Thursday, September 20, 2012

It's About Values


A Republican sympathizer commented (on Facebook) about my last blog entry, “You are much more interesting when you don't write about politics!”   So, I’m not going to write about politics this time.  I’m going to write about values. 

These are not mine:
    "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."  
     “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”
     “We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot… get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
     "I'm also unemployed."
     "There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip."  Seriously?
     "I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much."  But, golly, put it in a little tin box and it adds up to $374,000 in one year!
     “Well, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. … These are people who pay no income tax.”
       "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there."

All from the mouth of one man. 

But this isn’t about one man, it’s about values. 

When Republicans were wise and reasonable, President Dwight Eisenhower, said, “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”  I knew some day I’d find a reason to like Ike.  I found two.  In a 1954 letter to his brother Edgar, he wrote, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.  There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. … Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”  

All right, it is about one man.

     “Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.”
     “There are 47%... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they're entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it. … And the government should give it to them. …
     “My job is not to worry about those people.  I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
     “And they will vote for this president no matter what.” 

Which brings us back to values.  What would Ike have had to say about his or any political  party’s schemes to deny the right to vote to those, primarily minorities, deemed likely to vote for another party’s candidate(s)?  About one political body’s obsessive campaign to prohibit and criminalize a woman’s right to make decisions governing her own body?  About a treacherous cabal of an opposition  party’s elected representatives plotting, the night before a new president’s first day in office, to obstruct and quash his ability, hence the entire government’s ability, to accomplish anything for four years?  Sound extreme?  It’s a matter of record: a party that represents roughly half of Americans, and would like, at any cost, to represent all, swore, on the night before the president took office, to oppose every single thing the president did or wanted—in sum, to see to it that he failed.  Whose Senate leader said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” The single most important thing!  What about the people’s elected  representatives’ duty to make laws?  To regulate interstate commerce?  To coin money and collect taxes?  To “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States?”  To honor and uphold Article 1 of The Constitution of the United States!  Values!  In the gutter.

And the candidate?—the standard-bearer of “the single most important thing…”?  He doesn’t stand for anything—
     "I'm not familiar precisely with what I said, but I'll stand by what I said, whatever it was."

—and a man who doesn’t stand for anything will perversely stand for anything under the sun, no matter how base and unprincipled, if that will get him what he wants.  He is an empty vessel, wide open to being indiscriminately filled and emptied and refilled ad infinitum by anything or anybody with an agenda, at whim or will.  

Since this is about values, and one of mine is making an effort to present a balanced argument  whenever possible, I’ll let a Republican have the last word.  Writing for “Politico.com,” Joe Scarborough, former congressman and current host of TV’s “The Scarborough Report,” had this to say:
“Mitt Romney is in trouble. Not because of a boring convention or a bloodless speech or a grossly inappropriate press conference, but rather because the man refuses to stick his neck out and take a stand on the critical issues of our time. … And the lesson is clear: If we want to win the battle of ideas in the long term, we should be willing to face the fact that Mitt Romney is likely to lose—and should, given that he’s neither a true conservative nor a courageous moderate. He’s just an ambitious man.”

8 comments:

  1. Ok, this is your blog, but why present only a problem (as you see him) without a solution? What (who) would be your solution -- a devout Muslim who professes to love the principles of the Koran above the Constitution he swore to uphold, to side with Islam if it came right down to it; who wishes socialism was more prevalent in America and the rule of the day?
    What is your offered solution?
    To be fair, mine would be: Ron Paul; a return to education of the American People in the actual words of the Constitution; to non-income-based taxation in favor of a national retail sales tax everyone would pay by their purchases, eliminating loopholes and tax avoidance methods and making even criminals pay for what they buy; to Mexico as our 51st state, thereby eliminating the border problem and illegals immigration situation; to term-limits on Congress so we don't have "lifers" in office; to government out of the abortion business, either way; to making do with what we have ... as in using our natural resources rather than the Middle East's oil and gas. Should I go on, or can your readers already see the rest? Solutions, not problems, are the answers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes indeed, and the biggest solution would be to get big money out of our political process so our elected officials could actually serve the people for a change, rather than the wealthy, Wall Street, the lobbyists and the big corporations who now elect them.

      Ron Paul is not the answer to this, by the way. Nor is Ayn Rand.

      Delete
  2. The only "value" Mitt Romney cares about is the value the human being can bring him, and according to his most recent appraisal, 47% of the population is worthless.

    The man is morally and politically bankrupt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
    Barack Hussein "Barry Soweto" Obama

    The creator of the $500,000 COST per person job (Stimulus)

    The creator of 5 Trillion dollars in NEW debt in almost three and a half years.

    The creator of "shovel ready" ( I guess they weren't so shovel ready...ha ha ha..BO) jobs.

    The creator of behind the doors "transparency" of the health care bill one party negotiations.

    The creator of 43 months of +8% unemployment.

    The creator of Fast and Furious as well as the Executive Fiat to cover up the murder of a US Border patrol agent.

    The creator of the 500 million dollar gift to the failed Solyndra.

    The creator of a multi-million dollar effort to hide his past identities and school transcripts.

    The creator of a Professor of Constitutional Law, who couldn't keep his own license to practice.

    Very creative that Barack Hussein "Barry Soweto" Obama. Know why his initials are BO? Because he stinks of the stench of the death of the promise of America.

    Remember. You heard it from an African American true professor of the law. The re-election of Barack Hussein "Barry Soweto" Obama is the murder of the American ideal.

    Nostrova Comrades.

    The Judge



    ReplyDelete
  4. "Very creative that Barack Hussein "Barry Soweto" Obama. Know why his initials are BO? Because he stinks of the stench of the death of the promise of America." -- You are one sad, mentally challenged individual lacking rhetorical prowess. Unlike your president.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I expected this type of response much sooner. When one doesn't agree with the FORWARD point of view, or in this case is intellctually incapable of challenging the facts as presented they accuse the other person as either racist, hateful, stupid or crazy. In the first two years of occupancy in the office of Preseident BO could do no wrong. Once he showed his true self the blush was off the rose. Barry Soweto is a liar, an incompetent, and a bumbling fool and proved himself to be so in th last debate. Oh he'll come out aggressively hateful in the next one, but without his teleprompter he's just going to trip over his inadequacies once again. Just like you have in attacking me personally rather than the facts as presented. Remember, I'm African-American. Don't you want to call me an Uncle Tom too?

    The Judge

    ReplyDelete
  6. I appreciate your diligent work at rounding up these quotes, Ray. You build a fine case. Bush fils has his eight years to bring down our country; let's give Obama his eight to bring it back. I was not too impressed with his first four, but I must hold out hope that his next four will be better.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I congratulate the country on electing the full cast of "Reds" for another four years. James, I too held out hope for the brother until he embedded himself with the very people (The Goldman Sachs Cabinet) that he condemned. Keep yourr enemies closer? I don't think so. Immediately after the election he stood before the Amrican people like Arafat at the UN with an Olive branch and machine gun. He said he is open to new ideas and willing to compromise, but in the same breath said he will veto any vote which doesn't include his class warfare idealogy. His stand on abortion is stale as it is decided law. What he says nothing about is the fact that women are still paid less than men and what he will do about it. Beautiful ideas flowing from an empty vessel. He is no better than Sharpton or Jackson or Powell before them. He is self-serving much like the entertainment community that revels in their deification of him. I have never been so disappointed to be an American. I have never been so ashamed to be African-American.

    Judge D

    ReplyDelete