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| Fifth Column |
| Philadelphia Inquirer: G*d D*mn America! |
| 2008-07-02 |
| Put the fireworks in storage. Cancel the parade. Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time. This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned. We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago. The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them. Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion. Today, our nation does such things in the name of our safety. Petrified, unwilling to take the risks that love of liberty demands, we close our eyes. We have done such things, on orders from the Oval Office. We have done them, without general outrage or shame. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. "Rendition" of prisoners to foreign torture chambers. It's not enough that we had good reason to be scared. The men huddled long ago in Philadelphia had better reason. A British fleet floated off the Jersey coast, full of hands eager to hang them from the nearest lampposts. Yet they pledged their lives and sacred honor - no idle vow - to defend the "inalienable rights" of men. Inalienable - what does that signify? It means rights that belong to each person, simply by virtue of being human. Rights that can never be taken away, no matter what evil a person might do or might intend. Surely one of those is the right not to be tortured. Surely that is a piece of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This is the creed of July 4: No matter what it costs us, no matter how it scares us, no matter how foolish it seems to a cynical world, America should stand up for human rights. No, not even the brave men who picked up a quill, dipped it in ink and signed the parchment that summer day in Philadelphia lived up perfectly to the creed. But they did something extraordinary, founding a new nation upon a vow to oppose all the evil habits of tyranny. That is why history still honors them. But what will history think of us, of how we responded to our great challenge? Sept. 11 was a hideous evil, a grievous wound. Yet, truth told, it has not summoned our better angels as often as our worst. We have betrayed the July 4 creed. We trample the vows we make, hand to heart. Don't imagine that only the torturer's hand bears the guilt. The guilt reaches deep inside our Capitol, and beyond that - to us. Our silence is complicit. In our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little. We can't claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power. But did we heed them? Hardly. Barely . . . We were so busy. Soccer practice at 6. A credit card balance to fret. The final vote on Idol. We left it to those in power to keep our precious selves from harm. Whatever it took. We took the coward's way. The world sees this, even if we are too dim to grasp it. We've lost respect. We've shamed the memory of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin. And all for a scam. The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven't made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they've spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears. So put out no flags. Sing no patriotic hymns. We deserve no Fourth this year. Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation's birthday next rolls around. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #23 What was special about 1961, except that it reads the same way upside down, an event tha will not recur till 6009? |
| Posted by: Glase Stalin3977 2008-07-02 20:20 |
| #22 Fixed that for ya', Hellfish. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-07-02 19:22 |
| #21 This is the creed of There, fixed it for him. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-02 19:07 |
| #20 What an incredible shitbag! |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-07-02 18:56 |
| #19 I must take exception to your thesis, and you personally, sir! |
| Posted by: Andrew Jackson 2008-07-02 17:28 |
| #18 Human Piece of Shit |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2008-07-02 16:55 |
| #17 This is independance day, FOAD, or better yet, come out west and meet a few of us vets that would love to introduce you to a 32oz Louivulle slugger. I will hold the rest of my comments, hate to get sink trapped. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2008-07-02 16:28 |
| #16 "This is the creed of July 4: No matter what it costs us, no matter how it scares us, no matter how foolish it seems to a cynical world, America should stand up for human rights." Except when it would actually mean using force to protect them. Gas-chamber loving, fascist-apologist maggots like this make any freedom-lovers skin crawl. |
| Posted by: ebrown2 2008-07-02 14:55 |
| #15 This is the creed of July 4: No matter what it costs us, no matter how it scares us, no matter how foolish it seems to a cynical world, America should stand up for human rights. Does that include sitting back and awaiting our own destruction? I would conclude from reading this drivel that Mr. Satullo thinks it does. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-07-02 13:06 |
| #14 Another beauzeau for whom history begins in 1961. |
| Posted by: Fred 2008-07-02 12:28 |
| #13 Thanks, buddy. Appreciate the support. |
| Posted by: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 2008-07-02 11:39 |
| #12 Its not the f***ing "Fourth of July". Thats a date on a calendar This is INDEPENDENCE DAY Call it by its RIGHT name. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-02 11:36 |
| #11 This author, and those that agree with him, before the 4th, need to read (won't say re-read, cause I doubt they even know of its existence), A Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale. |
| Posted by: Sherry 2008-07-02 11:06 |
| #10 Sounds like a fund-raiser might be in order here. Raise money for the reporter for a one-way ticket to the country of his choice. I wouldn;t want this person to be uncomfortible with the country in which he lived. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-07-02 10:23 |
| #9 The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them. The writer sorta missed what those Americans were doing to the natives for the first hundred years. Washington directed a scorched earth policy towards tribes along the frontier that participated in actions with or were just suspected of dealing with the British. And to the latter charge, go read up on the Trail of Tears. Oh, by the way, dear author, just what outrage did the founding fathers express when the people drove out tens of thousands of Crown Tory Loyalist from the newly minted United States of America? Not much, because they understood the effect of tolerating |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-02 09:33 |
| #8 According to this logic, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt should be forgotten, too. Their policies and actions during war-time were more far-reaching and worse. |
| Posted by: Spot 2008-07-02 08:25 |
| #7 Well written, NMU, and I heartily agree. Unfortunately, many don't. Check out the wench in Denver who, at a formal city meeting, chose to sing the "Black National Anthem" rather than "The Star-Spangled Banner" she had agreed to sing. She's playing to the Obama crowd. It's going to be real interesting to see how many U.S. blacks decide they hate America if he doesn't get elected. |
| Posted by: Lumpy Spusoth6394 2008-07-02 07:32 |
| #6 Yup, the Founding Fathers probably would have been outraged. But not by the politics and actions of conservatives. They would, however, have been outraged by the politics of this author and his editor. Hostility towards free expression of religion, widespread abortion as a form of casual birth control, attempts to disarm citizens, a public funded education industry propagandizing against Western Civilization, a public funded propaganda network (NPR & PBS) shilling almost exclusively for one political party, collectivism, Supreme Court Justices basing their decisions not upon the Constitution but on the "law" of socialist and autocratic nations abroad, local governments given the right to grab property to give to other private interests, coddling of violent criminals, being more aggrieved about what amount to frat hazing exercises or "the theft of sleep" than journalists getting their heads sawn off, contempt for the military, divorce laws which treat men as second-class citizens, etc. All things that the author and editor no doubt find wonderful, or "a good start". These are the things the Founding Fathers would have found, shall we say, revolting, not the stuff the writer talks about. And what would the Founding Fathers have thought of an "American" who cared so much about what Europeans thought of our country in the manner of a high school sophomore trying to impress the "cool kids" and gain their approval? Not very much, I suspect. Nor should we, now. This attitude, of worrying how much the Euro "cool kids" like America, is a form of mental illess that requires treatment ASAP. Our Founding Fathers thought so little of decadent Europe that they essentially left. That's the proper attitude now, as then. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2008-07-02 06:55 |
| #5 When you say "first the traitors, then the enemy," it's oxygen thieves like this that come to mind. Keep printing garbage like this, Philly Inq. and your death spiral will speed up and steepen. I'll be a happy man when all these lefty rags are dead. Maybe then we'll get some news organizations dedicated to providing the facts, not just their moonbat opinions. BTW, if you think you're helping 'Bama, keep thinking that. Just keep printing this crap, all the way to the election... |
| Posted by: Lumpy Spusoth6394 2008-07-02 06:39 |
| #4 Philadelphia is the city where a single muslim on a jury deciding a case against one of the recruit target communities, means acquittal by jury nullification. Obama is all about empowering anti socials rather than uniting diverse elements. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2008-07-02 04:26 |
| #3 I started to reply to this about four times. Each time I erased it. If I say what I want, I'll get sinktrapped. So I'll just think it /real/ hard and go shooting on the fourth...maybe I can find a nice pic of the author for a target...but that might contaminate the paper, the bullets passing through it and the ground as bits fall off. It'd be cruel to do that to American soil. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2008-07-02 01:55 |
| #2 I can guess what George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have done if the Moors had murdered 3,000 New Yorkers. None of it would have involved panties or Habeas Corpus. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-07-02 01:47 |
| #1 FOAD to the author and the editor who printed it. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-07-02 01:41 |