What Is It Like To Be a Democrat?
David Bromwich
Huffington Post
On Thursday night, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general.
The 53-40 majority included all the Republicans present and six Democrats who crossed over. Love of power, privilege, and punishment express the soul of the Republican party today.
The Democrats are a sadder story. When you have given up this much, what is there left for you to be?
Four Democratic senators were not present to cast a vote: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama. One of three Republicans who did not vote was John McCain.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Act legitimated the expansion of slavery, Abraham Lincoln said in a great speech of 1854: "Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it." He had in mind a retrogression in the manners of American democracy, which showed in a new contempt for the meaning of the words "all men are created equal."
By Cheney and Bush, our republican robe has been soiled, and trailed in the dust. They have done it by contempt for the unavoidable meaning of the words of the Bill of Rights: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The founders knew what they meant by cruel and unusual punishments; and what they meant was torture.
Within the category of torture, they included the drowning torture; and they knew about the drowning torture because it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition.
They knew it as an instrument of tyranny and "the dark religions." They banished it because of what it meant, and because of what it was.
(Continued here.)
Huffington Post
On Thursday night, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general.
The 53-40 majority included all the Republicans present and six Democrats who crossed over. Love of power, privilege, and punishment express the soul of the Republican party today.
The Democrats are a sadder story. When you have given up this much, what is there left for you to be?
Four Democratic senators were not present to cast a vote: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama. One of three Republicans who did not vote was John McCain.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Act legitimated the expansion of slavery, Abraham Lincoln said in a great speech of 1854: "Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it." He had in mind a retrogression in the manners of American democracy, which showed in a new contempt for the meaning of the words "all men are created equal."
By Cheney and Bush, our republican robe has been soiled, and trailed in the dust. They have done it by contempt for the unavoidable meaning of the words of the Bill of Rights: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The founders knew what they meant by cruel and unusual punishments; and what they meant was torture.
Within the category of torture, they included the drowning torture; and they knew about the drowning torture because it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition.
They knew it as an instrument of tyranny and "the dark religions." They banished it because of what it meant, and because of what it was.
(Continued here.)
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