One of the most striking impressions I gained while serving as a state representative was that Party, not State, not Country, was placed in a position of much higher importance than anything else. Even campaign donations (read bribes) took a subordinate position. One member of my caucus stated his primary purpose for being in office. “I want to #@!! them,” he said. He meant the Democrats. It did not matter if the legislation had any merit, not even if it saved the taxpayers money. Beating the enemy was all. This attitude also ran rampant throughout the other side of the aisle. Four of my bills were taken from me and given to the Democrat leadership because I was a member of the minority party and my bills were viewed as a violation of a cardinal rule: a freshman legislator shall not propose legislation good enough to pass, especially if it is better than their leaderships’ bills.
Many questions have been asked why our government seems so inadequate in solving our ongoing problems. The simple answer is that the parties are too busy fighting each other to actually accomplish anything. Compounding that is the fact that they also don’t want to upset any of the big money people who typically donate to their campaigns, even if it is the right thing to do.
I have always believed that if an elected official becomes aware of a wrong being perpetrated, that official should take steps to stop it. I did so when I was approached by a group of casino employees upset over their tips being stolen from them by the casino owner. In researching this I found a state law that forbids the taking of tips. My own party attacked me over this, claiming I was violating the “free market”. The fact that a law was being broken was beside the point. In reality, the party in Nevada is owned by the gaming industry and they were told to remove an irritant.
Anyone who has ever watched the TV series The West Wing is familiar with the character Wesley. That character, throughout the series, consistently argues against allowing the Republicans to win anything, even if that win benefits the country. The unfortunate truth is that that attitude prevails in American politics. Elected officials are Democrats, not Americans; Republicans, not Americans; and it doesn’t end there.
Ever hear of Affirmative Action? It is a nasty piece of legislation that legitimizes discrimination because someone’s ancestor may have been discriminated against by someone in the past. In essence it is Washington saying that in this case, two wrongs do make a right. What it has actually done is keep the division going. In the US we do not have Americans in a variety of colors, we have African Americans, Mexican Americans, and so on…We are so busy creating and maintaining socio-political walls to divide our populace that we have become antagonistic toward those who try to scale the wall.
Like our government, our education system is in rapid decline not simply because we refuse to pay for the tools to do the job properly, but because we have surrendered to the politically correct forces who insist on maintaining the walls. The school board in my area has members who actively fight against those methods proven to work in the classroom because those methods are not politically popular with their party leadership.
The Democrat Party will not support anything that upsets the fanatic left. As a result, the party of John F. Kennedy seems to support international terrorism, the killing of healthy, living babies via partial birth abortion, the granting of amnesty to the vilest of serial killers, the removal of personal responsibility, the removal of any right that promotes self-reliance, the destruction of heterosexual marriage and the core family unit, the elimination of Israel as a state, and the dissolution of America as a sovereign nation.
The Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan has metastasized into a party that openly supports massive corporate theft, human trafficking, the resurgence of plantation style slavery, the elimination of small business and the destruction of public education.
Either way we lose, simply because the American voter no longer cares about who runs their party.
Friday, April 24, 2009
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2 comments:
"Either way we lose, simply because the American voter no longer cares about who runs their party."
Hmmm, the American voter overwhelmingly voted for Democrats so in a way the Democrats ARE their party. The American voter cares, but unfortunately not for Republicans.
Tsk, tsk.
Once again the point has been missed. Spend some time thinking and looking past the surface. Obama was not elected by a majority of citizens. He was not elected by a majority voting FOR him.
The column was not pro Republican or Democrat and your comment merely proves my point.
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