Have Republicans always hated America and we’re just noticing?
September 14, 2007 by William K. Wolfrum
After seeing this paragraph from an Associated Press story …
“The president does not think that generals should be denigrated at all,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. If critics of the president “want to attack him, fine, but the generals, and by association the military, should be out of bounds from partisan attacks.”
… I couldn’t agree more with John from AmericaBlog:
“Republicans simply do not believe in our democracy”
That’s ridiculous, dangerous, and utterly un-American. And it’s a notion that the Republicans have pushed for years. Namely, that the military in America is off-limits, above criticism, and always right. And it’s absurd. And dangerous. In America, the military is under civilian rule. And there’s a reason for that. The military, like any government entity, or any man, is not infallible. And worse, the military, unlike HUD or the Department of Labor, can throw its weight around in ways only dreamed of by other less-armed agencies (hard to imagine HUD waterboarding). It is a direct danger to our democracy, to any democracy, to give the military the right to trump the civilian.
But this kind of democracy-baiting isn’t new for the Republicans. They don’t like our system of jurisprudence either. They have disdain for judges – but really, it’s a disdain for the entire branch of government, the very existence of the branch.
Then there are the rights and liberties underlying our country. Freedom of religion? They don’t believe in freedom of religion. They believe in freedom of the Southern Baptist religion. All others need not apply. Freedom of speech? They don’t believe in any speech at all anymore. Freedom of the press? They think reporters should be tried for treason. Then there’s domestic spying. A crime once considered verboten. Now it’s shrugged off as just another acceptable fact of every day life because, you know, we have nothing to hide. Which goes to another underlying fact of American life, the right to a lawyer and the right to be innocent until proven guilty. Republicans don’t believe in those either, anymore.
And the arguments that Republicans use to bolster all of these claims? Straight out of the Soviet handbook. What are you so afraid of if you’ve got nothing to hide?
Back to the topic at hand, if the military is sacrosanct and off limits, then why do we have a Uniform Code of Military Justice at all? Let’s just delete it from the laws and say that anything the military does, anywhere, is okay, legal, and downright good. Or at the very least, make the UCMJ no longer apply to generals, since the White House seems to think that generals can do no wrong (still waiting for an answer on why Negroponte balled out Petraeus a few years back for cooking the books re: the number of Iraqi security forces trained – doesn’t sound like the kind of scolding he’d get if he were truly infallible).
If we’re the country the Republicans keep describing, then we are not the country I grew up in. Or worse, we are the country I grew up in, but I was lied to for 40 years about what that country stands for.
I’m not sure which is worse.
–WKW
Republicans want small government. Once you understand that this actually only means Republicans don’t want to personally pay taxes, then the rest of their views become perfectly consistent.
A couple of examples: how else could you resolve their views on…
Power of law enforcement – Republicans just seem unable to grasp how giving additional power to law enforcement contradicts their small government mantra. And this is because they do not view these powers being used against them. They’re only used against criminals and terrorists and such.
Freedom of religion – Giving control to a local public school administrator to force their religious views on your children is not a cry out for small government. One would think that with the intense infighting over religious ideology that goes on even amongst different flavors of Baptists, much less the all out animosity between various protestant denominations, that Republicans would be able to foresee a situation in which the principal and/or teacher and/or coach might practice religious beliefs contradictory to their own. Sounds to me that some people trust government.
Defense budget –We absolutely trash money in the Defense Department. Of course we must have a strong military, but the amount of money we spend and waste is insane, and at least nothing that small government types should want.
Groupthink – The Republican party uses every trick in the book Clinton to bully any and all dissenters into submission. Pandering to the lowest common denominator fundamentalist mentality discourages individualism. This is the very trick that collectivist, big government types use.
At least Libertarians attempt consistency which is more than I can say for Republicans.
Oh, my God, this is so true! America was always undermined with corruption, bigotry, and lies, but at least our elected officials were afraid of being found out, once upon a time, and tried to hide their own evil by rooting out others’ transgressions. Now it’s considered Business As Usual, and the perpetrators sit and smirk at Congressional hearings and answer “I don’t remember” — when they’re even called to account at all — knowing themselves to be beyond the reach of justice because of their Friends In High Places. And then the hypocrites go on TV and lecture US about Patriotism!
Please don’t stop telling the truth, America needs to hear it somehow, even if the mass media are owned by parties to the tyranny.
“smirk”
Libby’s smirk was the quintessential “eat shit and die you can’t touch me because our corrupt liar of a president is going to let me off” smirk. The arrogance of the Bush administration is best summed up by that cocky little grin on Libby’s face as he casually strolled out of the courthouse with his attorney. (The media played this clip almost every time they talked about the Libby case and I don’t guess I will ever forget it.)