PATRIOTIC SHAME: AN INDEPENDENCE DAY REFLECTION
ON THE COMMUTATION OF SCOOTER LIBBY
by
Jack Random
July 2nd is always an occasion for reflection on the nature of our nation’s founding and the great good fortune of genius among our founders.
Historians will attest that July 2nd is our true Independence Day. It was the day the declaration of independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. Two hundred and thirty one years later, as we observe an assault on our democratic ideals on all fronts – from executive usurpation of monarchical powers to a judicial aristocracy to congressional abdication of war powers – it is fitting that we celebrate not the act of independence but the ceremony.
We have become a nation that embraces the façade of freedom, justice and democracy even as our elected leaders and their judicial appointees betray those core principles at every conceivable turn.
It is fitting that on July 2nd – true Independence Day – our
president, without doubt the worst in our nation’s history – announced
the commutation of the prison sentence of convicted liar Lewis
“Scooter” Libby in an act so brazen and defiant of judicial process
that even the president’s staunchest supporters must blush at its
implications.
Reminiscent of Gerald Ford’s pardon of disgraced
former president Richard Nixon (a contingency we now know was broached
by Nixon’s advisors prior to Ford’s selection to replace the ousted
vice president Spiro Agnew), we need not wait 20 or 30 years for the
Freedom of Information Act to reveal what we already know: There was a
quid pro quo.
Scooter Libby, vice president Dick Cheney’s
chief of staff, lied and obstructed justice in the Valerie Plame case
(the exposure of a CIA agent on a political vendetta) because he held a
trump card in the vest pocket of his three-piece suit. He was curiously
stoic, undaunted and unafraid during the trial because he knew he would
never have to spend a day in prison, he would never want for money, and
he would emerge from his day in court the new Oliver North – not a
disgraced traitor to all the republic holds dear (namely, an
independent judiciary and the rule of law) but rather the “patriotic”
darling of the new right.
Scooter Libby held himself above the
law because he knew that the president would deliver what the vice
president demanded: unequal justice.
On this Independence Day, we truly have much for which we can be grateful:
Most of us will never be detained, renditioned or tortured, without reasonable cause or judicial review.
Most of us will not be sent to foreign lands to fight wars of aggression that congress never declared for other nations’ oil.
Most of us will not lose our livelihoods for speaking out against abuse of power.
Most
of us will not lose our homes to the deadly combination of a natural
disaster (triggered by global climate change) and government
indifference.
Most of us will never have to worry about
minorities claiming our spots in institutions of higher learning for
the gates are already closed to all but the privileged class.
Most
of us are not dissidents, activists, Muslims or of Middle Eastern
descent and will not be rounded up with the usual suspects to be tried,
convicted and incarcerated without the possibility of pardon,
commutation or parole, on trumped up charges like Mumia Abu-Jamal or
Leonard Peltier.
Most of us will never evade our tax responsibilities with offshore accounts or phony shelters.
Most
of us will not knowingly sacrifice our living wages, health care and
retirement benefits to a new world order of the corporate elite.
Most of us will never find ourselves above the law and beyond the consequences of our actions.
In
America, land of forgotten freedoms and neglected rights, few of us
will ever appreciate the kind of privilege that our president, vice
president and their loyal minions in the White House presently enjoy.
For
those of us who remember our nation’s founding and the sacred promise
it held forth to the world, we will not hold up our flags this Fourth
of July Independence Day with patriotic pride but rather with patriotic
shame.
Jazz.
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