So when we think about the nation we think about our country, we think about our home, we think about the people living in it and we think about its values. When we think about the state, we’re thinking about an institution.
The distinction there is that we now have an institution that has become so powerful it feels comfortable granting itself new authorities, without the involvement of the country, without the involvement of the public, without the full involvement of all of our elected representatives and without the full involvement of open courts, and that’s a terrifying thing –- at least for me.
That’s Edward Snowden speaking in a new interview in The Guardian. We’re so lucky that we still have American citizens like this, though they seem to be in shorter and shorter supply. Their enemies, like Barry Obama, are the real traitors, and belong in jail.
If you think that Barry Obama represents this country, represents America, represents you, you’re living in a dream world. Barry Obama represents a totalitarian corporate state of which you are merely a dispensable subject, with no rights beyond those he chooses to grant you out of the goodness of his heart.
Read the whole interview here — it’s long, but essential:
With thanks for the link to PZ . . .
For those who are utterly convinced that their own vision as the only legitimate vision of “our country” and its true identity, nothing is going to stand in the way of the realization of their particular vision. It doesn’t matter if it’s Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal, FDR and the New Deal, Johnson and the Great Society, Reagan and union busting, Bush and “nation building” or Obama and damn congress and the 4th Amendment I know better, or the Tea Party and no more taxes as a religious creed, or 2nd Amendment “advocates” who carry semi-automatic rifles into McDonald’s and polling stations. I am scared of anyone with an once of patriotism.
I just want the Constitution back — it’s always been a rudder, crude as it may be, for keeping things from going completely off the rails.
The Constitution has been taking a beating since it was first approved. Jackson, FDR, Johnson and even Kennedy all ignored it when it got in the way.
True, but until now it was always something you could appeal to when Presidents got too far out of hand. They tried to subvert it secretly, because they knew it still had force. Now it’s just a joke.