Virginia Tech

In this morning's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer "What can be said about the Virginia Tech massacre? Very little. What should be said? Even less." He goes on to complain that in the wake of the murder of 31 people by a student who had been identified as dangerous by classmates, teachers, and a psychiatrist, some are having the audacity to call for gun control and confinement of people whose mental diseases make them a threat to themselves or others. I have seldom agreed with Krauthammer; he seems to be convinced that in the course of earning degrees in both law and medicine, he learned all there is to know and he never makes any response to arguments with which he disagrees. He now reveals himself as utterly lacking in insight and compassion.
A friend of mine made a thought-provoking statement about gun control. Speaking of the Romanian faculty member who had survived the Holocaust, he pointed out that the Nazis, the embodiment of evil, could not kill the man, and the Communists, whom we were told were an evil empire, could not kill him, but Virginia's gun laws could. Gun controls are imperfect, but does Krauthammer really think that it's okay for someone who has been identified as an imminent danger by a psychiatrist to walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun?
I believe in civil liberties, but they are not absolute. When people drink and drive and are caught, they lose their licenses. If they persist, they go to jail. People are, of course, free to drink--but not if they endanger others by doing so. Shouldn't the same principle apply with the mentally ill?
And wouldn't you think that a psychiatrist familiar with the grief process would at least keep quiet if he couldn't show some compassion. Instead, he says to the families of the victims and to the survivors, "Shit happens. Get over it."
And Krauthammer, shortsighted, uncaring, egomaniac that he is, overlooks that we must talk about this tragedy. We must ask why. It seems to me that this society has become increasingly tolerant of outrageous speech. Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly spew their over-emotional, unsupported venom from the safety of the radio studio and this society says they are speaking courageously and we make them millionaires. We tolerate an administration that responds to what it takes as affronts with bluster. And it is not a long leap from speech to action. These outrageous people are valorized; they are, in effect, held up as examples. As they define the world in terms of friends and enemies and argue for the destruction of enemies, those who listen to them become less interested in getting along with other people. And when a madman defines the world as his enemy, when he is not restrained, when he is allowed to buy weapons, risk rises unnecessarily.
So Mr. Krauthammer, I will be writing to the Post and suggesting that they cancel your column. If you still appear on Inside Washington, I'll write to the producers and make the same suggestion. And frankly, I hope you'll have to make do with your savings for the rest of your life.

Who's Withholding

There Bush goes again. Someone, usually Democrats, questions his so-called plans for fighting what he likes to think of as global terrorism. Instead of responding to the questions, the traitor-in-chief and his lackeys identify whoever questioned the plans as the enemy: "Why do you hate America?" "Why don't you support our troops?" It's the traitor-in-chief's ignorance at work. Like every other member of criminal family, he believes that as emperor, he does not have to answer questions. He's simply too stupid to understand democracy, which is not a terribly difficult concept to grasp.
Now he says that if the Congress doesn't give him an emergency spending bill to pursue his imperialist aims in the Middle East, they will be denying the troops in Iraq the goods they need to carry on his illegal occupation. Let's get the sequence straight. The traitor-in-chief asked Congress for new emergency appropriations, not realizing that his lackeys were no longer running the legislative branch. The legislators considered his request and came to the conclusion that it was a bad idea to give a traitor who spends like a drunken sailor money without imposing conditions. They voted to give him the funding he requested, but they demanded accountability, something that the traitor-in-chief doesn't grasp. Essentially, their message came down to this: "Here's your money, but you'd damn well better end the occupation by a specified date because we're not going to keep handing you more." The part that the traitor-in-chief missed is "Here's your money." Congress met his demands. His role, at that point, was to accept the money and the accountability and, for once is his misbegotten, wasteful, criminal, debauched existence, do his best to achieve goals instead of laughing them off.
He doesn't know how to do that. His bitch mother protected him from the consequences of his mediocrity and substance abuse. Karl Rove protected him from the consequences of his incompetence and corruption. And what hurts most is the idea that the Secret Service has already indicated that it will cost more to protect him than any other former president simply because he has aroused such hatred around the world. I've got a terrific idea: No more for him than for any other former president. Let the bastard barricade himself on his ranch in Texas so that the security costs stay low. No one is going to want him to be an elder statesman anyway, and if I were Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, I damn sure wouldn't want him and his whore wife at my funeral.

What Bush Doesn't Get

Congress has passed a bill for funding of the Iraqi occupation that requires setting a date for American forces to leave there. Bush says that he will veto it. Once again, he demonstrates that his ignorance of fundamental principles of democracy make him a traitor who should be executed, not someone who should ever have set foot in the White House, even on the tour.
Vetoes were never meant to give the executive power to override the wishes of the people; they were intended as part of the balance of power among the branches--a means of curbing legislative usurpations without resorting to the courts. The real power lay with the representatives of the people in the legislature. A legislative act that passed both houses--one that had the support of the representatives of most of the people--therefore represented the will of the people unless it infringed on executive or judiciary prerogatives, in which case the executive would veto it. And if the executive didn't veto it, opponents of the act had recourse to the courts.
Bush, of course, overlooks that in a democracy or a democratic republic, the will o the people trumps the will of the executive. He can claim that he doesn't believe in polls, but that's only because he comes from a family of imperial wannabes who have sought to claim greater power for themselves through a variety of unsavory means. Most Americans say that it's time to end the war, and their representatives have heard them. It is now time for Bush to end the war, whether he likes it or not, whether he thinks that the people's wishes are prudent or not.
But he won't. The problem is not that he won't end a stupid war; it's that he claims for himself a power that no one in a democratic republic can have.