Imagine the Quaker
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archives | newquaker.comSaturday, October 02, 2004
Weird politics. Watching the Kerry-Bush debate, um, presentation actually got me yearning for a parliamentary system. What still raises the little hairs on the back of my neck is the comment by President Bush (made with a sour smirk and a lunge of his head as he clutched the podium) that America would never ask permission from other countries before prevailing to ensure the security of the US. This is starting to smell a lot like fascism.
Well, right after his encounter with Kerry, Bush started running around with the charge that the senator wanted to use "some sort of global test" before ever deploying American troops. He wouldn't do that, he said: "I will never submit America's security to an international test."[1] Of course not. This is the very same president who doesn't listen to any dissenting Americans, calling them mere "focus groups," as though they were sugar ants. Actually what Senator Kerry said was this:No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it ... you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.[2]
And so we're supposed to find some comfort in this correction, but we should all be gagging over the fact that both of these men don't really have a problem, at least not in principle, with the use of the "preemptive" attack. So is it any surprise that Ralph Nader is still seeing double when he looks at his challengers? In his political analysis of the debate Nader said this:
Neither President Bush or Senator Kerry have an exit strategy for the war in Iraq and both of them say we're going to win the war in Iraq—which means an endless occupation, which breeds resistance, and which does not cut the bottom out of the insurgency, because mainstream Iraqis are given no light at the end of the tunnel that they're going to get their country back with a set schedule under a US military and corporate (i.e. oil company) withdrawal from their nation.
While Cheney and Edwards get ready for their debate, er, presentation on Tuesday, October 5, in Cleveland, Ohio, right down the street will be a real debate featuring the other vice presidential candidates—Peter Camejo (Independent), Richard Campagna (Libertarian), Chuck Baldwin (Constitution), and Patricia LaMarche (Green). Starting at 7:00 pm on the campus of Baldwin-Wallace College, the format calls for an hour and a half debate with all questions coming from the college students themselves; then an intermission so all participants can watch a live broadcast of the Cheney-Edwards interchange, followed at 10:30 pm by rebuttals from the four vice presidential candidates.[3] Gosh, I wonder if I have time to get a flight to Cleveland.
1. CNN, Friday, October 1, 2004.
2. Duluth News Tribune, Friday, October 1, 2004.
3. PR Webb, Friday, October 1, 2004.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:40 PM
Sunday, September 26, 2004
When 2 is the loneliest number. I'm still bothered by the sinister but subtle attack by Focus on the Family against Jim Wallis and his "God is not a Republican...or a Democrat" petition drive sponsored by Sojourners. In the the first of a five-part series examining the role of evangelical Christians in the 2004 presidential election, Pete Winn's article in CitizenLink, a Focus on the Family forum, begins with the frank admission that God is neither Republican nor Democrat, but then moves quickly to question what Wallis is really after. The answer? "Wallis, a self-avowed Democrat, has targeted the ad at conservative evangelicals, who tend to line up with the Republican Party," meaning that Wallis and Sojourners, a "magazine for liberal Christians," must be planting themselves firmly on one side of a cultural and theological dividing line, with abortion and same-sex marriage on one side and all others in this side-taking battle on the other.
How sad this all is. The Sojourners campaign was aimed at calling attention away from the very issues that seem to trivialize Christ's social message; because its editor has made it known that he is a Democrat, evangelical Christians should therefore go ahead and line themselves up on either side of a moral fence. Forget about the terrible tragedies in Iraq and Afghanistan and the reasons that led to our shameful involvement there. Forget about the Bush administration's lethal evironmental policies. Don't talk about the underclass in America, those without food, shelter, or access to adequate medical coverage. These things are trumped by pro-family issues that must result in a "clash of world views" at the ballot box. So let's talk instead about oil, tax incentives, a huge military defense budget, the need to Americanize everybody else, and how all of this will rid the world of same-sex attraction and abortion doctors. Let's use words like freedom, liberty, the will of the American people, our resolve will not be shaken, we will prevail, blah, blah—hey, the Iraqi people, too, will learn to love MTV, beer, and pork rinds.
Equally sad is the inertia of an electoral system that demands of everybody that they line up at the ballot box in twos. In the last presidential election, Ralph Nader called them Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee; as we get closer to the November vote, we're going to see more ghosts of the disenfranchised: the young voters, those who prize a clean environment, those who oppose the use of American tax dollars for an aggressive US hegemony, and those who so value human life that they still yearn to vote for someone who will help them to bring Christ's message of love to this world.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 1:13 AM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
