“Delusions are states of refuge. The mind, unable to comprehend realities or to deal with them, finds its ease in superstitions, beliefs and modes of irrational procedure. It is easier to believe than to think.” ― Garet Garrett
President Bush has for the second time sworn an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” His remarks immediately after he took the oath made it clear he intends to do no such thing.
To judge by his inaugural address, the President’s highest priority in defending our Constitution is “…the expansion of freedom in all the world.” I’ve combed the Constitution in vain to find where it requires the chief executive to spread freedom throughout the world. I’ve tried to recall anything the Founders wrote that would convince the President he is constitutionally bound to do anything beyond defending American freedom right here in America. My meager memory and a Google search of the Federalist Papers turns up no arguments by Hamilton, Madison or Jay for spreading anything throughout the world except peaceful American trade.
Using the royal “we,” George II said, “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” I’m not a member of Scull and Bones but common sense leads me to a different conclusion.
On the evidence, the President’s conclusion is not only wrong, but the opposite is true. By every measure Americans enjoyed a lot more freedom when two thirds of the world was enslaved in the socialist wastelands of Eastern Europe, Russia and China. Now that almost every People’s Paradise has collapsed under its own weight of injustice and repression, or become sufficiently capitalist to survive, Mr. Bush intends to show the world the right way to do socialism ― with liberty and justice for all.
The U.S. government under George II is pumping the lifeblood of liberty into other lands by draining it from American veins. Americans are “liberating” Islamic peasants from Islamic tyrants by destroying our own liberties at home.
While fighting terrorists like a blind tiger, President Bush has failed spectacularly in defending the U.S. Constitution. In response to a single, unique but wildly successful terrorist attack, Mr. Bush has effectively abandoned the Constitution.
With no constitutional support he has invaded two foreign countries, created several enormous, lavishly funded bureaucracies, expanded the powers of every police agency in the county and shattered protections against illegal search, seizure, arrest and imprisonment. Without evidence or charges he has thrown thousands of Islamic immigrant grocers, cabbies, barbers and accountants into prison. He has shackled future generations of Americans to a mountain of debt to finance “…the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
I’m certain the President sincerely believes our freedom depends on everyone else’s freedom. I’m just as certain his belief is a variation on an age-old delusion. The notion that “We can’t enjoy what we have until everyone has what we have” didn’t originate with President Bush. History’s busiest highways to perdition are paved hard and smooth with that absurd idea.
The Chinese government bestowed the blessings of socialism on the peaceful monks of Tibet in 1959. Few of those monks survived.
Napoleon was sure the Russians wouldn’t be content until they were eating escargot instead of borsht. His army froze to death eating their boots in the snow.
Germany’s National Socialist Party fielded an army with the idea of making Moscow part of the Fatherland. That army froze to death on the Russian steppes as well.
Europeans fought wars for centuries based on the idea that the joys of Catholicism were available only in a world entirely Catholic.
Crusaders from Peter the Hermit to Richard the Lionhearted pursued a murderous religious folly to rescue the Holy Land from unholy Islam and light the lamp of redemption for their Muslim brethren.
Unlike the Crusaders, George II isn’t killing Muslims to convert them to Christianity. He wants them to kneel before Democracy, the goddess of parliamentary whores.
The American War on Terror is a delusional folly as surely as the Crusades were. Unfortunately, human folly and mass delusion are easier to identify than explain, easier still to see in the past than in the present. The delusion that one people cannot be content until all people are like them has led millions to destruction.
Our President, with the best of intentions, is chasing that same ancient mirage of faith, believing rather than thinking. He is wrong when he says we safeguard our freedom best by spreading it at gunpoint. Americans will remain free only by holding our leaders to their promise to protect and defend the Constitution, by refusing to be enslaved for our own good, by thinking rather than believing.
