My Beef with Bush Republicans
I am not the liberal I am often accused of being.
What I am is a conservative who shares some constitutionalist, libertarian, populist, conservationist, and once-republican ideals. I believe in the ideal of good stewardship.
What concerns me most is representation.
It is not that going to war is “mala in se", it is why, how, and whether or not it is a representative action of the desires of the people. It is fine for a man to act on principles and be stubborn about them, but not if he walks over the liberties of another while doing so. It is fine when a man sticks to his principles, but not when his job is to be a public representative of the people who elected him (those with the votes, rather than the donations). If he believes his job is to protect us with or without our approval, by means which were largely disapproved, then he has removed “we the people” from the entire debate of a “democracy". He has undermined the republic. When he refuses to acknowledge supreme court decisions by not opening an email (which may be seen to be as official as the “serving of a subpoena"), he has ignored the balances of power set in place to hold democracy together. How can he “bring democracy” to the world when he doesn’t believe in/ respect the system of government. When he acknowledges the definitions of what is deemed torture as given by the supreme court, he simply says, “that’s the law, the law is the law, but that’s not how I interpret it.” Then he continues to drag our country’s flag through the mud (in the eyes of our friends and foes alike), by ignoring the laws. When the one man who leads the country acts as if he is above the law, he is by definition a dictator (when not a king or monarch through hereditary succession). With regard, to the practice of torture (though a semantic argument would state that only certain acts are “legally defined torture"), the oppressive use of the declaration of “enemy combatants” on U.S. Citizens (denying them their 4th amendment constitutional rights and superceding criminal law), and denying law abiding (non-convicted) citizens their privacy, a leader would fit 3 definitions of an oppressive tyrant.
Representation is key. And not just that the majority of voters gets a face in an election, but that the democratic debate be on the table as open and free from agenda as possible. Yes, the majority of voters usually get their pick of who is in office. What they don’t get during the campaign and after the election, honest and clear news. It is an era of fact wars. Kerry supported the war in Iraq (a poll showed about 70% of those who voted for him thought he was in opposition to it). Iraq had no remotely direct connections to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers (after a confessed $23 million dollars spent on misinformation about this subject by the Bush administration, 30-50% of U.S. Americans still believe to this day that Saddam Hussein was involved -not based on facts, but on feelings or what they remember hearing the news). When all of this is the case (on only 2 issues), despite the average person even trying to pay attention to
politics and the news, they can not hope to have their views (not just their vote) represented in the “representative” government of the U.S..
Yes, I’m for small government, but more so, I’m for a representative government. As long as the government serves the will (not the good -as is elite theory) of the people, we will receive the most benefit. And when we make a mistake, at least our fate will be earned for ourselves, not by a greedy or power-hungry rogue leader. If the Iraq war was the peoples’ war, then let us go in and face the consequences. But when it is not the will of the people, change course or resign.
Congress, do your job. Hand the man his resignation, if he’s so determined to stay the course of death, destruction, and national bankruptcy. Your wallets only get fatter as the people get madder. One day you’ll find, “we are as mad as hell and we are not gonna take it anymore!”
ImpeachBush.org states: “The impeachment movement needs your help. Your generous donation will allow us to place more impeachment ads, help us cover the cost of impeacment petitions, stickers, placards, and flyers. Click here to donate today. Thanks to donations from people like you, we’ve already been able to place ImpeachBush ads in the New York Times, USA Today, and SF Chronicle.”
The next day, my now-Hollywood friend, Jeremy came back to SLC. He had just rode 175 miles in a biking event that offered proceeds toward fighting MS. Amazing! Elder Gutman, and The Hortons also participated. My Vegas friend, Ben arrived in town that weekend, and all three families went to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro for a celebratory get-together. The food was awesome, and the young Horton girl was our helpful waitress.