Memo from Earth:
The experiment in self-governance that became the United States of America lasted for approximately two hundred and thirty years. It continued to exist in name only for a considerably longer period of time, but the country founded on the ideals of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the other signatories of the Declaration of Independence, ceased to exist in 2006. In that year, the United States Congress passed, and president George W. Bush signed, a bill that abolished Habeas Corpus, which had been common law since before the signing of the Magna Carta. This act effectively shredded the United States Constitution and the principles on which it had been founded. The same bill, passed by a Republican-controlled congress intent on providing legal cover for numerous impeachable offenses committed by the Republican Bush administration, also legalized the practice established by the Bush administration of torturing prisoners in secret foreign prisons, thus reducing the moral standing of the United States to that of the worst human rights violators on the planet. In performing this act of state-icide, the Republican congressmen chose survival of their political party over survival of the principles on which the United States had been founded. The opposition party, the Democrats, remained silent throughout this episode, having been cowed by the political rhetoric of the Republicans, which equated a desire to protect the basic rights that formed the foundation of the political philosophy on which the country was founded with a desire to "protect the terrorists". And thus the Grand Experiment in self-governance that began with the American Revolution ended in failure.
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