[CTRL] Dictatorship From Within

[William Shannon]

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slu g=satrdr14&date=20010714&query=dictatorship Editorials & Opinion : Saturday, July 14, 2001 Imposing will of a president By Philip kirk Special to The Times After being elected by a minority of U.S. voters, and after vowing both before and after the election to pursue an agenda of conciliation and cooperation, the Bush administration has demonstrated a relentless quest for a radical and unpopular right-wing platform. On the environmental front, despite overwhelming popular opposition, the administration has, among other things, proposed to open up the national monument and wilderness areas for gas and oil drilling for the sake of a few months' supply of oil; has stricken down the limits on poisons such as arsenic in drinking water; has attempted to strike down the requirement for mining companies to put up clean-up funds prior to ravaging the land and declaring bankruptcy, and has even quietly proposed opening the national parks for oil exploration. In addition to these home-front issues, Bush has scuttled the Kyoto treaty, which attempted to limit the greenhouse gasses that represent the greatest threat to civilization since the meteoric impact during the age of dinosaurs, and in doing so has invoked universal international condemnation. On the moral front, despite a clear majority support for the right of individual choice, the Bush administration has initiated various attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, using surreptitious methods such as adding medical benefits for the unborn fetus or embryo in the fine print of Medicare legislation. The administration is also attempting, through the guise of charity, to slide religious organizations under the federal funding mat, even at the cost of minority protections within those organizations. On the gun-control front, after thumbing his nose at the international effort to control indiscriminate spreading of mostly U.S.-manufactured small firearms, Attorney General John Ashcroft has elected to provide his own interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, a view totally contrary to the position declared by every court of the land, up to the Supreme Court itself, and contrary also to the policy of several previous administrations, including Republican ones. While individuals may differ in their own views on each of these issues, the frightening thing about these events is not in the issues themselves, but the way in which the Bush administration is attempting to subvert the fundamental democratic process and the expressed will of the people of this country by embarking on Bush's own radical right-wing agenda, and doing it by insidious and surreptitious methods that attempt to avoid public scrutiny or opposition. In my recollection, there has been no administration in the past 70 years that has made such an overt attack on the constitutional democratic process, and every American should be outraged at what a minority-elected administration is seeking to accomplish over the expressed will of the electorate. Contrary to those who believe that the U.S. government is being undermined by U.N. subversives creeping across the Canadian border, this administration is beginning to smell of dictatorship from within.