Refusals and Recusals

If you want a good if disquieting read, pick up Eric Alterman's new book "What Liberal Media". The chapter on the Florida recount fiasco alone is well worth it. I never knew this but apparently Justice Sandra Day O'Connor attended a cocktail party on election day and bemoaned the possibility of a Gore victory. She was thinking about retiring and didn't want Gore appointing her successor.
And yet not thirty days later without so much as a by-your-leave there she was ruling on the Florida recount in favor of George Bush and his scurvy crew.
We live in a brutally unselfconscious age my friends, and if you are a movement conservative in America today you are freely encouraged to wallow in your hatred of constitutional governance. There are vast television networks, news organizations and wealthy benefactors to enable your loathing for democracy....on that never fear.
Their lack of even a polite hypocritical pretense of love for democracy may be a new and odious thing, but the solution to this sad situation is old and reliable.
James Madison (author of the Federalist Papers) said that in a contest between law and power, law always loses. The only thing that constrains power is an opposing application of power....the trick is, that liberty and the law must be amplified as a consequence of that conflict.
Well I won't go into how federalism, individual rights, and the separation of powers animates our republic....better writers than I are so much more eloquent on the subject.
I will say this, force is the only thing that will decide the issue...I'm not advocating violence but as liberals and progressives we must become louder, more belligerent and unyieldingly truculent.
We come to this fight without many necessities like cable television networks kissing our asses, bellicose DC think tanks, and endless money.
But just remember this, millions of Americans feel as you do, repeat that to yourself the next time some jack-off at work starts ranting and raving like they were Achille Starace.
Millions...and people equal power, and power is the only thing that will get us out of this mess.
Meanwhile, after you are done reading this, why not do something to piss off the nearest movement conservative?
Doesn't have to be much, just give em a little rhetorical prod to bust up their bright eternal sunshine...
:)