On November 7th Americans will go to the polls to vote in what will probably be the most important mid-term elections ever held in our country. Therefore, I write this article as an appeal to moderate and conservative voters with consciences, whose values I believe now approximate those of the Democratic Party much more than those of the Republican Party. That fact may not be evident to most Americans, since the wealthy and powerful corporations that have gained monopoly control of our national news media over the past several years, and who have showered the Republican Party with uncountable millions of dollars, have worked to conceal the fact that the Republican Party has drifted so far to the right that it is now totally out of touch with the values of ordinary Americans. Indeed, those corporations, who
control our voting machines,
our news media, and
many of our politicians, have gained so much power that even the Democratic Party leadership has drifted to the right of most Americans.
Yes, there are rare exceptions of prominent journalists, such as Keith Olberman, who have had the courage to tell it like it is. And now the corruption of the Republican Party has become so great and obvious that even our corporate controlled news media can no longer keep silent about it any longer. But still the extent of the anti-people nature of the agenda of the Republican Party is far from obvious to most Americans.
The problem has become so bad and pervasive that even life long prominent conservatives such as former Republican presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater and former Chief Legal Counsel to Richard Nixon, John Dean, have felt the need to publicly speak about it. Dean has even written a book, “
Conservatives Without Conscience”, where he divides conservatives into those with and without consciences. And guess what? The characteristics that he lists to describe conservatives with conscience differ in no way from the characteristics of most Democrats or liberals. Here is what
Dean says about today’s Republican Party:
At heart, those in charge of the Republican party are tough, cold-blooded, ruthless ... tolerate no dissent, use dissembling as their standard modus operandi, and have pushed their governing authority beyond the law and Constitution ... Our nation's founders relied on reason, which is anathema for many of today's conservatives. ... They cannot be trusted to exercise the powers of government responsibly.
But my main purpose of this article is not to discuss the numerous flaws of today’s Republican Party (I have done that
previously on
several occasions), but rather to try to confront some of the major myths about Democrats and liberals in general that have taken hold in the past several years as the Republican Party, with lots of help from the corporate news media, has repeatedly demonized the Democratic Party. By pointing out the many values that we share with moderates and conservatives with consciences, I hope that many of you will vote for a Democratic Congress next month and thereby help to put our country back on the road to a pro-people and pro-family orientation, which will gain back the
respect of the other nations and peoples of the world:
Personal accountabilityOne of the most dishonest myths about Democrats is that we discourage personal responsibility. We believe that personal accountability is of great importance to our nation, but we also believe that accountability should not be limited to the poor and the working and middle class, but should apply to the rich and powerful as well.
Corporations in our country today have as much or more wealth and power than they have ever had. We have entered a vicious cycle whereby one in a thousand elite Americans provide
80% of campaign contributions to our politicians, thereby buying a degree of influence that is no longer consistent with a democracy. The result is a rapidly
widening wealth gap in our country which is unprecedented since the
age of the Robber Barons of the 19th Century, a situation where the average American CEO
makes 431 times the average salary of the average working American, and an
increasing poverty rate. And they call us “the elite”!
I have no problem with CEO’s making lots of money, except when it comes at the expense of everyone else. But with their tremendous wealth and influence, a multitude of corporations have prevailed upon the Bush and Reagan administrations to drastically cut back on federal regulations which have been enacted in our country over more than a century. Today’s Republican politicians call this “freedom” and “getting government off our backs”. But government regulation of corporations is necessary in order to create a fair playing field for
all Americans. They are necessary to
prevent unfair monopolistic practices and consequent price gouging (which cease just prior to elections), to
protect our environment against the search for ever more profit, to ensure that our
foods and drugs and
other products are safe, and much much more. Democrats believe that our corporations must once again be held accountable for their actions and stripped of the advantages that allow them to take advantage of ordinary people.
We also believe that ordinary people should be accountable, but at the same time we recognize that some people and families need a helping hand from government in order to have the opportunity to live a decent life. We believe, for example, that all children should have the right to decent health care and education, and that all adults should have the right to a job with a livable wage. That is not the case in today’s America, and it is becoming worse. Infant mortality rate has risen for the
first time in 40 years under the Bush administration. Because of the wealth gap,
opportunity for a decent education is rapidly diminishing. As of 2004, 46 million Americans are
without health insurance, unemployment rate is unacceptable, and millions of working Americans do not earn a living wage because the federal minimum wage
has remained staticfor almost the past ten years.
Republicans tell us that regulation of corporations and providing a mandatory livable minimum wage increases unemployment, and they also tell us that Democrats discourage individual responsibility by removing incentives to work. But a consideration of average annual job gain under presidential administrations since 1923 shows precisely the opposite of that assertion:
Rate of annual job gain during U.S. Presidencies: 1923-2003, in descending order *
Roosevelt (D)…………...5.3%
Johnson (D)……………...3.8%
Carter (D)………………...3.1%
Truman (D)…………….…2.5%
Clinton (D)…………….… 2.4%
Kennedy (D)…………....2.3%
Nixon (R)………………....2.2%
Reagan (R)……………….2.1%
Coolidge (R)……………..1.1%
Ford (R)……………..…….1.1%
Eisenhower (R).………..0.9%
Bush I (R)………………...0.6%
Bush II (R)…………….…-0.7%
Hoover (R)…………….…-9.0%
* James Carville in “
Fighting Back”
And keep in mind that it was
John F. Kennedy who told us to ask what we can do for our country, whereas George W. Bush’s primary response to the 9-11 attacks on our country (other than to manipulate intelligence data to provide an excuse for war) was
to fight the creation of a commission to investigate how the attacks were allowed to occur, tell people to go shopping and travel, and provide the wealthiest citizens of our country with
massive tax cuts.
Military defenseI’m sure that you’ve heard the Republican chatter about Democrats being “soft” or “weak” on defense. But can you think of a single episode in the past century where Democrats have endangered the defense of our country? Woodrow Wilson successfully concluded World War I. Franklyn Roosevelt met the challenge of Fascism by preparing our defenses and
collaborating with Great Britain’s lonely fight against Fascism long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and despite intense Republican opposition. Harry Truman contained the Communist threat through his work in the creation of the
United Nations and
NATO, and by providing much needed assistance to European nations through the
Marshall Plan and other means. John F. Kennedy successfully guided us through the
Cuban Missile Crisis through intense diplomatic but tough negotiations with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. And Bill Clinton contained the threats from Iraq and North Korea during his presidency through a combination of sanctions and
diplomacy. The above actions include all of the Democratic presidencies since 1896 except for that of Jimmy Carter, who did not face a serious military threat during his presidency.
So where on earth does the accusation about Democrats being soft on defense come from? Part of that comes from George McGovern’s (1972 Democratic nominee for President) principled opposition to the
Viet Nam War. McGovern, former bomber pilot and
war hero from World War II, was excoriated as a pacifist for his opposition to that war. But McGovern was against the Viet Nam War because he recognized, long before the great majority of other Americans recognized, that there was no legitimate security or moral basis for that war.
The bottom line is that Democrats believe that the decision to go to war should be taken very seriously. They believe that war should be limited to situations where it is necessary, either for the defense of our country or in order to stop human catastrophes such as genocide. And similarly, they believe that defense spending should be limited to the extent that it is justified for the defense of our country, and not used for the purpose of feeding the “
military industrial complex, as President Eisenhower warned us against.
Thus, Democrats were split on the decision of whether or not to give George W. Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq. On the one hand, he had totally failed to prove his claim that Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction which constituted a threat to our country. But on the other hand some Senate Democrats, along with every Republican Senator except one, decided to trust our president on that issue despite the lack of evidence. It turned out that they were wrong to do so, as the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq turned out to be based on a
pack of lies. That war has now claimed the lives of
nearly three thousand American soldiers and over
half a million Iraqi civilians, with little to show for it except for the exchange of
a civil war for the removal of Iraq’s dictator, and widespread hatred of the United States throughout the Middle East (more than half of Iraqis
support attacks against the U.S. military that is currently occupying their country), with
the consequent recruitment of thousands of additional anti-American potential terrorists.
And what has George Bush, built up by our corporate news media as a strong leader, done to protect our country, other than
failing to capture Osama bin Laden, allowing North Korea to
develop a nuclear weapons program,
losing a war in Afghanistan, and making a total mess out of the war in Iraq? Corporate media shill Tim Russert has told us that we have to admit that you can’t argue against his record because since 9-11 there hasn’t been a single attack against us on our soil. Well Tim, even if that was true, which
it isn’t, that would put Bush in the same category as every other U.S. president we’ve had, unless you want to blame James Madison for the British invasion of 1813 or Lincoln for the Civil War. But George Bush failed to take any actions to prevent the 9-11 attacks, despite the fact that Clinton administration officials
warned him that it should be a priority to do so,
his response on the day of the attacks was incompetent, he fought the establishment of a 9-11 Commission to look into the circumstances of the attacks, and when the Commission was established despite his opposition he nevertheless almost totally
failed to comply with the recommendations of that Commission to prevent future attacks, despite repeated demands from Democrats that he do so.
Fiscal responsibilityRepublicans still claim that Democrats are irresponsible when it comes to spending. We admit that there are certain social programs that Democrats favor and are willing to spend money on to help give Americans the opportunity for a decent life. Examples include the
Social Security program,
Medicare, public education,
college tuition grants, and the Women, Infants and Children (
WIC) program for supplemental nutrition for infants and children whose parents lack the means to provide for them.
But Democrats have never, in the history of our country, run up our national debt like
Ronald Reagan and
George W. Bush. Clinton was able to
reverse the budget deficit of his predecessors after about five or six years, but George W. Bush quickly turned the Clinton surplus into a record deficit, and it is hard to know for how many decades our children will be paying for that. Republicans have no basis whatsoever for complaining about Democratic fiscal irresponsibility.
Family valuesThe many social programs that I spoke of above can all be attributed to Democrats, often enacted into law against intense Republican opposition. These are all programs that Democrats feel are needed in order to give ordinary families a fighting chance in life, and they have generally been opposed by Republicans on the basis that they are not consistent with their extreme free market ideology (or because they are simply bought off). George W. Bush has
cut funds drastically for these programs, with the complicity of our Republican Congress, and he has even
attempted to destroy Social Security through his privatization schemes. Another important example is the much needed veterans’ health benefits bill, which Democrats tried to pass, but which was
squelched by Republicans in the Senate earlier this year.
And yet Republicans call themselves the Party of “family values”. How do they get away with that? One way they do that is by demonizing homosexuals and putting anti-homosexual propositions on election ballots, claiming that these are necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the family. The stance of the Democratic Party is that, just as people have the right to practice their own religion without being persecuted, so do consenting adults have the right to do as they like within the privacy of their own homes, as long as it doesn’t interfere with lives of other people. Thus, when police arrested and charged two homosexual men for having sex with each other within their own home, their conviction, based on a Texas law, was
overturned by the United States Supreme Court based on our Constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy, though three Republican appointed judges filed a dissenting opinion to that ruling.
Another claim that Republicans use to pound on Democrats is that Democrats are “pro-abortion”. But the truth is that there is no Democratic policy that is “pro-abortion”. The last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, had an official policy to make abortion
safe, legal and RARE. And indeed, his policies resulted in an
11% decline in the abortion rate during his presidency, following a static trend during Ronald Reagan’s eight years in office.
The main point where the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion differs from the Republican Party’s stance is that most Democrats do not want to criminalize abortion, thereby making criminals of women who choose to seek an abortion and doctors who choose to perform them on those women. Democrats recognize that when abortions are illegal, as they have been in the past, women who feel that they need an abortion often end up having black market abortions that pose a
great danger to their life. And furthermore, the criminalization of abortion results in the birth of children into families that lack the means] to take care of them. Democrats believe that, rather than criminalize abortions, with all the serious adverse consequences of doing that, it is better to reduce abortions through proven effective family planning programs, which are supported by the American Medical Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (
CDC).
The rule of law and protection of our Constitutional rightsThe Republican Party has long claimed to be the Party of “law and order”. Yet it has been the Democratic Party that has fought the piece by piece abrogation of our Constitution, which provides the very basis for the laws of our country, under the presidency of George W. Bush.
George Bush has attached “
signing statements” to challenge the validity of over 800 laws that have been passed by Congress, compared to 332 such challenges by all of his 42 predecessors combined, a practice described by the
American Bar Association as violating the separation of powers principle of our Constitution by usurping the power of Congress to make laws. He has conducted a
warrantless spying program on millions of American citizens, in clear violation of both the
Fourth Amendment to our Constitution and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He has denied our
First Amendment rights through the use of so-called
First Amendment zones to prevent protesters from being heard, by
denying access to journalists who criticize him, by
threatening to jail reporters who criticize his administration, and by
paying shills (with taxpayer dollars) to write government propaganda disguised as news. And he has repeatedly violated international law specified in the
Geneva Conventions by authorizing the indefinite holding without charges or a chance to defend themselves in court, and the
abuse and torture of thousands of so-called “enemy combatants” who are suspected of terrorism, in violation of amendments V through VIII of the
Bill of Rights of our Constitution.
For fighting against this gross abuse of power and dismantling of our Constitution, Democrats have been labeled by Republicans as “soft on terrorism” and accused of wanting to “coddle terrorists”. But besides the fact that torture is against international law, morally wrong,
exposes our own troops to torture when captured, and
doesn’t work, there is a huge difference between a terrorist and a terrorist suspect, and it is the mark of a civilized nation to utilize the rule of law to try to discern that difference. The Bush administration has repeatedly indicated through its rhetoric that it sees no difference between the two, nor does it think it important to try to ascertain the difference in a fair manner, as proscribed by the Geneva Conventions and our Constitution. And given the wide powers handed to our president in the recently signed (undoubtedly unconstitutional)
Military Commissions Act, passed by our Republican Congress, George Bush now has
sole power to determine that difference in any manner he sees fit.
That means that any one of us, if George Bush so determines, could be thrown in jail without charges or opportunity to defend ourselves, sent to one of his
secret prisons overseas, and tortured and murdered. And therein lies the difference between a dictatorship and a Constitutional Democracy. That is what Democrats seek to correct. In other words, they seek no less than to restore respect for the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States in our country.
ConclusionIf you are an undecided voter I hope I have at least partially convinced you that the Democratic Party represents your values much better than today’s Republican Party. The choice is now up to us. If Americans on November 7th vote overwhelmingly to remove our rubber stamp Republican Congress from office, that will finally give the Democratic Party the opportunity to restore our democracy, as they have now been trying to do for several years. And at the same time it will also send a message to the administration of George W. Bush that the American people will no longer tolerate hypocrisy, corruption or tyranny.
It makes no difference whether or not the particular Republican Congressperson from your District is an otherwise good person or Congressperson. If that Congressperson is a Republican and has not said that he or she will bolt the Republican Party if elected, then that Congressperson will continue to contribute to the pro-corporate, anti-people, and anti-democracy agenda of the Republican Party if elected. And if we fail on November 7th to make our voices heard loud and clear we may not get another chance – for us or for our children or grandchildren.
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