Heading into a new election year, a year that promises to be anything but civil, what are Americans’ expectations? What do the people want? It is said that Republicans lost control of the Congress over the war in Iraq and even congressional Democrats are not faring well in public opinion polls because they are not doing all that was expected from them to end the US presence in Iraq.
The Democrat-controlled Congress just passed a bill to expand SCHIP, a program intended to provide health insurance coverage to poor children, which will now include “children” up to the age of 25 and will also include “poor” households with income in excess of $80,000.00 by substantially raising taxes on tobacco, a product most prominently used by lower-income folks. HillaryCare promises health insurance for everyone (actually, the proposal “mandates” coverage) to the tune of $10 billion per year while decrying the careless budget deficits of the Bush administration. The proposal also claims to be able to make the US health care system more efficient but is a little short on specifics. The Democrats have been handed a nearly made-to-order attorney general nominee but are suggesting that confirmation hearings will be delayed in an effort to force the administration’s hand over documents related to the FORMER attorney general while speaking of how desperately the US needs a new attorney general in place as soon as possible.
This is going to be an election season of “transactional politics”, to borrow a phrase from Time magazine, in which support for Democratic presidential candidates will go not necessarily to the highest bidder but will instead go for the highest bid, the candidate who will offer the most give-aways. Why is it that in a nation where freedom and liberty are claimed to be the cornerstones of our society, a society that expresses “fear” of illegal or unconstitutional wiretaps as a threat to our freedom even if for the sake of our national security, we seem to see no need to be fearful of a potential government that seeks to control nearly every facet of our existence? Why do we not see in these give-aways express threats to the very freedom and liberty we claim to embrace? Essentially it is that whenever the government dictates what we will or won’t do, what we can or cannot have and how much or how little we are allowed to have, the essential liberty we believe to have been ordained to us by divine authority is taken from us by government authority.
This is the fundamental philosophy that defines the difference between Republicans and Democrats. What is unfortunate is that so many – actually, too many – have come to believe that government give-away programs that attempt to manage and control our lives enhance freedom rather than restrict it. This must be the very reason why the late, great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. He didn’t demand equality of outcome of every enterprise. Instead he expressed faith in the reality that man, regardless of skin color, is capable of thinking for himself and is due the right to succeed or fail according to his individual effort. Dr. King did not ask for public give-aways; he demanded that obstacles be moved away. It is the very principle by which a Republican president was compelled to face down a Democratic governor in 1957 to do nothing more than to enforce the law of the land, the law which demands that individual rights be respected … period.
We would all do well to avoid “pied piper” politicians who sound a good theme by promising something for nothing but are actually leading us to our own destruction, destruction of the very freedom Dr. King was willing to die for.
4 comments:
Is it a well known fact that Dr.Martin Luther King was a Republican? I was never good w/history or politics, so I didn't know.
I find it interesting that his 'followers' are innumerable but many here are democrats.
The fact of Dr. King's political affiliation is according to Black Republicans website. I never knew it myself, but consider the lip service he got from the Democratic administrations (Kennedy and Johnson) and the outright harassment he got from J Edgar Hoover. Why would he think they were "with" him? Another fact of Republican affiliation is that the party was begun in 1854 as the anti-slavery party. Politics is politics, but Dr. King only asked to be treated as a human being. He never asked for favors.
Where is "here"? And thank you for your comment.
... my head is about to explode from all the contradictions and sweeping generalizations here and scattered throughout your blog.
re: the war in Iraq, I admit I wish the Democrats would be a LOT more vigorous, clear and decisive. but their hands are tied -- so many competing opinions & spin machines, emotions are high ("we can't leave our boys high and dry!") etc. the Democrats' majority is thin, and the administration is Republican... neither side can charge ahead with their agenda. compromises must be forged, agonizingly; whatever emerges from the process will of course be diluted.
Personally, I'm increasingly warming to Biden's proposal for a federal solution to Iraq's mess ("soft partition"). It's getting clearer by the day that the strong centralized Iraqi government Bush is advocating is impossible.
To say that the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats believe in freedom-threatening "give-aways" is a gross generalization. Do poor Republicans refuse to accept welfare checks on account of their so-called Republican principles? No. What I see is a Republican-controlled Congress and Republican president who continued the very fiscal irresponsibility that they once railed against. What I see is a pointless, badly mismanaged war that is costing $275+ million a DAY. What I see is a Republican president continuing to give tax breaks to the rich in wartime.
And I cannot believe you would name-drop MLK for being a Republican (so irrelevant, in that era of populist Dixiecrats) when just last month, all the major Republican presidential candidates skipped a televised debate on minority issues, snubbing blacks. (They also snubbed Hispanics when only McCain accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by Univision. In contrast, the Democratic contenders did both debates.) For shame.
Jen,
You make valid points that require any rational citizen to confront. There is nothing clean or clear about what is happening in our country or what is happening around the world. My references are directed toward the "gross generalizations" that are defining American politics and, specifically, this premature campaign season. Too much time to make too many promises without specific details.
My reference to MLK was to make a point of where we once were against where we are now in defining what constitutes human "rights". Consider very wealthy John Edwards and his emphasis on fighting poverty. A noble cause and one worthy of our attention. The concern I have is just this: are government policies designed to lift the poor from poverty, or does it simply make them comfortable right where they are? I suspect that government give-aways entrap the poor, the gullible, the uneducated into a cycle that will never end. They simply become accustomed to where they are, but at least they won't starve.
Did government programs make John Edwards or Hillary Clinton or any of the others rich and successful? I doubt it. I suspect that their success had more to do with their own personal ambitions and desire to succeed. The government cannot accomplish this for anyone on any level.
I have no shame in what I said, but I very much appreciate your perspective.
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