President Bush: what part of majority rule don’t you understand?

President Bush doesn’t get that majority rule means that greater than 50% prevail or that less than 51% don’t?

President Bush has more than delusions about the appropriateness of his military and foreign policy mission. He has an epiphany for his mission vindicated by his membership or affiliation with the one true faith which provides him a private chat page with the Almighty.

While President Bush was daydreaming during his Yale University history class about his next cheerleading activity, he missed a key tenant about the conduct of democracy. Despite the class lessons in the conduct of tyrants he did not get, as his petulant order for the ‘surge’ displays, that an elected leader with contempt for this tenant reveals himself to be a tyrant. That he missed the crux of military strategy in his classes did not help alleviate his myopia.

For every tyrant, delusion and epiphany are necessary and sufficient conditions for usurping majority rule, i.e., the opposition of the American public (2 of 3 opposed) to the Iraq war. For another tyrant, Hitler, the delusion was the superiority of the ideology of fascism and the epiphany was the military aggression of the Third Reich and attempted final solution. Fulfillment of this epiphany was enabled by the cowing of the German citizenry, i.e., they were assured just a bit of constitutional compromise and a bit more leader power would be a worthwhile, fulfilling objective. Like the U.S. House and Senate, the Bundestag and Reichstag groused, reprimanded then caved. When the media drowned out opposition, citizen opposition slowed down, shrugged and fell silent. The more the leader hawked his claims of superior policy, the more caving, drowning and silencing took place. Oh well, the citizens’ thought, we want things pleasant. Acrimony is discomforting while going along is so much less difficult. While the leader appears progressively less sane and less tolerant of more rational policies is despicable, the citizens’ delusions that the condition is preferred to the disquietude of opposition intensifies. Their political reps yield to the citizens’ mood enabling the leader’s encroachment to proceed without meaningful opposition.

For Germany, those were the tipping points. First was the failure of the legislature to stop the occupation of the Sudetenland. Second was the attack on Poland signaled by the Brest-Litosk Treaty. For America today, the tipping points were first the 2003 vote to authorize the Iraq war. The second is funding the ‘surge’. If Democrats don’t fulfill the mission we elected them to, America will slide down the slippery slope to escalating casualties, irreversible fiscal damage, and the loss of democracy by a president rescinding majority rule.

Democrat’s failure to stand for majority rule strengthens the autocratic power of the President tyrant who will push until stopped. As the German parliament failed, thus will Congress by not enforcing majority rule.

When Winston Churchill vowed to ‘fight in the streets and villages and never give in’, he meant fighting for the principles of democracy, such as the tenant of majority rule. This Congress, ordered by the people to stand up for those values, is showing every indication of sailing down the same river for the prospect of a continuing membership in the get along, go along, get elected Congress. Congress must stand firm against the “surge” if America is to stop the damage wrought by the Bush Administration. Congress must derail Captain Ahab in a pursuit of the Iraqi whale driven by a crew who are shackled in irons below deck for the mere uttering a hint of descent. In Pareto fashion, the 20% of Americans who are committed to the nation’s survival for the sake of their children must derail the Captain by any means necessary. For unlike Democrats in Congress, they do not lack the intestinal fortitude to act bravely.