By Alan Caruba
(from the June 2002 issue of The DeWeese Report)

It seems to me that, not since the days that preceded the Civil War, has Congress been so filled with arrogant, ignorant, indolent, and sometimes outright traitorous poltroons bent upon the destruction of this great nation and the Constitution that is supposed to be the highest law of the land.

Congress is filled with guilt-ridden millionaires who try to buy their way into Heaven by passing endless new social programs this nation cannot afford, absorbing more immigrants than we can assimilate, and doing nothing to guard our porous borders against our enemies.

Congress has sold us out to the United Nations, signing on to endless treaties that suck the lifeblood of our sovereignty, our right to rule ourselves. They have sold out to the secret communists, the self-identified "environmentalists", who sit up nights devising new ways to attack our corporations and other engines of the economy.

There are, in fact, communists among the members of Congress only they call themselves "the progressive caucus." Hanging is too good for them.

It is insane that our government would attack Microsoft and attempt to dismember this huge engine of prosperity and technological superiority.

It is insane for our government to extort billions from the tobacco industry, a legal business, providing a product people should be free to use or not. The taxes imposed on tobacco products are obscene.

It is pure folly to seek to disarm Americans at a time when an army of terrorists exist among us. These include not only Islamic Jihadists, but the earth and animal rights terrorists that have attacked university and other laboratories conducting life-saving research. These terrorists attack the development of new housing and other enterprises. They attack a whole range of businesses and have done so with impunity thus far.

Led by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), the Senate Majority Leader, some fifty pieces of legislation are tied up because this one man, with his eye on the November elections, does not want the Bush administration to have any success at a time when our nation is under attack. He is putting America's energy needs on hold. He is conspiring to insure that the federal court system still doesn't have enough judges to function effectively. He is playing politics with our national security and the ability of our economy to prosper. He is not being merely partisan. He is being traitorous.

It is Congress that has bargained away our property rights, protected by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, creating new funding by which the federal government and states can purchase more land from so-called "willing sellers". Congress that has authorized the acquisition by States of more and more land to be put aside from the use of citizens, whether it be for recreation or the natural resources we need to maintain our economy, or the development of new housing for the millions of new citizens added in the last decade.

It is Congress that is destroying our freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, by proscribing the ways we can contribute to the political party of our choice and restricting the right to express opposition to candidates weeks before an election.

It is Congress that has authorized billions more be spent on a totally failed educational system run entirely out of Washington, DC by teacher's unions that control the Department of Education. We are testing and testing and testing students who are being poorly taught in the first place. We are heaping more and more homework on them. We are demanding they submit to drug testing or be required to take mind-altering drugs because they have been diagnosed as hyperactive. Kids are supposed to be hyperactive. Let them have time to play!

Meanwhile, our hugely bloated government has demonstrated how incapable it is of protecting us against twenty terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon. It is incapable of protecting our northern and southern borders against a constant flow of illegal aliens. It is unable to find and deport the estimated millions of illegal immigrants among us.

It is unable to coordinate its intelligence gathering capabilities or to analyze it swiftly enough to take appropriate action. It has under-funded our Coast Guard to protect our many ports. It is unable, after spending untold millions, to stem the flow of illegal drugs into our nation. Its answer to airport security was to federalize still more government workers.

The price we pay for this is to have forty cents or more taken from every single dollar we earn, plus pay many hidden taxes. Most Americans are living on less than half their paychecks. They have little savings and a hospital stay can strip them bare of what savings they have. Millions of Americans are unable to afford medical insurance.

· We now live with a government that demands we eat according to its requirements,

· that we drive cars manufactured according to its standards,

· that we give up our homes when it demands the land on which they are built,

· that we visit our national parks according to its requirements,

· that we forego the mining and drilling for our natural resources because of its demands to "protect" the environment,

· that the proper management of our national forests be ignored, leading year after year to cataclysmic fires,

· that farmers be paid for not growing crops,

· that ranchers be denied grazing rights on federal lands,

· that countless "endangered species" are the reason new housing and other development is not permitted,

· that our infrastructure of roads and bridges erodes for lack of funding,

· that a nationalized railroad system, AMTRAK, continue to lose millions of dollars every year,

· that our utilities be forced to pay billions to upgrade their facilities, adding to our monthly energy bills in the name of the environment, · that we yield our Second Amendment rights to own guns,

· that small business be burdened with bureaucratic demands on who they can hire and fire.

· that we accept a matrix of United Nations treaties and protocols that are intended to undermine our national sovereignty,

Life in America has become too costly for its middle class and barely sustainable for its poor.

These are very real threats to America, and few people, in the wake of 9.11, are paying attention to the erosion of rights that millions of Americans have paid with their lives to protect. The America our Founders envisioned has been turned into a Socialist state by a succession of Congresses that have yielded to the allure of more and more control over our lives.