State of the Nation

After several days of media conversation on the President’s “national security” speech, the consensus seems to be that it was a fine speech with a minor flaw or two; that his positions are overall noble and admirable and that one or two of them could, perhaps, use a bit of “fine tuning.”

I just cannot get on board with that. This was a speech which contained within it an announcement to imprison a class of people indefinitely without recourse to the rule of law; which, further, declared the intent to distort our legal framework to provide that despotic process with a masquerade of propriety. This was not a fine speech with a minor flaw; with that content, regardless of any other, this was a bad speech.

As a friend once said to me, illustrating a different point but applicable here, “You cannot be a little bit pregnant.” We either are a nation of laws, or we are not. This nation was founded to escape the rule of man, was founded as a nation to be ruled by law.

Here we have a president, advertising himself as a “constitutional scholar,” addressing the nation and prating about the “rule of law” even as he is describing how he intends to abrogate that rule of law and violate his oath to uphold our constitution.

We also have a Supreme Court, our arbiter of justice and constitutionality, whose members openly state that their retirement dates will be determined by which political party will have the power to replace them.

Additionally we have a legislature whose members knowingly and routinely vote against national interests in the cause of assuring their own reelection to office and a voting public which reelects those legislators at a 95% rate.

We have a national media which regards all of the above as natural and unremarkable and condemns none of it.

This is the nation in whose armed forces, Navy, I once served with pride. I volunteered to put on that uniform. I do not think I would do so today, and I am deeply saddened by that.