Of Torches and Pitchforks

Photo: From the film "Seven Days in May."

Events that gave birth to the American Tea Party movement rekindled the dormant memory of that book, Seven Days in May. So I ordered the movie, which was made in 1964. They made really good movies in those days. The story’s plot involved a U.S. president pushing a policy of appeasement in the years immediately after WWII and the Korean War, back when the Red Menace was devouring nations, school children hid under desks in atom bomb drills, and families built fallout shelters in their back yards.  Built entire houses underground even. Fear hung in the air like smog.  In Seven Days in May, a group of patriotic military officers, decorated war heroes all, led by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, plots a coup to save the country. The Chairman's aide-de-camp, ardently loyal to his general and equally bound by his oath to the Constitution, figures out what's afoot and is torn between his duties. Spoiler alert: In the end, the Constitution wins.

The Founders built into the Constitution not only failsafes, but tripwires. When one of the three branches of government overreaches, the Constitution prescribes corrective measures. But the ultimate guardian of the Constitution is the vigilant citizen, We The People. Those safeguards built into our trifurcated system of government are useless if a supine citizenry acquiesces.

Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, stated that “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.” That was 38 days before Ft. Sumter. He must have reconsideration his words.

Politicians should have nightmares about torches and pitchforks advancing on Washington.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “When the government fears the people, there is liberty." The spontaneous rising of the Tea Party movement signaled the reawakening of the American people, serving notice that our Constitution, bought and paid for by untold sacrifice in blood and treasure over two and a half centuries, would still prevail. That was then, this is now.

Seven Days in May is rearing up again. Never has the U.S. Constitution been in greater peril than it is today. Pray it will win again, but it will only if courageous men and women do the right thing.

Karen McKay is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. She is a Foreign Area Operations Officer (Middle East/SW Asia), and Airborne, Civil Affairs, and Psyops qualified. Her PhD dissertation at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was on the failure of Allied air forces to bomb Auschwitz and the rail lines transporting Jews to death camps. She was the Executive Director of the Committee for Free Afghanistan, and president of Americans for Freedom, an NGO supporting the Contras, especially on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua.