Day 196: ‘Constitutional Cancer’

Not to get too Biblical about it, but this War on the U.S. Constitution began as the War On Terror, itself descended from the War on Drugs, which had followed the Cold War, World War II, and the War to End All Wars.

The current hostilities follow the legal shortcuts pioneered in the 1980s and expanded in 2001 and thereafter. America’s Founding Fathers never countenanced a justice system that allows the state to seize your property before you’re convicted, depriving you of funding for a lawyer to mount your defense. They never envisioned letting all Americans be considered potential ‘enemy combatants’ because some politicians feel like it.

THE STATE IS HUNGRY: SATURN DEVOURING HIS SON (Goya, 1819)These are struggles ordained from on high. They feed the state as it purports to fight an invisible enemy, engorging the police and bureaucrats and military with special resources and rights at our expense. Even as they fail to achieve anything useful. Check out Goya's painting of Saturn chewing his son.

Will the state’s overreaction to 9/11—compounded by the high fever it has sustained from bird flu—kill us, the tiny cells that enliven the body politic? A cytokine flood has Americans pleading from their rooftops for food and freedom.

A spark of hope emanates from the band of Senators who stood together yesterday to demand statistics from the Attorney General about how many Americans have been rounded up and what is being done to them. The politicians come from both political parties, from left and right, and some of their rhetoric pumped my pulse.

“Freedom is not a virus and draconian laws are not pills our system can automatically flush away after a fever,” said one. “We flirt with constitutional cancer,” warned another.

Sure it’s just talk. There aren’t enough of them to approve any bills, and anything they ever passed would be vetoed. But let me dream. As long as people talk like that, and I can read their words in the mainstream media, I breathe a little.

People want to know how I can meet Nina tomorrow while I’m living so happily with Anna. Happiness is a terrible thing to waste. I’ve been blessed with an upgrade.

I once fell in love with Nina and she fell apart. I was hurt plenty, but I’ve tried not to take it personally. I still care about Nina. She’s a good person who needs help. I hope to be useful. And I’m certain Anna will understand because we are happy and she is strong.