I hereby tender my resignation as Secretary of the Treasury, and announce my departure from the Democratic Party.
I did not expect to see surging support for the POLAND Bill. I expected to see indifference, agreements on the basis of principle but disagreements on implementation, or simple protestations that it could not be done. But it seems in our current lethargy, inaction is not enough; we must now even oppose the very thought of action, since this would require an end to slovenliness and a resolve that our current Congress lacks. It was not enough to reject the POLAND Bill. We had to discredit the people it aimed to preserve so that no such measures could ever be introduced again. We had to praise and defend the abominable autocracies that it sought to undermine, so that they should never be set to scrutiny in future. We had to not only stay our hands, but sever them at the wrist, so that the people and posterity could never call for them to be raised in action. We were offered a reprieve from inactivity; instead, we chose the convenient path of slothfulness.
If I was disappointed by our reluctance to commit to a decisive foreign policy, I am appalled by the apparent apathy to the cause of international democracy, which here manifests itself in a willingness to stand by and defend the most despicable reactionary regimes on Earth. We are told that democracy is not universal. We are told that absolute monarchies have the right to obliterate nations through conquest and oppress their subject peoples without criticism. We are told that there is no such thing as a nation-state, and no such thing as the Rights of Man. Perhaps someone should have pointed this out to the Founding Fathers - because these are the very principles and tenets upon which the American Republic was built. It seems that, in the eyes of certain individuals, it is one case for the people of the United States and quite another for the other national races scattered across the globe. Or, as is more likely, while we are glad to pay lip service to the principles of liberty and democracy, we are reluctant to put principles into practice.
Until we can overcome this indifference to world affairs, the Empire of Liberty is a sham. It is propaganda without principle; a state without foundation, existing only in our words and not in our hearts and mind. If we continue on this route of selfishness and narrowmindedness, of political ignorance and national narcissism, we shall find ourselves perpetually alone, without friends or allies, and without even those national principles which we claim to cherish. Stagnation will make a sewer of Washington.
God bless these United States, and deliver them from their present malaise.
- Anton Maxim