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Dept. of Bully Pulpits
TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze announced his resignation Sunday, bowing to opposition protesters who stormed parliament and declared a “velvet revolution'' in the former Soviet republic.
In her latest post, referring to recent events in Georgia (home country of Stalin, not the Gone-with-the Wind State) Fiona asks, “Do the People really have the power in Georgia? Can we do this here, if GWB cheats his way into power again?” Listening to the BBC, and then NPR report on this story, the same words and phrases kept coming to my mind. Thomas Jefferson wrote them:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
See also Secular Blasphemy
And this Op-Ed by cartoonist Ted Rall:
"in 2000...I figured George W. Bush for a meaner, stupider version of his dad, another linguistically challenged, harmless centrist with little agenda aside from paying off his contributors with, say, a cut in the capital gains tax. Boy, was I wrong. To paraphrase National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who could have imagined back then that a dozen maniacs would hijack our democracy, bankrupt the treasury and subvert our basic values?" |
