brandenpridgen

Posts by: brandenpridgen

It’s The System, Stupid

Oct 13

There was a small article in the September 25, 2011 edition of the New York Times reporting on demonstrations that are continuing around Wall Street. The piece was in a corner of page 18 and was short and bland. The protest was happening in Manhattan and arguably was a major event in the home city to The New York Times, yet the newspaper barely mentioned it and this apparently self-inflicted self-blinding was happening throughout our national media, as mention of the demonstrations was rare. That is in stark contrast to how extensive the coverage might have been had this been a Tea Party demonstration, given our national obsession with the radical right, and this vacuum of attention is significant.

The Citizens United v. FEC case, decided last year by a radical Supreme Court, has effectively made American politics exponentially more beholden to corporate influence, since we are now informed that corporations are people and have the same rights as those of us made of flesh and blood, especially the right to contribute boxcars of money to political campaigns. Of course, only corporations have the means to fill those boxcars, so America is now one giant step closer to becoming a de facto corporatocracy instead of a democracy and that is ominous, indeed, for actual human beings.

W. Edwards Deming taught quality in manufacturing to the Japanese after WW II (after American titans of industry ignored him) and, to offer just one example of the result, the Toyota Camry has been the most popular sedan in America for decades. One of Deming’s most important lessons is that when there is a problem, we should look first not to the individuals involved, but to the system that drives individual behavior. That is precisely where we should look to remedy our political paralysis and the obsessive quest for dumb in Washington.

Our political campaigns are hideously expensive, so much so that our politicians and would-be politicians have to spend about half their time both during campaigns and while in office just raising money, which means that they are set up to be at the mercy of the donors of big bucks. No matter if every legislator inside the Beltway is an Eagle Scout or its equivalent, they cannot afford to stop searching for their mother lode of cash if they are to achieve office and stay there. That is simply how our system functions.

The most significant reason for our hideously expensive political campaigns is the cost of advertising on television, with cable companies and other major news and entertainment media outlets. They, of course, are corporations and serve their own interests. Should we do anything to curtail political spending with them, those media outlets would be financially harmed, so it’s not in their interests to change the system. Perhaps that’s why you’ve seen so little coverage of those Wall Street protests to do exactly that – change the system.

To state the obvious, corporations have more money than individual citizens. That results in the voices of the corporations being far louder than all the rest of us can shout. Some of the loudest voices come from Wall Street. That’s why those thousands of people are on the streets of so many cities all around this country, “occupying Wall Street.”

If we are to have a democracy in America we cannot have corporatocracy – the two are mutually exclusive. And if we don’t change the system, the future is both certain and very dark for Americans.

There are people who are going about finding ways to change the system and ensure our democracy and you can find an excellent review at this web site, and also at www.MoveToAmend.org.

You can also sign Dylan Ratigan’s petition to change campaign funding at:

Just understand that your choice is to live in a participatory democracy or to be a serf to the corporations. The good news is that you still get to choose. The bad news is that the clock is ticking.

Because They Work

Sep 23

That’s the reason the Republicans distort, misrepresent and tell lies. Yes, that’s an incendiary thing to say. Yes, that especially includes those who honor their pledge to Grover Norquist over their pledge to the Constitution. Yes, we’ve been fed a steady, high calorie diet of dishonesty by these people for a long time. And don’t go looking for Democratic equivalency. The D’s surely have had their day (I’m thinking now about Lyndon Johnson’s “credibility gap”), but this is the era of neo-con dishonesty.

The Republicans like to say that President Obama apologizes for America. On the few occasions when those making that claim have been challenged, they have not been able to cite a single instance of apology – not one – yet they continue to spread the lie.

The Republicans charge President Obama of having a failed foreign policy. Of course, they never offer any substance to support their sweeping accusation. That he has a far better record of protecting America than President Bush, that he has focused on aggressively pursuing the perpetrators of 9/11, that he has re-established strong diplomatic ties with most of the rest of the world don’t seem to matter to the Republicans. They continue to make their fatuous charges.

Indeed, President Bush and his Republicans told us repeatedly that President Bush kept America safe. That’s a very interesting claim for a president on whose watch nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York, Washington DC and in Shanksville, PA in the worst direct attack on America in our nation’s history. In some bizarre, Through the Looking Glass logic we are supposed to believe that the Republicans are the ones who are strong on defense and President Obama has failed. It’s strange how the Republicans falsely accuse President Obama of the most terrible failing of President Bush and his Republican Congress.

Since President Obama’s inauguration the Republicans have been telling us that what is most important is “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Oddly, over the past 4 years they have managed to block every job creating bill with only one exception: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “Stimulus”). That bill passed in spite of every Republican in the House and all but three Republican senators voting against it.

The Veterans Jobs Bill was designed to promote employment for our military veterans. It’s an important bill, because our military personnel come home to a veteran’s unemployment rate that is 30% higher than our citizenry as a whole. Nevertheless, the flag-waving Republicans in the Senate blocked that bill with a filibuster, leaving vets to suffer in their unemployment. Still, the Republicans continue to tell us it’s all about “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan told us about a “welfare queen” living on the south side of Chicago. He said that she was collecting welfare under 81 aliases and living the high life. That was just the inflammatory story his base wanted to hear and, with his slick acting skills, he even sold that to middle-of-the-road voters. The only problem with Reagan’s story was that there was no welfare queen with 81 aliases. Reagan lied because it was self-serving and there’s a connection of that to what is going on today.

Mitt Romney is telling lies that blow the same dog whistle that Reagan blew. Romney tells us that 47% of Americans pay no income taxes, that they refuse to be responsible for their own care, that they see themselves as victims and are dependent on government and that they think they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” Oh, those blood suckers, those lazy bums who steal from the rich, Mitt implies. He wants us to believe they’re wealth redistribution lowlifes who have “foreign views” and will vote for Obama, whom Romney says is not like “us”, not like real Americans. Romney does that in order to create an enemy for their followers to hate, just like candidate Reagan did, and it’s just another self-serving lie.

The continuing drumbeat of lies is successful in manipulating less informed voters into voting for the liars. And their votes, coupled with those of “the base” are enough to win elections. That’s especially effective if done in conjunction with preventing legal voters from voting. The Republicans do that through Republican generated state laws to disenfranchise low income, minority and elderly voters, who tend to vote Democratic.

Lie, cheat, steal. That’s the Republican platform and they do those things because they work. It really is so easy to manipulate people. Just inflame them with the Big Lie over and over.

But Wait – There’s More!

Sep 21

To be read aloud – fast

You’ve suffered through four years of economic stagnation and have the bills to show for it.

You’ve watched as congress has locked itself in Tea Party tantrums and has paid no attention to you.

You know that your Medicare and Social Security are at risk and feel the terror of helplessness to come and there’s been nothing you could do about it – until NOW!

Mitt Romney is here to take us back to the tried and true Republican ideal of America.

Mitt is a CEO who knows how business works. He’s the one who knows how to create jobs – in China – and get American manufacturing going – away.

Mitt is a Republican who will take us back to the days of his Republican predecessors, all the way back to Ronald Reagan. So, you can count on Mitt to create the biggest budget deficits in history, because that’s what all Republican presidents do. Mitt is the CEO who knows how to go into bottomless debt, suck the life out of anything and do it all off-budget, just like George W. Bush’s wars.

Murray-isms

Aug 16

My friend Pat Murray is one of the clearest thinkers I know in the areas of group and individual behavior and I have learned some valuable lessons from him. See if this pairing of one statement plus two questions from Pat’s work stimulates your motivation innards.

YOU GET WHAT YOU TOLERATE – Children teach us this every day. A major part of their job is to push the envelope to find out where the edges of acceptability are. Those edges are often defined by some sort of pain, like physical pain as a result of attempting to defy the laws of physics while riding a bicycle or from adult displeasure over an inappropriate childhood behavior.

So it is with politics. Our politicians will push the envelope and keep on pushing until we tell them they’ve gone too far by punishing them with our phone calls, letters and emails of displeasure and, eventually, with election defeat. The key point is that if you tolerate their behavior, they will not only continue it but they will keep on pushing that envelope to an extreme until you actively refuse to tolerate what they are doing. Passivity and apathy on your part will result in ever more outrageous behavior on their part. You get what you tolerate.

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR? – Are you clear about what you stand for, what you believe in down to your bedrock, the absolutely most-not-be-violated ideals you will never compromise? Tagging on to that question, motivational speaker Les Brown likes to say that you have to know what you stand for or you’ll fall for anything.

There are people in all areas of our lives who want to sell us something, who want to bend us to their way in order to help them to create a world that serves them. Some of these people are quite comfortable lying to us, misleading us with flagrant, fatuous falsehoods (my alliteration for today) and many of them have very loud megaphones. They feed us a spoonful of verifiable fact to gain our trust and then go off into their stream of dishonesty. Unless you know what you stand for, you can be manipulated easily by these people and become a pawn to serve them while they do harm to you and everyone else in the process. What do you stand for?

KNOW YOUR INTOLERABLES – Yes, I know that “intolerables” isn’t a word you can find in the dictionary, but you understood its meaning immediately. What is on your list of things that you will not put up with? What are the absolutely no-go items? Lying, cheating, stealing, dishonoring the sacred, cruelty, abandoning the helpless, disloyalty? When you make your list, be sure to do a gut check so that you don’t write hollow platitudes, because that doesn’t serve you. Rather, write what is actually true for you.

For example, you may find abridging the rights of fellow citizens to be intolerable, but do you believe in it so strongly that you’ll fight anyone who tries to silence those with whom you passionately disagree? Do you believe in the rights of citizenship with such passion that you’ll stand up publicly for those whose voting rights are being stolen right now? Do you believe in civil rights so strongly that you’ll speak out against the anti-Muslim fever that is both marginalizing and killing some Americans? Speaking of killing, it may be an intolerable for you, but do you make an exception for those who kill abortion doctors? Know your intolerables.

It is true that those are under-the-skin questions likely to provoke. Are you agitated enough to take action? A good starting place is to make two lists: HERE IS WHAT I STAND FOR and THESE ARE MY INTOLERABLES. Your lists probably won’t be very long, but they will have great power for you. And when you’re done, you’ll stop falling for anything and instead will be prepared to stop tolerating all that envelope pushing that violates what you believe in. You might even exercise your citizenship by speaking out to make things better.

It’s Personal

Aug 05

August 6 is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and it is appropriate to remember in the ways that we can. There are millions of stories connected in various ways to that event and two are very close. They are quite different from one another, yet at root they bear the same message.

Even in the early 1940’s, when an atomic explosion was only a theory and had never been witnessed, the conflagration that would be produced was well understood. That was a different time, though, and the imperative was to win the war with a minimum of American casualties. Estimates ran north of a million dead and injured, should we attempt a land invasion of Japan, so, awful as it was even to contemplate, using an atomic bomb to subdue the enemy looked like the better option. Indeed, in those days, there was little controversy over whether to use such a weapon if doing so would avoid suffering 25,000 marines killed on every island in the Pacific on the way to Japan.

My father-in-law was a scientist, a chemical engineer Ph.D and for decades was a go-to guy for making chemical manufacturing plants operate well. He was so talented that he was called to serve on the Manhattan Project during WWII. What that meant for him and all the scientists working on the Manhattan Project was that in order to honor their duty and responsibility as Americans to help win the war, they would have to set aside their concerns over the moral dilemma of dropping a bomb on Japanese cities. Some, like my father-in-law, had to compromise a piece of their souls to do that, a compromise they came to deeply regret.

While the construction of that new and terrible weapon was ongoing, my father was posted in England and flew a P-47 fighting the Nazis, escorting bombers, dodging bursts of flak, getting shot at and shooting back, sortie after sortie. In today’s more gentle terms, he was in harm’s way, but there was nothing gentle about what was happening. He lived in a world of brutality every day, a world of sudden death and long suffering, a world where human beings saw and did unspeakable things. Indeed, like so many vets, even years later he was unable to speak the raw truth of those days and most of his terrible secrets died with him.

He did not entertain the post war moral analysis made from the comfort of peacetime over the dropping of the bomb. He had completed his tour of duty before that bombing, had served as an instructor to new recruits after his combat days and was on inactive status with the army. Had a land invasion of Japan been mounted, he would have been called back into active service and sent to the Pacific to wage war once again. Dropping the bomb made good sense to him, yet he was anything but absent of regret over those terrible days.

He had been raised to be a good boy and not do harm to others, but it had been wartime and doing what he did was his duty and responsibility, so he, like my father-in-law, did what had to be done. And he, too, had to compromise a piece of his soul, a compromise that came with deep regret. There are literally millions of stories like these from that awful time.

Today we use the word “sacrifice” to describe what our military people have to do. Yet in this country where less than 1% of our people shoulder our military burden, most of us don’t really understand what that means. My father-in-law and my father understood quite well. They did their duty and honored their responsibility for their loved ones and for our country. Their sacrifice was enormous, as both men shouldered a weight that they carried throughout their lives as a continuing torment to their souls. They paid an enormous price for us.

In their sacrifice they left us a country that remains free. Over the years they let me know in countless ways that they believed in personal responsibility and that they expected me and all of us to honor our duty and the responsibility that is inextricably bound to our freedom, just as they did. It’s likely that all of those brave men and women of that greatest generation would expect us to do that. Part of the keeping of our freedom is to sacrifice a piece of our convenience every four years and vote.

It’s personal.

National Despair

Jul 28

There’s no point in waving arms, getting red in the face and snapping at the annoying tweaks that are sent only to distract and manipulate us. If we’re to understand what is behind our national despair we need to focus on the core issue that keeps us stuck in a morass of helplessness and prevents us from the exceptionalism we’re capable of creating.

Perhaps you believe that doing the right thing is the right thing to do. If so, this may fit for you:

I despair over the paralysis of America caused by the people who are supposed to be our leaders but who, instead, feather their own nest and ensure that their system is self-sustaining, much to the detriment of the rest of us.

I despair over the abdication of the regulatory muscle that could have prevented the banking-driven recession that has hurt so many Americans and has undermined the American brand throughout the world.

I despair over the abdication of the rule of law, like claiming that torture isn’t torture, like leading us into an unprovoked war and, every bit as damaging, by the near-complete failure of Congress and the press to do their jobs to prevent all that.

I despair over the public hatred and lies that are repeated by those in leadership positions and by ordinary, angry Americans as well, spreading the venom that has come to be tolerated and even believed by a distracted public.

I despair over angry young men who take handguns, rifles and automatic weapons to movie theaters and schools and kill innocents randomly, this while the NRA tells us that guns don’t kill and that assault weapons with 100 round drums must be legal and, by all means, let’s have 34 round magazines for those Glock semi-automatics.

I despair when the meteorologists tell us that we can expect this year’s drought to be repeated for years to come and, at the same time, people we’ve elected to be our leaders blatantly lie to us and declare that global warming doesn’t exist.

I despair when a congressman or senator shouts bigoted remarks at others and, worse, when those remarks aren’t rebuked by colleagues, the press and the public.

It’s true that we’ve always had haters and liars and that we’ve always had leaders who have twisted the truth because it serves them (and not America) well. We have always had fools and bullies.

But it seems that the American train has jumped the track over the past 30 years, that dishonesty has become the purpose and dysfunction the goal. For example, Ronald Reagan told us this about the Panama Canal: “We bought it, we paid for it, we built it and we intend to keep it!” That was a huge applause line, right up until the day he gave it away.

George H.W. Bush told us over and over, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” Then he raised taxes.

Bill Clinton told us, “I did not have sex with that woman – Ms. Lewinski,” but, well, you know.

Now Mitt Romney is twisting himself every way imaginable to tell us that he’s always been against all those things he was always for.

And these are our leaders.

In any relationship, each has a part in the situation, so ultimately, it boils down to what we – you and I, our neighbors, your goofy brother-in-law, the retired couple down the street and everyone who works at the businesses in your town – have agreed to settle for. We have let self-serving dishonesty penetrate our leadership as we simply went about our lives with myopic focus. The lack of public integrity is so common now that we barely lift an eyebrow when we hear the next whopper. It’s what we expect. And that is the real poison of despair.

There is a glimmer of hope, though, that holds promise for us. We can cure our national despair and it is so simple, so easy and so obvious. We have the power to change everything and it is in our hands right now.

All we have to do is to stop settling. All we have to do is to stop tolerating the intolerable. All we have to do is to demand truth and call out the liars.

It’s time.

Mitt Romney Can’t and Neither Can Bob Dold

Jul 15

Yes, of course Mitt Romney is smart. He’s cunning and he’s been enormously successful. He’s persistent and focused and undaunted by challenge.

Yet Mitt Romney can’t seem to say anything that is true. He can’t seem to say anything that doesn’t contradict his own words and actions. And he can’t seem to say anything that has detailed substance. He simply can’t.

We just had a family reunion, with its predictable mix of political views, but the most significant ones came from family members who are sick of hearing stupid political fantasy displace fact, sick of leaders who don’t lead and sick of our eunuch government. Mostly, they are sick of politicians sounding like ten-year-olds on a playground calling others ugly names, vying to see who can say the meanest thing and, thus, become the biggest jerk on the playground.

Mitt Romney is now the most visible contestant in that game to be the biggest jerk. He makes up so much fantasy-as-politics and the outpouring of his lies is so voluminous that many Americans, like some of my family members, more than anything just want him to go away and have pledged to refuse to vote in November. Such is the effect of the screeching drone of political dumbspeak that floods our news. That is dangerous, because it serves the radical dumbspeak droners so well and abandons all the rest of America.

We in the Illinois Tenth Congressional District have elected moderates for some time. For a dozen years Mark Kirk was our representative. The good people of Illinois then elected him to the senate and he was replaced in the House by Stepford wife, Bob Dold. Each is soft spoken. Each appears to be compassionate.

Except neither of them is a moderate. Each of them votes in near-lockstep with the Republican fringe crazies. They support the big money ruling class and mask their bigotry with their moderate demeanor.

By November 6 Dold will have asked for your vote dozens of times. He will have attempted to justify that by telling you that he is fighting to save your Medicare, but he will somehow forget to tell you that he has twice voted for Paul Ryan’s Medicare Ruination Plan. He will tell you that he’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs, but he won’t remind you that he voted against every job creating bill except the one for veterans and that he had to be shamed into voting for that.

All of that is to say that Bob Dold is no moderate. He’s a right wing crazy in a pleasant looking package, just like Mitt Romney. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Judge him by what he has done and you’ll want him to disappear. That would be best because neither one of them can do anything you want them to do.

The point is that anyone dropping out of the process only serves to keep the radical playground jerks in place and assure that they continue flooding your news with lies and salacious innuendo. You can stop that by getting past your disgust over the political dumbspeak and showing up to vote in November.

Bedrock

Jul 09

A good friend sent a long response to my recent political essay, taking issue with my comments about what is being said publicly regarding the inclusion of contraceptive care in the health insurance plans of church owned institutions (not the churches themselves). He and I view things quite differently and the way he explained our differences is significant.

He offered his views in concrete detail and concluded his remarks by wishing that I would “ . . . check [my] thinking in light of [my] experiences.” He wrote, “I know you have the depth, but apparently not the will – and I wonder why.”

There is a weighty assumption in his comment that I harbor a willful insistence on blindness. I suppose that’s better than his telling me that I’m too stupid to get it, but a willful blindness? Why the personal attack?

In another section of his comments he asks if I am, “ . . . so corrupted by the left that [I] cannot look at an issue objectively . . . “ Of course, the answer to that is no, I can’t look at an issue objectively, any more than anyone else can. What is more troubling is his notion that I have been corrupted, this view apparently springing from my not seeing things his way. Through some magical transition, the discussion jumped from the issue of contraceptive care to a personal attack – a charge of corruption.

The admonition to avoid discussing either politics or religion in social discourse exists as a warning based upon limitations of the control we have of our own behavior and the consequences we unwittingly engineer. Perhaps the weight of the admonition should be squared when both politics and religion are included in a single conversation. Very often such conversations drift into personal attack, like the comments from my friend and often it gets far worse than his broadsides to me.

To get a finger hold of understanding about this, I consulted The Heart of Conflict, a most accessible text on dealing with conflict. It was written by my friend Brian Muldoon, who has years of experience working to help people resolve their legal and personal conflicts. Here’s a piece of what he has to say:

“There are many kinds of intractable differences, but virtually all of them can be reduced to threats against identity . . . “

“When we breach that boundary between what is me and what is not, when my innermost chamber is threatened, the powerful instincts of the survivor are invoked. At all costs, we defend the “self” . . . Because we humans derive our identity more from our consciousness (who we think we are or imagine ourselves to be) than from our physical form . . . we will fight harder for our ideas than for our actual corporeal survival.”

Muldoon is telling us that we humans have a set of bedrock beliefs that we use to define ourselves and they give us a sense of solidity in a shifting and sometimes dangerous world. Our religious foundation is key among these bedrock beliefs and our safety is anchored in that bedrock. When anything comes along that appears to be different, that threatens to shake our bedrock, we sense the threat to our identity, we man the battlements immediately and, “ . . . we will fight harder for our political and religious ideas than for our actual corporeal survival” (added italicized words mine – JA).

That’s how we get religious extremists willing to blow themselves up in a crowded market. That’s why it’s so difficult to talk about politics and religion with those whose bedrock beliefs seem to be different from our own. That’s why my friend and I won’t be having any more discussions about politics as we enjoy our occasional lunch together. Our friendship, after all, is more important than our political differences.

Yet we have a country of 300 million people, each having their own notions of bedrock, many lobbing personal attack bombs on those whom they see as both different from themselves and, consequently, wrong. Somehow we have to find a way to deal with our quite substantial national challenges, even with our existing bedrock differences. How will we do that?

Conservatives, Have You Reached Your Popeye Point?

Jun 30

Immediately after President Obama won the 2008 presidential election Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, Republican leaders in the Senate and House, announced to the world, “Our number one priority is making sure that President Obama is a one-term president.” That came as quite a surprise to those of us who thought that their number one priority was to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, that they were in Washington to promote the general welfare and the other things outlined in the Preamble to the Constitution. Not so, as we continue to be reminded.

The Republican Party has devolved into nothing more than opposing anything offered by Democrats and the President. They have even opposed their own bills, once President Obama said he supported them. They continue to oppose the mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act, even though it is exactly what the Republicans proposed in the ‘90’s, then accompanied by their battle cry of personal responsibility.

Since the 2010 mid-term election the Republicans have been telling us that what is most important is “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Since that time, though, the House, led by John Boehner, has passed bills against gay marriage and women’s healthcare. They have voted against immigration reform and have had temper tantrums against ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. None of that has anything to do with promoting jobs for Americans. The only job related legislation the Republicans passed was one promoting jobs for our military veterans, and they had to be shamed into passing it.

Two things are clear. First, the Republicans don’t want President Obama to have any wins, so they oppose anything he supports. Second, the Republicans want to run in 2012 against President Obama’s record on the economy and jobs, so they stonewall any effort to make things better for Americans, completely ignoring the suffering of the people in their selfish quest for power.

They have opposed keeping our promises to creditors in hopes of blaming President Obama for a global humiliation of their own making. They have repeatedly called the president a liar, most recently by flagrant fact falsifier Sarah Palin. Oddly, they offer absolutely no proof of prevarication.

They call him “Mr. Obama,” instead of using the proper title, “President.” They accuse him of being an un-American Kenyan, a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist. In short, they have reduced themselves to being pitiful name-calling schoolyard bullies throwing taunts.

Republicans, is that all you have? Tell us you have something more than that, because if that’s all you have, you have nothing.

There is nothing conservative about the party of personal responsibility abdicating its responsibilities. There is nothing conservative about ignoring the suffering of the American people. There is nothing conservative about preventing Americans from voting. There is nothing conservative about going to war and refusing to pay for it and lying to Americans about nonexistent death panels. In short, there is nothing conservative about today’s Republican party. Conservatism is dead. Radical dishonesty has taken its place.

The old Popeye cartoons had a recurring theme. Popeye would get into terrible trouble, pummeled and nearly helpless, when suddenly he would declare, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” A can of spinach would magically appear, he would eat the contents and be revived and then go about righting the wrongs.

The question now is whether you have reached your Popeye point. Have you had enough of the lies, the abdication of responsibility, the demeaning of the highest office in our land? Have you had enough of being manipulated? Is this all you can stands and you can’t stands no more?

Get your can of spinach right now. It’s time for you to start righting the wrongs and reclaim your party.

For Righties

Jun 12

You say you’re a strict constitutionalist and you believe deeply in the principles of that marvelous document. Let’s have a look at that

Of course, you’re a firm believer in freedom of speech. Yet, did you howl in protest when the Republican Party set up “free speech zones” far away from their 2008 convention in Minneapolis and prevented any display of dissent that might become visible to convention attendees or television cameras? How about when Mayor Rahm Emanuel attempted to stifle protests around the then-upcoming NATO and G-20 conferences this year with his “Sit Down and Shut Up” law? I thought all of America was a free speech zone and so did you. “Free speech zones,” indeed

Of course you believe in freedom of religion as outlined in the Bill of Rights, but do you tolerate those who insist that America must be governed according to their interpretation of the Christian Bible? That religious turf grabbing has the practical effect of establishing a national religion and marginalizing anyone who is not a Christian in their mold. And did you hit the Send button to communicate with your representatives in Congress about your disgust with the anti-Muslim hatred that now is masquerading as patriotism? Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion or from any particular religion.

The second amendment was crafted to ensure that immediately following our revolutionary days civilians could quickly be conscripted into an army in case the British invaded again. The second amendment wasn’t and isn’t about the right to own an unlimited stockpile of weapons of war. Since you probably don’t think the British are going to invade any time soon, why exactly do you think you’re guaranteed the right to own those assault weapons? Charleton Heston’s “cold dead hands,” testosterone-filled declaration may give you a dark side thrill of self-righteousness and cause your blood to boil, but your weapons cache is far more likely to make some innocent person’s blood spill.

If you’re a strict constitutionalist, are you taking action to stop Republican state legislatures from stealing the right to vote from millions of our fellow Americans? You should be in the front lines fighting that unconstitutional threat to our democracy.

The framers of the Constitution had a well-founded and deep seated distrust of excess power in a few hands. So, as a strict constitutionalist, you must be outraged over fabulously wealthy people stealing our elections from you and our fellow Americans. What action are you taking to counter that theft of democracy?

If you’re a strong supporter of our military, you probably thank soldiers for their service and perhaps you attend parades in their honor. But did you scream at George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld when they sent our soldiers into battle without personnel and vehicle armor, leaving them vulnerable to being blown to bits or left with debilitating brain injuries from roadside bombs? Are you sending checks to the VA so that we provide the after-action medical help our injured military people need, rather than making them wait a year for medical help?

Surely, you’re marching in protest against the war in Afghanistan, where most of our military deaths are due to bullets fired by the very Afghan security forces our soldiers are training. Part of “provide for the common defense” – that’s from the Preamble to the Constitution – means protecting our military people from pointless conflicts that produce little more than dead soldiers.

The Constitution that you hold as sacred is just as sacred to the rest of us, so here’s my proposition for you: Take a break from waving flags and slinging epithets and start taking action to protect the Constitution. It is long past time that we stop the outrageous screeching that serves only to make us feel powerful for a moment and instead start honoring our duties as Americans. That’s where the real power of the Constitution lies.

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JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler