The party of Lincoln, the party of Margaret Chase, the party of Eisenhower, the party of Jack Kemp, and the party of John Danforth is no more. It has been taken over by white trash and their cynical manipulators.

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A scourge stalks this land. It has been with us since our infancy. It is wretched, horrible and terrifying. It doesn't feel pity, pain or remorse. It will not disappear if we ignore it; it will grow stronger. Unlike Voldemort, naming it does not give it strength. Quite the opposite. Harriet Beecher Stowe knew that.

Armed with her faith in the goodness of Man she looked the American Medusa in the face and lived to tell the tale. When Uncle Tom's Cabin was savagely attacked, her detractors called her depiction of slavery a lie. To rebut these charges, she wrote a second book The Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin. This book examined each of her major characters and documented real life examples for all of them.

The title of Part III, Chapter X popularized a term she did not invent. The title of that chapter is "Poor White Trash" and its as politically relevant today as it was when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote it in 1854.

Ever charitable, ever striving for the best among us, Stowe wanted to believe we could aim higher and be that shining city on the hill Washington imagined before her and Reagan invoked after her.

WHEN the public sentiment of Europe speaks in tones of indignation of the system of American slavery... The apologists of slavery have pointed England to her own poor...It is a poor defence for America to say to older countries, â??We are no worse than you are.â? She ought to be infinitely better.

But she also had the courage and compassion to see things as they were and admit we had done considerably worse. Any doctor worth their salt knows you can't cure what you can't name. In her quest to cure this nation of a malady that had plagued it since infancy and threatened to kill it outright, Stowe knew she had to name the beast so we could see its true face. There was nothing pleasant in this task, but she found the courage to look evil in the face and strip it bare of all artifice so she could apply the balm of Gilead. Stripping away the mask and forcing us to see it in all its nakedness was the only way to address it. How did this pestilence take root?

The way that it is done can be made apparent in a few words.
1. The distribution of the land into large plantations, and the consequent sparseness of settlement, make any system of common school education impracticable.
2. The same cause operates with regard to the preaching of the Gospel.
3. The degradation of the idea of labor, which results inevitably from enslaving the working class, operates to a great extent in preventing respectable working men of the middling classes from settling or remaining in slave States.

Ever compassionate, Stowe knows men are not born wicked and cruel. Who among us has ever looked at a baby and called it wicked, mean or cruel? Those traits come later. Sometimes they are the only way to survive when you are thrown into desperate straits. Her description of contemporary conditions sounds familiar even today, and for good reason. Slavery is gone, but the oppression continues under color of authority with full support of the law. The anecdotes she relates are heart rending. And now comes the truly terrible part. What makes the next passage so terrible is its familiarity. You don't need to go back to 1854 to see it. You don't need to back to 1954 to see it. You only need to back to August and you will recognize it immediately.

This miserable class of whites form, in all the Southern States, a material for the most horrible and ferocious of mobs. Utterly ignorant, and inconceivably brutal, they are like some blind, savage monster, which, when aroused, tramples heedlessly over everything in its way.

Singular as it may appear, though slavery is the cause of the misery and degradation of this class, yet they are the most vehement and ferocious advocates of slavery.

The reason is this: They feel the scorn of the upper classes, and their only means of consolation is in having a class below them, whom they may scorn in turn. To set the negro at liberty would deprive them of this last comfort; and accordingly no class of men advocate slavery with such frantic and unreasoning violence, or hate abolitionists with such demoniac hatred.

These are the teabaggers, the deathers, the tenthers, the birthers, and the toters of today. They are the people who compare the president and his family to monkeys and apes. These are the people who attack their children with vile spiteful language designed only to hurt them. These are the people who scream "I want my country back!"

We know these faces. We see them on FOX all the time. And that is no accident. That is not a surprise. These misguided and terrified mobs are merely pawns. They are just the foot soldiers for much more dangerous men, enemies of democracy, freedom and decency. Men with money and power and all the trappings of social grace. Men who do the dirtiest of work without damaging their manicured hands.

The leaders of the community, those men who play on other men with as little care for them as a harper plays on a harp, keep this blind furious monster of the MOB, very much as an overseer keeps plantation-dogs, as creatures to be set on to any man or thing whom they may choose to have put down.

That strategy has not changed one bit. Only now the mobs enter your house through your television set. As I wrote earlier in the week, Van Jones was just the latest victim of this mob mentality. His crime? Like Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird, this black man had the temerity to feel sorry for the children people spit on, the kids dismissed as "white trash." That was unforgivable.

The party of Lincoln, the party of Margaret Chase, the party of Eisenhower, and the party of Danforth is no more. It has been taken over by white trash and their manipulators who gleefully call themselves The Corrupt Bastards Club. This has become a party disdained by William F. Buckley and Richard Viguerie. As he lay dying, Lee Atwater lamented the fact that he had unleashed this beast. The genie is out of the bottle and now recognizes lunatics like Beck as its master. This is precisely the calamity that led me to write my series Red State, Slave State. Since I wrote those essays, things have gone from bad to worse.

Faced with this scourge we have no choice. If this mob is allowed to continue unchecked it will infect all the institutions of civil society. Backing down only encourages more bad behavior. Hoping their blood lust will be satisfied by a sacrifice or two or three is as foolish as expecting a serial killer to stop. We are not the first to face this, we will not be the last, but if we fail we will have to explain to our children how we let that happen. Fortunately, those who came before us left us a map that shows the way out of this mess.

King Hussein of Jordan, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), pointed the way out in stark terms as he wept over the body of his murdered Jewish comrade, Yitzhak Rabin:

Let's not keep silent. Let our voices rise high to speak of our commitment to peace for all times to come, and let us tell those who live in darkness who a the enemies of life, and through faith and religion and the teachings of our one God, this is where we stand.

This is our camp. May God bless you with the realization that you must join it and we pray that He will, but otherwise we are not ashamed, nor are we afraid, nor are we anything but determined to fulfill the legacy for which my friend fell, as did my grandfather in this very city when I was with him and but a young boy.

He was a man of courage, a man of vision and he was endowed with one of the greatest virtues that any man can have. He was endowed with humility. He felt with those around him and in a position of responsibility, he placed himself, as I do and have done, often, in the place of the other partner to achieve a worthy goal. And we achieved peace, an honorable peace and a lasting peace. He had courage, he had vision, and he had a commitment to peace, and standing here, I commit before you, before my people in Jordan, before the world, myself to continue with our utmost, to ensure that we leave a similar legacy, And when my time comes, I hope it will be like my grandfather's and like Yitzhak Rabin's.

This brings us to Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina. He does not get to throw bombs and walk away clean. His penalty deserves special notice.

Violating congressional codes of conduct is the least of his sins. His lack of civility and the damage he inflicted upon a vital American institution as a privileged citizen strikes at the core of the code of conduct that guides his children, four of whom are Eagle Scouts. All four of his sons took a solemn oath

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

The Scout Law is clear

A Scout is:

Trustworthy,
Loyal,
Helpful,
Friendly,
Courteous,
Kind,
Obedient,
Cheerful,
Thrifty,
Brave,
Clean,
and Reverent.

Eagle Scouts are special because they represent years of work by dozens of people who poured everything they could into these young men and asked for nothing in return.

It's not about tying knots, pitching tents, reading maps, or building fires.The most important part of being an Eagle Scout is citizenship. Citizenship in the community. Citizenship in the nation. Citizenship in the world.

In the wake of Charles Whitman's shooting spree on August 1, 1966, everything changed when it was learned that the sniper in the Texas Bell Tower was an Eagle Scout. Ironically, the police officer who actually had to kill him (Houston McCoy) was an active troop leader with the Boy Scouts.

Good, honest, decent, God-fearing, loyal Americans woke up the next day to learn they had helped create that monster. He learned marksmanship as a Boy Scout. When he went to that tower he was prepared. To avoid that in the future, citizenship took on an elevated level of importance. It is ingrained in scouts from their earliest days as cubs and never stops.

It is not enough for Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina to apologize.Words alone will not repair the damage he has done. Apologizing to his sons will not be enough. Here is a list of Eagles who served this nation in keeping with their code of conduct and when their time came, they gave everything they had to offer.

Refusing to leave his position dishonors their memory and their sacrifice.

Aquilla J. Dyess, USMC LTC, Kwajalien Atoll, Eagle Scout, Medal of Honor

Robert E. Femoyer, US Army Air Corps 2LT, Germany, Eagle Scout, Medal of Honor

Benjamin L. Salomon, US Army CPT, Saipan, Eagle Scout, Medal of Honor

Joe Ebert Allen, 1LT, USMC, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Michael Vinay Bhatia, DOD contractor, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

James L. Badley, 1Lt, USAF, North Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Eric Barnes, USAF Airman First Class, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Stephen R. Bixler, USMC Cpl, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Harry Brinkley Bass, Lt Cmdr US Navy, Pacific Theater WWII, Eagle Scout

William C. Bresnahan, USMC PFC, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Allan Brooks Callaway, US Army SSG, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

David M. Caruso, USMC Sgt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Jesse G. Clowers Jr., US Army SSG, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Casey Combs, US Army SSG, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Lawrence J. Culver, US Army PVT, Germany, Eagle Scout

David Day, US Army SSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Felix M. Delgreco, USANG SGT, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Nathaniel DeTample, USANG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Nick A. Dewhirst, US Army 1LT, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

James C. Edge, USMC Cpt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Tommy Ike Folks Jr., Iraq, Eagle Scout

James R. Graham, USMC SGT, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Kevin Grieco, NG SGT, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Robert Guthrie, US Army SFC, Korea, Eagle Scout

Benjamin John Hall, US Army 1LT, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Frank E. Hand III, USN Lt.jg., Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Gordon S. Hart, US Army Air Corps PVT, North Atlantic, Eagle Scout

Kelly Hornbeck, US Army MSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Doyle Hufstedler III, US Army 1LT, Iraq, Eagle Scout

William W. Jacobsen, US Army CPT, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Julius Patrick Jaeger, USAF Cpt, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

John L. Jones, US Army PFC, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Darwin L. Judge, USMC L/cpl, Saigon Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Christopher E. Loudon, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Patrick Lee Lybert, US Army SSG, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Joshua P. Mattero, US Army SSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Daniel McGuire, USMC, Iraq, Eagle Scout

John J. McKenna IV, USMC Cpt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Christopher T. Neiberger, US Army Spc, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Andrew Paul Nelson, US Army SSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Roger Miller Nelson, US Navy, Khe Sanh, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Andrew Olmsted, US Army Major, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Travis Patriquin, US Army Cpt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Christopher L. Robinson, US Army SSG, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Michael A. Robinson, USMC LTC, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Neil Satoriello, US Army 1Lt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Benjamin W. Sammis, USMC Cpt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Neil Anthony Santoriello, US Army 1LT, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Christopher J. Schornak, US Army SSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Jonn Joseph Seery, USN Lt, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Casey Sheehan, US Army Specialist, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Alan Sherman, USMC Sgt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Chris Sitton, US Army SPC, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Abraham Simpson, USMC Lcpl, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Steven Thomas Stefani, USDA, Afghanistan, Eagle Scout

Michael R. Sturdivant, US Army Sgt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Michael Tarlavsky, US Army Cpt, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Daniel L. Wagenaar, US Army PFC, Viet Nam, Eagle Scout

Ryan Doran Walker, US Army SPC, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Chris Walsh, USN, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Davy Nathaniel Weaver, US Army MSG, Eagle Scout

Dion M. Whitley, USMC LCpl, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Jesse L. Williams, US Army, SSG, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Bryan S. Wilson, USMC Cpl, Iraq, Eagle Scout

Jonathan A.V. "Jake" Yelner, USAF, Iraq, Eagle Scout

To spit on that legacy is unforgivable. Joe Wilson of South Carolina does not merely dishonor his sons. He burdens them with a lifetime of shame for his behavior if he does not voluntarily resign and admit his is not worthy of holding a position of public trust.

Authors Bio:
For starters, I am not the Henry Porter who writes for the Observer in Britain. I'm a native New Yorker living in Maryland. I used to believe knowledge was power. Now I know knowledge translated into action is power.