I don't expect you to understand, but will explain for the more intelligent readers:
The history of the United States is a record of a long experiment with Democracy.
It is an experiment in liberty, not democracy. The two are not synonymous.
America was the first truly democratic nation, and it made mistakes.
America is not a democratic nation and never has been. Your insistence that it is explains much of your delusion.
Slavery was excused for almost 100 years, but the Civil War ended that practice. The Civil Rights Amendment 100 years later finally brought that issue to rest (on paper). History was vindicated.
You flunked history in high school, didn't you? Slavery was excused? So the Abolitionists did not exist? The Missouri Compromise was a fiction? Calhoun's theories of nullification were a fantasy?
Also, what Civil Rights Amendment was added to the Constitution during the 1960s?
Finally, what "history" was vindicated? Since when did "history" preordain any outcome?
It is essential for the future of the United States that it's history remain in balance. When an inequality is recognized, the pendulum must swing to correct it. Even the APPEARANCE of correction is important.
History is not "balanced". History is a record of what was done and what was said, and no more. History
may grant perspective denied us in the present, but it is still merely a record of what was done and what was said. Again, your concept of "history" presumes and demands a foregone conclusion, a preordained notion of what the "right" outcome is in all cases; your concept, in other words, is wrong.
The President of the United States is granted enourmous power, with very little oversight. This trust exists because it was assumed that a president would never violate his responsibility to the Constitution. That responsibility is, after all, enshrined in his oath of office. Nevertheless, our past president clearly took advantage of his position and used his powers for trivial and personal reasons.
Little oversight? Great power? The President of the United States has very little power: he cannot make laws, he cannot declare war, he can only negotiate treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, he cannot even choose his own advisors without the advice and consent of the Senate. So sayeth the Constitution.
As for the assumption that the President would never violate his duty, that is disproven by the section on impeachment. If there were no anticipation a President might stray from the path, there would be no cause to consider the grounds for and structure of an impeachment proceeding.
As for "taking advantage"--President Bush did not do anything that LBJ did not do, nor even Lincoln. Even the overly sainted FDR was a petulant ass when the other branches of government objected to his ideas.
Again, the facts of your "history" fail to coincide with the history that actually transpired.
In terms of the torture of detainees, this practice has been rejected by the legal system and a vast majority of Americans in general. Even if it were useful (which it isn't) the option to torture has been taken off the table. It was not an option for Bush to reinstate the practice.
From the legal perspective, there was no torture. Dear Leader's
ex post facto declaration that waterboarding is torture carries no legal weight; it is an opinion, and nothing more.
So, what do you do with a president who takes advantage of the trust built into our Executive Branch? Just as the Civil War is the example of the solution to slavery, George Bush must be the example of the solution to presidential irresponsibility. The nation must regain its balance and demonstrate it is able to fix the problems inherent in a democracy. We as a people must accept the responsibility and do what is necessary to insure this abuse of power cannot happen again. History demands it.
There is no "trust" built into the Executive Branch. You really should acquaint yourself with the Constitution before you wander off on these whimsies of yours.
If the Civil War is your "solution to slavery", then you are endorsing several thousand times' greater brutality and carnage than can ever be assigned to President Bush.
Moreover, the irresponsibility was not that of President Bush, but of the Congress, and in particular the Anti-Republicans, who hypocritically were passive regarding their presumed opposition to Bush's policies, but who time and again voted in the affirmative for those policies, and who continued that practice even after gaining the majority in 2006. (Anyone who wishes to understand my contempt for the repugnant and cowardly Anti-Republicans need only examine their actions and discourse during the 110th Congress to see how thoroughly despicable and dishonorable they are).
Your false history demands much, but false demands are empty demands--such demands are, to borrow from
Macbeth, the quintessential "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
How people will view Bush from the perspective of history is a matter yet to be decided, nor will that matter be settled by either you or I. My belief is that President Bush will be viewed kindly; my very strong belief is that the gutless and directionless Anti-Republicans will be viewed far less kindly in that perspective, and simply because when given the opportunity to lead, they chose vituperative vilification of President Bush while continuing all that he started, rather than charting the new and different course they promised the American people.
