More Moral? Moral Profit
Posted by Henry Meyerding on Jul 8, 2007, 00:38
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What do you say when someone you know says George W and the members of his administration are "more moral" than the Democrats? It is a ludicrous proposition on its face - moral politician is an oxymoron of the first rank, regardless of their party affiliations. When a politician is described as a man of high morals, there's two things that people usually mean by this:
- They mean that the politician believes in certain things and will stand by those beliefs even when they do not pay out political dividends. In other words, such a person whose allegiance is not for sale.
- We agree with their past and present positions on political issues and they have been relatively steadfast in supporting one side or the other of the "important" issues of the day.
Almost never does someone laud a politician with the epithet of moral unless their moral choices coincide with those of the person giving their opinion. By the first definition above, after all, Adolph Hitler was a very moral politician. Boss Tweed is generally considered to be not a very moral politician. Most people dislike Hitler because they disagree with his morals. Boss Tweed is disliked largely because he was for sale to the highest bidder and essentially knew no morals. Both were liars. Both claimed to support some things they worked actively to defeat and claimed to oppose things their administrations actively supported. How do we judge them both? We judge them by what their respective governments actually did.
So, what are George W's morals? What does he believe in? Well, people will tell you all kinds of things about him and his cronies. Many of these things are open to serious question. The only real evaluation that makes sense is to see what it is that they actually do. What has the Bush administration actually done?
| Education |
Continuing lower academic standards and student performance - lowered expenditure per student in most districts |
| Pre-emptive War |
More than $800 billion dollars and more than 50,000 killed and wounded Americans in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan |
| Veterans |
Appalling conditions in veterans hospitals resulting from under allocation and funding of veterans programs |
| Inner Cities |
Continued disintegration and economic erosion of inner city government and economies |
| Foreign Relations |
Lower esteem, if not contempt, from the majority of people and nations of Earth - wars of aggression, extraordinary rendition, ... |
| More Government |
Larger budget, employing more people - much of it privatized, so we're being taxes to make other peoples' profit |
| Law |
Government operating in contempt of the Constitution - warrantless wiretaps, Patriot Act, Commuting sentences for high crimes |
| Environment |
In the pocket of Big Oil, fighting to make sure that nothing is done about global warming, gutting the EPA |
It doesn't matter what fine words his speech writers put into his mouth or how good he sounds - it matters what his administration does and there is nothing of any consequence I can come up with to show these people to have any morality whatever, save enlightened self-interest. There neo cons are just the newest version of Tammany Hall, with a twist - their self-interest is actively destroying the moral fiber of the nation - putting everything up for grabs to the highest bidder.
Just take a look at these men, like Cheney, like Rumsfeld, like Wolfowitz, and so on... they learned their trade under Nixon, polished it under Reagan, and now under George II they have free reign to indulge their proclivities and plunder the national treasury for their own purposes - re-writing the administrative rule book so that government ceases to be a means the people institute to address matters of public concern and becomes instead a grand con game whose object is to generate revenue for yourself and your friends.
What we need in our time more than at any point in the nation's history are men and women of honor who will devote themselves to the service of the public, who will accept the trust of the nation as a sacred duty and accomplish great things that are needful not for their own profit, nor for anyone else's profit, but to fulfil the promise of this great nation for all its people and for all the world. I've said it before: a world run for profit results in a world not worth living in.
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