The Imperial America Grows

I just read on an upsetting article on TPM Muck Raker linked to from The Huffington Post that the US and Iraqi Governments are within spitting distance of establishing the latest legally permanent military garrison of US solders abroad, this time, obviously, in Iraq. To those of us who subscribed to the notion that the United States is not in fact an Imperial Power, its time to crawl out of the cave and have a look around.

Sorry this has nothing to do with skating but I don't live in a vacuum and the Imperial reach of America is not healthy, not healthy for the rest of the World obviously but also not at all compatible with the ideals of a Democratic Government.

Ironically the ideals of the second amendment to the US Constitution: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Ambiguous in its meaning today, but this amendment was added to the Bill of Rights not to ensure that a bunch of guys could throw their rifles in the back of their Dodge Durango, rather the ideals behind the second amendment were that the United States would not have standing armies, rather the States would be defended by "well regulated militias".

Only in times of war would the United States actually have an army. In fact Article II of The Constitution spells out that the President will be commander-in-chief only when there is an army or navy: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States... The men who created the United States knew that: liberty, as we all know, cannot flour­ish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. - Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited (chapter 1, Over Population).

Fifty years from now I fear that this date will be remembered as the day government of the people for the people perished from this Earth.

It is too difficult for me to talk about leisure activities when The World, or at least the United States - the "shining city on a hill"-, is flying apart at the seams. Sorry for the melodrama, maybe I will feel better about these things in the morning.

In the meantime would someone please give Bush a blow job so Congress can impeach him?