How to make sense of the Bush, Gonzales and the GOP.

From pushing the Patriot Act which allows the Government to detain you, hold you indefinitely, not allow you access to a judge, trial or even stand accused of a crime all in the name of "national security"... to instituting laws that allow open-ended fishing expeditions into what you and anyone else want to read in your public library, all in the name of rooting out "enemies" yet without any probable cause to investigate you or anyone else. That the Bush administration can put someone like Alberto Gonzales in the position as the chief law enforcement officer, someone who was the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration is astounding.

Gonzales' advice led directly to the abandonment of long-standing federal laws, the Geneva Convention, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales' legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales' endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

Yet that's how Bush and the GOP view the law of the land and the basic principles we as a nation have always strove to stand for. That is the utter insanity of their rhetoric to defend and craft a legal basis for such actions.

In short, they employ doublethink and doublespeak when they get rid of freedoms and civil liberties in the name of "freedom" and "liberty". The irony is that this is the antithesis of traditional conservatism and is a radical intrusion of civil liberties and the authority of the government to intrude into your private life.

As Benjamin Franklin, one of our wisest and most revered founding fathers, once astutely opined:

"people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

That quote is not only timely (and timeless) but is a truism. Perhaps we should help Bush and Gonzales by downloading and printing a wall poster of that phrase with the various wordings of it used by Thomas Jefferson, so that they can look at it everyday and undue the damage they have wrought, while pondering the wisdom of it before they subvert the very principles we stand for and are worth defending again. It might also help you when you are confronted with doublethink Right-Wingers (Fright-Wingers™). Or when you meet with people who consider themselves to be "conservatives" and hold liberty and freedom as vital principles by having them read it. If they still think Bush and Ashcroft are defending our Constitution, our nation, and our most cherished principles, you will have a handy safe non-harmful tool to roll up and smack them up side the head, much like one does to potty train dogs.

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