 |
 Latest |
 Greatest |
 Lobby |
 Journals |
 Search |
 Options |
 Help |
 Login |
| Home » Discuss » Journals » Time for change » Read entry |  |
 Advertise on more than 70 progressive blogs! |
Time for change's Journal
If you got the impression from the title that this post is about 2008, you’re only partially correct. The turning point that I discuss in this post is 1980, a year when we replaced one of the best presidents in U.S. history with one of the worst. Tuesday’s election calls this to mind, as we are now hoping that we will witness a mirror image of 1980 – the replacement of the worst president in U.S. history with one of the best.
Needless to say, Barack Obama does not yet deserve that designation – and he would no doubt be one of the first people to acknowledge that. He’ll have to earn it, and it will be a very difficult, uphill climb, with an abundance of intensely nasty opposition. In my opinion, in order to be a great President he will have to take risks, frequently opting for what is right rather than for what is popular or easy. That will be a lot to ask of him. As the first African-American president of a country that has a long history of racism, he will be under intense pressure to go with the flow, so as to avoid being seen as too far left. He will have a very fine line to walk, between doing what is right and avoiding the animosity of the conservative corporate elites of this country. Well, he had a mighty fine line to walk to get the Democratic Presidential nomination and then go on to win the Presidency. If anyone would have asked me one or two years ago what I thought the chances were of an African-American being elected President of our country in my lifetime, I would have said they were slim to none. Obama’s election was nothing short of a miracle. What it took was a combination of an exceptionally eloquent, talented and inspiring candidate, in combination with eight years of the worst presidency we’ve ever experienced. Congratulations, President Obama!  Yet to a large extent, Barack Obama remains a mystery to me. I am hopeful, but not convinced that he will be an outstanding President. It will probably seem ludicrous to many people that I use Jimmy Carter as an example that I hope Obama will follow. Jimmy Carter’s presidency is widely regarded among conservatives, moderates and even many liberals as a failure. Of 8 historical presidential rankings listed by Wikipedia that ranked both Reagan and Carter, only one (thank God for that one!) ranked Carter ahead of Reagan. The latest one, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, ranked Carter 34th and Reagan 6th. Well, screw that poll, and most of the others as well. Their main criteria for a high ranking seems to be “winning” a major war, either as president or a general: # 1 Washington (Commander-in Chief for the Revolutionary War); # 2 Lincoln (Civil War); # 3 F. Roosevelt (WW II); # 6 Reagan (Some say he won the Cold War); # 7 Truman (ended WW II in the Pacific); # 8 Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander during WW II); # 9 Polk (Mexican War); # 10 Jackson (Won the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812); # 11 Wilson (WW I); # 14 McKinley (Spanish-American War). Not that I don’t agree with the high rankings for Lincoln and FDR. I do. But I find the worshipping of war, manifested both in these Presidential rankings and in so much else of American culture, to be repugnant. The long imperial history of the United States prior to the Carter Presidency The history of the United States is a long story of imperial aggression, beginning with our use of slaves from Africa, the near extermination of the original inhabitants of our country over the course of more than a century, and a war of aggression against Mexico (1846-8). I discuss this history in more detail in this post. Following World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, our aggressive tendencies intensified, as we repeatedly helped to replace leftist governments with right wing dictatorships or put down rebellions against repressive governments. Major examples include: the CIA sponsored overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran (1953); the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala (1954); our assistance in the massacre of Communists in Indonesia (1965); the Vietnam War (1959-75), with its associated bombing of Laos (1969-74) and Cambodia (1970-75; the CIA sponsored overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973) and our help in putting down the East Timorese rebellion against Indonesia (1975). There is not full agreement on the reasons for all these Cold War interventions. Our claim was that we conducted the Cold War to protect the peoples of the world against Communist tyranny. But no doubt there were many other reasons, such as our desire to maintain and expand our international influence, corporate profiteering, and perhaps most important of all, the fear of many American leaders that successful leftist governments would set an example that Americans might want to emulate. Our desire for oil became an increasingly important reason for our meddling in other countries during this period of time. In 1970 domestic oil production peaked in our country and then began to decline. From that point forward, we became increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, especially from the Middle East. The Carter Presidency reaction against U.S. imperialism and war Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most peace-focused President our country has ever had. On the campaign trail in 1976, Carter was an outspoken critic of U.S. imperialism: We’re ashamed of what our government is as we deal with other nations around the world… What we seek is … a foreign policy that reflects the decency and generosity and common sense of our own people. Morris Berman, in his book “Dark Ages America – The Final Phases of Empire”, discusses Carter’s commitment to human rights as President: Carter never stopped talking about the subject… He cut out aid to Argentina, Ethiopia, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, Rhodesia, and Uganda because of human rights abuses. Berman discusses the hopes engendered by Carter’s 1976 election to the Presidency and how the American people turned out not to be ready for that kind of change: For a brief moment in American postwar history, the position of sanity found an echo… We would work for a more humane world order in our international relations, not seek merely to defeat an adversary; military solution would not come first; efforts would be made to reduce the sale of arms to developing countries… But… the Carter morality was, within two years, heavily out of step with the return to the usual public demand for a more muscular and military foreign policy… Out-of-office cold warriors closed ranks, forming organizations such as the Committee on the Present Danger… Their goal – to revive the Cold War – was ultimately successful; Ronald Reagan and CIA-assisted torture in Central America were the inevitable results. And in the course of all this, a picture was formed of Jimmy Carter as weak, bungling, inept… That Carter would be perceived as weak, and presidents such as Reagan and Bush Jr. as strong, says a lot about who we are as a people… The Carter “malaise” speech Carter’s malaise speech of July 15, 1979, was one of the most unpopular acts of his unpopular presidency. It was unpopular largely because Carter suggested that Americans needed to learn to be satisfied with less material goods. Americans as a people (and perhaps most or all other peoples as well) don’t like to be told that they need to look within themselves to discover the source of their problems. They would much rather blame all their problems on external enemies. Jimmy Carter felt deeply that that attitude was dangerous and needed to be changed: I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy… (Our nation is experiencing) a crisis of confidence… It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation… Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning… We are at a turning point in our history… There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. The relations between Carter’s malaise speech and our quest for Middle Eastern oil I believe that Carter’s malaise speech is in need of some interpretation. There are certain things that U.S. politicians simply cannot say if they truly value their political future. So Jimmy Carter was trying to walk a fine line – trying to make a point that he considered to be of great importance, while at the same time trying not to commit political suicide. As it turned out, though he tried to exercise some political caution, Jimmy Carter nevertheless crossed the line into political suicide. Andrew Bacevich, in his book “The Limits of Power – The End of American Exceptionalism” says of Carter’s malaise speech: Carter then proceeded to kill any chance he had of securing reelection. In American political discourse, fundamental threats are by definition external. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or international communism could threaten the United States… That the actions of everyday Americans might pose a comparable threat amounted to rank heresy. Yet Carter now dared to suggest that the real danger to American democracy lay within. To better understand the background for Carter’s speech, I believe that one needs to go back at least to 1953, the year that our CIA overthrew the popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Stephen Kinzer, in his book, “All the Shah’s Men – An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”, describes the lasting effects of that tragedy: In Iran, almost everyone has for decades known that the United States was responsible for putting an end to democratic rule in 1953 and installing what became the long dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. His dictatorship produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power a passionately anti-American theocracy that embraced terrorism as a tool of statecraft. Its radicalism inspired anti-Western fanatics in many countries… The violent anti-Americanism that emerged from Iran after 1979 shocked most people in the United States. Americans had no idea of what might have set off such bitter hatred in a country where they had always imagined themselves more or less well liked. That was because almost no one in the United States knew what the CIA did there in 1953. In January 1979, just six months before Carter’s speech, anti-American revolutionaries had overthrown the Shah of Iran. Carter must have recognized his own role in the anti-American attitude of the Iranian revolutionaries, as he had been a firm supporter of the Shah. Perhaps he felt guilty about his support for the Shah, recognizing that that support was not fully consistent with his sincere passion for human rights. My interpretation of Carter’s malaise speech In any event, it was rapidly becoming obvious by 1979 that the Middle East posed a potential source of long term conflict for our country, so long as we felt the need and the moral right to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs as a consequence of our dependency on foreign oil. It seems to me that that was what Carter was trying to warn us against. I believe that that was what he meant when he spoke of “… a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.” And what about when Carter spoke of “a turning point in our history” and the “two paths” we had to choose from? I believe that those points can be looked at specifically in terms of our growing dependence on foreign oil. When it comes to that issue, there are basically three alternatives: 1) Use much less oil – which would mean any or all of the following: Make do with less Develop alternative, renewable (and cleaner) sources of energy Develop policies that are much more energy efficient 2) Develop more domestic sources of oil 3) Use our military to control the oil of other countries Carter fully recognized the limitations of the 2nd and 3rd options. The second option was not realistic because we had already reached peak oil production in our country, and efforts to develop more would only lead to ever dwindling oil production at greater expense. And the third option was a formula for ever increasing military conflict, national debt, and a reputation as the world’s bully. It is quite clear that Carter greatly preferred option number 1 – and many actions of his presidency were directed in that direction. Carter was intensely criticized for his malaise speech. Conservatives criticized it because it asked the American people to limit their consumption and their military prowess, and even many liberals criticized it because it was so politically ruinous. I view it much differently. I believe that it was one of the most courageous speeches ever given by an American President. As Bacevich said, it helped to end Carter’s political career and earned him the ever-lasting hatred of many of the conservative leaders and war-mongers of our country. So perhaps it could be said that the speech was not politically astute. Perhaps it could be said that Carter overestimated the character of the American people. And certainly it could be said that the speech was a political disaster for Jimmy Carter. But what Carter attempted to do was to lead the American people to a greater sense of purpose and a better future – for themselves, for all of humankind, and for future generations. He failed in that regard. But it was a heroic effort. He gave it his best shot, and he paid the ultimate political price. The Reagan Presidency as the path that Carter warned us against One major effect of the Reagan Presidency was to lead our domestic policies in a much more conservative direction – more specifically, to start us on a course of systematically dismantling FDR’s New Deal. He accomplished that under false pretenses. He led Americans to believe that it was to their benefit, when in reality it benefited only a small minority of Americans, led to skyrocketing national debt, a rapidly widening wealth gap, and a continuing reduction in standard of living for most Americans. Bacevich describes Reagan’s basic foreign policy philosophy, especially with regard to Middle Eastern oil: If developments in the Persian Gulf could adversely affect the American standard of living, then control of that region by anyone other than the United States had become intolerable. Though Reagan, like Carter, bemoaned our escalating dependency on foreign oil, his approach to the problem was radically different. Bacevich explains: In practice, however, they did next to nothing to curtail that dependence. Instead, they wielded U.S. military power to ensure access to oil, hoping thereby to prolong the empire of consumption’s lease on life. In defense of his immense military spending, Reagan reassured Americans and the world: The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise. The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression – to preserve freedom and peace. Bacevich explains the long-standing consequences of ingraining this myth in the psyche of the American people: A new national security consensus emerged based on the conviction that the United States military could dominate the planet as Reagan had proposed to dominate outer space. In Washington, confidence that a high-quality military establishment, dexterously employed, could enable the United States, always with high-minded intentions, to organize the world to its liking had essentially become a self-evident truth. In this malignant expectation… lies the essence of the Reagan legacy. And just as Reagan effected a change in the American psyche, that change affected the long term foreign policy of the United States: Simply put, the United States would rely on military might to keep order in the Gulf and maintain the flow of oil, thereby mitigating the implications of American energy dependence. By the time that Reagan retired from office, this had become the basis for national security strategy in the region. Obama’s great challenge The American people in general, and Barack Obama as our new president, are now greatly burdened by this legacy. Bacevich places the dilemma in terms of the current day: That Americans might shake the habit by choosing a different course remains even today a possibility that few are willing to contemplate seriously. After all, as George H. W. Bush declared in 1992, “The American way of life is not negotiable.” With nothing negotiable, dependency bred further dependency that took new and virulent forms. Each of Reagan’s successors relied increasingly on military power to sustain that way of life. The unspoken assumption has been that profligate spending on what politicians euphemistically refer to as “defense” can sustain profligate domestic consumption of energy… Unprecedented military might could defer the day of reckoning indefinitely – so at least the hope went. How will Obama handle the current military expectations of our nation’s people? On the positive side of the ledger, Obama has proposed a comprehensive policy for developing alternative energy sources and improving energy efficiency. That is very encouraging indeed. I also see as very encouraging his early opposition to the Iraq War, and his stated intentions of withdrawing most of our military from Iraq as quickly as possible. Most encouraging of all, I firmly believe that, like Jimmy Carter, his heart is in the right place. But notwithstanding all of this, Obama has shown very little tendency to question the predominant American dogma on the use of our military – that we have the right to intervene any time anywhere in the world if our “interests” are at stake. It’s hard to fault him for that. It is quite possible that had he seriously questioned the prevailing American military paradigm during his presidential campaign, we would now be looking at 4-8 years of a McCain-Palin presidency. And undoubtedly, Obama will be under tremendous pressure not to change the prevailing paradigm. Yet, how good can an Obama presidency be if he fails to change current American attitudes towards the use of our military for imperial purposes? I think that if Barack Obama is to make a significant contribution in this area he will need to combine the morality and courage of a Jimmy Carter with superior political skills. The pressure that he would face in trying to do this would no doubt be extremely intense and ugly, and he would be taking a huge political risk. I have to admit that I have no idea how this is going to play out. I am hopeful, yet in view of the unimaginable obstacles, not at all convinced. Good luck to you, President Obama! |
A summary of my DU posts
Time for change  The good majority of my DU posts consist of one of six general subjects: The need to remove from office the current cancer upon our nation; election fraud; the tragedy of the Bush administration; my ideas on the liberal values that we all hope will some day replace the values that our current government runs on; historical events that I believe cast light upon our current situation; and other political ideas. The need to remove Bush and Cheney from office In 2006, John Conyers wrote a 198 page report, documented with 1,401 references, titled “The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance”. The title of his report reflected the primary reasons why George Bush and Dick Cheney must be removed from office: They have made a mockery of our Constitution – the foundation for the rule of law in our nation – by consistently violating it. Our Constitution, if we can keep it in fact and not just in name, makes our nation much more than just a democracy. By providing protections for minorities and the powerless, our Constitution adds civility, humanity, and decency to what could otherwise be a barbaric nation – democratic or not. Aside from the continuing damage that Bush and Cheney can do to our country in their remaining time in office, including their potential to involve us in ever expanding new wars, failing to remove from office the most lawless presidential administration in our history will set an awful precedent in our nation – a precedent for doing away with our Constitution. Providing in our Constitution a mechanism for impeachment and removal from office was of utmost priority to our Founding Fathers. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “When once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles…” Many arguments have been put forward against impeachment. This post answers those arguments. Some opponents of impeachment mistakenly advocate the view that the impeachment of public officials requires evidence of the commitment of an actual crime – and would not be justified by such things as gross violation of the public trust, corruption, negligence, or incompetence. Leaving aside the fact that such an interpretation would leave our nation subject to rule by people who would do great and possibly irreparable harm to it, the preponderance of evidence flatly contradicts that interpretation. Others claim that we don’t have enough evidence to proceed with impeachment. I argue here that the current evidence for impeachment is so abundant, arguing that we need more sets the impeachment bar at an absurdly high level. Others argue we don’t have the votes for impeachment – which implies that we must not bring individuals to trial until we have counted the votes, rather the using the trial to get the votes. Such an argument ignores the likelihood that votes will accumulate as Americans watch the impeachment trial and become intensely exposed for the first time to the many outrageous crimes of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it also ignores the fact that Senators who refuse to vote for conviction will probably be putting their seats in jeopardy. But perhaps the most urgent reason for moving to impeach Bush and Cheney as soon as possible is that their continuing refusal to be bound by the laws and the Constitution of our nation raises the spectacle that they may be planning a coup d’etat. Why else would they go to such lengths to destroy our Constitution and the rule of law in our nation? We must preempt them by moving as quickly as possible on this. Election fraud The DU apparently was born as a result of the 2000 November-December election fraud that began the long nightmare that is the George W. Bush administration. I went to bed on Election Day 2000, shortly after Bush was announced as our new President, feeling as if the end of world civilization was near at hand. My wife woke me up a couple hours later to tell me the good news that the announcement of Bush’s Presidency had been temporarily cancelled. Thus began a period of 36 days that I followed more intensely than any other news event of my life – ending in the infamous and disastrous Supreme Court decision that marked the beginning of our long road to dictatorship. My son (EOTE) joined DU in January 2001, a few days after it began, but I did not, for reasons that now escape me. I did, however, do a lot of writing about the 2000 election, including a desperate plea to my Maryland Senators, to please demand a real recount of the 2000 Florida vote. And I also contributed an article to DU on that subject, in my son’s name (I did not use my own name because I was a federal employee and I was afraid that I could get into trouble for writing such an article), in the spring of 2001. The fraudulent 2004 Presidential election is what brought me into DU. I had worked as a volunteer in the Kerry/Edwards campaign, I had followed the presidential polls obsessively, and by Election Day 2004 I was about as confident as I could be that John Kerry would be our next President. Thus, the reported results of that election were both profoundly disappointing and difficult for me to believe, as they were for the great majority of DUers. I immediately began an effort to acquire as many election statistics as I could, in a feverish and desperate attempt to prove that the election was a fraud, which I hoped would aid in its overturning. In late November I had my son post an analysis that I did of the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official election results (Note: My son supplied the title, which I feel is too strong, which you can see if you read the article). And finding that it was awkward to have my son post my articles, I joined DU a few days later. Since then I have posted dozens of election fraud related threads, a small number of the most important of which I have included in my journal. In particular, I have come to believe that the main mechanism by which the 2004 election was stolen was the massive and illegal targeted purging of Democratic voters in Ohio, especially in Cleveland. This thread contains a great amount of evidence to support that contention. In addition, I believe that there is good evidence that says that large numbers of votes in Cuyahoga County were deleted by its central tabulator, as explained in this thread, which also discusses an early 2006 partial audit of Cuyahoga County. And, I think that the death of Raymond Lemme, who while investigating Clint Curtis’ sworn allegations of vote switching computer programs, was found dead in a Georgia hotel room, just a couple weeks after telling Curtis that he had traced the corruption “all the way to the top”, is extremely suspicious to say the least. Here is my explanation of the controversy over the discrepancy between the 2004 exit polls and the official 2004 vote count. And here is a summary of several reasons I have written about for believing that the 2004 election was stolen. Finally, here are my ideas for preventing another stolen election in 2006 and 2008. The tragedy of the Bush administration The fake war on terrorism I believe that a crucial requirement for a good understanding of the Bush administration’s actions since September 11, 2001, is the realization that its “War on Terrorism” is nothing but a colossal fake. Only with that realization do numerous Bush administration characteristics and actions make sense, including: Its disinterest in Osama bin Laden; its great urge to rush into a war with Iraq at any cost; its utter contempt for international law and the rest of the world; its succession of no-bid contracts for its wealthy friends; its lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest of our citizens and corporations during ‘time of war’; the Dubai port deals; and, its attempt to turn our democracy into a dictatorship. With that in mind, I wrote in this post about the main reasons why I believe that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9-11 attacks. There are many reasons why I believe that now, but the initial and still most important reason is the utter failure of our military, the mightiest military that the world has ever known, despite repeated warnings and more than ample time on 9-11 itself, to protect its own capital city. Abuse of the human rights of prisoners for no apparent purpose To me, the most sickening and disgraceful aspect of the Bush administration’s “War on Terrorism” is its complete lack of concern for human rights, demonstrated among other ways by the indefinite confinement, without trial or even bringing of charges, of thousands of prisoners of war, and its frequent use of torture. I have discussed this issue in several OPs, starting with this one. Here I describe the issue as seen through the eyes of a U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain who had ministerial responsibilities for hundreds of our prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who witnessed the severe and daily abuse of his charges over a period of several months, and who eventually was imprisoned himself when it was felt that he was making too many waves over what he had seen. Here is my summary of what the great journalist Seymour Hersh had to say on this subject, based on his numerous high level sources. Jimmy Carter felt so strongly about this issue that he broke the unwritten rule against ex-Presidents criticizing sitting Presidents, with one of the most scathing attacks on this policy that I have ever seen. And Senator Richard Durbin was the victim of continued public verbal abuse from the right for daring to make public how our government was treating its prisoners. Lying us into war It is evident to most informed people that one of the biggest motivations for Bush's "War on Terror" was to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq. Seymour Hersh’s excellent account of how the Bush administration manipulated and twisted intelligence in order justify a preemptive war against Iraq is a must read for anyone who still supports this administration and thinks that the Iraq war was necessary. And as for Bush's excuse that we are now fighting that war for the benefit of the Iraqi people, Democrats should start talking about how the Iraqi people actually feel about us being in their country. Just how bad are Bush and his cronies and how much danger do they pose to American democracy? George w. Bush and his administration and fellow travellers in today's Republican Party are about as bad as they come. They are anti-science ignoramuses. They are chicken hawks. They have no consciences. They are torturers. They are cowards. They are evil. And I doubt that there are any moral boundaries beyond which they will not go to get their way. I think that in the interest of preserving our democracy, we should be aware of the similarities between the Bush administration and Hitler’s Nazis (which I wrote about even before the revelations about Bush’s warantless wiretapping), and understand that if we aren’t vigilant, yes it CAN happen here too. Moral values that separate us from today’s Republicans It makes me so mad to hear people ridicule what they consider to be “liberal values” and compare them unfavorably to the wonderful moral values of George W. Bush and his Republicans friends. In the vast majority of cases these people don’t even have a vague idea about what liberal values really are. They have simply been conditioned by our corporate media over several years or decades to believe that liberals encourage irresponsibility, are ‘soft’ on national defense and ‘law and order’, and are wild spenders. These ridiculous myths about liberals have in turn encouraged the Democratic Party to disavow the liberal label and in some cases to veer way to the right. I submit that, rather than running away from the liberal label we should be proud of it, and we should challenge those that seek to disparage it. And to further make this point I posted a tribute to several historical and current political leaders who have been unafraid to speak out loudly for what they believe in, and I suggested an answer to those Republican morons who accuse liberals of hating America. Let's take a look at some of the specific moral values that separate Democrats from Republicans: Republicans like to pretend that they're more moral than us because they're more "religious" Many of those who disparage liberals are fundamentalist Christians who repeatedly invoke the name of Jesus Christ, and who believe that the superiority of their moral values to those of liberals and Democrats is proven by their repeated references to Jesus. Don’t these people understand that Jesus was a liberal, whose moral values were much closer to those of the Democratic Party than to those of the Republican Party, with whom they align themselves and vote for? Isn't it an astounding paradox that the Republican Party has usurped for their own purposes one of the most liberal religious leaders in world history, while at the same time showing nothing but contempt for liberals and liberal principles? The movement for privatization of government functions One of the biggest threats to our democracy is the privatization movement. In the name of “freedom” and “self-reliance”, the leaders of this movement advocate the freedom of powerful corporations to destroy our environment and to run our elections, our schools, our social safety net programs, and our prison system, as well as every other program which has long been considered a legitimate function of government. The fact that government is elected by the people to serve public functions, whereas the purpose of private corporations is to make profits for their investors, is either totally lost on these people, or else they simply feel that the above mentioned programs should be run for profit rather than for service. Al Gore alluded to this issue in his great film, "An Inconvenient Truth", where he discussed the unholy alliance between government, private industry, and the press, whereby a corrupt government, in exchange for legal bribes from the industries they are supposed to control, propagates false information and policies that are favorable to those industries instead of the public that they are elected to serve. I discuss my own personal experience with that unholy alliance, where the FDA withdrew an about to be published scientific article I had written, under pressure from a manufacturer who stood to be economically hurt by the information in that article. The need for a free and independent press Another great threat to our democracy is the ownership of our country’s news media by a very small group of wealthy individuals who have strong ties to the Republican Party, and whose motivation in providing “news” is to maintain satisfaction with the status quo, rather than to report what is important and true. Two prime examples of corporate media shills and pseudo-journalists who pretend to be real journalists are Chris Matthews and Tim Russert. Bill Moyers explains how this situation threatens to destroy our democracy, and how this came about through the dismantling of rules and regulations which were meant to prevent the monopolization of our news. And Robert Parry explains why he started his web site to help combat the misinformation we get from our corporate media. Health care Liberals, and most other decent people, believe that people should be entitled to decent health care. That is why, prior to the "pro-life" administration of George W. Bush, infant mortality rate in the United States had been steadily declining for several decades. But shortly into the Bush administration, due to the starving of women and infant health programs for federal funds, infant mortality rate began a steady rise. Nor do Republicans care much about veterans' health, as indicated by the rejecting of this much needed veteran's health bill in the U.S. Senate by virtually a strict party line vote. An enquiring mind One of the many tricks that our corporate media uses to squelch alternative viewpoints is to label anyone who substantially disagrees with their “correct” version of the news as “conspiracy theorists”. Well, I have news for them. The views of us “conspiracy theorists” are usually much more closely aligned with reality than is most of the trash that we hear from the corporate news media these days, such as the stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which were used to justify our illegal preemptive invasion of that country. We “conspiracy theorists” believe that it is not only the right of American citizens to challenge the corporate news media story lines, but it is our responsibility as well, as good citizens who care about our country. The dignity of all human beings Perhaps the most important value held by liberals is a belief in the dignity of all human beings – hence the 19th century movement by liberals to abolish slavery. Here is one of my favorite stories on that subject. A summary And here is a post where I talk about all the major values that separate Democrats from Republicans. Historical events that help us understand our present Though there is little doubt that George W. Bush is by far the worst president we’ve ever had, our past history is at least partly responsible for preparing the way for this tragedy. The history of our nation is full of examples of failures to live up to our ideals. In addition to our long history of slavery and our near extermination of the Native American population of our present day country, we began a long history of overseas imperialism beginning in the late 19th Century. The long standing history of extreme hostility to socialism by the elites of our country has been responsible for much of this imperialism, as well as domestic repression against labor unions and others who would speak out against the status quo. The usurpation by our Executive Branch of the war making powers given to Congress by our Founding Fathers did not originate with George W. Bush. And the attitudes fostered by our long history of slavery are still with us today, especially in the areas of our country where slavery thrived for so long. Today, as the transgressions of George Bush and Dick Cheney threaten the existence of our nation as we know it, we would do well to recall how the German nation was led into tyranny more than six decades ago. The parallels between Hitler’s war on terror and George Bush’s war on terror are extraordinarily striking in my opinion. And the better able we are to recognize the danger, the more likely we are to take steps to prevent a similar fate. Political ideas Republicans have 3 great advantages in elections against Democrats, whereas the only advantage that the Democratic Party has is that its policies are meant to serve all Americans, rather than just the select few. In addition to electoral fraud and huge sums of money donated to the GOP by their corporate masters as legalized bribery, Democrats have to contend with a multitude of news media whores. But those advantages are not sufficient for a Party that has nothing of value to offer to our country. So, when we suggest investigation of their corrupt deeds they call us conspiracy theorists. When we suggest policies such as making basic affordable health care available to all Americans they accuse us of class warfare. And when we criticize the rampant corruption at the highest levels of government they accuse us of "hating America". And when none of that works they try to scare us by telling us that if we don't give them unlimited power over us we risk being killed by terrorists. If there was ever a presidential administration that needed to be impeached, this is it. Grass roots efforts are under way to accomplish this, and we can all help. Our Democratic leaders need to seriously consider and talk about this. And they must be united and avoid inter-party warfare. Profile Information Time for change
Visitor Tools
Use the tools below to keep track of updates to this Journal.
Discussion Forums
Big Forums
More Forums
Today's Featured Forums
|
