falls es jemanden interessiert (und gut Englisch kann, da fehlt´s bei mir) hier ein Test dazu:
- Tuma’s Toons -
The Ugly Truth About the
Republican Party:
The Myth of GOP Conservatism
by Kevin Tuma
„An elective despotism was not the
government we fought for.“
–Thomas Jefferson
„Degrees do not matter…
one does not bargain about inches of evil.“
—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
As a paleoconservative, I find myself these days looking back at the Clinton
Administration with a sort of warm, golden nostalgia. Much has changed since
those days…and not for the better.
To anyone with even a basic understanding and respect for the Bill of Rights,
the United States, since September 11, 2001, has begun a nightmarish descent.
To put it simply, the Bush White House has put the Constitution on the
chopping block in ways the Clintons would have never dared to attempt.
The US public—naive and obedient as always–blithely sucked up the maudlin
flag-waving and crocodile tears that accompanied the passage of the Patriot
Act and the Office of Homeland Security. Authorities can now invade homes
without warrants, arrest people without charges, and jail people without
trials.
The Feds have declared Posse Comitatus obsolete, and they are creating hordes
of military police to be unleashed upon the country. A new branch of the
military is now on the drawing board, to deal with „domestic threats“–i.e.,
common American citizens. Despite the fact that we are not at war, the
government continues to hold hundreds of military prisoners in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and apparently will deal with them using military tribunals. People in
the Press continue their ongoing demonstration that there’s no lie the Federal
government can tell that they are willing to expose, and no usurpation of
power that they will ever find objectionable. Even the United States’ ‚shadow
government‘ has been openly discussed–and no one dares to criticize the
concept. Orwellian newspeak abounds.
The government continues to turn the word Treason on its head with its
unconstitutional treatment of the public and its illicit treatment of ‚enemy
combatants‘ like Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla. In the latter case, the
‚terrorist‘ is an American citizen being held without any charges, denied all
legal representation, denied the right to defend himself, and the right to
face his accusers. No one in the Imperial Media cares. Machiavellian plotting
to establish armies of secret police and citizen informants goes on unabated,
despite the fact that these measures did not pass Congress. The small public
outcry generated by the TIPS plan is swept aside…a citizen informant system
will be implemented anyway. Why? Because the Attorney General says so.
Apparently, Mr. Ashcroft learned a very valuable lesson from his predecessor,
Janet Reno: The Attorney General is–absolutely and without question—above
the Law, and is capable of creating policy by fiat, just like the President
does. We now have a modern triumvirate of entities that create policy, and
answer to no one: the Supreme Court, the President, and the Attorney General
of the United States. All Americans are subservient to their whims.
The abuse of liberties in the name of safety goes on. The government continues
to push for National ID cards and a computer chip implant tracking program for
children–it would appear that human privacy is just as irrelevant now as
human liberty. Only human ‚safety‘ is important, even if it’s the safety of
the gulag. The New York Times published an article suggesting that the Feds
have built concentration camps within the United States…there was no real
denial from the Executive Branch. Media talking heads have actually asked
citizens if they think torture of ‚terrorist suspects‘ is a good idea–as if
to suggest that favorable public opinion would legitimize such tactics. In the
War On Terror, no potential abuse of civil liberties goes unconsidered. One
gets the queasy feeling that once official Washington has finished off what is
left of the Constitution, they will revive the Inquisition and go after the
Magna Carta next.
It is time for a realistic assessment: We are living in a Police State right
now. Not six months from now. Not ten years down the road. Not if someone we
do not like gets elected President. Not if all our guns are taken away.
Right now.
The only reason you are reading this article here is because they haven’t
started censoring political dissent on the Internet…yet. There are many
evils that have not been implemented to date, but the mechanical apparatus of
totalitarianism is completely in place, oiled, idling, and ready for use,
thanks to the War On Terror.
America was fascistic and centralized before, but not nearly this bad.
American citizens at least had some legal protections against government abuse
in the past, and some means to keep an eye on the Feds–these have been
essentially stripped away. The Independent Counsel Act is dead, thereby making
it much harder to investigate the Executive Branch. The FBI is rewriting its
own rulebook to make Federal whistleblowing a dangerous and difficult thing to
do. The Freedom of Information Act has essentially been nullified-to protect
our „national security“.
The Fourth Amendment is effectively dead until the USA-Patriot Act is
repealed, or until it is declared unconstitutional by a high court. The
Patriot Act’s deadly provisions do not sunset, despite government
misinformation to the contrary. Most of the other nine amendments of the Bill
of Rights have been ignored for years. They will certainly be ignored now that
the Federal government has voted itself unlimited power and control over our
domestic liberties in the name of security. Meanwhile, we are inches away from
full-blown Martial Law, and in constant danger that it will be put into effect
at the slightest new terrorist provocation.
Unfortunately, these changes are pretty much unknown to the typical indolent,
unfocused US citizen. While the average American was lazing around, stuffing
his face with potato chips, and watching „Big Brother“ on TV, the Federal
Government became Big Brother in real life. Sadly, it requires effort—like
reading and thinking—to see that our liberties are being threatened from
within; this is apparently beyond the scope of most modern Americans. Of
course, another reason why there has been little outcry is because there has
been very little information disseminated by the official state propaganda
corps we once euphemistically called „the Free Press“.
The biggest problem, however, is not the fat, lazy American or the many
goose-stepping little Goebbels of our news media–the big problem is that
these changes have been wrought by a Republican President who was elected by
millions of gullible conservatives. There is no „lesser of two evils“ or
philosophical core to the Republican Party, and the inarticulate Mr. Bush is
proof of that pudding. The massive abrogations of freedom that have come from
Washington since 9-11-01 are an official product of Republican governance.
They cannot be blamed on Bill Clinton or Al Gore or Tom Daschle.
The GOP has been wholly in charge of post-War-On-Terror Washington, and is
fully responsible for the unconstitutional policies that have been enacted.
These are oppressive government policies that–if implemented in the 1990s,
under Clinton and Reno, would have provoked screams of outrage. The mavens of
talk radio are now silent about civil liberties, and seem only interested in
discussing the joyful topic of going to war in the Mideast again, and killing
more fleeing Iraqi soldiers. There are no philosophical principles behind the
policies of the Bush Republicans; they simply want to seize as much Federal
power as possible, and make war. The 21st Century conservative movement is not
just an intellectual wasteland…it has become a primary threat to our freedoms
as well.
However, the real reason the Republican Party is a threat to liberty is not
because conservatism itself is an errant philosophy. The reason is because the
Republican Party never stood for conservative values in the first place, and
is lying to the public whenever it attempts to co-opt the values of
conservatism. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were never the standard
bearers, or the rule. They were the exceptions to the rule, at least when they
were at their best, and were not being manipulated by empire builders
themselves. The real Republican Party is and always has been an arrogant
political body, dominated by snobs and big business people who are more
interested in Robber Baronism than honest capitalism. They have always been
ready and willing to use Big Government to enforce their schemes, to hand out
corporate welfare to them, and to protect their investments–particularly in
the case of petroleum. The Republican establishment backs the Federal Reserve,
the IRS, and other unconstitutional agencies while giving shifty-eyed lip
service to the concept of small government and lower taxes. Such people have
no populism in their soul, and no concern for the constitutional rights of the
little people–and they couldn’t possibly care less about the size, scope, and
intrusiveness of the government. Snotty corporate monopolist wannabes and
closet socialists are the true heart and soul of the GOP…not the poor,
misled middle-class voters who believe „that government is best which governs
least“.
That is not to suggest that the Democrats are any better. They aren’t; their
party is a massive fraud as well. But they are also not any worse. Those
voters who mistakenly thought they were worse are responsible for voting Bush
into office, and thereby destroying the 4th Amendment. This abrogation of
human liberty probably never would have happened under Gore, had there been a
President Gore, because talk radio and the FOX News Channel would have
provided large-scale political dissent that we do not have today.
Unfortunately, the GOP masses have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that
they are every bit as much a bunch of partisan lemmings as the Clintonistas
were. And they have also disproven–with their popular President, who is
treated with kid gloves–their own long-held contention that the elitist news
media is liberal. On the contrary. The elitist news media is a whore, dancing
to the tune of those with power and influence–and if it is firmly anything at
all, it is firmly Anti-Liberty and Pro-Big-Government. How fortunate for the
Bushies that their beloved „President 911“ stands for exactly the same
things.
The word ‚conservative‘ implies preservations of values and important
traditions. In America, our most important traditions would be embodied in the
Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. By this standard, the most
conservative Americans around today are libertarians, not Republicans.
However, very few libertarians today would willingly claim the word
‚conservative‘…and I can hardly blame them.
What is called ‚conservative‘ today is warmongering 20th Century statism
drummed to a flag-waving beat. The common diatribe used by liberals–that
‚Republicans are still living in the 1950s‘–is incorrect; they are actually
living in the 1940s, instead. It is very telling, for example, that Rush
Limbaugh is a huge fan of the Spielberg film „Saving Private Ryan“, and had
nothing but praise for Tom Brokaw’s book „The Greatest Generation“. How
apropos that Limbaugh calls himself the „Doctor of Democracy“. If Republicans
pine for the histrionic days of World War II, they are nationalists–not
conservatives. They are longing for the nostalgic trappings of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s world, not a conservative culture. FDR was both a Communist and a
liar, but, additionally, he was also a very effective warmonger and
militarist. War, apparently, is very important to the Republicans–they do not
worry much about little things like rights or liberties; they want to be
fantasy heroes with a gun, like Rambo or Dirty Harry. The star-spangled cloak
that self-proclaimed conservatives like Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly and
Kristol wrap themselves in is a fabric of big-government nationalism and
military expansionism. If boot-stomping nationalism is all conservatism really
stands for, the warmed-over '60s peacenik academics who have called Hitler a
‚right-winger‘ are correct.
The true spiritual father of the Republican Party is not Goldwater, or Reagan,
but Abraham Lincoln. Some people might misinterpret this as a compliment. I
refer to the real Abraham Lincoln. The same Lincoln who suspended the writ of
Habeas Corpus, and the same Lincoln who used a noble human idea—the freeing
of the slaves-to wage a greedy war of aggression on a separate and sovereign
nation, and to grind its culture and people into the ground. The same Abraham
Lincoln who ordered the arrest and imprisonment of newspaper editors and
publishers who disagreed with his war, and ordered Federal troops to demolish
their printing presses. The same „Honest Abe“ who ordered troops to interfere
with the election process in opposition Congressional districts, and who
ordered the arrest and imprisonment of several dozen state legislators. The
same brooding tyrant who went on to order the military arrest of a sitting
member of Congress who was a war opponent, and then have him deported from the
United States.
Abraham Lincoln was the ultimate Federalist and the ultimate propagator of
War. He was the summation and the embodiment of the essence of Republicanism.
There is nothing new about this; it is how things have always been.
Republicans in authority have almost always kowtowed to corrupt business
interests and marched the US to war for greedy causes, just like Lincoln did.
Any list of historically prominent GOP leaders is predominantly a list of
globalists and elitists who have believed in a strong, centralized government.
There is no grand and glorious history of GOP conservatism…GOP conservatism
is a sham. They are not capitalists or constitutionalists; they are statists.
And that is the ugly, untold truth of the Republican Party.
Quelle:
Etherzone.com
http://www.etherzone.com/2002/tuma100302.shtml
Grüße
Raimund
der das leider nicht alles verstanden hat, aber glaubt, dass das für den einen und anderen interessant sein könnte.
MOD: Quelle nachgetragen
-mkl-