Republicans are sending around the Internet a photo of a cute little
boy whose T-shirt reads: “The mess in my pants is nothing compared to
the mess Democrats will make of this country if they win Nov. 2nd.”
One can only wonder at the insouciance of this message. Are
Republicans unaware of the amazing mess the Bush regime has made?
It is impossible to imagine a bigger mess. Republicans have us at war
in two countries as a result of Republican lies and deceptions, and
we might be in two more wars--Iran and Pakistan--by November. We have
alienated the entire Muslim world and most of the rest.
The dollar has lost 60% of its value against the euro, and the once
mighty dollar is losing its reserve currency role.
The Republicans’ policies have driven up the price of both oil and
gold by 400%.
Inflation is in double digits. Employment is falling.
The Republican economy in the 21st century has been unable to create
net new jobs for Americans except for low wage domestic services such
as waitresses, bartenders, retail clerks and hospital orderlies.
Republican deregulation brought about fraud in mortgage lending and
dangerous financial instruments which have collapsed the housing
market, leaving a million or more homeowners facing foreclosure. The
financial system is in disarray and might collapse from insolvency.
The trade and budget deficits have exploded. The US trade deficit is
larger than the combined trade deficits of every deficit country in
the world.
The US can no longer finance its wars or its own government and
relies on foreign loans to function day to day. To pay for its
consumption, the US sells its existing assets--companies, real
estate, toll roads, whatever it can offer--to foreigners.
Republicans have run roughshod over the US Constitution, Congress,
the courts and civil liberties. Republicans have made it perfectly
clear that they believe that our civil liberties make us unsafe--
precisely the opposite view of our Founding Fathers. Yet, Republicans
regard themselves as the Patriotic Party.
The Republicans have violated the Nuremberg prohibitions against war
crimes, and they have violated the Geneva Conventions against torture
and abuse of prisoners. Republican disregard for human rights ranks
with that of history’s great tyrants.
The Republicans have put in place the foundation for a police state.
I am confident that the Democrats, too, will make a mess. But can
they beat this record?
We must get the Republicans totally out of power, or we will have no
country left for the Democrats to mess up.
I say this as a person who has done as much for the Republican Party
as anyone. I helped to devise and to get implemented an economic
policy that cured stagflation and that brought Republicans back into
political competition after Watergate. If I could have looked into a
crystal ball and seen that under a free trade banner, Republicans
would enable corporate executives to pay themselves millions of
dollars in “performance pay” for deserting their American work forces
and hiring foreigners in their place, thus destroying the aspirations
and careers of millions of Americans, I never would have helped the
Republicans. If a crystal ball had revealed that a neoconned
Republican Party would launch wars of naked aggression against
countries that posed no threat to the United States, I would have
shouted my warnings even earlier.
The neoconned Republican Party is the greatest threat America has
ever faced. Let me tell you why.
How many Republicans can you name who respect and honor the
Constitution? There are Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and who? The ranks of
Republican constitutional supporters quickly grow thin.
The reason is that Republicans view the Constitution as a coddling
device for criminals and terrorists. Republicans think the
Constitution can be set aside for evil-doers and kept in place for
everyone else. But without the Constitution we only have the
government’s word as to who is an evil-doer.
This would be the word of the same infallible government that told us
that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that were
on the verge of being used against America, the same infallible
government that told us that Guantanamo prison held “770 of the most
dangerous persons alive” and then, after stealing 5 years of their
lives, quietly released 500 of them as mistaken identities.
Republicans think the United States is the salt of the earth and that
American hegemony over the rest of the world is not only justified by
our great virtue but necessary to our safety. People this full of
hubris are incapable of judgment. People incapable of judgment should
never be given power.
Republicans have no sympathy for anyone but their own kind. How many
Republicans do you know who care a hoot about the plight of the poor,
the jobless, the medically uninsured? The government programs that
Republicans are always adamant to cut are the ones that help people
who need help.
I have yet to hear any of my Republican friends express any concern
whatsoever for the 1.2 million Iraqis who have died, and the 4
million who have been displaced, as a result of Bush’s gratuitous
invasion. Many tell me that the five- and six-year long wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan are due to wimpy Americans “who don’t have the balls
it takes” to win. Killing and displacing a quarter of the Iraqi
population is just a wimpy result of a population that lacks
testosterone. Real Americans would have killed them all by now.
Macho patriotic Republicans are perfectly content for US foreign
policy to be controlled by Israel. Republican evangelical “christian”
churches teach their congregations that America’s purpose in the
world is to serve Israel. And these are the flag-wavers.
Those of us who think America is the Constitution, and that loyalty
means loyalty to the Constitution, not to office holders or to a
political party or to a foreign country, are regarded by Republicans
as “anti-American.”
Neoconservatives, such as Billy Kristol, insist that loyalty to the
country means loyalty to the government. Thus, criticizing the
government for launching wars of aggression and for violating
constitutionally protected civil liberties is, according to
neoconservatives, a disloyal act.
In the neoconservative view, there is no place for the voices of
citizens: the government makes the decisions, and loyal citizens
support the government’s decisions.
In the neocon political system there is no liberty, no democracy, no
debate. Dissenters are traitors.
The neoconservative magazine, Commentary, wants the New York Times
indicted for telling Americans that the Bush regime was caught
violating US law, specifically the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, by spying on Americans without obtaining warrants as required by
law. Note that neoconservatives think it is a criminal act for a
newspaper to tell its readers that their government is spying on them
illegally.
Judging by their behavior, a number of Democrats go along with the
neocon view. Thus, the Democrats don’t offer a greatly different
profile. They went along with the views that corporate profits and
the war on terror take precedence over everything else. They have not
used the congressional power that the electorate gave them in the
2006 elections.
However, Democrats, or at least some of them, do care about the
Constitution. If it were not for Democratic appointees to the federal
courts and the ACLU (essentially a Democratic organization), the Bush
regime would have completely destroyed our civil liberties.
Some Democrats are “bleeding hearts,” who actually care about
suffering people they don’t know, and who think that we have
obligations to others. Have you ever heard of a bleeding heart
Republican?
Traditionally, Democrats objected whenever policies resulted in a
handful of rich people capturing all of the income gains from the
economy. There might still be a few such Democrats left.
Looking at the Republican mess, I doubt that Democrats, try as they
may, can equal it.
---------------------------
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.comhttp://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07232008.html
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