Le Sabot Post-Moderne

I'm not a huge fan of John Kerry's, and most of my life I've felt "liberal" was a dirty word. But G.W. Bush and his administration have so sullied the name of conservativism, trampling on the rights of innocent Americans, that I can honestly say,"If that's conservatism, let's give liberalism a try."

AutMom, a little historical perspective might be in order. Bush's conservatism is not all I would like it to be, either -- but the dirty little reality of American history is that elected conservatism has never had the ideological purity of its philosophical base. IOW, name me one American President or one time during which the dominant philosophy of congress even approached the kind of conservatism that us conservatives would actually like to see. It's always been more authoritarian and less pure than the pundits and scribblers would like.

Is this a happy thought? No. But I think it should temper our judgment of individuals. If we judge them against the absolute principles of conservatism, no actual, living, breathing person who has ever been elected to high office will ever qualify (or has ever qualified.) Better to judge them in terms of who *best* represents what we're looking for.

Autmom-

Let me start by saying, "What Pentamom says." As always.

Also, I'd be interested to hear more about Bush's trampling of civil rights. Without more specifics, it just sounds like a repetition of Democratic scare tactics. The kind that smeared John Ashcroft as some sort of Nazi hatemonger. In reality, he's a dedicated Evangelical Christian, and it's grievous to see how he's been slandered. It's funny how the civil libertarians are all a-tizzy about Ashcroft's alleged sins, but were strangely silent as Janet Reno ran roughshod. For me, remembering Reno helps put things in perspective.

"that I can honestly say,"If that's conservatism, let's give liberalism a try."

We really don't know each other well, and it may be that we just have different values or beliefs. Let me make sure I say very clearly that that's okay. The litmus test for friendship and smiles here at Le Sabot isn't political agreement with me, but expressing thoughts clearly and kindly. And you certainly meet that. :)

Tell me though, what do you mean when you say,honestly, "give liberalism a try"? What's your definition of liberalism and how does that match your own belief system?

If you're talking about Ashcroft getting slandered for his views on public morality, fair enough.

But as for specifics on his destruction of civil liberties, I'd say one is enough: how about a U.S. citizen, arrested on U.S. soil, being held for more than a year without access to a lawyer?

Oh wait, there's also the guy who's being prosecuted for holding up an anti-Bush sign not in the "free-speech zone," but in the area reserved for his supporters.

Oh yeah, and the numberous other restrictions on access to counsel.

Ashcroft may be an Evangelical Christian but frankly, I'd happily replace him with someone who has the common-grace ability to read the Constitution.

And I'll ignore your tu quoque attack on Reno, which is beneath you.

P.S. for AutMom - he's not kidding about the friendship thing. Hope you get the chance to meet him someday.

P.P.S. for Disco - AutMom's an old high-school friend of mine. Hope you get the chance to meet her someday!

First off, I must apologize for my statement, "let's give liberalism a try", that was a wee bit of hyperbole. As you get to know me you'll see that in my righteous anger, I can at times get a little fiery. But I wasn't kidding when I said that I am so disgusted with what conservatism has turned out to be.
As for the ways that W has made me ashamed of my registered Republican status (in no particular order)...

1) cronyism. Sure, as President he has the right to appoint whomever he feels most comfortable with as advisors. However, when those advisors' personal or financial interests shape public policy, that crosses the line. The fact that there are/have been no fewer than 3 former top executives from Eli Lilly as advisors in some capacity to Bush helps to explain the Eli Lilly rider to the Homeland Security Act, which I among other parents of autistic children tried, unsuccessfully, to have removed. Basically, in the wee hours before the House vote on the Homeland Security Act Dick Armey (R)'s office had a rider attached to the extremely popular legislation which almost no one would vote against. It made it illegal to sue Eli Lilly for damages if a product they created in the 1930's (thimerosal, also called merthiolate)and continue to market to this day caused brain damage.
A little history here: thimerosal is 49.6% mercury by weight. Mercury is a known neurotoxin. You have a spill in high school chemistry calss and the HazMat teams are called in. But every day thousands of infants, children and even fetuses (via the Rhogam and flu shots give to their mothers) are injected with vaccines that are preserved with thimerosal. When the number of vaccines administered was low, as in teh 1930's very few people suffered, such as the first 11 children in the world diagnosed with autism in 1943. But as new vaccines have been added to the recommended schedule over the years, including the addition of the Hep B and Hib vaccines in 91 and 92, the amount of mercury that children have received via their vaccinations has skyrocketed... and so have the rates of autism, all states reporting increases between 300% and 800% over the last 10 years. Further, the amount of mercury a child receives in just one thimerosal-preserved shot exceeds the EPA's safety limit for daily ingestion of mercury (0.1 mcg per kilogram of body weight). One dose of Hep B vaccine, typically administered in hospitals on the first day of life contained in the 90's and early 2000's 25 mcg of mercury. A 7 pound infant is roughly, what, 10 kilograms, and could therefore "safely" take in 1 mcg of mercury. Instead the child gets 25 mcgs. This is compounded at the 2 month shots, the 4 month shots, ad infinitum. By 1 year, the children who do not excrete mercury as easily as others (as demonstrated by Dr. Amy Holmes' work with autistic hair samples has shown) have acculumlated ridiculous amounts of mercury in their systems and despite having progressed normally developmentally, with the huge round of shots they receive at 1 year, some children's bodies can withstand the assault no longer and begin to show the classic signs of mercury poisoning, losing their speech and motor functions, and acquire erratic bizarre behaviors, such as head banging, and rocking. As the exposure to the excessive mercury increased, the number of children succumbing to autism has increased dramatically. And now that the science is catching up to what the parents knew all along, law suits are going forward. Parents, oddly enough, want compensation/revenge for their healthy children being made sick. And Eli Lilly is being hammered.
So we are back to Pres. Bush. That huge war chest he accumulated that vaulted him to the Presidency, the largest in history? It didn't come from a bunch of pacifist nuns. Some of it came from pharmaceutical companies, such as Eli Lilly, and others who manufacture vaccines that use thimerosal. These companies made sure that they were not forgotten. The Eli Lilly rider was added in the wee hours of the night, after House Reps had received a copy of the previously un altered bill, they had debated it and they had decided how to vote on it. All that remained was for them to show up to work in the morning and vote on it, which they did. Only after the fact did they realize that soemthing had been added. Autism advocates in the House, like Dan Burton of Indiana were furious. But, you say, how can you attriubute this to Bush, Dick Armey is the one who put it in the bill? He didn't do it alone. Despite Armey's going on the 700 Club show and proclaiming to Pat Robertson and other Christian cheerleaders that he was not sorry for this sneaky move, saying he'd do it again to protect the vaccine maufacturers who we all so desperately need (gag), this was a move clearly orchestrated by the President, no doubt to pay back his dear friends at Eli Lilly. When the bill came befroe the Senate a few days later, the troops had mobilized. Parents of vaccine injured children were calling/emailing/faxing their Senators tirelessly, and summoning all their friends and family to do the same, begging them to have the guts to remove the Eli Lilly rider or else vote no on something as seemingly deserving as the Homeland Security Act. I know, I was one of them. President Bush made calls the night before the vote to Republican Senators, to ensure they knew he wanted the Eli Lilly rider left in tact. It stayed and was voted on and it passed. My Republican Senators did not listen to the cries of their constituents. The President felt he owed more to Eli Lilly than to millions of Americans affected by autism and mercury related illness.
There are plenty more stories of cronyism all over the news, most recently Cheney going hunting with Justice Scalia despite him having a case before the Supreme Court. Can you imagine any other judge spending the weekend with any other defendant - and refusing to recuse himself?! I but I weary of point A, on to point B.

b) the weakening of environmental standards. Now, as a Republican, I've made my share of tree-hugger jokes. But as I grow older, and learn more, I find that those who scorn the environment as a valid issue because of the outlandish behavior of a few braless, pot-smoking freaks do us all a disservice. Bush claimed his Christian faith when refusing to allow federal funds for stem-cell research and this is good. He further claims his faith for his pro-life stance, this too is good. He claims that he prays daily, and has a relationship with God and Jesus. Bully for him. So why does he find it so difficult to follow one of God's earliest commands to man, to care for the earth? If he had simply left all environmental standards alone, I could say he did no worse than to leave things as they were, and however bad status quo might have been. I couldn't have said he acted agressively to damage the earth. But since day 1 this man has tried to weaken environmental standards that are there to protect not just the earth but its inhabitants (us)! In the earliest months of his presidency he called for the levels of allowable arsenic in drinking water to be raised to what they were in the 1940's. Tell me, what good does it do us as a nation to allow more arsenic in our water? What good do billions of dollars invested in the NIH do if we are only to take what science teaches us and throw it out the window? Arsenic is a poison! Laws have been passed over the last decade banning it from use as a pesticide on wood because some of that wood would then be used to build play structures for children who would somehow ingest the arsenic in the wood (mouthing? splinters?). And now we want to INCREASE the amount in our drinking water? Who does this help? Oh yes, industry. You see, it much easier and cheaper to dump the arsenic that is a by-product of whatever it is you produce into the drinking water supply than to dispose of it properly. And the people this most affects are many American families who cannot afford to buy bottled water. Once again, Bush's friends/financial supporters, 1; American public, 0. I don't think this is what God had in mind when he gave us dominion over the earth. Along these same lines, Bush has also tried to get the EPA to raise the "safe" levels of various other toxins. The man literally is poisoning us. I see a strange parallel here. Didn't we just oust a guy who poisoned his own people? How is this different? Oh yes, we're dying more slowly, suffering illness along the way. That's makes it so much better.
3) Iraq. He lied. Hundreds of American boys and girls have died because he lied. Thousands of Iraqis, most innocent bystanders, have died because he lied. We now know, thanks to Paul O'Neill's book, that the Bush Administration was 10 days old when he first suggested regime change in Iraq, thus the "War on Terror" spin is a disgrace to all the Americans who died or survive as widows/orphans on 09/11. Hussein was a bad man whom no one will miss. But it wasn't up to Bush to spend American tax dollars and American lives to settle a score between the President's daddy and Hussein. To use the rightful war on terror to justify this sham war is horrific. To lie to justify it is horrific. (And I think God doesn't like lying anymore than abortion or stem-cell research.) He lied to serve his own purposes, and now we have to foot the bill to rebuild a country we should never have destroyed.
4) grandstanding. To use images of our fallen firefighters on 09/11, against the stated wishes of their widows, in his campaign ads is atrocious. I don't care how well you thought he handled 09/11, which I,at first, thought he did pretty well with until he got sidetracked with Iraq, that's using a national tragedy for personal gain. He's like a rich kid who thinks others exist soley for his benefit.
5)And now for the civil liberties issue. Gee, where to begin. First let me recommend a website:
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/electionsecurity.html. Bill Moyers show "NOW" hs done a good job of covering some of this Administration's actions regarding civil rights. There's a lot to read on this one page alone, several valuable links to the ways gov't is trampling on people's rights from pretty much disregarding the Freedom of Information Act, to allotting $8 million of the $87 billion rebuilding Iraq fund to provide "security" for a Free Trade meeting (read: police macing senior citizens and other peaceful protestors).
And I'll ditto Liberal Media's mention of Guantanomo Bay. Since when to we say that if a crime was horrific enough, and you are the same race and/or religion as those involved, we can do away with your rights?
Then there's Ashcroft subpeonaing (sp?) the records of hundreds of women who've had abortions. Again, let me clarify my pro-life views. Human life begins at conception, science bears this out. But medical records of ANY kind are private. I don't care if he's subpeonaing records of diabetic amputees, medical records are private. End of story. Ever since the Patriot Act took effect I've had to sign new releases at my son's doctors' and speech therapists' offices. I've had to sign away my son's right to privacy with regards to the gov't. As someone who has chosen to stop vaccinating her children, and how the Homeland Security Act provides for the involuntary forcible vaccination of the population at the whim of the DHHS, I worry about how his medical records might be used. It's just one more right we are accustomed to that has been quietly eroded. Ugh, I wish I'd started with this one because I have so much to say, but this post is already way too long and I'm way too tired. But here's some info, take it or leave it. It's why I'd vote against Bush even if the Democrats had nominated Mickey Mouse.

I couldn't go to bed without wrapping this up right.
6)Tax-n-spend isn't just for Democrats anymore. For years I heard about how bad the Democrats were for taxing us and spending our money, and how a Republican President couldn't get anything accomplished because of that darned Democratic Congress. Then it was the darned Democratic President thwarting the good and holy Republican congress. Finally we get a Rep. congress and Pres and what do they do? They go to town spending... but not taxing. So basically they have taken the checkbook and written checks without making any deposits. When I do that, my bank gets mad. As co-owners of the American pocketbook we should demand that our President not spend beyond our means. It jsut goes to show that Republicans will spend just like the Dems, we simply have different pet causes.

And to Disco - I hope this doesn't come off as me insulting you personally. I simply have a different perspective, but one that any thinking person could appreciate I think. And much of my animosity toward Reps comes from problems at the state level, Reps trying to cut funding to those receiving services for the developmentally disabled (read: my son), and refusing to meet with, or talk to, their constituents about it. But you live and you learn, and you do what you can to change the wrongs of the world, right? It's all in your perception of what's wrong! :)

And Lib Media - thanks for admitting you even know me! But don't go calling me "old" anymore! :) Next time I'm in Eastern Europe, maybe you, me and Disco can get together and talk about the things we agree on! Do y'all have Starbucks over there?

No Starbucks, yet. But TLM has offered to bring me some tortillas, (muchas gracias!) and so maybe we could all have a night of Tex-Mex and Pina Coladas and talk it all out. . .

Lib-

Thanks for the kind words. :)

Autmom-

I really appreciate the full responses. I want to show you the same consideration, but it's 1 am and I'm completely knackered. I'll write you up an answer or three manana. See you soon!