OPEN FORUM:
Where is the Outrage?
By Esther Ramos
Published July 29, 2009
On the one hand, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not taking action sooner. On the other hand, where’s the outrage? On the third hand, am I talking out loud? Where are the checks and balances that were installed within our three-branch government to guard against just this sort of thing?
I’m upset all over about it, but local folks get tired of hearing from me, because I’m usually steamed about one thing or another, and they generally overlap, as these unusual activities overlap with the Sotomayor drama. Anyone who is not frightened spitless is just not paying attention! So listen up!
Any of us who didn’t cheat on our civic class finals, (or maybe it was history class), has to know that in the early 1930’s, many of these same things happened in Germany. They knowingly put people into office who professed to be able to save them from themselves and to cure all their ills. Sound familiar? There, too, self-policing czar-types were put in at the head of entities, wherein the natural selection processes of supply-and-demand should have dictated who sank and who swam in the private and corporate industry sectors. A czar answers to no one. No checks and no balances. Sound familiar yet?
Then, in 1933, the right Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Hitler the dictatorial powers he needed to become “Hitler”. He, then, set about to systematically get rid of those people and entities that would potentially get in his way. Ring any bells now? He, too, was charismatic, thin, well-dressed, a great orator, etc., etc.
Of course there were also many differences: no Article II of a battered Constitution to be snubbed. No pesky 10th Amendment to be ignored. No ‘www.’ to spread quickly to the masses, all of the laws and regulations that were being trampled upon in that regime’s hurried attempt to dismantle their governing system. No teleprompters. No speechwriters getting paid WAY more than the average citizen to put it all together for them.
Yes, “We the people…” elected these folks in. That bothered me from the start. But it’s still not the President’s job to make law, or form policy, to fire company heads, or hire new ones, nor to generate, allocate, or spend money.
Why don’t ” We the people…” know these things? Why are we sitting around as though powerless to stop these outrageous behaviors? We are not like those German citizens of not so long ago, in that they had not seen these activities previously, and had no concept of where they were being led, and how their freedoms were being destroyed around them.
Every time that the citizenry of an area install more government over themselves, (or allow it to be done), some of their freedoms are lost in the process. Yes. Every time. You’ve got the internet. Look it up! Please!
The time to wait and see how this new administration will play their hand is over. They are ramming so many provisions through Congress now, that billions of our posterity’s dollars will be spent right out from under their noses if we don’t all call and write and demand that they stop, or at least slow down long enough to read and to absorb the paperwork.
What in the world is their hurry? Call and ask them. Do not sit idly by and let them get away with what they are doing to us. I know YOU didn’t vote for them, but they’re in, and are supposed to be duty-bound (if not honor-bound) to do what we ask of them. So ask them, or tell them, or something. Make some noise! It’s your duty as a citizen to say something. They can’t represent you if they don’t hear from you. They, like you, hear from me often.
