The attack on America
Dr. John E. Warren
The National Archives in Washington D.C. house three important documents pertaining to America: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.
On the North side of the building is the following inscription: “What is Past is Prologue.” In reflecting on these words and looking at the destruction and override of basic principles of governance under Donald Trump, we should also remember what the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote in his exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilizations. “Great civilizations are not murdered, but destroyed from within.”
America is under attack by Donald Trump, Mitchell McConnell, leader of the U.S. Senate, and those Republican members who prop him up, as well as William Barr, Attorney General of the United States, who has turned his office into a rubber stamp of Donald Trump’s totalitarianism. These men are trampling the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and ignoring the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Their weapons are racism, bigotry, and financial greed for the few – like putting over $2 billion dollars in the current Republican stimulus proposal for a new FBI building across the street from Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel while cutting proposed unemployment benefits for millions of Americans to $200 a week instead of the current $600. McConnell has made a mockery of the doctrine of Separation of Powers in the Constitution at every juncture, from denying former President Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee a hearing to undermining the impeachment process by refusing to call witnesses.
McConnell refuses to investigate or give legal direction to the President and has trampled “States Rights” under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution which says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This does not allow sending federal agents into this nation’s cities at the whim of the Federal government was being done.
President Trump violated his Oath to “Protect and Defend” against all enemies of the United States, Foreign and Domestic by not challenging Russian President Putin on questioning whether he offered bounties for the murder of American troops in Afghanistan. The Republican Party is equally as guilty of not rising to the aid of the American people in a national crisis such as the present pandemics.
The lack of leadership, racist and selfish actions of these people over the needs of the American people in a crisis that has already claimed more lives than most wars of the last century while, still claiming hundreds of lives daily, has set in motion the kind of collapse that brought down Rome in 177 A.D. It was a collapse from within more than conquest from without. This is why Toynebee said, “Great civilizations are not murdered. They commit suicide.”
But there is still hope. Our Constitutional safeguards have not been completely destroyed yet. We are less than 98 days from an election that can still set aright the “Ship of State.” If we rise up and vote in November, we will once again be able to say: “Thou too sail on O Ship of State, O Union Strong and Great. Humanity with all its fears and all its hope of future years is hanging breathlessly in thy fate.”
Let’s use our knowledge of what has happened in the past to stop the pandemics of COVID-19, Donald Trump and the racism and inequality we have finally decided to do something about. We can defeat this attack.
Dr. John E. Warren is publisher and CEO of the San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper
