Bush Fidgets, Jefferson Smiles

An anxious Nancy Pelosi in November 2006 made a hasty promise to the embattled president shortly after the Democratic takeover, "I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table". The ancient founders of freedom must be shaking their heads.

It is true that under Article I, Section II, the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment". Therefore it alone has the power to bring the President to trial and if Pelosi says no then that's the end of humanity, right? Wrong! Pelosi has forgotten the basic tenet and restart button of Republican government.

Thomas Jefferson "borrowed" many of his ideologies for the Declaration of Independence from John Locke, a renowned political philosopher from the late 1600s. It was from his book, Two Treatises of Government, that Jefferson got the nerve to rebel against King George. Locke advocated the idea that man was not infinitely bound to his government, and that natural man had consented to be apart of it for collective protection.

If a free man believes that his life was in danger, he may break away from that union and reshape it for the better. According to Locke, a deadly and tyrannical government should be overthrown, "But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected". A long chain of abuses and a hierarchal design of evil are grounds for revolution.

The second most holy document in the land, The Declaration of Independence, highlights many of Locke's basic ideas in that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". This means that a group of humans somewhere in the abyss of time gathered around a fire and in a series of grunts formed a government. All of the parties involved, whether extra-hairy or toothless agreed to be governed by representatives.

This is the electrifying factor behind a democracy, and it is so fascinating because every man agreed to take part in it. What Jefferson hammers home in the text is that the government is accountable to the people that it governs. Locke mentioned way back in 1689 that if a government does not protect the right to life, then it is the right of the people to dissolve that government and create a better one. Look at Jefferson's writing:

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety".

Thomas Jefferson was the first disciple of revolutionary theory, and John Locke was the master. The freedom that Locke had envisioned so long ago was finally justification for war against Great Britain. Jefferson emulated Locke in every measure possible, especially when listing the wrongs that He (King George III) had committed against the colonists in great detail. The King had placed troops in the colonists' homes, failed to give them equal representation, and in some cases dissolved colonial legislatures. In the minds of the Founding Fathers, this constituted "a long chain of abuses", as Locke had so eloquently described it. Essentially, the quartering of troops in innocent colonists' homes and a general lack of representation in the British Parliament were seen by some as solid grounds for revolution.

In the 21^st century there is a new King George III in town:

He has warrantless wiretapped the homes of innocent Americans and consistently intruded on the First Amendment. He has eliminated habeas corpus, a right that has been with the people of the free Western World since the signing of the Magna Carta.

He wields the ability to call any American citizen an enemy combatant and hold them in prison indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay or another secret foreign prison.

He initiated a war under false pretenses with minimal intelligence and a vested interest in monetary gain for corporations that have cost thousands of American lives, and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Iraq.

How different are these new grievances against the current government today than those that the Founding Father had against the British government in 1776? In fact, they are more serious and alarming than the "long chain of abuses" that plunged our infantile nation into revolution. Americans were not dying by the thousands at the hands of British corporations or at the hands of the government.

The French and Indian War had ended and the American troops were sent home. Colonial militia did not stay in the mountains of Canada for years bogged down by French resistance fighters. The British actually had an exit strategy, and that was to defeat the French and gain new territory. At least those greedy aims were broadly stated.

According to Locke, a government can only be overthrown if it can no longer guarantee the right to life. Step back for a moment and examine the United States government. Can it guarantee that all citizens are protected under those gentle Eagle wings? If a citizen can be tortured, held without trial, and arrested for political dissent under the Bush Administration, then how far-fetched is it to kill a citizen suspected of terrorism?

Revolution is still on the table, Speaker Pelosi, and it is backed by the very architects of the Constitution. Except that revolution should not come in the form of bloodshed or treason, but instead by the most powerful Republican ideal possible. The vote can trace its history to Roman times, and it is the peaceful form of revolution. This idea cements the government to the people and holds the government accountable.

In fact, it has been used several times in the past to overtake an oppressive government in America's early history. Most notable of these was The Revolution of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson uprooted the tyrannical Adams and his Federalist Sedition Act that jailed government dissenters in the press and violated the Constitution. George W. Bush and his Administration have widely abused their offices of power. A peaceful and successful take back of the American government has been staged in the past, and it can be done again.