Without Delay

It’s hard to understand the hubris that allows Tom DeLay to more or less demand all-encompassing power over every living being. We guess it comes from having a strong sense of one’s own innate divinity. Why is it so difficult for Delay and his supporters to understand the concept of checks and balances? In a nice editorial in today’s New York Times, Adam Cohen suggests that members of congress seem to believe they have the highest billing in government because they hold elective offfice, whereas federal judges are appointed more or less for life. (Never mind the cult of party, which would normally defuse this problem—Republicans have for so long genuflected at the golden calf of Ronald Reagan, it’s a wonder their adoration does not extend indefinitely to every decision and judicial appointment the Gipper ever made.)

Any depraved high school student who manages to stay awake for ten minutes of civics class understands the simple idea: the arrogance of any one branch of government is abrogated by the arrogance of the other two, and the promise (or rather the threat) to “unset” what Congress has “set-up” (that is, the courts) is not going to come as welcome news to most red-blooded Americans. As Cohen makes clear, the present GOP monopoly will not be complete nor satisfied until it has also overrun the judiciary, and the battle-cry against “activist judges” should be translated into simpler terms—”we will have the judges and the laws that best serve our party, and opposition and dissent do not serve our party.”

All we can say is pride goeth before the fall, and present Republican leadership’s slash-and-burn approach to politics will not only do permanent violence to the Plain People of America and their great-grandchildren, it may insure a permanent place as the minority party for another one hundred years. FDR had a war and a depression to thank for his visionary heroism. The next great president will have neo-conservatism to thank.

You know, we fought and won a bloody war once to rid ourselves of the Royal Imperative, and despite our short memories and attentions spans, Americans tend to remember that at important historical moments.

Newt Gingrich was just a salty-sour appetizer. Tick-tock, Mr. Delay. Tick tock.