On that morals and values question...
Posted By: sm on 2008-11-06
In Reply to: This is a very good post, but - Morals and beliefs gone.
May I point out one way that Emanuel is most definitely NOT left wing liberal. On the issue of Israel, he is more to the right than even Bush is. To be honest, the idea of his being Chief of Staff to Obama is concerning for me in THAT regard. However, that post is a very broad one and I do not pretend to know precisely what Obama's motivations may be for considering him. What I do know is that Emanuel is only one voice in many that Obama will be listening to. I have not heard that Emanuel has accepted the position but I know that he has expressed his passion for the legislative branch, has his eye on the Speaker's position and has personal considerations of being the father of small children. This is in the wait and see mode. I feel I do not have enough information on him yet and am trying not to focus on what I consider to be a strong negative about him.
In terms of your fear, I will gently suggest to you that you might try broadening your base of information sources beyond O'Reilly, if you haven't already done that. It is not surprising that Bill O's guests are calling Obama a puppet. I hear none of that anywhere else but Fox. As difficult as it may be, a good dose of balance AND extreme viewpoints may be helpful in this respect. I hold my nose quite often and listen to Rush Limbaugh (ugh), Bill O and Hannity, though I confess I have a pretty low tolerance to them. I also tune into Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty, Joe Scarborough (not terribly fond of him either), Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Naomi Klein and innumerable independent journalists. I find that approach very effective in soothing the fear factor and to be much more engaging.
You may be right to a certain extent about the morals and values. We are not living in the same world and our nations best interests will not be best served if we try to pretend we are. That is what the dynamics of change is all about. As a species, human beings have survived BECAUSE of their capacity to adapt to change. The internet and free trade act has transformed our country into a vital component of a global economic and cultural system. We must now take on the task of defining what role we want to assume within that context. The diversity of our nation's culture can remain a point of contention and division, or it can become a new source of our strength and pride. This choice is ours to make and I believe this election has been a mandate on where the younger generations stand on this issue. After all, they are the ones who have grown up in the midst of these population dynamics.
In this respect, it seems that our most basic and cherished values and beliefs do manage to endure as a nation, and what does not can always be elaborated in how we lives our personal lives. In the past, as a country we have managed to survive quite well during "liberal years." However, that is not what I believe is in store for us now. Whatever tectonic shifts we have undergone in the past (and we have had our share), never once have we been able to negotiate them against a backdrop of a house divided, as gourdpainter pointed out earlier. We unite, we rise to the occasion and we get past it.
I think part of our peek into the future will inevitably require us to place much more focus on new energies and phase out our dependence and relentless and, at times, fatal search for fossil fuel resources. I cannot think of a better way to diffuse the power that those "not so friendly nations" hold over us now. Jobs do not necessarily have to come from the oil patch and there are alternatives to trying to drill our way out of these problems as T. Bone Pickens so eloquently reminded us recently. Any new jobs creation will have that domino effect you describe.
Obama hardly is a one-issue candidate (tax) the way Bill O would have you believe. I will not spend my time trying to promote the president-elect, except to say you may find some comfort in at least reading his Blueprint for Change, whether you trust him to carry it out or not. He has put this is writing and no doubt the media and the electorate will be holding his feet to the fire with those words and promises. So it looks like we are back to wait and see again.
BTW, a good antidote to fear is hope and faith....and that does not necessarily mean Obama style hope. Being hopeful and drawing strength from faith is also a very personal choice one makes in life. It is not that hard to talk yourself into a more positive attitude. Just talk the talk and walk the walk and pretty soon, it becomes second nature.
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Like I said.......this man has no morals.....
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Then there would be no morals
Just a lot of contradicting dictators with their own ego agenda.
Your morals are not everyone's morals.
What is so hard to understand about that? You think that everyone should behave exactly the way you want them to behave, believe whatever you want them to believe, and act however you want them to act. The last time I checked, this was still a free country. Stop trying to impose your beliefs on others.
No morals is what's going
in our country. Drugs, same-sex "marriage," abortion, taking God out of every conversation. When drug use is commonplace, when people of the same sex demand "marriage" and affirmation, when you are allowed to dispose of your unborn children, when using God's name is illegal, what do you expect? To many people, children are dispensable at any age.
I definitely don't base it JUST on morals
I guess I should have been more elaborate on that. And you are completely right, most presidents change their tune after they get into the white house. I feel like we are almost gambling when we vote, who will change less?
Honestly, if we could take the candidates and even the VPs and just mush them into one candidate, I think we would be flying pretty high.
I think my biggest fear right now is that myself and a lot of people I know are one step from losing our homes and standing in the breadline. I Get upset that my husband and I both work extremely hard to keep what we have (which isn't much) but that we can't seem to get any assistance whatsoever. Yet someone can have seven kids and never work a day in her life and be taken care of. Do I think this will change? No. I feel like the middle class in the economy is a lot like "the middle child" in a family - often forgotten about, but expected to behave anyways.
On religion, check out my reply to Kaydie. I've written a short summary of a part of the book I mentioned to her in response to you saying that Jesus was a highly evolved human being (I used to believe the same thing)
Josh Mcdowell puts it like this: either Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.
If he spent his life telling everyone that he was the Son of God and getting people to believe and follow him and he knew that he wasn't, then he was a liar. But the question poses, can someone that evil hearted (remember a lot of his disciples left there homes, family, jobs, etc to follow Him and were even killed defending His name) never do wrong? See I believe that there were enough people that hated Jesus that after he died if someone tried to talk about how great he was they would have been writing about ANYTHING wrong he did if they knew that he did. We would have heard about it.
Lunatic - If he did all this not knowing that he was being deceptive, and he really believed that he was the Son of God, then he had to be crazy. But this is crazy to the tenth power. Most lunatics who believe they are something else believe they are something tangible, such as a dog or a butterfly or another human. To believe that your the Son of God (remember, there was no Son of God in history before him, so it's not like it was a term thrown around or an unoriginal idea) is very unlikely. Not to mention how eloquent of a speaker Jesus was and how he was so easily able to explain things.
Lord - If Jesus was neither a liar or a lunatic, then he must be who he says he is - Lord, the Son of God. And since the Son of God cannot sin, he cannot lie, which means when he says "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father EXCEPT by me" then he must not be lying.
Josh Mcdowell explains this a lot better than I can (that's why he's a PhD and I'm an MT! :-D ) but in case you never get to check out his book, I just wanted to give a recap. It helped me make my decision that he is Lord, because for a long time I wanted to believe that he was just "a great man" or "a great teacher" but I feel now that it was so rude of me to say that of someone who personally died for me.
Just my ideas! Thanks for giving me yours! It's nice to be able to talk back and forth about this without anyone getting upset! :-D
My morals are my business.
I am not interested in discussing my morals, especially with people who are trying to shove their morals and their religion down my throat. That's the whole point of my post. Keep your moral and religious beliefs to yourself!
Define morals.......
Your definition might not match mine.......That's why God gave us free will.
yeah well America's morals have changed
interracial marriages used to be illegal. One day we ill look upon the ban against gay marriage to be as rediculous of a notion as not allowing blacks to go to school with whites. The times, they are a changin!
YES, I most certainly would if it meant sacrificing my morals, my soul, hurting.....sm
other people everywhere, and basically being a cut-throat sleeze. I would love if I could get rich honestly, with integrity. I would love to provide the best educations for my children, give to charities, pay off my two sisters' mortgages for them, etc., but it is NOT going to happen, so it is a moot point. A person can be "rich and prosperous" without a large bank account, I feel I am rich indeed for my blessings.
What values do liberals have?
While at a pro bush rally I knew I was surrounded by people who generally agreed with my morale values. I knew these people were pro life, believed in god, loved America, believed all nations and people deserved freedom, and finally supported our troops. I thought if the liberals generally disagree with the conservatives moral compass what do they believe?. They support the killing of children in there mothers womb, they have on many occasions attempted to rid god from the publics view, they opposed liberating the people of Kuwait and Iraq, and are quick to call our brave troops who would die for our nation war criminals.
Liberal values?
You asked about the values of liberals, so here goes ... at least from this liberal's perspective. I value people's inherent ability to make decisions about their own lives, barring medical issues preventing same (i.e., mental incapacity). I live by the Golden Rule. I value the choice for people to practice whichever faith they choose ... or none at all ... and really mean it! I accept people and their differences from the "norm". I believe 2 consenting adults with the required mental capacity should be allowed to marry - with no litmus test. And I sure don't care what people do in their own bedrooms as long as it is between consenting adults. Most importantly, I value the principles set forth by the Constitution of the United States since, first and foremost, I am an American.
That about sums it up. I hope it helps!
Our Endangered Values
By Jimmy Carter. A MUST READ.
In reading the book, I was reminded of the saying that people don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. In this Carter succeeds. That said, don't pick up a copy of the book expecting to find well reasoned positions backed with unambigous references to reliable data and statistics.
In Our Endangered Values, Carter describes a set of American values: equality, liberty, justice for all, individual empowerment, inclusion, generosity, forgiveness, and leadership by example. This is framed by a narrative which is personal and focused on people finding common ground on which to build a better tomorrow.
These values are then contrasted against what is described as a general trend toward fundamentalism. The fundamentalism Carter argues against is not the adherance to a literal interpretation of secular texts, but the practice of intolerance regarding people of differing beliefs.
Intolerance, he argues, becomes particularly dangerous where people choose to recognize their leaders and institutions as masters rather than servants. Such leaders and their institutions tend to combine their beliefs and intolerance into agendas which exclude, dehumanize and punish.
From there, it is just a hop, a skip, and a jump to a laundry list of ways in which the actions of recent administrations and highly visible religious leaders are tipping the balance toward fundamentalism and endangering the values he holds dear.
In summary, it is well worth reading, and is relatively light reading at that. Some reviewers have come down fairly harshly on the book for religious and/or political grounds. I think they miss the point. Carter isn't mandating that you subscribe to his beliefs. He is asking you to look for common ground and tolerate the differences.
Speaking of values
Golly how many times are you going to bring this up about Clinton like it is truly important in the problems our world faces? It's like you are completely nutso about this, over and over and over and over and over and over and over......wow!
I think it is terrifying and heart-wrenchingly sad that with the genocide, starvation, astounding poverty globally PLUS this war we have created with how many hundreds of thousands of civilians killed including babies, pregnant women, children plus the US dead and countless with TBI and amputations....that the thing that you totally obsess over is Clinton and his sex and his lie to the court over something that should never have gone to court in the first place. JFK would have been in deep you-know-what had he ever been brought to task for his philandering....and he probably would have covered things up, too.
How pathetic that this nation is more interested in sex scandals than the multitude of catastrophic problems facing our population on this planet. It shows how shallow and value-less we can be.......impeaching someone over sex.....how about impeaching someone over the death of 1/2 a million people for dubious reasons and political gain.....
family values
She was left unsupervised at a very critical age (like the Down baby will be) and did not receive enough parental guidance to prevent this tragedy.
family values
Barack and Michelle have been married for years with not a hint of scandal. they have two beautiful age-appropriate children. Joe Biden has a beautiful blended family that truly loves each other. McCain dumped his gravely injured first wife for a beauty queen. Then he was pressured into picking another beauty queen with an Down infant who obviously needs a full time mother and pregnant teenager for his running mate. Family values, family values, family values.
So you are saying now that they have NO family values because their...
daughter is pregnant and not married? Are you REALLY saying that?
Nobody's forcing their values on you.
Nobody's making you to become gay. Nobody is forcing an abortion on you. Nobody is compelling you to join their church. Nobody insists you drive a Honda. I won't tell you what books to read. You can listen to any music you like. Nobody's requiring you to do anything, not even give your permission. If you think what you have is diminished by someone else having it as well, that's rather.... infantile.
Yeah...that and family values!
Because Bennett's *values* match their own.
They must be very confused by the WH's response. Probably don't know what they're allowed to *think* about this.
My hunch, based on their own posts, is that at this moment in time, they'd all vote for Bennett because his inner prejudices and hatred match their own.
Then how come so many are being found out? What was that again about moral values? nm
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Bush Family Values
Bush Family Values
MICHAEL DONNELLY | September 8 2006
It's astonishing to see how desperate our homegrown fascists have become. The entire cabal is in full-on media blitz mode with Rummy, Dick and Theodosius, er, Bush slamming their foreign opponents with the latest absurd tag Islamic Fascists; and, their domestic ones as Nazi appeasers. Or, in the deranged mind of Condi Rice; domestic opponents are tantamount to folks who would have stopped the Civil War and allowed slavery to continue in the South.
It's not just desperate; it's monumentally moronic, given the real history. This bizarre trip on the Wayback Machine demands a deeper look--though don't look to the mainstream media. Given the opening, one would think that everyone by now would be fully informed that the Bush Family took Nazi appeasement to far greater heights and were actually part of an American faction of documented Nazi SUPPORTERS.
We're also unlikely to see much mainstream media analysis of the new Islamic Fascist branding of those opposing the Empire's designs on the Middle East. As Sir Winston Bush gets a media pass as he tries to conflate fascism, communism and Islam while also trying to ironically tie his criminal wars to WWII and the Cold War, it warrants our own trip on the Wayback Machine to see just what the Bush family was doing during those earlier good wars.
Samuel Bush: arms merchant
George W. Bush's great-grandfather, Samuel Bush was charter member of the military/industrial complex. In 1918, he was chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section for the War Industries Board, with oversight responsibility for Percy Rockefeller's Remington Company. Rockefeller had helped get Bush's son, Prescott into Yale and Skull and Bones in 1916.
A 1926 Senate Munitions Inquiry (the Nye Committee) into the military/industrial complex's WWI windfall examined Samuel Bush's dealings with Remington as part of his War Industries Board duties. Virtually ALL of the records of Samuel Bush's efforts were destroyed by the National Archives to save space.
Prescott Sheldon Bush; George Herbert Walker: Nazi collaborators
George W. Bush's grandfather, former Connecticut Senator Prescott S. Bush was a Wall Street banker with Brown Brothers Harriman. (Averill Harriman was also instrumental in getting young Prescott into Yale and S&B.) Bush's maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker was the bank's first president. Walker built the famed Bush family estate at Kennebunkport on Walker Point. Prescott Bush joined W. A. Harriman & Company in 1926 and became its CEO.
Harriman Bank was the official Nazi financial conduit in the US. Closely tied to Fritz Thyssen, who proudly claimed in his 1941 book I Paid Hitler that he was the Nazi Party's first and greatest financial backer. The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a subsidiary of Harriman created by Walker and it was used for Nazi financial matters. Thyssen provided 100,000 gold marks ($10 million in today's dollars) to the Nazis in 1923 just prior to Hitler's failed putsch. By 1941, UBC held a private Nazi stash of over $3,000,000 ($36 million in today's dollars) in its New York vaults.
After the war, a Treasury Department investigation reported that during the two years after the Stock Market crash; Thyssen dedicated his fortune and his influence to the single purpose of bringing Hitler to power. In 1932, he arranged the now famous meeting in the Düsseldorf Industrialists' Club, at which Hitler addressed the leading businessmen of the Ruhr and the Rhineland. At the close of Hitler's speech, Thyssen cried, `Heil Herr Hitler'. By the time of the German elections later that year, Thyssen had succeeded in eliciting contributions to Hitler's campaign fund from all of the big industrial combines. He himself is reported to have spent 3,000,000 ($30 million today) marks on the Nazis in 1932 alone.
During 1933 Thyssen served as intercessor between von Hindenburg, von Papen, and Hitler. He brought them together at a secret meeting which laid the basis for the appointment of Hitler as Reichschancellor.
It was Thyssen, not Prescott Bush as some now claim, who was called Hitler's Angel by the New York Herald Tribune. He later fled Germany in 1939.
Even though Hitler had declared war on the US, it was still legal for UBC to conduct finances for the Nazis. But, after Pearl Harbor that outrage finally changed. After another ten months of Bush/Harriman/UBC work for the Nazis; in November 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, all of the Harriman business interests were seized by the government, including UBC.
The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war and then quickly returned. Prescott Bush' interest in UBC consisted of One Share--worth $1,500,000 ($19 million in today's dollars) at the time UBC was disbanded in 1951. (The Harriman family garnered $4 billion!) It was the money used to start the Bush Family Texas oil empire.
Another Harriman subsidiary through Silesian Holding Co.; Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation saw the Harriman-Bush group owning one-third of a complex of steel making, coal-mining, and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland. The other two-thirds were owned by Wehrwirtschaftsführer (Military Economy Leader) Friedrich Flick. Silesian Holding Company's president was George Walker and its sole directors were Prescott Bush and Averill Harriman.
Silesian Steel used slave labor from Auschwitz (even before the concentration camp was built there) in its coal, iron and zinc mining operations. At Nuremberg, Flick was sentenced to seven years for Silesian's role in building up the Nazi war machine. Harriman, Bush and Walker were never charged.
June 14, 1940, nine months after the Nazis conquered Poland, the IG Farben Company opened an Auschwitz factory and slave labor camp in occupied Poland, to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. This was done in a partnership with Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (EXXON).
The millions made off the labor of hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims were inherited by William S. Farish III, grandson of William S. Farish, the head of the IG/Standard cartel. Farish III is George H.W. Bush's best friend and the person who took over Bush's assets and managed them in a blind trust after Bush was elected vice-president.
Investigator John Loftus has said, As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman to be prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany.
I've yet to take the Wayback Machine back to investigate Rice's whopper that decrying the carnage of the U.S. Civil War meant supporting leaving Slavery in place. But, I'm pretty certain that the same unsavory links to what John Trudell calls, the colonial industrial class were just as odious in the 1860s.
Clinton and his party's values?
You refer to a morally bankrupt Clinton and his PARTY. I assume you mean the Democrats, all guilty by association. So then am I to draw the same conclusion that you believe that Foley and his party are also morally bankrupt?
I believe you have another post also generalizing the Democrats as all being sleazy, for lack of a better word. Perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am wrong.
Despite being a liberal, I feel that Foley is not representative of his party's values in general.
Those small-town values are
EXACTLY what the big bad world needs to take it on. Resolute, firm in beliefs, freedom, country first.
Sex, Drugs and Oil - How's that for Family Values????
Oil man in office - SURPRISE!!!!
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/news/economy/oil_officials.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008091015
What a hypocrit! Family values?
You think a man who has no problem with a baby left to die after a botched abortion has values of any kind?
Left to die in a bucket? Maybe you need to ask yourself what his true family values really are.
No, some of us have values and common sense.
nm
The "family values" party?
In one neighborhood in Los Angeles last night, every car and home that had an Obama bumper sticker or yard sign was spray painted with swastikas, racial slurs, and other messages of hate. Very similar to what is posted on this board by the rabid, right-wing, Bible-thumping Republicans. If racial intolerance, fire and brimstone, and seething hate is what "family values" is all about, count me out!!
Yes, this is sad. But hardly the core of *right wing* values. Puleeze. nm
.
Better McCain....at least he has basic American values still...
Obama is a radical socialist and that is the "change" he is talking about, and he "hopes" he can hoodwink America into buying that "change." And it looks like he is doing a pretty good job. Just be careful what you ask for...he has started already applying is black liberation theology plank of economic parity...redistribution of wealth. He has promised to do that. Windfall profit tax on oil companies (which will do NOTHING to bring prices down, will in fact send them up) and redistribute that income to people who did nothing to earn it. That is the opposite of what has made America great. I should not be surprised that so many believe him...but I am.
I do not think there will be anything negative from family values voters...
I do not believe they will react negatively to this. What kind of man would McCain have been to decide not to choose her just because her daughter was pregnant and not married. What if she was pregnant and married? This whole thing just reeks. Like Obama said...children should not be involved in politics and this will not affect her ability to function as governor or as vice president. At least one on the left is being decent about this.
Not swooning, just genuine family values.
Haven't seen those in Washington for a very long time. The family is beautiful, in my opinion. In fact, the more I read statements like yours, the more beautiful they become. Someone sounds jealous. Sad. 
Yet if the "religious family-values party"
had tried to hide her or condemn her you all would have been all over that too.
Everyone makes mistakes, God says to love them anyways. Get over it.
Either way, it makes the family values party look bad.
Hiding it would have caused a major uproar, and giving them a standing ovation made the family values party look absolutely ridiculous. Using Sarah Palin's children as props throughout the campaign, made the entire Republican party look bad!
Who cares if he has family values and loves this country!
Obama values life of babies AND their mothers.
I am not in the habit of debating with brick walls, but I will address your issue directly just as soon as you come up with something that will convince me that McCain's air quotes demontrate high regard for human life. Kill the mom, save the baby, then watch while it pulls itself up by its bootstraps, lest we turn our beloved country into a welfare state. P-U.
Obama is criminally naive. "Upholding our values
Umm...and just who was being waterboarded prior to 9/11, Mr. Obama? Or, putting it more precisely, we know now from the 9/11 Commission that the attack on that day was in the making long before Bush even took office. So which of the numerous values that Clinton violated was it that led to that event?
Pathetic reasoning - a crime against your office, in fact. You obviously do not know the first thing about either terrorists or terrorism - or else you think we don't.
Impeach Obama now. Unfit to serve.
Obama is criminally naive. "Upholding our values
Umm...and just who was being waterboarded prior to 9/11, Mr. Obama? Or, putting it more precisely, we know now from the 9/11 Commission that the attack on that day was in the making long before Bush even took office. So which of the numerous values that Clinton violated was it that led to that event?
Pathetic reasoning - a crime against your office, in fact. You obviously do not know the first thing about either terrorists or terrorism - or else you think we don't.
Impeach Obama now. He is utterly unfit to serve.
Isn't the party line "good christian moral values" or something like that? sm
If they are going to espouse all that good moral values stuff, the least they could do would be to acknowledge it in their own loves. The GOP won the election (supposedly) on the stand that they would bring back all that good value bullcrap to government. So, I guess we're seeing it now, huh?
Marital Fidelity and Family Values in Republican Candidates?
Should cut both ways, shouldn't it?
I'm providing the link to the article because I run the risk of posting profanity if I copy what some of these Republicans did, and as we all know, the words describing the deed is unacceptable, although the deed itself will be defended in Neoconville, as long as it's done by a Republican.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.benen.html
Lying and the Culture of Life. What Moral Values by Junaid Alam...sm
Lying and the Culture of Life
What Moral Values?
By M. JUNAID ALAM
Strong moral values, decency, propriety, and honesty: conservatives long ago declared these ideals essential to their belief system, achieving political ascendancy with promises of restoring honor to a government they view as tainted by liberal immorality and excess.
A fine notion, indeed, but one question lingers: what happened?
Barely a year into Bush's second term, the American political landscape is brimming with blatant examples of conservative deceit, dishonesty, cronyism, and hypocrisy.
Foremost among these examples is Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's right-hand man, who has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements before a grand jury. Not that this is cause for embarrassment among conservatives--indeed, many are relieved, pointing out that Libby is in trouble only for lying. It seems conservative standards on morality have slipped a bit.
Of course, the Libby indictment is but the tip of the beast's horn. The larger case is about a vengeful administration that was bent on destroying an undercover CIA agent's career by leaking her name because her husband, Joseph Wilson, also a CIA agent, challenged shoddy evidence buttressing the case for war in Iraq.
Let us forget for a moment the value of simple honesty. Let us forget also the importance of not undermining the nation's intelligence services when one's entire platform is national security.
What does this event tell us about the oft-invoked conservative call to respect the culture of life, so often invoked in abortion debates? Let us not pander to fools: this war was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, based on manifest lies and exaggerations. Therefore, can anyone seriously claim that this administration showed even the slightest respect for the lives of the 2,000 American soldiers, or the lives countless Iraqi civilians now lost to the war's horrors? Most intriguing, then, is this culture of life--a culture which champions life when it does not yet exist, and abandons it when it does.
Surely, however, could the Republican Party not redeem itself through its philosophy of Christian compassion? Apparently not. Congressional testimony two weeks ago revealed that when FEMA's sole representative in New Orleans--who was there only accidentally--found thousands of Americans stranded without food or shelter during the hurricane, he issued a desperate call for help to FEMA chief Michael Brown. Brown's aide replied--several hours later--with the following instructive example of compassionate conservatism in action: It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. The locale of choice? Baton Rouge. Marie Antoinette would have been impressed.
Equally impressive is the Republican Party's idea of taking responsibility and not blaming others--a key conservative tenet--in the case of Tom Delay, the House majority leader indicted for pouring corporate money into Texas' 2002 state elections, which saw the reconfiguration of the state's congressional districts along even more pro-Republican lines. Censured three times in 2004 alone by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, Delay nonetheless views the indictment as a kind of vast left-wing conspiracy, calling the prosecutor an unabashed partisan zealot. Heaven forbid.
It goes without saying that Republican contrition for any of the outrages outlined above is unlikely: the arsonists are running the firehouse, and they take great pride in fanning the flames.
We would be sorely remiss, however, if we ignored the role of the Democrats in this affair. They have sat on their firehoses and idled their fire engines on key issues, enabling Republican misbehavior to go unchecked. Most Democrats, it must be remembered, voted in favor of granting Bush unprecedented war powers. And it was the liberal New York Times, with its neo-con pseudo-journalist Judith Miller at the helm, who led the drumbeat procession to invade Iraq based on the thinnest of lies.
Naïve liberal Democrats were also quite pleased to see conservatives break ranks during the Harriet Miers debacle, taking it as a sign of some kind of impending right-wing implosion. They apparently forgot the basic fact that it was the far right--not what passes for the left--that tore apart Miers' chances for judicial confirmation. Now, a staunch conservative, Alito, has been nominated and the implosion has disappeared into thin air. As usual, we can soon count on the usual centrist Democrats--those Klan-minus-costume-crats and heirs to the Dixiecrat legacy--to help vote Alito onto the bench.
Thus, while conservative wrongdoing is obvious, liberals must take a long, hard look at their own party's role in producing the present state of affairs. Americans are told, after all, that there are two major parties, and that one is supposed to act in opposition to the other.
A fine notion, indeed, but one question lingers: what happened?
M. Junaid Alam, co-editor of Left Hook, can be reached at alam@lefthook.org
Family values....Obama's family can't even agree
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