What values do liberals have?

• What values do liberals have? - LB
  • Liberal values? - Denise
  • why are you posting here? - vt
    • That's why most of the states are red. sm - MT2
    • You are so right on! - applause!!
    • Thank you!! - MTME
  • I hesitate to respond to this because I'm an Independent and see good and bad - MTME
    • Thank you, thank you... - Observer
      • Thank you for the kind words. - MTME

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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!

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.

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.....   

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Oil man in office - SURPRISE!!!!

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/news/economy/oil_officials.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008091015

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.

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.

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 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

But they're outnumbered by neocons who are more like roaches than people.  They're nasty, keep multiplying, aren't very nice to be around, are very hard to get rid of and are just creepy and disgusting.

 This is a good read. Would be funny if not so true.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0610-23.htm

http://www.badbush.com/war_pres.html

Also click on the ***back to main page*** link. 

who repeatedly say that Palin has hurt McCain.  I think some people are obviously put off my Sarah Palin but others find her refreshing.  The media is generally more liberal and so we obviously hear more about how she hurts McCain than helps, but I think she is doing great.  I think they make a great team.  You could say that Biden hurts Obama especially with some of the boneheaded things he has said but you don't hear people continually bringing that all.  Nope....it is always Sarah.

I saw an interview with that Rothschild woman yesterday.  She stated that she is not only is voting for McCain and Palin, even though she is a major democrat, but she is also going around and talking to many democrats who are not so extreme left as Obama.  They too are voting for McCain.  She would not name names but there are many democrats who do not want to go so extreme left.  You might be surprised at the outcome of this election.  It will most definitely be close either way.

I never call Republicans any of those names and I don't like it when Republicans use the same derogatory names for liberals.  I don't like Ann Coulter because I just think she uses her intelligence for fear and hate mongering, but that's just me.

When people of any ideologic viewpoint call each other names, it diminishes their own standing, imo.  Use your words, people!  Stop name calling and have intelligent debates about the issues.  That's much more fun anyway.  And I've never seen Ann Coulter be able to do that, hence my dislike for her.

have spoken out about the war in Iraq over and over and over again and just recently there was an attack on a military recruiting center by a man who said the reason for his attack was for "political and religious" reasons and his disagreement over military operations.  Gee....sounds to me like he did something because he kept hearing the libs on TV disagreeing with military operations in Iraq. Hmmm....if you want to spin something, it can be spinned both ways.....just remember that.

The only people to blame are the people who do the crime.  I can't blame libs for this guy opening fire on a recruiting center just as you can't blame Bill O'Reilly for that nut job who opened fire on Tiller.  So give it up, give me break, and get a clue.

just get better producers and your radio shows and T.V. networks/shows will be raging successes!!! 

   Bill Maher's cheese slid off his cracker a long time ago....

"willing to totally put" their lives in the hands of some politicians.

It's the Neocons who are the Stepford Wives of the Bush administration, who follow in step, never varying in their pro-Bush propaganda mantra, who make excuses constantly for Bush, and who treat Bush more like a god than the lying, manipulating, misleading, very dangerous moron that he is.

LOL, your first sentence sounds like back in the 1960's..Well, I know some Blacks..and they are my friends..Well, geez, you know some liberals..yada yada yada..

It is still a free country and if we want to bash Bush we can..Most certainly throughout the 1990's most republicans bashed Clinton and his wife and unfortunately his daughter..Now, who has turned out to be stellar and giving back to society..Chelsea..Not Bush's daughters, they are too busy partying and getting drunk and certainly not Bush's nephew, drunk in public..OMG..As much as you republicans bashed Clinton, he is loved by many and a statesman and handles himself quite well these days..like I said, loved by many..and his daughter is contributing to society, an intelligent, upstanding citizen, his wife is a senator in NY who will most probably be re-elected as many in NY love her..So..mmmm..seems to me Bush and his family fall just a bit short..So bash Bush, you bet, sweetie, every chance I get.

with the same problems as well.  Bush's family seems to take the lead as far as number of people who are drunks or drug addicts.

Now, if you don't mind, I think I will stop responding to your posts.  It's much more entertaining watching you talking to yourself on this board. 

I hope you find the attention you so desperately seek, but you're not getting any more of it from me.

Have a pleasant day, dear.

I see that I’m being nailed to the cross on the Conservative Board by the usual suspects with more, I'm sure, to follow.  Perhaps my post came too close to the truth and struck a nerve or two.

Just to clarify, my post is not a result of all the mean, nasty personal characteristics they attribute to me.  It is the result of 5 years of watching a President and certain members of his following.  Again, my post didn’t read ALL followers, just the most “radical religious followers,” a point ignored by those who wish to condemn me, unless, of course, they are a part of this rather large group.  My post isn’t a result of hatred; it’s a result of genuine fear about where our country is headed and the true motives behind it.  There have been many articles written about this.  As you can see by the date of this article, this isn’t a new concept.

May 21, 2003

The Rapture of Destruction

Shopping, the End of the World, & Bush

By SAUL LANDAU

There shall be a fourth kingdom on earth that shall be different from all the other kingdoms; it shall devour the whole earth,and trample it down, and break it to pieces.--Daniel 23

As I browsed the New York Times for news of Iraq, terrorism, SARS and the latest environmental disaster, my teenage daughter and her friends arrived with the nutritional equivalent of ecological bio-terrorism. They opened Burger King bags and unveiled cheeseburgers and fat-laden fries (the French might reject their name connected to such items) dipped into what Ronald Reagan called a vegetable (ketchup). They drowned this cholesterol feast with noisy slurps from 22 oz. plastic coke containers.

As they slowly sucked in the artery clogging fast food, I recalled the messianic words from the Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle: This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there, he told John Pilger in the New Statesman, December 16, 2002). If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now

If kids eat food like this, I thought, the only songs they'll sing in the future will be hymns at each others' premature funerals. Fast food, shopping and total war! Can one encompass epic concepts like waging perpetual war for perpetual peace on the one hand and harmonize them with a vision of a trivialized society whose spiritual glue is perpetual shopping?

The Bushies address this issue through religion, not political philosophy. For example, their policy planners reject scientists' prognosis of disasters that will ensue from global warming. Indeed, neither corporate CEO's--except for insurance chiefs --nor government heavies seem to factor global environment into their plans.

The May 7, 2003 LA Times reported, for example, that lawyers representing some 30,000 impoverished Ecuadoreans are expected to sue Chevron Texaco Corp. today, accusing the second-largest U.S. oil company of contaminating the rainforest and sickening local residents. The suit alleges that a Chevron Texaco unit discharged billions of gallons of contaminated water, causing widespread pollution and illness.

Other oil companies used similar practices in Nigeria. In 1999 Shell Oil injected a million liters of waste into an abandoned oil well in Erovie in the Niger Delta. Those who ate the crops or drank water in the area fell ill. Almost 100 people died from poisonous amounts of lead, mercury and other toxics. In 2001, exploration for new wells by western oil companies contaminated the fresh water supply, causing serious illness among the local population. The typical oil company responds to such mishaps by explaining: hey, people drive cars, cars need gas, we supply the gas. Neither oil company CEOs nor the President addressed the implications of using more fossil fuels.

When pushed, one corporate executive alluded to God's will. At the 1997 Kyoto Conference on environment, Jeremy Leggett, who wrote The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era (2001), cornered Ford Motor Company executive John Schiller.

Leggett, a Greenpeacer, asked Schiller how he dealt with a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas available on the planet. Schiller first denied that fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for eons. He claimed, instead, that the Earth is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the age widely accepted by scientists. Schiller then referred Leggett to The Book of Daniel: The more I look, the more it is just as it says in the Bible. In other words, Schiller's theological interpretation of the world foresees earthly devastation [that] will mark the `End Time' and return of Christ.

So, like members of the powerful in the White House, just refer to biblical passages to understand those photos of melting ice caps on the Andes and breakups of polar ice caps, like the warming effects of the now frequent of El ninos, which have a devastating impact on the sea and land's wellbeing.

I juxtapose my fears over deteriorating environment with the rapture experienced over such ecological decay by the very people who manage the destruction. They view optimistically the dire environmental warnings as sure signs that the end is near and the Messiah will return. As a kid in Hebrew school the Messiah would supposedly arrive and take all the Jews to Israel. When my father told my mother about this imminent event, she wailed in despair: Just after we spent all that money fixing up the house?

In the no laughs born-again world, however, the Millennium means that the Lord will welcome a smog-filled planet so he can redesign it as it in its original Edenic form. Somehow he will afford to the true believers the necessary lung power to survive and live for a thousand years in Nirvana.

If this sounds bizarre, then read Joan Bokaer, who studied the fundamentalists at the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University. Tens of millions of Americans, she reports, have taken up this apocalyptic form of religion. Not all of them shape their lives dogmatically around this religious vision, but they do tend to dismiss environmentalists as worry warts.

Bokaer adds that these serious soldiers of God see their role as paving the pious road for the Lord's return. Like the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th Century, these modern zealots predict Christ's return only at the time when they have successfully carried out His work: purged the country of sinners and replaced the corrupt civil law with the dictates of the Bible--which includes, in foreign policy, promoting the battle of Armageddon by supporting Israel.

Like the Puritans, they do not believe in the separation of church and state. The Puritans, however, studied science, believing that God had placed the challenge of discovery before them. Modern fundamentalists tend to disparage the discipline of research to learn about God's ways and instead direct their energies at promoting ultra right politics: including belittling environmental concerns and supporting Israel. So, long live Israel (even with its population of Jews, whose prayers God doesn't hear); hooray for depleted uranium in military shells and bombs.

This religious vision --or nightmare--coincides with a society whose main spiritual value is shopping. Place at the political head of this nation a born-again alcoholic and you may have the glue albeit not one that's logical or holds together disparate pieces in any other way. George Bush's inflexibility of thinking on the one hand--his dogmatic use of good and evil as politically defining poles--allows him to live with or ignore the obvious contradictions in his imperial plan for world domination on the one hand and his destructiveness on the other. We need an energy bill that encourages consumption, he told a Trenton, N.J. audience on September 23, 2002.

In the October 11, 2002 Counterpunch, Katherine van Wormer cites brain studies to reinforce what recovering alcoholics and their counselors have been saying for years; long-term alcohol and other drug use changes the chemistry of the brain These anomalies in brain patterns are associated with a rigidity in thinking.

My wife first said it during the presidential campaign debates, when issues emerged for which the programmers had not prepared Bush. He's a dry drunk, she said, referring to the Alcoholics Anonymous term that describes the alcoholic who no longer drinks, but has not stopped thinking about drinking and has not entered a program to deal with his addiction.

Van Wormer, a professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa and the co-author of Addiction Treatment: A Strength's Perspective (2002), says dry drunks tend to go to extremes. I immediately thought about his religious fundamentalism, his insistence on an extreme tax plan, his threat to smoke 'em out. As we all have heard, Bush called for a crusade after 9/11--which he later rescinded, but he loved to label his enemies as evil. Van Wormer also lists exaggerated self-importance and grandiose behavior as characteristics of dry drunks. Judge for yourselves!

Arguably the least qualified president, Bush presides over the most complicated period of world history. The American economy needs a public in a constant shopping frenzy. That requires certain kinds of freedom--freedom to confuse desire with need. Shopping needs advertising, which needs broad freedom to lure anxious customers into purchasing goods and services to elevate their status, self esteem, sexual prowess, and power, as well as to improve or enhance their body features. In Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World (2001), Eduardo Galeano calls advertisers who know how to turn merchandise into magic charms against loneliness. Things have human attributes: they caress, accompany, understand, help. Perfume kisses you, your car never lets you down.

The car--or SUV--has become a basic capital good which our system must mass produce. The very act of producing gas burning vehicles, however, conflicts with the future of human life on the plant--global warming, ozone layer depletion etc... Bush's policies exacerbate the environmental issue. Instead of confronting this reality, Bush and his followers pray that the end will soon come. Perhaps his troublesome teenage twins contribute to his desire to bring it all to an end.

My teenager finishes her greasy burger, belches and does not sing great songs about Bush.