For a few years now, the American public has been willing to dismiss those who (like me) have tried to argue that our current President is just the latest in a familial disease that’s infected our government. No doubt, they’ll continue to do so for awhile longer.

Yet, increasingly people who are either responsible for having helped King George I and II into their positions, or who have worked closely with them, are beginning to speak out — and ever more vociferously.

Hopefully, soon, even non-intelligent people will begin to wonder….

The most obvious thing I’ve always felt pointed to the wrongness of the Bush Administration is actually not their particular political views. It’s true that I’m not fond of those (views), but I’m not always in complete disagreement with them. After all, I’m no huge fan of democracy as practiced in the United States. Too often, “democracy” here is merely a euphemistic term for “mob rule.” (The Founding Fathers shared this belief, by the way, which is why they built a republic instead of a true democracy. Since we no longer teach this history in our schools, the concomitant, yet antithetical, results of a dismantling of democratic institutions and mob rule carry the day.)

My objection to the Bushes centers more around their unabashed (and yet craftily veiled) theft of our resources and their apparently strong beliefs that this is their entitlement. The subsequent dismantling of democratic concepts such as “due process” has been a natural move for them. In a CBS story which has for unknown reasons become a little watered down since I first spotted it a couple days ago — I may have to start copying them the minute I spot them for this very reason — we’re told by the former Treasury Secretary, that the President was willing and eager from day one of his presidency to kill Americans by sending the military to achieve his desired acquisition of Iraq,

“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,'” says O’Neill.

The September 11 attacks by an unconnected (but see here for an alternative view) terrorist group provided ammunition to the President. Suddenly, all Muslim countries (including, now, Saudi Arabia) were up for grabs and the U.S. oil cartel headed by Cheney and Bush jumped at the chance.

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to realize that warring with the rest of the world is not in our best interests. The problem with bullies is that, eventually, people get fed up with them.

The problem with these bullies, however, is that because of the way our country normally functions, the negative impact of this administration will be with us for many years after they’re gone.

For the time being, however, Americans are content to believe that this is our birth-right. Any other countries who stand against us — even if they’re doing exactly the same thing to Americans that America is doing to their citizens — are being either told, or shown, exactly what we think they can do with their opinions.

We’ve forgotten our true birthright: Freedom. And so today, the news is replete with stories that herald the circumscription — potentially even the end — of that freedom.

But that last story should come as no real surprise. Ralph Nader has noted that the Bush Administration has made it clear — not only as noted in some of the stories above, but elsewhere — that neither the Legislative, nor the Judicial, branch of the government should stand in the way of the Administrative branch.

Even Ronald Reagan disagreed with this approach:

Led by Madison and Jefferson and others, the authors of the Constitution established a fragile balance between the branches and levels of government. That concept was their genius and the secret of our success — that idea of federalism. The balance of power intended in the Constitution is the guarantor of the greatest measure of individual freedom any people have ever known. Our task today, this year, this decade, must be to reaffirm those ideas. Our Founding Fathers designed a system of government that was unique in all the world — a federation of sovereign states with as much law and decisionmaking authority as possible kept at the local level. They knew that man’s very need for government meant no government should function unchecked.

Today, this fragile balance of power is threatened by the Knights of the Bush Table. (By the way, isn’t there something a little odd about saying “FEMA is an incredibly important part of a president’s team”? Is this more confirmation of Paul O’Neill’s remarks that the President’s strategy was clear from start?)

And if we don’t — in the spirit of our Founding Fathers, replace and endorse the checks and balances on this government — we shall find that we have lost sight of our rights in the Nights of the Bush Table.