Dennis Miller: "I think he's lost his mind."
Mark R. Levin on FOX: "Half the country thinks he's a mental patient."
John Podhoretz in the New York Post: "It is now clear that Al Gore is insane."
James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal: "Gore suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder."Sean Hannity: "He's really nuts."
When might some right-wing colleague of psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer take the next step and sign the order committing Al Gore to a psychiatric hospital? Impossible? How many of the Bushevik horrors listed above seemed possible when Bush took his oath of office in January 2001, and swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" - a Constitution that stipulates that the President "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed"?
When, in earlier essays, I wrote of a need for a moral hero as a leader of the opposition to Bushism, I was scolded by some readers for my apparent desire to replace one authority figure with another. Not so. The hero-leaders of whom I speak did not seize control of a movement, the movement was drawn to and chose the leader. Without the moral qualities that these men brought to the struggle, their emerging leadership would not have happen. When the leader loses sight of the commanding objectives of the movement, that leader is likely to be replaced.
Even so, my respondents issue a valid caveat. For many reformers in history have succumbed to the corruption of power. Napoleon, who began his career as an anti-royalist reformer, later proclaimed himself emperor. Robert Penn Warren's great novel, All the King's Men, in effect a fictional biography of Louisiana's Huey Long, depicts the rise, corruption and fall of a populist reformer. As another great leader, Thomas Jefferson, warned: "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
So who will lead the resistance that will put a stop to this dictatorial madness? Who will be our Sakharov? He may be a Republican - perhaps better a Republican. Will some GOP senator stand up in the Senate and publicly denounce his President and leave his party or even the Senate? Will another Republican, who has access to proof-positive evidence that the past three elections were stolen, disclose and publicize the damning evidence? Will some general on active duty refuse an order to bomb Iran? Is there another Dan Ellsberg somewhere within the bowels of this administration willing to face prison as he publishes the "state secrets" that just might bring down this illegal regime?
What act of civil disobedience will at last ignite the opposition to Bush's incipient despotism? What will be the new realization of Gandhi's general strike and salt march? Or of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, provoked by Rosa Parks' defiance, which "selected" Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leader of non-violent resistance? We do not yet know. But if that defiant act is to come and is to be successful, it will be ingenious and dramatic, and it will, as Gandhi prescribed, provoke a response from the regime followed by massive non-violent defiance. (More about Gandhi's resistance in a subsequent essay). Simple courage, while necessary, will not suffice. Intelligence and discipline will also be essential to ultimate success. This much we have learned from history.
I daresay that if someone with the courage and moral authority, not to mention tactical shrewdness, of a Gandhi, Mandela, M. L. King or Sakharov, stands up and calls the citizen-troops to action, we may all be amazed at how many will follow.
But we must not wait for that leader to appear, for, if we are fortunate, that leader will emerge as did Gandhi, Mandela, King and Sakharov, out of the ongoing struggle and defiance of the people. That leadership must be preceded by innumerable individual acts of protest and resistance.
The Busheviks, through their greed, their corruption, their disregard of the law and the Constitution, their cruelty, and their war crimes, have disgraced us all in the eyes of the peoples of the world. Those Americans who sit idly by as passive spectators as their country is dishonored and their democracy is dismantled, are accomplices to the criminals in power.
Only the American people can restore the honor of the United States of America.
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