zonian

FDR threatened to pack the court with judges sympathetic to his policies. The Supreme Court Court backed down and ruled, in essence, the New Deal legal. In theory a court can issue arrest warrants but that isn’t going to happen with Trump. SCOTUS has already ruled that Presidents are largely immune to arrest and the President can pardon whomever he wants. Thus, effectively there is no legal mechanism for enforcement.

Much of the American system relies on established political norms for governance. Pretty much all of these norms are being gutted. No one knows what the long term impact will be but I believe the republic as we knew it is dead.

I was a kid when the Treaty was ratified in the Senate and when the Treaty was first implemented on October 1, 1979. As a kid it was a sad day for us. We all thought that Panama would be incapable of running the canal properly. The railroad quickly went into disrepair when Panama took over so there was some valid reasons for believing this.

In our own way we protested things. We wore shirts that said, “To Jimmy from the Canal Zone” with Gummy flipping the bird. We wrote some graffiti with slogans like “CZ Forever” and “Kiss My American Ass”. The transition was peaceful though and no violence was carried out. It took 21 years for the Treaty to be fully implemented. I came to the United States for college and stayed here in the U.S. ever since.

When I went back to Panama some years ago I could see that Panama made great progress compared to when the U.S. was there. One rabiblanco I talked to put it this way, “When you Americans left we had to grow up.” I could first hand see that we ended up stunting the political and economic progress of Panama.

The Treaty was the right thing to do. I hated it as a kid to lose my hometown and start being patrolled by the Guadia Nacional (PDF) but as an adult I see it differently.

I was born in the Canal Zone while it was still a territory of the United States. I’m a natural born U.S. citizen. Few Americans have a better claim to the Canal Zone as I do and I absolutely don’t have a legitimate claim to any part of it.

As sometimes happens between nations the Canal Zone was given to Panama by the United States. It is theirs. We don’t have a moral right to claim it back 25 years later. Picking on a much smaller and defenseless nation does not make America strong. We have become an infantile super power. This is a disgraceful time for America.