Presidential Tyranny Untamed by Election Defeat

By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent

Tuesday 12 December 2006

I. Genetic Modification

Like the two entwining strands of the double helix, law and power form the genetic structure of government. Law is nothing but empty verbiage without power to back it up, enforce it, embody it. And power without law is nothing but a mad ape, baring its teeth, thumping its chest, raping and beating where it pleases, taking what it wants: a bestial thing, born in the muddy swamp of our lowest, blindest, rawest biochemical impulses. Disconnect these strands and things fall apart, as Yeats says; the center literally cannot hold, and the blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world.

We have seen the proof of this in our time. When law - understood here as agreed-upon principles of justice and commonweal - is treated as a filthy rag or a "quaint" relic or a cynical sham by those in power, the result is an ever-growing suppuration of greed, lies, brutality and violence. Its starkest form is evident in Iraq, where a lawless invasion based on deceit has created a hell beyond imagining, and beyond control. At home, unfettered power has stripped Americans of their essential liberties and human rights, which are now no longer unalienable and inviolable but are instead the gift of the "unitary executive," to bestow - or withhold - as he sees fit.