Editorial

Beware the power of King George

On the second floor of the Deschutes County Courthouse, where those about to face justice whisper nervously with lawyers, there are copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The founders of our nation fought King George III to create this nation, dedicated to individual freedom. The Bill of Rights was to protect citizens from the abuse of power, from tyranny.

Now a younger but no less imperious King George (who also inherited his crown) hopes to dismantle these protections. King George de Bush wants a list of the books citizens take from the library and buy at the book store. He wants to be able to look at their e-mail. He wants to know what kind of activities they pursue in union activism. The list is endless.

Then, if King George finds something he does not like, he wants to haul citizens out of their homes and take them away to locations undisclosed to family or lawyers. He does not want them in court, where they could face their accusers and have the right to a fair and speedy trial before a jury of their peers.

King George favors instead the tribunal, the military hearing, the kangaroo court. He says these tools are necessary to protect "homeland security."

Ah, if only we could trust him. But we can't. It has been shown through the centuries that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Our King George already wields too much power, granted to him by our own aristocracy, the Earls of Energy, Princes of Pollution, Dukes of Pharmaceutical, Barons of Big Oil and the Lords of Insurance.

This aristocracy has stolen your government. Before it imploded from its own greed, Enron was setting energy policy. Drug maker Eli Lily had two paragraphs stuck in last week's Homeland Security Bill protecting it from lawsuits over a chemical it stopped putting in vaccines 10 years ago because it might cause autism in children.

Insurance cartels keep the poor away from medical treatment because they know there isn't enough for everyone and they get to charge admission.

These new aristocrats own your government. They steal your retirement and jack up the price of your electricity, they double your insurance costs and monopolize the drugs you need to stay healthy, they put toxins in your air and don't want you to know what they put in your food.

Citizens can speak, for now, but their words are drowned out by the vast pounding surf of money that washes away dissent. The new corporate aristocracy knows if they shout loud and long enough, we won't remember King George's alliance with morally bankrupt industrialists.

The corporate aristocrats hope we won't hear their footsteps as drums beat for war. The war against terrorism is for them little more than a business opportunity. And it won't be long before the already elastic word "terrorist" is stretched to include those who protest against the government and government's powerful patrons.

We are on the eve of very dangerous times. But the enemy is not only the Saudi with bombs and bazookas. We need to be vigilant, too, of our own leaders, when they have become pawns in a larger game.

That is why we had a revolution. That is why we have a Bill of Rights. That is why those rights are posted on the courthouse wall.

Tyranny is an insidious foe, because at first you believe it is your friend.

-- E.D.