Again, a brave soul walks lonely down the aisle of the House, the other members scrambling to get away and carelessly side-talking until he has to demand decorum on his own. The scurrying furry bodies quiet down somewhat, allowing him to continue with his simple plea for justice and the rule of law. Meanwhile, disreputable sorts scoff in the wings.
The dark stain of blood is visible to the trained eye of one who would look beyond the obvious exteriors of the worn benches and soft, absorbent carpeting. But no one would want to own up to the carnage the last batch of scurrilous shoplifters and bandits created when they rubberstamped a war they must have known was less about the needs of the nation than about lining the pockets of the already rotund gourmands of the public trough, so the experienced eye looks away. Only a "statesman" would go on such a fool’s errand, knowing that they would be pilloried in the corruptible press for speaking the truth.
What good can come from speaking truth among the powerful? What difference does it make to fling soft skin against the unyielding stone of the wheels of certain politics? Only honor is at stake, and so many have long since lost their need for honor, from the sordid details of begging to suck money from the powerful to justify their existence.
Yet, there is reason.
In the long-ago cold days of the American Revolution, there was little to be hoped for. History, as all the essential participants knew, consisted of wave upon wave of humanity driven by the whip to claw out an existence with little hope of gain for any but the tiny fraction at the top. And, in many cases, even they could look forward to nothing but a bleak existence among cold stone castles where death lay around the turns with fresh sufferings of disease and injury. Old age meant gumming food more than chewing it. What hope was there to press a case for democracy or the dignity of man?
But they had courage that we seem to lack. They dared to put in place a system that matched their dreams more than their reality. In those days one can imagine that their fellow men, their wives and their children thought they were more suitable for the loony bin than the corridors of power. Yet, now we look back on them and count them as geniuses for following their stars and not their shoes. We stand in awe of the acts of their pens because, with perfect hindsight, we know that when they stood on principle it worked out for them (and for us). We know that they did the right thing because we are here, now, to write about it. We drink the wine they put away in America’s cellar, a wine mellowed with age to a sweetness they could never have imagined, except perhaps in the delirium of their final hours.
We don’t know its worth as we pour it on the ground, shaking it in bottles to squirt on our sports teams and guzzle at our New Year’s Eve parties. We will know its worth when the kegs run dry, but that is not for today. The ship of state has yet inertia to take us for some little ride, perhaps in the Caribbean, perhaps to the pleasant isles of the Mediterranean, before it runs out of fossil fuel or comes aground on the sands of Arabia.
In some days past Michelle Obama was called out for not being proud of her country until the victories of her husband perked up her hopes. I am not black. I am not disadvantaged. I am not a woman. Still, I will say that I have not always been proud of my country, nor its leaders, nor even all its citizens. I don’t think that this country is better than others because of who we are (just humans, citizens of the world) and cannot do wrong (because we have, and not just once in Iraq). That would be a presumption that someone ignorant might make, or a false bravado that someone frightened might assume, but no one of intelligence and knowledge of culture and history could fairly claim such a thing in front of the world. What looks they would get!
But, there are things that do make me proud to be an American. It is not the cowardly display of the Speaker of the House and the Leader of the Senate who shrink from their duty to call the administration to account for its lack of forethought, its tendency to put themselves before the good of the country, and their outright crimes of omission and commission. It is not the cravenness of their fellow travelers who seek to squeeze the political situation to get a better chance for a Democratic President and a few more Democratic members in Congress by avoiding their sworn duty.
They won’t want to hear it, their duty, which they might not remember from their own words, the words they mouth as they take the oath of office. But I’ll say it, because we all must say it, so that they can’t escape it, even though they believe that by closing their eyes and shutting their ears they can free themselves of that duty. No, they are bound by their oath, and they will either come around to living up to it or they will burn for their sins of abandoning it when it means the most.
Constitution.
It doesn’t go away so easily, does it? You don’t get away from it, not even if you think there are loopholes or exit strategies. It’s an inescapable fact of life because the only thing that makes America more than yet another people on the face of the earth and yet another land with trees and brooks and stones and sand is what it means within that document: freedom, duty, honor, country. The nobility of America is not that of a person, it is that of a principle. So much the better, because no one can be denied that nobility by birth and all can aspire to it with only their actions to take them there.
I’m proud to be an American today. It’s a perishable thing, but I cherish it even as it slips away. The thing that makes me proud to be an American today is simply this, that a man took that document at its meaning and stood up before the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and read out the charges it demanded against the shrinking man who’s been squatting in the great palace of the people of the United States for no more reason that that the servants of the owners have been remiss to show him out. That there is someone, yet, who values what truly makes our nation great and was willing to risk knowing ridicule of the falsely grand to stand up and say before the entire world that wrong is wrong, that a crime has been committed, that justice demands better than politics of politicians, and that we, as a great people cannot tolerate anything less than greatness when a great issue is before us, the issue of whether the law will be upheld.
In our time, which is not so harsh and unforgiving as that of the late 18th century, when the founders of the United States dreamed their special and grand dream of a democratic nation where no man was above the law and the sovereign people were served by the officials of state, when they established and gave life to their New World Order, we should not expect that it would be hard to get people to live up to their oaths or to find that they would do what they know to be right and just. But plenty is the enemy, sometimes, of doing what’s right. And, so we have only a few who will go out on that stage where the media can take pot shots at them and those of a "practical nature" can shake their heads and say "it will never happen" (with the implicit thought, why try?).
The true patriot is the person who defends the principles of the Constitution. I salute our patriots, though they come by ones and twos. History can only tell us what is written. If freedom slides silently into the dark waters, these brave acts may disappear under the waves. But, I think there will always be a legend, at least, of those who stood up for what’s right. I’ve seen courage, and I wish it were more common. But I understand if some don’t want to come out, because it is such a dark time under the glare of the Klieg lights. Yet, I will hold my head up because I am an American, and an American took a stand to defend the Constitution on the hostile grounds of the House of Representatives. What courage he had.