Letters to the Editor
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The Unamericans
These folks have never believed in core American political principles. I'm old enough to remember the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. When the Committee was in session, it was frequently the case that the only Unamericans in the room were the members of the Committee themselves.
How many devotees of the Enlightenment have there ever been in America? The miracle is that we've done as well as we have. Belief in democracy, and belief in civil liberties of the kind encapsulated in the Bill of Rights will always result in at least some cognitive dissonance in an age of powerful demagogues. That it has let to outright schizophrenia in our own time is a measure of how badly we've failed to measure up to the hopes that the founders had for us. Sadly, this failure didn't begin with George Bush; it began even before the ink was dry on the Constitution itself.