It’s a common belief that those cute little lemmings follow one another over a cliff and are dashed on the rocks below to their instant demise. In point of fact, lemmings aren’t particularly smart, but they do have enough innate mental ability not to follow their pals over a cliff and commit suicide. That is a most useful point.
Mark Kirk has held his job as congressman from the 10th District for 10 years. For eight of those years he just did what he was told to do by Republican leadership and voted for every Republican spending bill. He helped to doubled the national debt, adding more to it than all previous administrations combined, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, this because Kirk was a follower.
When the issue of war, any nation’s gravest question, came before him, Mark Kirk asked not a single question in session. He didn’t require any substantiation. He didn’t offer any skepticism or even appear to raise an eyebrow. He just voted in lock step with the rest of the Republicans for the wrong war, taking us over the metaphorical cliff. He was a suicidal follower.
Here’s another, more dire way to see this. Mark Kirk lied about his military experience, claiming he had been in combat. He wasn’t. Then he sent our troops over to Iraq to be maimed and killed in combat without so much as a moment of hesitation for their welfare. That mortal hypocrisy has killed over 4,000 of our men and women, all because he wouldn’t stand up and lead. Instead, he followed his Republican masters.
My notion is that we elect people to represent us and to be leaders for us. Kirk cannot be a leader, though, if all he does is keep his head down and follow, just doing what he is told to do.
We need our leaders to be bolder than that and, certainly, they need to be at least as smart as lemmings and not follow anyone over a cliff. It’s time to fire the follower because of his total lack of leadership. It’s time to make Alexi Giannoulias our next senator.
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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