Here is a what a real president would tell the American people and the world in a future State of the Union address.
Madame Speaker, Vice President Paul, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
We have all struggled through a time of great deception, and have been made to witness haunting immorality by our leaders and system of government. The unforgivable crimes that were committed in the name of liberty and the American people will never be forgotten. We will do future generations of the world a great service by examining where we went wrong as a nation, and how we the people failed most of all. The popular notion that we did not know is a lackluster excuse. Self-deception played a decisive role, one that we cannot evade simply because our institutions and leaders repeatedly lied to us.
Our leaders, in the guise of defenders and patriots, exploited our tragedy and told us that we must give up our rights to save the nation from monsters abroad and barbarians at home, but the only threat to our demise came from them alone. They appealed to our worst prejudices of the other in a time of crisis, and banished reasonable debate on the important issues of the day from public light. And while the White House turned off its lights, our personal flashlights were also missing in action. We too abandoned our most cherished principles and falsely believed that this time we were being told the truth. By policing ourselves we gave our despicable leaders ample opportunity to accomplish what destroyers and oppressors throughout history have always attempted to do, mainly, position themselves beyond approach. And for a long time, they were.
True, our fall into tyranny was not marked by mass troops stamping their feet on Pennsylvania Avenue, but who can rightly deny that the clear signs of a totalitarian order were non-visible? Ask the victims of the American justice system if lawlessness was kept hidden. They will confidently tell you that they faced government charges without any protection of the law; or will show you pictures of their dead family members who were innocently killed off in a criminal aerial campaign sold as an operation against Taliban extremists. You will not be able to look away from them because facts are facts.
And the facts of our nation's crimes will continue to stare us in the face long into the future. Although it is impossible to return to September 10, 2001, or August 5, 1945, it is never too late to apologize for what we have done, and pray that the people of the world will forgive our criminal actions over the course of many years. But our compassion can not end there. We must reconcile with our past and also forgive ourselves, while still realizing that any justification for the crimes committed in our name is a cowardly denial of the truth. The truth is no doubt hard to accept, but a national recovery is not possible without complete acceptance of the truth.
To be sure, nobody possesses the whole truth. Knowing even half takes the most resilient of wills. But there are always exceptions who try harder than the rest. Individuals, empowered with the facts on the ground, can stand against the largest of armies and the cruelest systems of thought control because they can see farther than the twenty-four hour news cycle. For them no opinion is sacred. Blessed with a passion for the truth, they aim for clarity, and don't shrink from criticism or insult. The triumph of truth and reason does not rest on their shoulders, but without their constant appeal to mankind's better instincts, no progress can be made. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers communicated some of the most sublimest thoughts on the conception of existence, truth, and reality in his lectures at the German Academy of Frankfurt in 1937. Near the end of his address on truth he said:
"Reason does not set itself up here as judge, nor does it make any absolute doctrinal pronouncements; but with honesty and fairness it penetrates all reality and allows it to come to light. It does not explain anything away; it does not conceal or oversimplify."
To acknowledge that a few resourceful members in our national establishment knowingly murdered nearly 3,000 innocent citizens on September 11, 2001 in order to thrust the nation into criminal wars of aggression, and that our national media outlets masterfully participated in brainwashing the public, turns the ground on which we stand into vaporizing dust. Everything comes into question. So we must refrain from being too hard on ourselves. Living in a world where truth is defenseless against unthinking bullies and murderous liars is an alienating experience. And for a long time such a state was the case; our society was wrapped up in the abyss of unreason; the chasm between true reality and a makeshift world was daunting for any individual who was at all able to take a glimpse at the disorder without jumping back into his preconditioned ideas of the world and of historical events; it was a period of spiritual disintegration, when authority, as Jaspers understood it, came to be "a mere power in existence without enlivening all the sources of truth." But I am glad that we experienced this great unrest because our country, our people, and our world, is stronger today than at any time in history.
The German Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized the grave psychological impact that organized lying has on the individual mind and society at large, saying: "The experience of a trembling wobbling motion of everything we rely on for our sense of direction and reality is among the most common and most vivid experiences of men under totalitarian rule."
The man who most clearly expressed in the political arena the spiritual agitation that Arendt spoke of was Dr. Paul. On May 19, 2009 he saw what had been done to his country, describing the expansive matrix of lies as an unjust nightmare, and predicted revolutionary changes to come:
"Could it all be a bad dream, or a nightmare? Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? It's surreal; it's just not believable. A grand absurdity; a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions; based on preposterous notions; and on ideas whose time should never have come; simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; insanity passed off as logic; grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; evil described as virtue; ignorance pawned off as wisdom; destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; violence, the tool of change; preventive wars used as the road to peace; tolerance delivered by government guns; reactionary views in the guise of progress; an empire replacing the Republic; slavery sold as liberty; excellence and virtue traded for mediocracy; socialism to save capitalism; a government out of control, unrestrained by the Constitution, the rule of law, or morality; bickering over petty politics as we collapse into chaos; the philosophy that destroys us is not even defined.
His lifelong dedication to liberty and the restoration of his country constitutes a strong legacy that we can build on for the rest of this century. He set an example to the youth of the world through his undeviating principled stand for the law, and by consistently being his country's conscience in the Congress when the time mattered. In a previous speech he gave on the house floor on June 21, 1999 called "Let liberty ring loudly," the great doctor said:
"For the sake of the future of our Republic, it is important that we are not just consistent, but correctly consistent. We must defend not just the sections of the Constitution we find popular, we must defend the entire Constitution. Most importantly, we must jealously guard the philosophy of freedom upon which it is based. If we do, the sound we will hear is that of liberty once again loudly ringing across our land."
If we had listened to Dr. Paul's judgment earlier we would not have experienced the great and immeasurable suffering that we are still learning to grapple with. It seems history must always be taught the hard way. If we look back on Dr. Paul's words now, we see a part of God trying to teach us, and point us the way. But if it takes tragedy to wake us, then so be it. We are awake now. Let us remember the voices who told us the truth, and carry on in their footsteps. I submit that we build a statue of Dr. Paul in the 9/11 memorial in Washington D.C. A statue, however, will not be enough in the long run. A deep commitment to our moral conscience and the liberty of this great country by every single breathing soul will do the late doctor a much higher honor.
Our Constitution demands that we, public servants, live up to highest ideals of the country every day we are in office. Giving respect in the form of elegant pageantry and words of appreciation is not enough, we must follow its guidelines faithfully, and adhere to its core principles that generations of Americans have fought and died for. To do anything less is impermissible. At best it would constitute failure; at worst, treason.
If the document that is meant to restrict the growth of government is regarded as just a piece of paper by its chief dissemblers then we submit our fate as a nation not to the law of the land but to the gross activities of crooked public officials and their powerful paymasters. Our treasured way of life and the health of our republic is only possible if we vocally and painstakingly resist when our freedoms are threatened. The much lauded claim that what we lose in liberty we gain in security has once again proven to be a fatal lie. All the heartache our country and the world has underwent in these last few years would not have happened if we had remained vigilant to the task of preserving our liberties. To prevent another crisis of authority in the future we as a people must stay true to our founding principles regardless of difficult circumstances because there is nothing more desirable for the illegitimate forces that constantly seek to misdirect our energies than to help create an atmosphere where tradition is broken, and where respect for the sacrifices of previous generations is diminished.
I realize that every word penned two hundred and twenty three years ago is not definitive. What is sacred is the spirit of resistance, without which our founding document would never have been written. We must remember that the Constitution gives evidence to the strength of the Founders' convictions, but also to the imperfection of their final execution. We are blessed with their ever lasting gift - a republic based on laws - just as they were blessed by being alive at the right position and in the right moment in history. But the work of creation is never finished. In every generation new opportunities arise to perfect the original construct, and those few opportunities would not be possible if not for the daring resilience and enduring capacity of every generation that has come before.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of our conscience, believed this nation's destiny laid in the hands of its citizens. And Americans at every critical moment in our history proved Jefferson right by awakening to the sirens of justice well before their leaders. Numerous examples attest to this fact. Before Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War, it was a citizen and a writer, Henry David Thoreau, who gave a clear indictment of the immoral standing of the law and appealed to every individual to play a role in history by serving his inner conscience. In his prized essay "Civil Disobedience," he wrote: "The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free." Likewise, as President Johnson was intensifying a needless war in Vietnam, it required the work and patience of an outstanding pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, to steer the nation towards a more just equilibrium. In our own time we can learn by the example of Alex Jones, another courageous voice who has stirred the conscience of our people over many years, and whose tireless efforts has allowed me to speak before you tonight.
And so, in the spirit of these men, I ask all Americans, as well as my colleagues on the floor, to take up the call of making sure that this country and this world prevails as a free resting place for all human beings who live on it.
Alexandria's Link.
