My title comes from this exchange:
First, wanderindiana asked
Who will undo it?
And how can we be sure that damage will be undone when our current elected officials have contributed to that damage?
I responded
good question
but not only who, also how
and finally wanderindiana responded back
Someone else, another day...
That exchange took place in the thread on my diary yesterday, entitled If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful . . .
Perhaps the answer should be All of us, starting right now
We have to be insistent.
We cannot remain silent for sake of winning a few more popular and electoral votes, or perhaps hoping to reach 60 (without Holy Joe) seats in the Senate. For after all, we read in Mark 8:26:
For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?
If we remain silent on these core issues now, how will we expect our voices to be heard, if we still have them, should we raise the issues that concern us after a new administration and a more Democratic Congress are in place?
Yesterday I wrote about cruelty, about how even if one could rationalize that actions like waterboarding as not being torture they were still cruel and hence unacceptable.
even if one could could rationalize . . . I cannot. I do not see the distinction parsed by people like John Yoo, which may be why some try to argue that the President in a time of war is not restricted by law or Constititution, because ultimately the Yoos of the world know that their "legal" arguments will not hold.
We know that if we keep reminding people of something, eventually one of two things will happen: either they will stop listening to us entirely or they will confront the issue we raise, if only to shut us up. If it be the former, then we will know what many here may already suspect, that we are no longer a liberal democracy with a government of limited power constrained by a Constitution whose Bill of Rights clearly defines rights that should not except in the most extraordinary circumstances be restricted.
Yes, the very nature of the social contract requires that we give up to the government the power to protect those rights, including the ability to in real cases of necessity, restrict them. But that same social contract establishes that we the people are sovereign, that the government exists and gains power by our consent. Perhaps that is why this administration has so often obfuscated and even lied deliberately, to manipulate the consent of the people so that it can claim a popular mandate for the abusive actions it has been doing.
Who and how? That is the question I asked yesterday.
Let it begin with me, let it begin now, and let it begin with my words.
If this government lies, I will speak out - this government is lying
If the media or politicians refuse to acknowledge the lies, I will speak out why cannot you use language properly, and label the deliberately mistruthful statements of the Bush administration as the lies that they are?
If it is cruelty it is wrong, and should not be done.
If it can by reasonable people classified as torture then no legal dissembling will make it into something else.
My voice is that of one person. It is incumbent upon me that I speak out.
Your voice is also that of one person.
Each of us is only one person. But together, with voices united, we begin to express the will of some of the people, and with massed voices we will be heard, or we will know for certain that a democracy of popular sovereignty, the last best hope of mankind, government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has perished from this earth.
All of us, starting right now
without which, the hope I am about to offer, will be in vain.
Peace.