Where Is The Outrage?
By Charles Cole (07/18/04)
Have you ever noticed how certain politicians are forever talking about “issues”? The economy, the war in Iraq, the (mis)treatment of Iraqi POWs and other detainees, the 9/11 Commission report, the Senate Intelligence Committee report about the CIA, the need for the government to “fully fund” (local) education, the environment, a “woman’s right to choose”. The litany of “issues” about which pundits and politicians drone on and on ad nauseam seems endless.
Have you also noticed that, whatever course of action the Bush administration takes on any of these “issues”, the left twists, turns and contorts it to “prove” that the president and his “cronies” are greedy, incompetent boobs, if not outright purveyors of fascist evil!
Of course, this trick has been around for ages. The Soviets were masters at employing it. An old Soviet era joke depicts a TASS correspondent’s report of a 100 yard race with the only two athletes being a Soviet sprinter and his American counterpart. Not surprisingly, the result depended exclusively on which sprinter crossed the finish line first. If it was the Soviet sprinter, TASS would report: “At a multinational sports competition, in the 100 yard dash, the Soviet sprinter finished first, and the American runner finished last”. If the American had somehow, magically, managed to cross the line first, the Soviets would report that “At a multinational sports competition, in the 100 yard dash, the Soviet sprinter captured second place. The American entrant in this event finished next to last”.
One wonders how long the American voter will fall for such sleights of hand. Perhaps it’s time to offer the American people a clear choice between two philosophical directions, rather than continuously focus on this never-ending hodgepodge of “issues”. Then the American voting public could finally have an honest look at the unequivocal choice facing them at the polls.
The utter failure of the Clinton administration to deal with the threat of global terrorism should have served as a wake up call to the nation long before the 9/11 catastrophe. This man blatantly lied to the public on numerous occasions, even before a plurality sent him to the White House in 1992. The “mainstream media” convinced the American electorate to ignore Clinton’s draft evasion and select him to serve as Commander in Chief of our military forces, rather than re-elect a proven war veteran. The public was talked into overlooking his recurrent marital infidelities and, later, retain him in the Oval Office despite his affair with “that woman – Miss Lewinsky”.
In the mid nineties, the Democrats, under Clinton’s magnificent and omniscient leadership, actively supported efforts by former Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) to “reform” the CIA. This led to the dismantling of the agency’s human intelligence capabilities. Years later, when it turned out that the “reformed” CIA had overestimated the WMD capability of Hussein’s Iraq (due to a lack of human intelligence assets), these selfsame Democrats now feign shock and dismay and pompously hold forth: “How could this have happened?” The list goes on and on and on with no end in sight.
Clearly, the time has come for voters to look at factual examples of what the leaders of the two political parties actually do, rather than what they say. In an article published in Human Events magazine, Republican State Assemblyman John Campbell reported a priceless example of what the leadership of today’s Democrat Party is capable of. Republicans in the California State Assembly, noting that the body had celebrated the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo for the past four years without once commemorating the 4th of July during that time period, tried to arrange an official ceremony in the Assembly to recognize the holiday honoring the founding of our nation. They invited Vietnam war hero and former POW retired Admiral Jeremiah Denton to participate in the planned ceremony. However, the Democrat leadership nixed the 4th of July celebration, denying Denton access to the Assembly floor with a claim that “problems” had arisen as to the ceremony and certain of its proposed participants.
Instead, they arranged for the Assembly to hold a ceremony to honor the career of a reporter from the LA Times on the occasion of his retirement. This fellow was, not surprisingly, permitted to speak, whereas a genuine war hero (Admiral Denton) was excluded during a time of armed conflict! When Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger learned of this affront, he set up a ceremony honoring America and invited Admiral Denton to attend as an honored guest. The admiral gave a moving speech to a room packed with veterans from several of America’s wars. A whopping grand total of one elected Democrat attended.
Democrat politicians incessantly decry intolerance, exclusion and discrimination. Voters need to take a calm, sober look at examples such as the aforementioned disgrace and quietly, honestly decide which party in fact repeatedly engages in state-sanctioned discrimination and which party it is whose leaders actually express, in deed as well as in word, tolerance of the views of others. Rank and file Democrats would benefit greatly from a healthy dose of introspective analysis of events such as the blatant, disgraceful anti-Americanism which recently occurred in Sacramento. They might also want to listen objectively to the rabid, vitriolic hatred which is being directed by their supporters at the President and his supporters and ask themselves whether such views really represent theirs. It’s time for rank and file Democrats to take off the blinders and for Republicans to stand up and expose the Democrat Party’s agenda for what it really is: an attempt to dismantle our 200-year-old republic and replace it with a socialist state.
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