Let freedom ring

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Let freedom ring				January 14, 2006

Last week I received an e-mail from one Tryphon Bardwell, who, according to his subject line, wants to discuss with me “roughshod arithmeticals.” I’ve delayed opening the letter, since I really haven’t had the time to get into a philosophical discussion about Euclid, Aristotle or Einstein. Or perhaps he wants my take on President Bush’s Florida victory in 2000. But I don’t have time for that either.

What Tryphon doesn’t seem to understand is that we’ve got an inauguration going on around here and that no one has time to get into the finer points of arithmeticals, roughshod or not.

What really piques my interest in this Williamsburg inauguration is the fact that it has come about as a result of the extensive efforts of my delegate to the General Assembly, Melanie Rapp (R-96^th). Obviously embubbled by the coup she’s orchestrated, Rapp wrote a convivial letter to the Gazette last Saturday about the big day.

Most intriguing about the letter is Rapp’s expansive overview of the event. She notes that inaugurals “are a celebration of our freedom and liberty, of our right to participate in the selection of our own leaders, and an important reminder that here, the people rule.”

Right. The people rule.

Well, I suppose so, though in our last election there wasn’t much for the people to rule in Rapp’s run, since she sallied forth unopposed. Write-in votes offered the only possibility for opposition, so there wasn’t what you would call much participation in the selection of our leaders in Rapp’s case or in scores of other redistricted races.

But I guess that’s all part of the concept of freedom and liberty that Rapp paeanizes. In this she echoes President Bush, who proclaimed not long ago that we want to “advance around the world our concept of freedom and democracy.”

If our concept of freedom, liberty and democracy is reflected in the scandal, divisiveness and corruption that pervade our country’s political structure at this point, I would think that we might want to lock it away in Vice President Cheney’s hideout, rather than spread it around in the rest of the world like some deadly flu bug.

Where is our freedom and liberty, or how do the people rule in a country in which its president has no compunction about authorizing without restraint spying on his own citizens? Or where the NSA, with only presidential approval, started eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails four years ago and then destroyed the names of the thousands of citizens and corporations it bored into lest it get caught with its hand in the spyglass jar?

Where were freedom, liberty and democracy hiding while the country’s controlling party was busily sucking money into its coffers like some giant Electrolux from sleazeballs like Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay?

Ah, but not to worry. Once the burglar alarms went off, our righteous renegades – including Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1^st) and Republican Sens. George Allen and John Warner – fell all over themselves in an effort to relieve their reputations of the filthy lucre that came strolling into their campaign chests. All the tainted buckos would go straight to charity, they oozed. There it would be laundered so that our representatives and the president could purge their sullied souls and emerge to proclaim again our occluded concept of democracy.

The people rule, says Rapp. Perhaps closer to the truth is the insight of Mark Twain, who noted that the United States has the best Congress money can buy.

But certainly freedom and liberty rule in Virginia, if not in the nation as a whole. Well, maybe.

What demented notion of liberty and freedom are we facing when the City of Manassas can legislate that only parents, their offspring and grandparents can live under the same roof? If you live in Manassas, you better not invite Aunt Emma or Uncle Mort to live with you. Or that sick nephew who’s been left in your care. Can’t have him there either.

No, in order to wage war against illegal immigration, the city of Manassas has now defined for you what constitutes your family. And if that’s not liberty, I don’t know what is.

Fortunately, a suit brought against the town by the truly liberty-oriented ACLU has forced Manassas to postpone putting its obliquitous ordinance into effect.

You really have to wonder what’s in the water up there in Manassas, since
Robert Marshall, their Republican delegate to the General Assembly, is striking another laughable legislative blow for freedom and liberty. Marshall, whom the pixies of perniciousness denogginized years ago, is now proposing in HB 197 that no doctor or other medical professional be allowed to use artificial insemination to induce pregnancy in an unmarried woman.

Marshall simply does not want any unmarried woman to be birthing babies unless intercourse is involved. That’s just too, too much liberty and freedom. Taken to this bill’s illogical conclusion, the more unwed mothers giving birth via intercourse the better. Hello?

Whether today’s Rappist inauguration will override all that lunacy I cannot say. What I do know, however, is that the present Republican leadership has spawned what House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called a “culture of corruption.” And that, I think, is not something with which we want to infect the rest of the world.

Oh, I forgot. I just opened Tryphon’s e-mail. He wants to sell me cheap Viagra and Cialis. More smoke and mirrors. Do you suppose he and his roughshod arithmeticals know Jack Abramoff or Bob Marshall?

Contact Lew Leadbeater at www.lewleadbeater.com