For "Democracy" And "The Republic"

By Paul Street

02/09/07 "ICH" -- -- These are dangerous and confusing times. Let’s take a look at an interesting formulation from an unusually long and dramatic lead editorial in a recent issue of liberal-left weekly "The Nation":

“World opinion is against the US escalation in Iraq. The American people are against it. Congress is against it. The Iraqi government is against it. Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government rule be restored?”

This ominous paragraph constitutes the cover of the magazine’s “February 5th” issue ("The Nation" dates its issues a week in advance of the day you see them on the newsstand or in your mailbox?).

Later in the editorial, "The Nation" says the following:

“It is not only the Vietnam syndrome but the Watergate syndrome that [the Bush administration] want[s] to overcome. If the keynote of [Richard] Nixon’s character was covertness (not for nothing was he called Tricky Dick), then the keynote of Bush’s character is brazenness: he seeks to carry out in broad daylight, as his formal right, the usurpations that Nixon committed under the cover of night. Thus, the deepest theme of the whole three-decade story, now presented in almost outlandish caricature by the President’s tug of war with the nation and the world over Iraq, is the issue of power and how it shall be constituted in the United states, and the deepest question the crisis presents is whether the country will continue to be a constitutional republic or bow down to the new system of one-man rule asserted by President Bush. It’s an issue that must concern every citizen, and the antiwar movement is in fact reviving it.”

After some intelligent reflections on the need to combine efforts to de-fund and end the occupation of Iraq with citizen actions, resolutions, and investigations that could lead to impeachment, The Nation hopes that the American people and Congress can act together to save “the Republic” (“For the Republic,” The Nation, February 5, 2007, pp. 3-5 and cover).

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