csua.org/u/9jt -> www.moveonpac.org/gore5/
During this series of speeches, I ha ve tried to understand what it is that gives so many Americans the uneas y feeling that something very basic has gone wrong with our democracy. There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that th ere is something deeply troubling about President Bushs relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information tha t might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the Presid ent as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to hav e a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical analysis. And while I hav e no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that it is an impor tant motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me an d for many of you, most of the Presidents frequent departures from fact -based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and econo mic ideology than with the Bible. But it is crucially important to be pr ecise in describing what it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is ideology and not his religious faith that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the p roblems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican id eology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporation s over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own s ake is the original sin of this presidency. The surprising dominance of American politics by right-wing politicians w hose core beliefs are often wildly at odds with the opinions of the majo rity of Americans has resulted from the careful building of a coalition of interests that have little in common with each other besides a desire for power devoted to the achievement of a narrow agenda. The two most i mportant blocks of this coalition are the economic royalists, those corp orate leaders and high net worth families with vast fortunes at their di sposal who are primarily interested in an economic agenda that eliminate s as much of their own taxation as possible, and an agenda that removes regulatory obstacles and competition in the marketplace. They provide th e bulk of the resources that have financed the now extensive network of foundations, think tanks, political action committees, media companies a nd front groups capable of simulating grassroots activism. The second of the two pillars of this coalition are social conservatives who want to roll back most of the progressive social changes of the 20 th century, i ncluding womens rights, social integration, the social safety net, the government social programs of the progressive era, the New Deal, the Gre at Society and others. Their coalition includes a number of powerful spe cial interest groups such as the National Rifle Association, the anti-ab ortion coalition, and other groups that have agreed to support each othe rs agendas in order to obtain their own. You could call it the three hu ndred musketeers one for all and all for one. Those who raise more tha n one hundred thousand dollars are called not musketeers but pioneers. His seeming immunity to doubt is often interpreted by people who see and hear him on television as evidence of the strength of his conviction w hen in fact it is this very inflexibility, based on a willful refusal to even consider alternative opinions or conflicting evidence, that poses the most serious danger to the country. And by the same token, the simpl icity of his pronouncements, which are often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, are in fact exact ly the opposite -- they mark his refusal to even consider complexity. Th at is a particularly difficult problem in a world where the challenges w e face are often quite complex and require rigorous analysis. The essential cruelty of Bushs game is that he takes an astonishingly se lfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then clo aks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the proce ss he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that ac tually hurt their families and their communities. Bush has stolen the sy mbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most r adical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America and give as much as possible to the already wealth y and privileged, who look at his agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul ONeill, this is our due. The central elements of Bushs political as opposed to religious -- bel ief system are plain to see: The public interest is a dangerous myth a ccording to Bushs ideology a fiction created by the hated liberals who use the notion of public interest as an excuse to take away from t he wealthy and powerful what they believe is their due. Therefore, gover nment of by and for the people, is bad except when government can help members of his coalition. Laws and regulations are therefore bad agai n, except when they can be used to help members of his coalition. Theref ore, whenever laws must be enforced and regulations administered, it is important to assign those responsibilities to individuals who can be dep ended upon not to fall prey to this dangerous illusion that there is a p ublic interest, and will instead reliably serve the narrow and specific interests of industries or interest groups. This is the reason, for exam ple, that President Bush put the chairman of Enron, Ken Lay, in charge o f vetting any appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. En ron had already helped the Bush team with such favors as ferrying their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt the counting of legall y cast ballots. And then Enron went on to bilk the electric rate-payers of California, without the inconvenience of federal regulators protectin g citizens against their criminal behavior. Or to take another example, this is why all of the important EPA positions have been filled by lawye rs and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their respective in dustries in order to make sure that theyre not inconvenienced by the ac tual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution. In Bushs ideo logy, there is an interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that support him and his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads. Their preferences become his policies, and his politics become th eir business. Any new taxes are of course bad especially if they add anything to the already unbearable burden placed on the wealthy and powerful. There are exceptions to this rule, however, for new taxes that are paid by lower i ncome Americans, which have the redeeming virtue of simultaneously lifti ng the burden of paying for government from the wealthy and potentially recruiting those presently considered too poor to pay taxes into the ant i-tax bandwagon. In the international arena, treaties and international agreements are bad , because they can interfere with the exercise of power, just as domesti c laws can. The Geneva Convention, for example, and the US law prohibi ting torture were both described by Bushs White House Counsel as quain t And even though new information has confirmed that Donald Rumsfeld w as personally involved in reviewing the specific extreme measures author ized to be used by military interrogators, he has still not been held ac countable for the most shameful and humiliating violation of American pr inciples in recent memory. Most dangerous of all, this ideology promotes the making of policy in sec ret, based on information that is not available to the public and insula ted from any meaningful participation by Congress. And when Congresss a pproval is required under our current constitution, it is given wit...
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