The only thing we have to fear is...

Franklin Roosevelt said in his First Inaugural Address, during the thick of the Great Depression, to a frightened, uncertain, and despairing population: “Firstly, I would like to assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.” Roosevelt, arguably one of the greatest Presidents of these united states, gave new hope and comfort to the down-trodden population with his first address to the American people. And, ultimately, he would assuage the people’s fears altogether by lifting them out of the terrible Depression.

In 1933 and the years following Roosevelt’s Inauguration, the leaders of yesteryear triumphed over the problems facing them. We must face many new challenges in this new millennium, and it seems to me that we have something new that should be feared above all.

Many people these days are really displeased with the current president, George W. Bush, and he is often disparaged by average people and media personalities alike. That’s very good, it shows that we are exercising our right of Freedom of Speech, and he very much deserves every criticism that he gets. But, if we do not recognize that the sorry shape that our country is in today is not the sole fault of George W. Bush, then we are all delusional, and can do nothing to improve our country and protect it from further usurpations in the future.

George W. Bush, Commander-in-Thief of the United States of America, has (1) gotten us into an illegal and damaging War in Iraq; (2) made torture an acknowledged device of American foreign policy; (3) trampled all over our civil liberties, particularly the right to privacy and the right to a fair trial; (4) racked up record deficits and has had to borrow heavily from other countries, meaning that China now owns us; (5) has alienated America from the rest of the world with his foolish and arrogant foreign policy decisions; and countless other things, many of which we do not know of as of yet, due to the secrecy of our government. But, when you look at all of these things that George W. Bush has done, you must remember that we have more than one branch of government. We have a system of Checks and Balances, with each branch of government checking and balancing out the other. However, the Congress of the United States has failed miserably in checking and balancing the Executive Branch. In fact, they, the Democrats included, have facilitated nearly every action that George W. Bush has decided to take as president.

Take, for example, the War in Iraq. In 2002, the Congress passed a resolution that would allow the president to declare war on Iraq (a middle-eastern country with a lot of oil, who was supposedly a nuclear theat to us) whenever it happened to tickle his fancy. Sure, the resolution instructed that the President go to the U.N. and follow all of their rules, but it meant that, effectively, the President, rather than the Congress, declared war on Iraq. The Congress did not issue a direct declaration of war. So, you can see, the Congress completely facilitated the President, and, although the Congress was Republican at that time, there were Democrats in that Congress, and, had they taken the initiative, one of them could have filibustered the bill that would have allowed the President to declare war on Iraq. The system of Checks and Balances failed because of the cowardice, and political calculation, of our Representatives.
And it will continue to fail, as it has done in many instances since 2002.

One of these instances was the recent Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, in which the Democratic Congress practically bent over backwards in order to give Bush a reason to go to war with Iran (another middle-eastern country with a lot of oil, who was supposedly a nuclear threat to us). The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Democratic Congress, with many a Democrat voting for it, including Hillary Rodham Clinton. The bill declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. And, because the IRG has ties all over Iran and Iran’s government, George W. Bush could easily use this Kyl-Lieberman amendment to justify a possible military strike on Iran. Bush could just say the magic word “terrorism”, and we could be off on another “misunderestimated” adventure. Fool me once, shame on you, but, fool me twice, shame on me.

Congress has completely and utterly failed to utilize the system of Checks and Balances. George W. Bush would not have been able to do all of this if he had been prevented from doing so by the Congress, exercising its full power as the more powerful branch of government. But our representatives are completely and totally preoccupied with winning reelection and maintaining their power (and raising enough money to do so). The Congress is so preoccupied with this that they are not doing their jobs. One instance of this which is prominent in my mind was at a recent Democratic Presidential debate: Former Senator Mike Gravel suggested that the candidates in Congress leave the campaign trail and vote, for forty consecutive days, to end the War in Iraq. The moderator and the other candidates seemed to think this an insane suggestion; god forbid that our representatives actually do their jobs.

The preoccupation with money and maintaining power makes it so that our “representatives” represent the special interests and businesses that they must get money from to win reelection, rather than representing the People of the United States. Essentially, George W. Bush’s two terms in office are indicative of a much bigger problem: representative government is broken. It no longer functions in the interest of the people, as it was originally designed to do.

John Adams once said to his friend, Thomas Jefferson, “You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.” What we have right now, in our government, is essentially a monarchy and an aristocracy. Our Executive branch has nearly unchecked power due to the negligence of the Congress, and the Congress is full of rich, power-hungry, corrupt politicians, most of which care more about appeasing the special interests and maintaining power than helping those less fortunate than themselves. It certainly reminds one of an aristocracy and a monarchy.

How did it get to be this way? Why has our government degenerated into this cesspool of corruption and destruction?

James Monroe, the 5th President of the United States, once said, “It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”

Monroe’s neighbor and the 4th President of the United States, James Madison, had this to say, “The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.”

Ponder these two quotes, and they will help you see a clearer picture of our current situation. When you look at our government, and when you look around our country today, you have to realize that, ultimately, the responsibility lies with us, the People of the United States of America. We are the only legitimate fountain of power. We are the pillars that hold our Democracy up…but these pillars are crumbling. We have become ignorant, corrupt, and complacent, and that has allowed our elected officials to usurp power and corrupt our government. The people are too ignorant to stop them. And it is a sad fact that the People cannot elect a great leader to pull them back together for the very reason that the People are falling apart.

And, when people realize, once in a great while, that their government is doing them a great deal of harm, they blame their elected officials alone, even though the power of those elected officials springs from the Power of the People. We solely blame those elected officials, and so, like I stated before, we can do nothing to improve our country and protect it from further usurpations in the future, because we don’t realize that there is a greater problem than just those few elected officials.

People don’t realize that they, living in a Democracy, are the only legitimate fountain of power, from which all other legitimate powers in this nation spring. They are living in a state of Civic Adolescence, so they don’t take responsibility for their country’s problems, and they leave it to their elected officials (who are often ineffective and incompetent) to become learned about problems and fix them. Because they feel no responsibility and leave everything to their elected officials, they are ignorant about many of the problems of today.

I have a solution to some of these problems that I have above described. To move us out of a state of Civic Adolescence and into a state of Civic Adulthood, Former Senator Mike Gravel has an interesting proposal. It’s called the National Initiative for Democracy, and it would empower the people to make laws, directly, in partnership with their elected officials. If people make the laws directly, then they will see that they are directly responsible, and then they will bother to educate themselves about the issues (because it would be greatly in their own self-interest to do so). Then, perhaps, shed of our thick skin of ignorance, the People will become the true masters in this Democracy and will no longer allow their elected officials to exploit them and corrupt their government.

But, today, there is a different reality. Sadly, as James Monroe over 200 years ago warned us might happen, we have become the willing instruments of our own debasement and ruin. Our elected officials are exploiting the ignorance and corruption of the people for political gain, to the point that they have been able to set up a veritable monarchy and aristocracy.

In 1933, the only thing that we had to fear was fear itself. Today, the only thing that we have to fear is ourselves.