Saturday, March 31, 2007
WHO ELECTED A KING?
This is a wonderful country. I am proud to be an American. I love the traditions of this great nation. I love its history. I respect its founding patriots and intellectuals.
None of our early leaders was perfect, nor did they always agree. The history of our nation is not entirely honorable, but it is mostly so. Though we are flawed as a people, we have a great legacy.
America has no place for kings, nor does this country accept any nobility. We recognize no hereditary titles, nor do we break our citizens into classes. Our laws do not permit the granting of titles, nor do they mandate forms of personal address for any gentry. Once our Constitution was amended after the great civil conflict, and again last century on suffrage, we became a nation of equals before the law.
Maintaining freedom requires a system of checks and balances. Very wisely this republic was organized under a constitution with just such a system, as well as a bill of rights. We have the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Our freedom and our survival as a democracy depend upon all three functioning well -- none dominating the others.
While some may still question the legitimacy of Mr. Bush as president, nobody recalls electing him king. Nevertheless, the republican congress fell into step, giving Mr. Bush whatever he asked. After 9/11 he wanted an irrelevant war in Iraq, and they led in giving him that. He wanted unfettered powers in the name of security, and they gave him those.
The Bush administration has broken laws protecting privacy of telecphone, e-mail, and bank accounts; broken laws and treaties governing the treatment of prisoners; ignored habeas corpus laws, rules of justice, and international kidnapping prohibitions; justified torture of prisoners in custody; politicized prosecutions; broke secrecy laws on intelligence agents for political reasons; and sponsored a stable of conspirators from the White House.
Mr. Bush claims he is "The Decider." Is that not a monarchial assertion? Arogantly he proceeds in escalating a war that he knows lacks popular or congressional majority support. He goes opposite from informed study group recommendations. Yet his party members go right on supporting him in Congress, as though somebody named him King, and they must be the Tories.
It may be true that Mr. Bush is under delusions of grandeur and power. His party faithful appear to encourage that notion. No doubt some of his friends from the religious right have told him that he has been anointed by God.
Somebody needs to tell him the truth. We don't have kings. Even Samuel told the Israelites that God was displeased with their clamor for a king.
It is too bad that Oklahoma has no real representation in the Senate and little in the House. We have one senator with the reputation of an ignorant jackass, while the other vacillates between being a clown and a zealot and never passing through normalcy to get from one to the other.
The republicans in the Congress have done nothing to curtail the rampant and reckless abuses of power by Mr. Bush. Unfortunately they are continuing to compound their errors. Will someone please shout that in their ears?
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
None of our early leaders was perfect, nor did they always agree. The history of our nation is not entirely honorable, but it is mostly so. Though we are flawed as a people, we have a great legacy.
America has no place for kings, nor does this country accept any nobility. We recognize no hereditary titles, nor do we break our citizens into classes. Our laws do not permit the granting of titles, nor do they mandate forms of personal address for any gentry. Once our Constitution was amended after the great civil conflict, and again last century on suffrage, we became a nation of equals before the law.
Maintaining freedom requires a system of checks and balances. Very wisely this republic was organized under a constitution with just such a system, as well as a bill of rights. We have the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Our freedom and our survival as a democracy depend upon all three functioning well -- none dominating the others.
While some may still question the legitimacy of Mr. Bush as president, nobody recalls electing him king. Nevertheless, the republican congress fell into step, giving Mr. Bush whatever he asked. After 9/11 he wanted an irrelevant war in Iraq, and they led in giving him that. He wanted unfettered powers in the name of security, and they gave him those.
The Bush administration has broken laws protecting privacy of telecphone, e-mail, and bank accounts; broken laws and treaties governing the treatment of prisoners; ignored habeas corpus laws, rules of justice, and international kidnapping prohibitions; justified torture of prisoners in custody; politicized prosecutions; broke secrecy laws on intelligence agents for political reasons; and sponsored a stable of conspirators from the White House.
Mr. Bush claims he is "The Decider." Is that not a monarchial assertion? Arogantly he proceeds in escalating a war that he knows lacks popular or congressional majority support. He goes opposite from informed study group recommendations. Yet his party members go right on supporting him in Congress, as though somebody named him King, and they must be the Tories.
It may be true that Mr. Bush is under delusions of grandeur and power. His party faithful appear to encourage that notion. No doubt some of his friends from the religious right have told him that he has been anointed by God.
Somebody needs to tell him the truth. We don't have kings. Even Samuel told the Israelites that God was displeased with their clamor for a king.
It is too bad that Oklahoma has no real representation in the Senate and little in the House. We have one senator with the reputation of an ignorant jackass, while the other vacillates between being a clown and a zealot and never passing through normalcy to get from one to the other.
The republicans in the Congress have done nothing to curtail the rampant and reckless abuses of power by Mr. Bush. Unfortunately they are continuing to compound their errors. Will someone please shout that in their ears?
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Saturday, March 24, 2007
A MAN WITH NO GUILE
In the Gospel of John (1:47) Jesus says to the other disciples as Nathanael approaches, "Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile." That was a high compliment, and certainly a desired characteristic in a prospective disciple.
How great it would be if we could look among our elected politicians and make a similar statement about any of them -- democrat or republican. But then how many of us, the electorate, would in truth qualify for such an accolade?
The Militant Moderate looks again and again at the political chicanery in our state and national capitols, and he is prone to repeat the questions of his last essay: "Have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?"
It emerges that one political party in Oklahoma has been holding supplemental funds for schools hostage, supposedly to extract a promise from the other party for a tax cut. The Governor was left out.
On a bipartisan vote, the legislature has passed resolutions in both houses for a vote to take school land revenues from colleges and schools and send these to repair the neglected teacher retirement system.
This is worse than robbing Peter to pay Paul. This would be robbing NOC, NWOSU, OU, Langston, OSU, and other collges, as well as all public schools, to pay for past neglect. This would require a vote of the people, plus and endless legal battle over breaking a constitutional trust written in conformity with the Enabling Act of Congress under which Oklahoma became a state.
Let us consider for a moment our venerable politician, former Senator Gene Stipe, also in the news lately. Many of us in public life have known Stipe for decades. We have had friends in common, some deceased. The senator supported every good educational measure that we can remember.
Certainly, Senator Stipe could never be described as "a man with no guile."
Senator Stipe was loaded with guile. He was recognized as one of the better trial lawyers in the country. His defense of the young corporal from Calvin in his district, from an alleged atrocity in Viet Nam, was a Stipe classic, although performed in a strange court on the other side of the planet. Stipe had lots of good friends, and he took care of those.
Generally speaking, Stipe used his guile for good -- his constituents and his own. But he had powerful enemies. The eventually got him, after he had lost much of his guile.
During the last decade or so, Senator Stipe, now in his mid 80's, has lost much of his former brilliance. He has made dumb mistakes. Those who have known him could easily recognize that he has experienced a decline, and that he is but a shell of his former grandeur in guile. Gene needs a good advisor, rather than a prosecutor.
Few of us are without guile. We use it for various purposes.
Most politicians have a lot of it, and they choose to use it for different purposes according to expediency and priorities at the time. "Straight Talk" may be the name on a bus, but currently this title fits no one in the presidential race. At least, such remains to be established.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Saturday, March 10, 2007
HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY?
Senator Joe McCarthy, the republican junior senator from Wisconsin, cut a wide swath during the early 1950's. As chairman of the senate select committee on investigations, he had laid low many of the best known talents in Hollywood, the state department, government service, the arts, journalism, and private business with his obsessive, ruthless vendetta on exposing suspected communists in whatever context they might be suspected to lurk.
Fears often provide a backdrop allowing unacceptable and egregious government probing into the private lives of citizens.
Not limited by facts, civility, or truth, McCarthy ruined the reputations and the careers of hundreds of citizens. As one member of his party put it, "McCarthy is judge, jury, prosecutor, and publicist." He was riding high in 1953, and was greatly feared by public figures of all venues. When one of his aides was drafted into the army, he and his staff were exposed trying to obtain special favors for the draftee. McCarthy then turned his artillery upon the army itself. He alleged that a number of ranking army officers and defense department officials were communists.
The result was a legitimate senate hearing into the matter of "The Army versus McCarthy" in the spring of 1954. As a high school social science teacher at the time, the Militant Moderate had his classes watch that hearing. As the televised hearing wore on, McCarthy's petulance, reckless accusations, and offensive behavior was exposed to the country. Rebuffed and sensing he was losing, McCarthy leveled a desperate charge that one of the lawyers in the army counsel's own firm belonged to a communist front organization. (It was a legal guild doing pro bono work for the poor.)
Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer of senior maturity representing the army, then asked the question which has been quoted thousands of times during the last half century. He said, "Until this moment, Senator, I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Sir, have you no sense of decency?"
These words were crushing, and they foretold the end of the rampaging career of this rapacious senator. He would never recover power, and he died not so long thereafter at a fairly young age. His despicable chief aide, Roy Cohn, would die unlamented as one of the earliest known homosexual victims of AIDS. McCarthy's short, dark rule of fear and terror reflects the historical connotations of the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials.
"Have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?" These are questions which need to be raised again in American politics.
Recently the notorious spokeswoman for the right wing, Ann Coulter, went before a meeting of conservatives and insulted every major democratic candidate for the presidency with words dripping in angry sarcasm. When she came to John Edwards, her words went something like this: "Edwards, what can I say about him? Does the word 'fagot' ring a bell?" The audience laughed hilariously.
"Have you no sense of decency?"
This woman has been over the top repeatedly. Reputable television talk anchors no longer invite her, although she frequents guest lists of known ideologues. Her books are outrageously insulting. Partisan pundits and political groups know what they are getting, so why would they continue to invite her?
Should we be asking those who provide air time or a platform for such outrageous speech, regardless of which political affiliation: "Have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?"
The quality of our political discourse must find its way out of the gutter to a more genteel level. Hate speech is inappropriate in politics and in parlors.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Fears often provide a backdrop allowing unacceptable and egregious government probing into the private lives of citizens.
Not limited by facts, civility, or truth, McCarthy ruined the reputations and the careers of hundreds of citizens. As one member of his party put it, "McCarthy is judge, jury, prosecutor, and publicist." He was riding high in 1953, and was greatly feared by public figures of all venues. When one of his aides was drafted into the army, he and his staff were exposed trying to obtain special favors for the draftee. McCarthy then turned his artillery upon the army itself. He alleged that a number of ranking army officers and defense department officials were communists.
The result was a legitimate senate hearing into the matter of "The Army versus McCarthy" in the spring of 1954. As a high school social science teacher at the time, the Militant Moderate had his classes watch that hearing. As the televised hearing wore on, McCarthy's petulance, reckless accusations, and offensive behavior was exposed to the country. Rebuffed and sensing he was losing, McCarthy leveled a desperate charge that one of the lawyers in the army counsel's own firm belonged to a communist front organization. (It was a legal guild doing pro bono work for the poor.)
Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer of senior maturity representing the army, then asked the question which has been quoted thousands of times during the last half century. He said, "Until this moment, Senator, I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Sir, have you no sense of decency?"
These words were crushing, and they foretold the end of the rampaging career of this rapacious senator. He would never recover power, and he died not so long thereafter at a fairly young age. His despicable chief aide, Roy Cohn, would die unlamented as one of the earliest known homosexual victims of AIDS. McCarthy's short, dark rule of fear and terror reflects the historical connotations of the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials.
"Have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?" These are questions which need to be raised again in American politics.
Recently the notorious spokeswoman for the right wing, Ann Coulter, went before a meeting of conservatives and insulted every major democratic candidate for the presidency with words dripping in angry sarcasm. When she came to John Edwards, her words went something like this: "Edwards, what can I say about him? Does the word 'fagot' ring a bell?" The audience laughed hilariously.
"Have you no sense of decency?"
This woman has been over the top repeatedly. Reputable television talk anchors no longer invite her, although she frequents guest lists of known ideologues. Her books are outrageously insulting. Partisan pundits and political groups know what they are getting, so why would they continue to invite her?
Should we be asking those who provide air time or a platform for such outrageous speech, regardless of which political affiliation: "Have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?"
The quality of our political discourse must find its way out of the gutter to a more genteel level. Hate speech is inappropriate in politics and in parlors.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
SUPPORT THE TROOPS
The Militant Moderate has always been patriotic. As a young lad, he thrilled to see the flag waving from the pole at the courthouse, the school on the hill, and the campus of the college a short bike ride out of Wilburton. As a seventeen year old recruit volunteer in the U.S. Navy in 1944, he thrilled to the sound of taps in the evening as they lowered our flag on the training base. I love that flag. We still have in our possession the flag which was presented to my mother for my brother, who was killed in war and interred in the military cemetery at Nettuno, Italy.
Some of us still feel chills when we hear the Star Spangled Banner or a spirited renditon of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. We revere our history and the stalwarts who made it. We love freedom in America.
I am angry at George W. Bush for taking my wonderful flag and making a political of it for his misbegotten war. I love the flag, but I do not support his wrongful war. There is nothing patriotic about this Iraq war. Somebody should make tht clear to him, and to that 30% who still support him.
The Militant Moderate must confess that he is troubled by all the ribbon symbols saying "Support the Troops." It seems that there is some trickery at play with that. Somebody is trying to equate supporting the troops with supporting the war. If it is a bad war, then who wants to keep our young men and women in harm's way? Many of us support the troops by clamoring to get them out of Iraq.
I become sick at heart when I hear a soldier in Iraq say, "We are fighting them here to protect our people at home." I am sad when I hear a bereaved parent say, "He died to protect our country." But I become livid when I hear politicians saying, "We are fighting them in the streets of Baghdad, so we will not have to fight them in our streets in America." They know better.
The Bush Iraq misadventure has been a war based upon falsehood and deception. It continues to be so. Some have become obsessed and delusional about it. Some are still trying to equate the war with patriotism. As the saying goes, "That dog won't hunt."
Supporting the troops in a wrongful war demands difficult mental gymnastics. It begs the question: How does one find nobility within and amongst the ignoble? Many democrats are trying to do this. Maybe it is there, but it is difficult to see from here.
The Militant Moderate has come to the conclusion that being a patriot now requires one to oppose the ruin of this beloved country by the reckless actions and policies of George W. Bush and his cronies. This is indeed a patriotic struggle, but not as defined by the ruling business, religious, and political coalition.
This is my country. I will defend it against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. We took that oath before we went off to war in our youth. Now, we need to swear it again.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
