Ragnarok

Thomas Jefferson once noted, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Tyranny is a little like rust on a ship; turn your back on regular maintenance, ignore a spot of rust here and there, and before long the hull will rust right out from under you.
It only takes one hole in the hull to sink a ship.
It doesn't remain seaworthy, even if the total area of it's hull exceeds the total area of the holes.

I guess that’s where we are now.

It’s painfully clear to any but the most determinedly obtuse that Barack Obama represents nothing more than a continuation – and even extension – of the worst of George Bush.
They like to say that you must be bitter, angry, dark, disloyal, pessimistic -- and worse -- if you point out the holes. They ask, "Why can't you be optimistic and joyful and have faith, and focus on the places where the hull isn't rusted through?"
Why? Well, because that would be stupid.
That's why.


Warrantless surveillance,
Imprisonment without trial.
Torture.
Does that sound like “the land of the free” to you?

But this isn’t a new battle.
It didn't start with Obama.
Or even with Bush.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

Magna Carta, 1215

From King John to President Obama, this is a battle we’ve been fighting for a long, long time.

It’s the battle of all battles.
The only one that matters.
Without victory in this one, all other battles are lost.
Ragnarok.

There can be no retreat.
No compromise.
No surrender.


sj