge nationwide support for
raising the federal minimum wage, which have both been fought tooth and
nail by Bush and the Republican party.
No matter how we the people want to be governed or how we decide we want
our country to look, Bush sticks stubbornly to what he wants, to what he
mandates and what he decides in his delusional world of absolute power and
authority over all he surveys.
It's a bitter irony that what we celebrate today is deliverance from just
such an absolute power and authority in the form of King George III, about
whom the Founding Fathers railed in the majority of the Declaration of
Independence and from whom they declared our freedom. We broke away from
the colonial rule of a tyrant and, in the preamble to this sacred
document, we stated that our leaders are ultimately governed by those for
which government is created and that those elected president get "their
just powers from the consent of the governed."

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right
of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness.
We declared our break from a monarch, an absolute ruler, in 1776 when the
13 colonies risked it all to repudiate that form of government and to say
that the leader of what would become the new United States of America
should listen to the will of the people and not the other way around.
One has to wonder what Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hancock and the other
Founding Fathers would think of where we're at, 231 years later, if they
could see the vision of Democracy they cherished so soiled and the 43rd
president known not at all for his wisdom and entirely for his outrageous
abuse of power.
George W. Bush has taken our country and made us despised throughout the
world, ruined our global reputation in a way that may take a generation to
salvage and made us far less safe in a dangerous world. Indeed, he has
used our nation's wealth and power to make the world a more dangerous
place.
His administration has also found a way to diminish a great holiday like
our Independence Day, to make us feel less like proudly waving our flag
and to even cause many like me, who have worn our country's uniform, to
wonder what the hell it was for.
And, for that, every American who voted for Bush, should take time this
July Fourth to perform a truly patriotic act and be profoundly ashamed.
BobGeiger.com