Special Rejoinder:
In Sufferance of the Permanence of Hell

Earlier this week, I published an article reproducing the text of a proposed amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Should such a proposed repeal amendment be ratified in the due form and course of such matters, a President of the United States would no longer be limited to two terms. In particular and as a cautionary example, George W. Bush, who is now serving his second term as President, would not be constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third term.

It has been pointed out to me by several readers that attempts to repeal the 22nd Amendment have been made in the recent and not-so-recent past, and all have failed. I shall not be faint in my warning about the here and now. Below is the synthesis of responses I have and will set forth to the earnest suggestions that history mitigates the present.

That previous attempts have been made to repeal the 22nd Amendment is not in dispute. This is precisely the point.

The Democrats of the 109th Congress seem to believe that all things are as they have been in times past, in Congresses of yesteryear, and in manner of progress to a more open society. They hold to old lines of authentic rhetoric, mechanistic proceduralism, and statesmanly patience, all of which might in their day have worked to great and noble ends. The Democrats sail confidently yet perilously close to shallow waters, awaiting the returning tide to lift them from the jagged meanness of their Republican colleagues.

And in this route, they have come to wreckage.

More importantly, the Republic in its growth as a liberal democracy has not been temporarily slowed; it has, instead, been ended. The Republicans set forth action in proposed laws, move forward in aggression, and leave nothing behind for the Democrats to negotiate. Worse, the nation will not, as it has in other eras of excessive conservatism, recover—certainly not for decades, anyway, and perhaps not ever.

The Republicans maneuver outrage into law with the finesse in foreplay of Don Juan followed by the copulatory sensitivity of a Roman Legion battering ram. The Democrats cry as violated victims incapable of vengeance because they want not to lower themselves to the beasts who have taken their dignity.

The Democrats stand flat-footed, as if it is the duty of some ill-define "The People" to avenge their honor; and so they suffer the irresistible and false hope that the pounding of their stolen heart is the hoofbeats of a rescuing knight.

John Conyers is relegated to the outdoors to hold a phony "hearing," Harry Reid pulls a Senate closed-session desperation play, and Howard Dean energizes the masses of the disaffected with hot language that repairs nothing.

Nothing.

The descent into the abyss continues.

Abortions will become practically impossible to obtain within a decade, military siege will be the instrument of America's belated and amateurish engagement of a world it cannot perfectly control, evangelical Christianity will speak through both law and regulation, and political thought will run through a filter of wariness and fear of consequences from both private and public thugs.

Yes, it is different this time: Medievalism in the Age of Enlightenment is no longer Medievalism; it is, instead, neo-conservatism; and it wields an iron fist.

Until the Democrats understand this, they will grasp not how to respond in the beginnings of battles; and until they know how to strike at the subtle whispers in the preambles, they will have no hope of saving this Republic...

...if this Republic is worth saving, that is.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

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This article is cross-posted from The Dark Wraith Forums.