Olbermann takes on Bush, again

I just want to offer a portion of Keith Olbermann’s soliloquy from lasts nights countdown:

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

‘Nuff said.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Empty cores

There is something phony and elitist about the argument David Ignatius makes in this column (building on his reading of “The Way to Win” by Mark Halperin of ABC News and John F. Harris of The Washingotn Post. They posit a vision of America that pits centrist and civil pragmatists against the flamethrowers at the edge, placing the old-guard media like the major papers and the network news programs on the side of civility and reason.

Centrists like Bill Clinton, the argument goes, are only interested in solutions and not in ideology. This is the correct stance, Ignatius implies. The flamethrowers, which include the blogosphere, cable news and team Bush, are ideaologues and divisive and dangerous to our democracy.

The flaw in the argument is that ideology does matter. Political philosophy guides how we react to events and how we hope to make the world better. I come from a left-liberal perspective and believe that government can work to make things better, am distrustful of corporate power and large concentrations of power more generally. I would support public control of electric utilities, for instance, and a functioning social safety net. My solutions to the nation’s — and the world’s — problems come from that basic mindset.

A conservative would approach things with a far different attitude. He or she likely believes that the public schools can be fixed only by dismantling them and opening them to market forces. Same goes for electric rates or gas prices.

Democracy demands a dialogue between these different philosophies, with the folks we elect finding a way to reach some kind of consensus without sacrificing their core beliefs or the core beliefs of their constituents.

The problem with the pragmatists described by Ignatius is that they do not appear to have core beliefs and so are willing to sacrifice it all. That was Bill Clinton’s problem — remember triangulation? — and it is why, though Democrats and liberals are unwilling to admit this, his presidency was a failure.

And it is why national Democrats continue to have trouble winning voters back to their cause.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

What the founders really said

Brooke Allen, in The Los Angeles Times, reminds us that the founders of the republic were skeptical of the entanglement of government and religion with a quick overview of some of James Madison’s thoughts on the topic.

The people who really did build this nation most definitely did not define “religious freedom” as the right of churches or other religious groups to benefit from taxpayer dollars.

Madison, in particular, was an unambiguous skeptic who believe that there was a definitive wall between church and state, Allen writes. Madison disapproved of

churches and religious societies being given a “legal agency” (including taxpayer funds) to carry into effect “a public and civil duty.” The public weal is the responsibility of the government itself, funded through taxation. Any charitable work churches might undertake is “pious charity,” and as such a voluntary act on the part of church members.

He wasn’t opposed to church work, but against the entanglement. The same goes for today’s so-called “separationists”:

Separationists are not attacking religion. They are merely reminding us that religion and church membership, under our Constitution, are defined as voluntary — the general population cannot be compelled to underwrite any particular church. That is what freedom of religion means.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.