- Probably one of the most chilling statements ever made
by a tyrant was Caligula's warning: "Remember, I can do anything to
anybody."
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- Few tyrants have ever had such total power. Even in Caligula's
case, he wielded such power for a relatively short time before he was killed.
The only tyrants in our time who could have made such a statement were
Joe Stalin and his admiring fan, Saddam Hussein. In both cases, they literally
could do anything to anybody, provided, of course, they could get their
hands on them.
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- Stalin was by far the greater monster, probably the greatest
monster in the 20th century. His victims numbered in the millions. He exerted
total control over a vast nation, and he was feared by all who knew him.
Just how afraid people were of Stalin is illustrated by his death.
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- Sometime during the night, Stalin suffered a stroke.
He lay on the floor of his bedroom, alive but unable to speak or move,
half the night and nearly all of the next day. Personal servants who had
been in his employ for years were so scared of him that they dared not
even knock on his bedroom door when he failed to appear in the morning.
They waited late into the afternoon, and even then did not dare go into
the room. They called the secret police instead.
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- Saddam obviously did not inspire that kind of fear, but
plenty of people were afraid of him, and with good reason. I've often said
that the worst possible job in the world would have been to be Saddam's
public-relations adviser. He had a nasty habit of greeting advice he didn't
like with gunfire or the torture chamber. I was amused by the statement
of one of the Iraqis who was allowed to meet with Saddam after his capture.
He complained that Saddam showed no remorse. Well, of course, he didn't.
Psychopaths are incapable of remorse. He will go to his grave believing
everything he did was the "right thing to do."
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- We in America need not fear someone assuming absolute
power. But we should remember that just as absolute power corrupts absolutely,
relative power can corrupt relatively speaking. Anybody with power over
someone else can become a tyrant - a schoolteacher, a policeman, a parent,
a military drill instructor or a schoolyard bully. To be a tyrant is simply
to impose your will on another by force or threat of force without lawful
authority.
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- To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, the abuse
of power is something up with which no American citizen should ever put.
We should ever be on our guard that people with authority over others never
abuse that authority. It is one of the continuing duties of citizenship.
And it's not easy.
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- My main objections to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
are that both were undertaken without a formal declaration of war by Congress,
as the Constitution requires. President Bush didn't ask for a formal declaration,
and Congress gave him a resolution. Both branches of our government disregarded
the Constitution. Congress conceded a grant of power to the president that
the Constitution does not authorize. This is an abuse of power.
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- The Constitution is a fragile thing. It can protect our
liberties only so long as we the people firmly insist that all elected
officials obey it. If we allow parts of it to be disregarded, then we invite
the disregard of all of it. As all of the wise men in our nation's past
have warned, the main threat to our liberty will never be a foreign conqueror
but our own apathy coupled with the unbridled ambition of our own politicians.
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- I wish Americans took their Constitution more seriously.
It is not a historical document. It is as binding today on every federal
official as it was the day it was ratified. Americans should consider violating
the Constitution as being the unforgivable public sin and vote against
every single person who does it.
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- There is everything right with saying to a congressional
representative, a senator or a president, "You know, I like you, and
I agree with a lot of the things you've done, but you've violated your
oath of office, and I can no longer support you." That's putting the
Constitution where it belongs, ahead of public-opinion polls, partisan
politics or even personal feelings.
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- If we don't take better care of our Constitution, we
will find ourselves one day living in a very unfree society, and the result
of more than 200 years of blood, sweat and tears by better people will
go into the trash can of history. It's bad enough to lose one's liberty;
it's even worse to throw it away.
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- © 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040102/index.php
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