EDITORIAL - The KO punch vs. the brat pack

"How can you ask us to join you in your search for truth when you have already branded us as liars?" This was perhaps the most incisive and memorable line ever uttered in any of all the explanatory speeches of congressmen during the impeachment vote in the House last Tuesday.

The line was in the explanatory speech of Rep. Raul Gonzalez Jr., a young lawmaker from Iloilo and son of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez. The speech, more than explaining his yes vote, was in fact a broadside fired at the brat pack that comprised the House political opposition.

And that line cut not only right through the physical hearts of the brat pack, but through the very heart of what the brat pack pretends to stand for. The line exposed for all to see the well-disguised sham that make up the cause of the brat pack.

One particular casualty of that line was Rep. Edmund Reyes, who just days ago asked the House, making a dramatic sweep of the entire breadth of the chamber with his eyes, if there was anyone else willing to join him in his and the brat pack's search for "truth."

"Wala na ba?," Reyes intoned with feigned pain and sadness. Well, there is your answer, Mr. Reyes, from Mr. Gonzalez Jr., who is probably just as young as you. "How can you ask us to join you in your search for truth when you have already branded us as liars?"

How indeed? Did Mr. Reyes and the brat pack think that, after calling their colleagues liars for not joining them in their search for "truth," they will suddenly become not liars if they enlisted in their crusade for "truth." Is common cause the sole measure for "truth?"

Doesn't that kind of thinking precisely validate the observation of many that, to the brat pack, you are everything that is good if you are with them but that you are everything that is bad if you are not?

Doesn't that kind of thinking precisely validate the perception of many that the brat pack is imbued with the self-righteous arrogance that makes this country a very dangerous place to live in when they begin to assume very high positions of power?

Doesn't that kind of thinking precisely validate the nagging fear of many that the brat pack will stop at nothing to achieve an end even if the means to achieve it comes at the great cost of breaking down institutions and jeopardizing the safety and well-being of others?

Doesn't that kind of thinking scream out the fact that the brat pack brooks no hesitation to make their own rules as they go, such that they would convict first, as when they demanded that the president resign, before going to trial and, failing still, to threaten unrest?