Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Keith Olbermann calls on George Bush to apologize to the nation, not just for his failed policies but for violating the principles the principles of freedom which this country represents:

In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents — of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word “freedom.”

Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom.

Olbermann reminds viewers that George Bush has violated the principles of the Founding Fathers of this nation:

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.”

Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job, Mr. Bush.

They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.

He put them in the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Bush, what would you say to something that anti-thetical to the status quo just now?

Would you call it “unacceptable” for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?

Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued – a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone who disagrees.

Or what will next be done to them.

The present crisis in our democracy reminds us a lot of Watergate with one important difference. During Watergate the media frequently reported on Richard Nixon’s crimes until he was forced to resign. Since then the fairness doctrine has been eliminated and the media has been consolidated under generally conservative ownership, quieting most voices of dissent in the media. The supposedly liberal media reported every step of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but until recently kept quiet about Bush’s misdeeds.

I am pleased to see that Keith Olbermann is not only speaking out about the specifics of Bush’s actions, but the general principles which have been violated. Far too often, liberals have allowed the right wing noise machine to use words like freedom in an Orwellian fashion as they have violated. It is important that supporters of freedom stand up to show that the Republicans have fallen under the control of authoritarians who have no support for freedom. Similarly we must show that, despite their rhetoric, Republican support for corporate welfare is opposite to the prinicples of capitalism, and that the Republicans are the ones who have cut and run every step of the way, refusing virtually every Democratic recommendation, to keep the country safe from terrorism.