Fear

Sorry about that; I took a week long coffee break to visit the Northwest Territory and only now am able to resume my pontifications.

It is obvious, that George Bush is expanding his powers by using fear to scare the populace and to intimidate the Congress. From my short and non-scientific foray into Ohio, I came away with the sinking feeling that Bubble Boy is a lot tougher and smarter character than his opponents have ever been willing to concede.

Having grown up in the time when leaders even in the darkest of times called upon the people to forget their fears and to sacrifice for the common good, it is sad to see a leader tell the nation that there is no need to sacrifice in the war on terror and to go about their daily lives secure in the knowledge that he is protecting them from the great fear. All they have to do is trust him in assuring that the terrorists are held at bay far across the sea.

That Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or George H. W. Bush would resort to assuring the people that all would be well as long as they trusted in them and went on with their little lives is beyond my comprehension. These leaders described the fear clearly and said that only by sacrificing could we overcome the furies of Nazism or Bolshevism. We were not to fear alone in our homes while the government took care of us and protected us from the evil all about. We were called to step up and participate.

Today, we are called upon to sacrifice nothing for the war on terror save our individual liberties. Our grandchildren will pay for the shattered lives and the bill for munitions for the Iraq War. All we have to do is cut taxes, cut entitlements, and leave the worrying to George.

In Ohio, I heard the repeated canards of the right. The Democrats have no ideas, no alternatives to the Bush plan and doctrine. But I heard other voices expressing concerns about an Attorney General refusing to spell out for our representatives just what the administration is doing or why in looking into the activities of American citizens. Can it be that the government is reading the communications of our countrymen simply because they oppose the war in Iraq? You’ll never find out by asking Mr. Gonzales.

There are a number of parts of the Republican coalition that are suffering greatly from this expansion of presidential powers, but they too are being intimidated by the fear that Bubble Boy will charge them with dereliction should a major terrorist attack take place in the U.S. While the moderates, fiscal conservatives and civil libertarians deplore the way things are going in the war, the internal spying, and with the ever expanding deficits, they are constantly reminded that if anything goes awry in a subway explosion in an American city, they will be held accountable for failing to hand over more power to the president.

By having their media lackeys firing away on all of these fronts, America is becoming a land of the intimidated. The reality is that the president and his sycophants are the ones without ideas for the nation. In the war on terror, their answer was to attack Iraq. On Social Security, the answer was to turn it into a defined contributions program. On deficits, the answer was to cut taxes to bring prosperity and eliminate the deficits. All these great plans were simply pipe dreams.

The Democrats have a great chance. There are millions of independent and disaffected Republicans ready to vote for them providing the jackasses are willing to govern from the center. Should they turn hard left, however, all their ideas of social justice and to return us to a nation of civil liberties will be endangered for another four years.

Mark Warner of Virginia, Hillary Clinton of New York, Evan Bayh of Indiana and many others seem to be getting the message and are fighting the Republicans for the center. Sadly, the hard left as demonstrated by the failed filibuster for Sam Alito is not yet able to see that compromise is the only possible way to drive these people who ruining the country from power.

The choice is clear, the Democrats better get it pretty quickly or Bubble Boy will pass the baton to one of his clones who will protect us from everything but ourselves.

Blog on!

Wild Bill