Essential Liberty

The authorship is in doubt, but the sentiment is rarely challenged:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The faith vs. reason battle between Bush and Kerry has been overtly exposed of late, in a swath of articles ranging from Ellen Goodman's easily overlooked but brilliant summation of the denial-based foreign policy to Ron Suskind's now-famous demolition of their empire-based community, which can supposedly change reality on a whim. (I, too, believe in the power of will to change reality, but understand that it's "hard work," as our President puts it.)

In my fiction writing, however, I try to keep in mind the difference between theme and plot, and I see more and more evidence that the war between denial and sanity is more of a theme for this election than the meat of it. And while Bush throws lots of coded red meat to his base, ranging from cultures of life to Dred Scott (code for overturning Roe v. Wade), his entire appeal to the center is "Kerry can't save you."

Ignoring the total deceit of that conceit for the moment, let us pretend for a moment that George W. Bush would actually keep us marginally safer than John F. Kerry. (I know, it's a really big stretch, but some people believe this.) For these people, the vote is between the guy who will keep Americans "safe from terra" and the guy who will recognize basic truths and the limits of Constitutional law. Even then, they're still on the wrong side of the debate -- because they're advocating the temporary security candidate over the essential liberty candidate:

The largest and most important [reason to elect Kerry] is the protection of American democracy. It is always difficult while enjoying the comforts and privileges of taken-for-granted liberties to imagine that they could be lost; but the elements of Bush's misrule have plainly converged to form this threat.

...

The Democratic Party generally wants to defend civil liberties and does so when it dares; the Republicans, with honorable exceptions, apparently would sweep them aside. The Democrats prefer social justice, however weakly they fight for it; the Republicans would give every dollar they can find to the rich. The Democrats are inclined to limit corporate power; the Republicans are corporate power.

I believe that this is the fundamental plot of the election. Kerry is finally, at last, out in front, but even in the most wildly optimistic landslide scenario for our side, we're not likely to win more than 55% of the popular vote. Think about that.

Forty-five percent of the people who will vote are willing to give up essential liberty for temporary security. At least. And at least forty percent are so disconnected that they don't see the danger, or the difference between the candidates, or just don't care. Either way, they won't bother to get involved.

Ben would be so proud.

(/) Roland X
Kerry/Edwards 2004: Vote While You Still Can

Too Radical For PAT FREAKIN' ROBERTSON!

First, a blast from the past:

• "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."


• "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them."


• "Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals -- the two things seem to go together."


• "There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore."

This cornucopia of wingnuttery is brought to you courtesy of Pat Robertson, the televangelist's televangelist, the grand high poobah of the Religious Right, the Dark Lord of American Radical Fundamentalism himself. There are few names more respected by the lockstep brigade or feared by the reality-based community. And here's what he has to say about Bush's detachment from reality:

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

The White House is calling Pat Robertson a liar. Let me repeat that for emphasis: The White House is calling the most famous and prominent fundamentalist televangelist in the world a liar:

• White House and campaign advisers denied Bush made the comment, with adviser Karen Hughes saying, "I don't believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it."


• "Obviously, we already had casualties in Afghanistan at the time. If you look at that, that (the comment) was not consistent with what was going on," [Hughes] said.


• White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."

All from the article quoted above.

Now, it would neither shock nor dismay me that one of these vile, despicable leaders is a liar. Still, it is, IMNSHO, deeply telling that a) Pat Robertson would feel a need to create potential distance between himself and Bush's Folly, and b) the White House is so scared and desperate regarding any blowback on said Folly that they're willing to risk alienating Robertson's legions of fundie sheeple by directly contradicting him.

Then again, things are already looking touchy between the political and religious lovebirds.

Influential American evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Evangelical Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem, that if President George W. Bush were to "touch" Jerusalem, Evangelicals would abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third party.

Maybe there's some payback going on here. Maybe a rat's hearing "Nearer My God To Thee." Maybe someone's eager to try out his political muscle on his own. Regardless of the reasons, Robertson looks willing to ditch God's Own Party, or at least God's Bush...because this bunch is too whacked even for him. Bush, meanwhile, is poised to make his biggest mistake of the election season: alienating his base.

Feel the love.

(/) Roland X
Kerry/Edwards 2004: Vote While You Still Can

Why You Should Vote Kerry

The latest on DemocracyMeansYou.com from Roland X:

Why You Should Vote Kerry
(Hint: He's more than just Not Bush)
(First of a three-part final push into Election Day)

It is heartening for me to see progressives -- former Nader supporters in particular -- line up behind John Kerry. No matter how much they might like Nader, Cobb, or other great leaders on our side, they see the danger of a Bush administration and want to help take our country back. And certainly, the complaining has subsided somewhat after the way Kerry demolished Dubya in the first debate.

Read the rest...

The Purity Brigade

Thus Endeth Ralph Nader:

His candidacy, he argues, should be measured by the purity of his ideas and ideals, not his chances of winning.

Purity.

Pat Robertson and Ayatollah Khamenei believe in religious "purity." The Chinese government believes in ideological "purity." The KKK believes in racial "purity."

Holy Mother, haven't we had enough of purity for one species' lifespan?

(/) Roland X
Member, Non-Idiots for Kerry

The John-John Win-Win

A quick look at the debates.

There's not much to say about the Kerry vs. Bush showdown. It was the Hero vs. the Chimp, and it showed. Bush got in a couple of shots, sure, and Kerry missed a couple of chances to refute a gross distortion. Overall, however, Big John obliterated the Naked Emperor.

Captain Sunshine vs. Dick Luthor was somewhat more interesting. I thought Edwards won on style but Cheney on, um, "substance" isn't the right word when so much of his defense was outright lying, but I had to admit that he did it well, and with so many lies to refute, Edwards had to pass on a lot of them. I figured Cheney would look okay.

Poll after poll has Edwards winning big time, however -- not all of them, certainly, and many of them are non-scientific blog polls -- but damn, did I see a different debate? Even not-so-crazy Andy thought Darth Cheney stank up the joint, and he punted on the Hate Amendment (the one thing I'll give Cheney props for; even the comic-book Lex loves his daughter).

On almost everything else, of course, Dick lied through his Lex Luthor sneer. But he also messed up big time on something important: fact checking.

He told viewers to check out factcheck.com for the straight dope on the bad things that mean ol' Edwards was saying about him and his old company Halliburton. Problem is, he probably meant factcheck.ORG, a site dedicated exactly to what you'd think from its name.

The people who own factcheck.com, as it happens, are not fans of the
Bush/Luthor ticket. So they redirected the link to...wait for
it...georgesoros.com.

Meanwhile, factcheck.org posted a response saying that Cheney was full of it.

At the same time, Captain Sunshine was just beaming. He was the nicest pit bull you'll ever meet. I thought he let Cheney get away with too many falsehoods at the time, but with style meaning so much he just rode his charm to victory. I now think it was a deliberate strategy to let the post-debate debate handle the lies, a strategy that seems to have worked magnificently.

So did Cheney learn not to mess with the Internet? Probably not. This is a
man who continues to push a Saddam/al-Qaida connection, mind you (while
hilariously arguing that he never made an Iraq-9/11 connection). Still, it's
nice to see someone get what they ask for. Especially when it's exactly what
they deserve.

(/) Roland X
Personally, I prefer to go straight to Daily Kos. But that's just me. *G*