Slow-Motion Revolution
Explaining his veto of the bill funding the war in Iraq and setting deadlines for its end, our president said this week that"members of the House and the Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders."
In the new American system of government, we now learn, the elected representatives of the people are supposed to defer to the professional military. This is apparently what the foundershad in mind, and explains why they gave Congress the power to raise and fund armies and"provide for the common defense." Somehow from that constitutional beginning we now arrive at an argument that Congress is meant to leave all decisions about the common defense to the sole judgment of military commanders; otherwise our elected representatives are substituting their opinion for that of the military, which is meant to be in charge. The nerve of the legislature, trying to impose their"opinions" on the nation.
Like it says it Federalist 26:
"The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence."
See how clear it is? The founders meant for Congress to defer to the military. Or, you know, not.
Joining their president in his trip over the edge of the cliff, the authoritarian and anti-republican right is manifesting a derangement that approaches the level of a fatal illness. At the National Review Online, for an example from the same day of the president's assault on American political tradition, Thomas Sowell mused in passing on whether or not it might become necessary to launch a military coup -- really! -- in response to the"worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia." The focus on elite"degeneracy," in the company of a discussion about seizing power by force, is unavoidably fascist -- on its face, not in a complicated fashion.
Meanwhile, at Michelle Malkin's website, active duty military personnel openly spewcontempuous words at the elected representatives of the American people.
The U.S. Army has just announced an aggressive crackdown on soldier blogging and emailing from war zones. I can't help but wonder if the new restrictions are caused, at least in part, by nervousness among Army officers about the growing virulence of these attacks from within the military (and its superiors in the executive branch) on the consitutional authority of the legislature.
In any case, if our military leaders aren't nervous about the way they're being positioned rhetorically against congressional authority, then rest of us have good cause to be nervous for them.