Other Voices
WHY EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD BE CONCERNED
By Michael N. Searles

I recently heard a survey rating President Bush's popularity among the American public. It was not surprising to discover that only about 30 percent of the population supported the President. However, what did surprise me was that 60 percent of Rep ublicans supported the President in general and that 50 percent supported his war efforts in Iraq. I was absolutely amassed at the findings. I tried to understand why Republicans would give the President such a favorable rating. While I am a lifelong Democrat, I thought I had some idea for which the Republican Party stood.

I always believed that Republican Party stood for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and personal liberties. I would defy anyone to argue that President Bush is a champion of any of those values. While I could list a litany of violations of these cherished principals, I will limit my comments to one gross abrogation of each Republican tenet.

Limited government is a virtue of the federal system established by the U.S. Constitution. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the last two states to ratify the Constitution for fear that an overreaching national government would usurp individual and states rights. The Fourth Amendment was designed to make citizens "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...." President Bush has continually asserted that as President there are few if any restraints on his authority. One example is the use of wiretapping of international calls to and from the United States without a warrant and a warrantless domestic surveillance program. While President Bush's advisors felt confident in this interpretation, the American Bar Association disagreed stating the President exceeded his powers under the Constitution in his domestic surveillance program. Fiscal responsibility was once a watchword among Republicans. The cry that we were placing an untenable burden of debt on the backs of our children a few years ago was a presidential campaign issue. Who can argue that the spending of this administration and the refusal to veto any budgetary bill that President Bush is adhering to Republican principals?

Personal liberties, the foundation of society, were the freedoms we historically advocated for ourselves and others. If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, we as a nation have fallen into a deep sleep. We have come to the collective conclusion that the President [and Congress] may have any authority as long as it is done for our security. This attitude is what some of the Founding Fathers feared. While many have called for the President's impeachment, I am not one of them. However, if you think that this kind of talk is limited to the liberal left, the John Birch Society in its magazine, The New American published its support for impeachment on January 9, 2006, in an article on the Constitution entitled: "It's Not Just a Piece of Paper." While I am not an impeachment advocate, I would like to see a little more Republican outrage and less support for a man who has taken actions that warrant impeachment and removal from office.

Editor's Note: Burke County resident Mike Searles is an author and history professor at Augusta State University