July 25, 2006 at 22:54:37

How George Bush Became a Dictator

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By Len Hart (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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More recently, the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon -a Bush battle by proxy -is just such a case. While there is still the possibility that Iran and Syria will ally and join the fray, Bush will only exploit that as well. An authoritarian dictatorship, Bush's stock and trade, is fear; being "right" does not matter. Clearly -Bush has never shown himself to be concerned with consequences. What does matter to Bush is that Iraq is now off the front pages and just in time for the mid-terms.

How did we get from there to here? How was our Democracy snatched from under our noses? How did we wake up as cockroaches?

It may have begun with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 [NSC-68]. It was then that the United States became a "security state". The act was implemented in January 1950 when the National Security Council produced a blueprint for a new kind of country, unlike anything that preceded World War II.

It was not openly discussed at the time, but Senator Arthur Vandenburg --a Republican --reportedly told Truman "...that if he really wanted all those weapons and all those high taxes to pay for them, he had better 'scare the hell out of the American people.'"

It would appear that Bush took that admonition to heart. But the issue with Bush and Reagan is not a matter of finding ways to pay for high tech ways to blow things up, it's a matter of simply not paying for them at all -hence the Reagan/Bush deficits! Reagan left to Bush senior the largest debt in our nation's history. Bush will do the same if he leaves office.

In the meantime, a climate of fear is maintained. The brief exception is Dwight Eisenhower. In an attack of conscience unheard of among latter day Republicans, Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex that had, by then, established permanent control over the state! We've been overfeeding the beast since 1947.

It was David Hume's 1758 Of the First Principles of Government that stated:

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular.

-David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government

Hume was most certainly not alone in associating military governments with despotic governments. When any person puts himself both above and against the law, then the people of the US states are entitled lawfully to rise up -violently if necessary -to overthrow the tyrant, the self-proclaimed dictator.

John Dean makes this chilling point. Nixon, as we mentioned earlier, toyed with the idea of defying the high court, but, in the end thought better of it and resigned. Bush/Cheney won't budge. They have already declared that whatever may be alleged against them, they can, themselves "authorize" it and make legal -even after the fact. Bush has arrogated unto himself the power to interpret the laws. In a crisis, Bush will defy the court and the American republic is over.

Both Jefferson and Che Guevarra recognized that when government reaches this point, it operates outside the law. Both men recognized the terrible alternative to ultimate submission to tyranny. Revolution!

The success of revolution is by no means guaranteed. Lives will be lost; a terrible cost will be exacted. Victory is not cheap but the cost of failure is even more dear: our freedom. It is the existentialist position that we are most truly human in our acts of choice. Sartre said, for example, that "....man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.' These are not empty words; consider the dreadful implications of making the wrong choice, but even worse, no choice. It is not so much the choice we make between a predetermined good vs a predetermined evil that is significant but, rather, the fact that we make a choice at all. Even Victor Frankl, inside the concentration camp, found his humanity in exercising the last choice left him: that of his own attitude. When Bush has denied us Democracy, we may either submit and be slaves, or choose freedom and fight.

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http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/

Len Hart is a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts and full-length documentaries. He is a former major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS, ABC-TV and UPI. He maintains the progressive blog: more...)

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