Eulogy for America

Source: http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4305
Author: David R. Hoffman

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Born July 4, 1776 - Died November 2, 2004

Ladies and gentlemen, we gather here today to mourn the passing
of the United States of America, a nation that once stood as a
beacon light of hope for the world.

America was betrayed and murdered on November 2, 2004. Also
killed during this time of madness were the following virtues: truth,
justice, integrity, freedom, compassion, brotherhood, tolerance,
faith, hope, charity, peace, and respect for other cultures and
nations. These virtues are survived by their antitheses--deceit,
injustice, hypocrisy, fascism, selfishness, hatred, fear,
hopelessness, greed, perpetual warfare and arrogant hegemony...

So rest in peace America. As St. Paul said, "You fought the good
fight." But the majority of your people did not keep the faith. Your
dream of "checking and balancing" the corrupting influence of
power to prevent the rise of evil was a noble endeavor. But history
has shown that evil can never be checked, that tolerance often
sows the seeds of intolerance, and that the majority of people will
always be susceptible to the machinations of madmen...

To those in other nations who read this eulogy, who are still
mystified by how swiftly a once great nation was transformed into a
neo-fascist nightmare, and how easily a man as hateful,
hypocritical, venal, bloodthirsty, warmongering, sadistic and
deceitful as George W. Bush was converted into a paradigm for
"moral values," all I can say is that millions in the late United States
are pondering these same questions. Perhaps the answer resides
in three disturbing, yet immutable, laws of human nature...

Edmund Burke once said, "All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil is that good people do nothing." But the madness
that murdered America on November 2, 2004 proves that evil will
always triumph, regardless of what good people do...

Why should we protest the bloodlust, butchery and bellicose
braggadocio of a cabal of bullying cowards when such behaviors
do not offend the "new morality?" Why speak out at all when
history has proven that activism and compassion usually destine
one for scorn, blacklisting, false imprisonment, suicide or
assassination?...

So in our grief let us not forget that, just as America was
finite, the perpetrators of evil who infest the halls of power
are finite as well. If there is atonement in eternity, then
those who do evil, and those who enable them, will ultimately
have to pay for their crimes. But dark days are ahead my friends,
and perhaps the best we can hope for as this maelstrom of evil
engulfs us is that we do not succumb to its allure, lest we
become, like those who murdered America on November 2, 2004,
people without souls.