A Few Thoughts on Guy Fawkes Day

"The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today." - Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-1896)

It's fitting that Virginia has elections every year within days of the holiday that commemorates a British plot to blow up parliament and kill the king.  The second Tuesday of November has always seemed an odd time to have an election, but in a nation that holds it's Constitution above all men, all power, all wealth, and all other aspirations, there couldn't be a better time.

Here in Virginia and across the nation, the last 30 years have seen the rise of a conservative movement.  Like all right-wing, extreme movements it based its rise on a hate for progress, an adoration of aristocrats, and expanded limitations on true freedom.  As their ideological forebears had the Jews, the gypsies, or the gays as scapegoats, conservatism vilified the dreaded "lib-rul".  Vilification made it possible for this, as all other authoritarian movements to raise angry followers and pugilize the opposition.
In very short order, a massive multi-billion dollar smear machine was able to reduce to a slur, the name of the movement that brought America to its leadership role in the world.  The movement that gave the middle class, worker's rights, voting rights, women's rights, peace, prosperity, hope and freedom as an example to the world, was endlessly defamed by the billionaire plutocrats who  sought to plunder the riches of the most wealthy nation on earth, and the trusting faithful who they swindled.

For over 20 years the waters of conservatism rose, built on a foundation of greed, hatred, and ignorance, but the good work of hard working and effective liberals in government and every day life, had created a storehouse of wealth and excellence that was hard to extinguish.  It was only under a national extremist government, the Bush Administration, and its red-faced shadow in the Virginia legislature, that the fault lines began to show.  Endless debt, and reckless mismanagment have laid bare the failings of this sick and dangerous movement, promulgated by the greed of tyrants, and the manipulation of the faithful.

Now that the truth is obvious, what will happen?  Now that America knows the "Family Values^TM" party to be the party of closeted, self-hating, gay-bashers, whore mongers, and pedophiles, what will they do?  Now that America knows the "Strong Military^TM" party as the party strategic military ignorance, failed jingoistic belligerence, and the Iraq War's $1 Trillion boondoggle, what will they do?  Now that America knows the "Small Government^TM" party to be the party of endless debt, massive government spending and invasiveness, and a true enemy of the Bill of Rights, what will they do?

In American civil society, we don't blow things up.  In American civil society, we vote the bums out.  Recent polls have shown that this is the angriest electorate in the history of polling, that voters don't just want change, they want to punish the people who have taken so much away from our Great Nation.

The selfish children who stormed into Washington under Gingrich, and who overtook the Virginia House following George Allen, have taken America to the brink, and the remedy is simple.

As Harriet Beecher Stowe said, "The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today."  And today, is Election Day.

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