In last Wednesday's Indianola Record Herald, there was a Letter to the Editor declaring the Left as being akin to Nazi's in their pro-choice policies as well as saying that being a Democrat was like being in a pseudo-anti-religion.

While the Nazi argument is nothing new - it's a favorite comparison in politics for both sides of the isle I guess, heck I've even compared a certain policies of the Bush administration as having parallels to those of the Nazi party - I believe that all of us must be judged on our own merits, not simply by the party we back.  Let me clarify - I know several Republicans and non-Republican conservatives.  While I disagree with the actions of their Party, I know that these individuals are FAR REMOVED from the actual policies of their Party.  My friends didn't have a hand in the Patriot Act (*ahem* while some of the members of my own Party in Congress did), and many of them have a far more liberal stance on the environment and privacy rights than their Party.  But when someone like in this letter decides to declare war on THE PEOPLE of my Party, THE INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS rather than the Party as a whole, that makes me incredibly angry.

Plus his was a message of hate.  Plain and simple.  To have the gall to say that the Left are Godless shocks me.  When you do that, you are calling my Grandmother Godless, a woman who has done more for her community through the church than anyone I know, yet she's a Democrat.  You're calling my neighbors Godless, a family who is active in both their church and the Democratic Party.  You're calling my friends Godless, many of whom go to church every week, Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists and others.  Look around people, our country is split pretty evenly, so odds are you're saying that about every second person you meet on the street.

Frankly I am sick of the moral argument of the Republican Party.  Not because I believe that there shouldn't be a moral argument - those raising the argument have the right to their beliefs like everyone else.  It's because I can't believe that these members of the "moral majority" REMAIN Republicans!  The Republican Party on a national level talks the talk when it comes to morality, but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, they are all inaction, preferring to pass aid to the mega-rich and controlling corporations.  Republicans have controlled the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court for the past three years!  Where is your prayer in schools?  Where is the 10 Commandments in the courtroom?  Where is abolishing Roe v Wade?  If my Party had control and didn't act on any of the key points it runs on, I would be looking for a new Party - and none of my Republican friends voted Republican so that the oil companies could get billions out of Iraq.  So why remain Republican?  I'm not saying that you should switch Democrat, because maybe we don't match your ideology either (though maybe we do).  Why not a third party then?  I'm just asking...

Anyway, I wrote a Letter to the Editor that may or may not go in the RHT this week.  I am posting it below in its entirety for review and comment if you want.  I tried my best to keep my argument to being against the Party and not the People (with the exception perhaps of the guy who wrote that other editorial last week), but you can be the judge.

Blinded by the Right
March 11, 2003

Reading a letter in the RHT this week, I once again saw the same age-old rhetoric used by the Republican Right against the Democrat Left.  This letter complained about how unfair it was that an earlier letter referred to "Republican bigots" yet itself went on to compare the Democrats to Nazis.  The letter cried out that we must entrust in the American people the freedom to decide on banning same-sex marriages constitutionally, yet at the same time it advocated against their individual choice of whether a woman should carry a pregnancy to term.  As typical of such arguments, it lashed out at the Democrats as being immoral and filled with hatred while dispensing only bile itself.

These are classic tactics of the modern Republican Party, the party that works so very hard to distract the American people – especially its own loyal members! - by making the public debate be about so-called “moral” issues while at the same time selling us out to the machinery of corporate corruption and greed.  The national Republican Party is like the sucker-punch fighter, getting you to look at the waving hand while punching you in the gut!  Consider their misleading arguments we can expect throughout this election year:

They will make the argument be about so-called "morality issues" such as the pro-choice vs pro-life debate, allowing the Ten Commandments in our schools and courtrooms, and providing for prayer time in the school day.  Yet in the past three years of a Republican-controlled Presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court, they have made no meaningful movement on these issues.  At the end of the day, just painting themselves with the brush of morality gains them loyal support willing to ignore the Republican Party's corporate agenda, while actually acting on these policies would risk labeling them as too extreme and losing office.

They will make the argument be about not allowing same-sex couples the benefits of the social institution of marriage.  But do you know who really wins when same-sex marriages are not allowed?  Despite what the Republican Party would like you to think, it’s not the church.  Allowing civil marriages for same-sex couples in no way forces a church to do so, the same way that your church cannot prevent a couple from divorcing in the eyes of the state.  No, the real benefactors are the insurance companies who collect less in premiums from a civil-recognized married couple than they would from two individuals.

They will make the argument be about tax cuts for working America.  Yet over 50% of all of the Bush tax cuts went to the richest 5% in our country.  Bush himself saved over $30,000 annually from the tax cuts; Cheney over $80,000; and their rich friends saved even more.  Meanwhile the bottom 60% of taxpayers in America saved a whopping $300 in federal taxes while our country remains in deficit.  Of course when you point this out to a Republican they cry out that those people didn’t really pay anything in taxes anyway since they’re obviously the nation’s poor.  Any idea where the cutoff for the 60th income percentile is?  It was an annual income of $62,500 as of 2002, not exactly a low income level.

They will make the argument be about the Bush administration’s heroic measures against terrorism.  Yet they ignore the facts that the Bush administration spent their first eight months making a missile-defense shield a priority over acting on the piles of intelligence handed over to them and continuously provided by the former-Clinton administration, the Hart-Rudman commission, and CIA director George Tenet about the imminent threat posed by bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

They will make the argument be about building democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Yet companies like Halliburton and Unocal – companies led by Cheney, other members of the administration and their friends – have been making billions of dollars off of their reconstruction.  They've even gone so far as to install former Unocal staffer Hamid Karzai as the interim president of Afghanistan.  Not so coincidentally, this was followed with Afghanistan allowing Unocal to install a natural gas pipeline through the country worth billions – something that had previously been attempted with negotiations between Unocal and the Taliban leadership as well.

They will make the argument be about welfare.  Yet they forget that Jesus taught that we are judged by what we do for those with the least among us, that civilized societies have an inherent responsibility to help those who cannot help themselves, and that history has shown what happens to the stability of a country when social welfare systems do not exist.

They will make the argument be about Democrats running wild with government spending.  Yet they ignore that Clinton left office with a budget surplus while Bush Jr has given us the greatest deficit in our country’s history and yet still advocates further tax cuts beyond all logic.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, they will make the argument about being the party for blue-collar America.  Yet they promote policies that allow the corporations to grow ever more wealthy and powerful at the expense of their employees.  The Department of Labor releases guidelines on how companies can get away with not having to pay for overtime.  Insurance companies are allowed ever-greater restrictions on what they have to pay you benefits on.  Companies are allowed to raid pension plans in favor of “investing” the proceeds in themselves without fear of meaningful recrimination.  Heck, companies are even allowed to take out life insurance on employees that exist even beyond the employment of the individual where the company is the sole beneficiary named.  You die, your family may be left destitute, but your former employer makes money (and they even go so far as to call this “Dead Peasants Insurance”)!

I’m all for capitalism – as an entrepreneur and someone who has had a successful business here in Indianola, how could I not be?  But to borrow the old adage, unregulated capitalism is like a hockey game without rules – everyone ends up getting hurt.  The modern Republican Party and the current Bush administration has had at the heart of their agenda nothing less than allowing businesses to grow as rich as possible at the expense of We The People.  Despite their claims to the contrary, if you look at their true policies, it’s not about morality at all – it’s about money.

Jason Cross, Indianola