If you've been in a cave for the last 6 years...

Sydney Blumenthal reminds us what a catastrophe BushCo has been, not only for our country, but for the world.

If you read about this in a history text, the kind of demon's gallery of malfeasance, chicanery and naked powermongering that has characterized Bush's tenure, you'd say "Whew. Glad we missed all of that." Ahhh, but we didn't, did we?

9/11 has been called the defining moment for our generation(s), and rightly so: Unfortunately, we did not get our "England's Finest Hour" or the like, as our parents and grandparents did. What we are left with is an imperial presidency, hithero unknown in this country, whose lust for power, whose dreams of market control, whose greed and avarice are the instruments of this republic's destruction.

The shouting of "September 11th" to every question while defiling not only the lost men and women of that day, but every man and woman who gave all since the beginning of this experiment is tantamount to necrophilia.

Blumenthal, however, reminds us of a time when "progressive" and "republican" were not mutually exclusive, in citing a Bull Moose Prophecy:

"In 1900, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a sympathetic biography of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the short-lived English republic of the 17th century. While Roosevelt admired many of Cromwell's intentions to create representative government, he described how Cromwell's volatile temperament undermined his virtuous goals. 'In criticizing Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than to the man'. Roosevelt continued:

'Self-governing freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole. When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands'.

The tragedy that Theodore Roosevelt described is not reserved in its broad dimensions to Britain. Roosevelt wrote his history as a lesson for Americans, who had been spared the travesties of the English revolution. Instead of Cromwell, we had had Washington. Ultimately, a people are responsible for its leaders. Bush's legacy will encompass a crisis over democracy that only the American people can resolve. "