Tag Archives: Republicans

Be Free or Be Right In America. Choose One.

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Like his vision-thing, Mr. Bush's freedom-thing is a hard thing to get right. Hardly anyone in America really wants to be free. Instead, we'd rather be right–about our religious and political beliefs, our versions of patriotism, and our lifestyles.

We want our rights-and-wrongs black and white, settled once and for all, and predictable, with no raggedy-edged uncertainties. We absolutely must be right about our versions of elemental things: the Pledge, the Flag, the Ten Commandments, the Constitution. We must know with finality–Are we or are we not the good guys in the white hats? Is our country and way of life the best, as we learned in elementary school? What about our god, our church, our religion, our form of government–they're the right ones, right? We did and do fight on the right side in every war, right? We are the land of the free and the home of the brave?

We'll slash campaign vehicle tires, print misleading election leaflets, make harrassing phone calls to election boards, slow down voting, spread rumors of infidelity, lie, cheat, and steal to elect our right guys. Anything goes, it seems, for the right to be right about America on election day.

Americans love freedom, but we'll trade freedom, to be right. Speak freely, we insist, say what you want, write what you please, research any area–except, of course, controversial ones that question our basic assumptions about ourselves, our leaders, and our foreign policy, about history, values, gender and racial differences, about Jesus and Jews and terrorism, about the war in Iraq, and whether or not we're all turning into fascists.

As long as we can be right, we'll leave our loved ones and travel around the world to shoot complete strangers in the face beside their families and homes in the lands of their ancestors. We'll rain bombs down from miles up, upon exotic civilian populations–as long as we're right. We'll imprison, maim, and torture, if it's necessary, if we're right.

But Americans cannot be right and free at the same time.

Living in a free country means being right is up for grabs. Living in a free country means giving other religious and political and social and economic systems the same respectful attitude and tone we want to hear toward our own. Living in a free country means not insisting, or even wishing, that everyone else think and act like we do. Living in a free country means winning elections with no dirty tricks, because when you win that way, you're no longer free. Living in a free country means listening to all other sides, and supporting their right to be heard. Living free means working to be educated inquirers, and not just to reinforce the stuff we already think we know. Living free means accepting complex humanity in all its messy and glorious diversity, not hating other Americans, or Jews, or Arabs, or liberals, or conservatives, or Christians, or atheists. Living free means holding to and speaking out about our beliefs, values, and allegiances, without insisting on being right about them.

The road to this American freedom-thing may be a long and hard one for everyone.

 

Social Security Cheats Black People? I Don't Think So

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President Bush claims that Social Security cheats black people because black people die younger than whites. Now whose fault is this? Whose programs make it harder for black people to live long, stay well, and prosper? Mr. Bush chooses to deliberately overlook the fact that the black population has historically benefited more than whites from Social Security. If Bush insists on playing the race card, he should at least get it right.

 

Gambling is already a big enough problem for black Americans. Now Mr. Bush wants us to bet our futures on beating an unreliable stock market. Under Mr. Bush's proposed new Social Security reforms, a majority of retirees will either go broke or become even poorer than they already end up now.

 

A small minority of investment-savvy winners, those lucky enough to die young and flush, stand to gain from President Bush's proposed “personal savings accounts.” Which leaves the rest of the black population twisting in the wind. Under Bush's plan, citizens who invest shrewdly and live long, would receive about the same old-age benefits as they do now, minus of course, all the previously guaranteed lifetime payments, cost-of-living raises, disability benefits, and survivor programs which stand to be cut under Bush's plan. This is reform?

 

How soon we forget how good FDR's great Social Security system has been for American blacks. Grandparents today enjoy a real chance for a dignified retirement, even when they've suffered financial setbacks and have been unable to save. President Bush's proposed changes to Social Security would leave the elderly even more vulnerable.

 

If Bush really wants to help black people, he can offer quality education, a living wage, universal health care, and lower living costs. Instead, he hands out “personal savings accounts” in a disgusting attempt to appeal to a few reckless souls who would abandon their race and put their own futures at risk in exchange for a kind of gambler's death insurance.

  

Because they are often poor, blacks as a group get back a proportionately greater return from their Social Security taxes than do generally wealthier whites. Blacks also benefit disproportionately from the guaranteed lifetime payments and cost-of-living increases which Bush threatens to cut. Current Social Security policy also minimizes the impact of years of unemployment, while guaranteeing support for disability and survivor benefits, all programs which black people rely on even more than whites. All in all, blacks have gained more than whites from the full range of Social Security's present benefits.

 

Bush thinks black people won't care if most of their people lose, so long as a few have a chance to get ahead. Bush has it wrong. Most of us would rather not win a long shot if our gamble requires that everyone else loses big. American blacks have had enough of that already.

Why Republicans (and Some Democrats) Fear Howard Dean

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I’m reading everywhere that Republicans are overjoyed to welcome Howard Dean back into Democratic leadership. They were so heartbroken when his presidential candidacy misfired. They were so desolate that he would not become the Democratic presidential nominee. Dean would suit Republicans perfectly, they proclaimed. Good old boy heartland Americans will stand in line to vote against such a quintessential eastern liberal egghead.

 

Methinks Republicans doeth protest too much.

 

Republicans are, in fact, justifiably terrified that the wounded Dean has come back stronger than ever, and with a shiny new forum for his ideas and influence.

 

Exactly as they did back when Dean showed every sign of winning the primary, so now are Republicans screaming with one voice, louder than Dean ever did, in a concerted attempt to quickly marginalize and stereotype him before he infects America’s mainstream.

 

Republicans are rushing to solidify the impression that Dean the Scream and Dean the Extreme is unworthy of respect, interest, curiosity, or even a brief listen. (Such is American democracy?) In urgent unison they scream:  Do not hear this man. Do not read anything he says. Stop up your ears and avert your eyes before it’s too late, before you actually think about what he has to say. Don’t waste a minute of your time on him.

 

Because what Dean has to say will resonate with the rank-and-file. Dean’s vision is infectious, and it will shake to the roots the wobbly edifice of half-truths and innuendo carefully built up by conservative radio and television demagogues.

 

There are even some entrenched Democrats who have opposed Dean from the start, and for basically the same reasons: Dean is powerful and uncontrollable, in the way Clinton is. This doctor cares deeply, he’s comfortable with anyone, he thinks outside of predictable boxes. He unflinchingly speaks truth to power. He will poke unforgettable holes in Republican nonsense-as-usual, cut through institutionalized silliness, and from his bully new pulpit he will be heard. Dean is capable of rousing the rabble to their own cause, and of triggering a grassroots upheaval, He will help shape a Democratic platform that Americans desperately need, and will vote for in droves.

 

And that makes him absolutely terrifying.

What Social Security Is For (and Not For)

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A teacher in my youth often railed against social security, so I asked an older friend why the program was so controversial. He had worked for the WPA during the depression, and recounted for me with teary eyes the long soup lines and the desperation of good people who couldn’t find work because of national economic failures. He told me that FDR had done a good thing, and that the real reason behind social security legislation was to insure that the richest country in the world would never leave old people to die in the streets, a tragic situation which might also foment revolution.

 

And indeed, a national or global crisis could plausibly occur again soon, arising from a number of contemporary as well as timeless scenarios, including disasters arising from war, terrorism, plague, economic uncertainties, and nature’s unpredictable catastrophes. During such events, many American citizens will be unable to provide for themselves. Without a reliable and universal social security program, our government will once again be forced to choose between stepping up and doling out additional taxpayer money to feed, house, and clothe the destitute–or to do the unthinkable and abandon their own, as capitalism’s collateral damage.

 

Social security has changed America’s face; today we see smiling seniors enjoying one another’s company for hours over McDonald’s coffee, where yesterday we saw gaunt haunted faces staring bleakly out of dirty windows.

 

Americans do not yet embrace FDR’s fourth freedom: freedom from want. Until we do, social security must simply insure that any American who someday ends up with too little money to survive will at least be able to get by. No one plans to be poor in old age; some of us are smarter, have more opportunities, more education, better values, are harder-working, bolder, more responsible, more talented, or luckier than some others. Social Security was never designed to give even greater success to those who already enjoy the rewards their own gifts and their country’s have provided. If the American people want to give everyone an opportunity to save, we should insist on thoughtful policies assuring a living wage for those who work hard and play by the rules.

What Are We Getting For Our Pentagon Dollars?

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We have a huge Pentagon budget which pays for neither the costs of wars nor for protecting our homeland. So what do they do with all that money? To be sure, someone still needs to have the financial wherewithal necessary to protect and defend America’s economic and strategic interests abroad, as well as (on occasion) our heedless or haplessly wandering citizenry.

 

But America’s global economic and strategic interests could be far better attended to by a well-funded Commerce and State Department. Our citizens should stay out of countries where they’re not wanted, and behave as polite guests where they are invited. And if they find themselves innocently threatened? Well, that’s what the marines are for. Keep on paying them.

 

If America redirected just half the amount of funding we give to the Department of Defense to Commerce and State, we would all reap the rewards of wise, mutually advantageous longterm trade deals and proactive diplomatic dialogues. We’d be far less likely to feel any need to throw our unrecognizable, camouflaged firstborns into the maw of all those foreign hellholes we ourselves created by having a military budget so huge it dwarfs any other country’s tenfold. America’s primary diplomatic tool is a hammer. No wonder foreign countries all look like nails.

 

Which leaves us still with the necessity of defending our homeland. If our foreign policies precluded pushing smaller countries around to suit our pride and greed, if we refrained from occupying other lands with hundreds of farflung military outposts, not to mention callous and inequitable trade policies, then perhaps we’d have fewer terrorists angry at us because our governments underwrote their despots, our tycoons pillaged their resources, and our national interests left their families in danger, economic slavery, and without rights. I don’t see any terrorists threatening Canada, or Norway, or Sweden, and they top most lists of being the so-called envied lands of the rich and free. Now why is that?

 

It is our present policy to give great unaccountable gobs of money to a Department of Defense that cannot keep us safe from terrorists, cannot win unwinnable wars, and can only add terror and injustice to the terror and injustice already caused by others.

 

Our beloved America can do better, must do better if we are to live up to our wonderful traditions and ideals. I hope Americans soon decide to spend our taxes more wisely, for our own sake, and for the sakes of so many others.