10 March 2005 - 3:00am
Lien on me
Now I'm the first to admit that I've been pretty snarky towards the right. In fact I did it again in a post just a few moments ago. I'm kind of surprised at this development, because I've always considered myself a sort of moderate to the extreme, if that makes any sense. I mean, to me, fiscal restraint is only smart going, but to slack on environmental protections or public health or public education is just plain stupid, and to pass laws to endorse all sorts of unexamined personal sexual hangups and social phobias is just fucking offensive. I didn't change, but the GOP sure as heck did!
So now, on this dark day where Hell's Kitchen (if not hell) is freezing over, I take a smidge of reassurance and find a speck of hope in the fact that right-wing bloggers seem to be as upset about this no-bankruptcy-for-you-peasants-consumers-suckers bill as those of us of the reality faith. I fear there's little hope to prevent passage, but when reason triumphs over jingoism over there, I begin to indulge in my pollyanna tendencies and believe that progressives and true conservatives can find common ground on some of our most dire challenges on this planet.
Yet here we are, with the public overwhelmingly against this bill -- at least to the extent that the mainstream media has reported on it at all -- and all the Republicans and a lot of the Democrats are poised to pass it into law.
Don't the people count for anything when the Senate is about to pass the most hateful piece of class warfare/corporate welfare legislation since Coolidge was president?
Oh yeah, that's right. We're just supposed to shut up and go shopping. American politics isn't about what the people want, it's about what the corporations want.
Could it be true? Have we been barking up the wrong paradigm all along?
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Comments
"American politics isn't about what the people want, it's about what the corporations want."
Yes, it's terrible. German politics, too!
I mentioned it earlier and I mention it again. I used to be a Conservative, but as the old saying goes, a liberal is a conservative who's been rousted by the police.
The conservatives of years ago were for a leaner government, but that was across the board. It meant keeping corporations in check and being watchful of what President Eisenhower, our hero, warned us in his farewell address, of the "military-industrial complex," a name which Ike coined. In [url=http://wikisource.org/wiki/Military-Industrial_Complex_Speech]Real Player[/url] or [url=http://wikisource.org/wiki/Military-Industrial_Complex_Speech] Wav[/url]; it's a bit over nine minutes long and worth hear over a cup of coffee or while putting that laundry into the machine.
Reagan campaigned against "big government" and missed what the traditional conservatives warned us against and ended up embracing exactly the opposite of conservative principles.
As the joke went some years back. "I like Ike." (His campaign slogan. "Hell, I even miss Harry."
The neo-cons are not conservatives at all.
As I listen to Eisenhower, I understand the Reagan and Bush and Bush are the people he was warning us about and against.
THIS is what conservatism once was and why today I am a progressive. I dare say, Ike would be, too.