I rest my case....
On Monday, January 26, 2004, at 07:08 PM, Charles wrote:
George Delano Bush<image.tiff>
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Posted: January 26, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
George Bush met with some skeptical listeners in his recent State of the Union address, but he truly convinced me of something. He convinced me that the Republican Party, as the party of small government, is dead. Oh, I understand very well that in terms of electoral votes, the Republicans have seldom had a future that looked more immediately promising, but the party is nevertheless a soulless zombie of an institution.
Or rather, make that a vampire. For the Bush administration is sucking the lifeblood out of the United States with every raising of the federal debt roof, with every new federal entitlement, with every new Clintonian promise to end someone's pain somewhere, somehow. Consider the following federal spending increases:
• Education, 60.8 percent
• Labor, 56 percent
• Interior, 23.4 percent
• Defense, 27.6 percent
This is not even Clinton-lite, this is simply armed left-liberalism. Note that the increase in domestic departments dwarfs the increase in defense spending during a time of war. This is astounding!
Now, the president's defenders argue that President Bush has no choice, that the exigencies of the War on Terror require that he accommodate his Democratic opposition in order to free his hand for his duties as commander-in-chief. But this is precisely backward! Wars do not prevent chief executives from driving the domestic agenda – in fact, history supports the opposite premise.
Did FDR refrain from his radical program of nationalization once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in order to accommodate his conservative opposition? On the contrary, he put the pedal to the metal and increased government spending to the greatest share of the economy it has yet known. From this, I conclude that President Bush is doing exactly what he intended from the start, but he is using the war as an excuse to placate his hoodwinked conservative allies instead of using it as a political weapon to bludgeon his enemies on the radical left.
But if the Republican Party is dead, where can those who believe in republicanism, small government, individual freedom and the Constitution go? Right now, there are two places: the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party. Either, in my opinion, are vastly preferable to the empty charade of the GOP.
Ultimately, both parties must eventually merge into one Freedom Party, which will certainly require some level of initially uneasy assimilation. Some libertarians will need to accept that abortion is a violation of the unborn child's unalienable right to life, while conservatives will need to recognize that drugs are not an appropriate target of federal warfare. Christians will have to understand that using the state to enforce traditional morality will always backfire in the end, and everyone will have to wake up to the fact that government largesse is nothing more than poisoned bait.
George Bush has not destroyed the Republican Party by himself, he is merely the culmination of 24 years of false promises. Actions speak much louder than words, though, and his resemble none of his predecessors so much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, expanding central government and eradicating individual liberties during a time of war. He could have been George Jefferson Bush, or even George Reagan Bush, instead, he chose to become George Delano.
As the November elections approach, there are those who will say that one must simply accept the inevitable and vote for the lesser of two evils. To them, I will only say that regardless of whether it is big or small, supporting evil is anathema to any man who seeks the good, the right and the true. Three political generations of Republican promises of future virtue to follow the whoring of Republican principles should be enough for any honest conservative to abjure the party once and for all. I did so 12 years ago – I have never regretted it for a moment.
It is painful to admit that one has been betrayed. It is even more painful to see the rock roll down the hill, and know that one must begin pushing it back up again. But every journey begins with a first step, and sometimes wisdom requires embracing what the world believes to be folly.
Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist Convention, and has been down with Madden since 1992. His weekly column is syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Visit his web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.Tim Harder
Charles Mims
http://www.the-sandbox.org
Sometimes I even amaze myself.- Han Solo, Empire Strikes Back
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