Guarding Democracy

Mikaela raves:
Great opinion column by personal favorite, V.B. Price.

Excerpt below, full piece here.

The idealism of American education has long taught that American government forms the apex of civilized rule. Our constitutional democracy of checks and balances, we were told in school, represented centuries of struggle up from barbarism, imperial tyranny, feudalism and the aristocratic rule of the rich and privileged. We were portrayed to ourselves as a nation of law, against which no Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Mao could stand a chance. Our government was portrayed as the exact opposite of a repressive police state.

But today we see ourselves becoming increasingly like the governments we have always opposed - and like that brutal part of our national past we have worked so long and hard to overcome. It's the part of our national character that slaughtered strikers, refused women the vote, committed genocidal acts against American Indians, enslaved blacks in the South, oppressed Chinese workers after they'd built the railroads west, contaminated our waters, polluted our cities, forced workers to labor under terrible conditions, interned and impoverished Japanese Americans, spied on war protesters and the likes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and infiltrated peace groups to disorganize and undermine them.

...

We've sought to right our wrongs, because we've believed ourselves to be the citadel of justice, fairness, compassion and peace. But now we see our own government doing the very things we were always taught to abhor.