Hillary Clinton, Demagogue
Well, now there's this.
This is about as close as I get to a political litmus test. If you don't give enough of a damn about the First Amendment and freedom of (especially political) expression to stand up to the flag fetishists, then it's virtually impossible for me to trust you with the reigns of government.
I've never really known what to make of Hillary Clinton. She strikes me as a smart and reasonably level-headed centrist, much like Bill, but I've never really been able to get a fix on her. Part of me would like to see her get elected president so that the crazies on the right would burst into flames. One benefit of this is that then I might be able to become a Republican and be shed of the hapless Democrats, the Chicago Cubs of politics.
That's a pipe dream, I realize...but less even of a dream anymore.
I've long said that virtually the only thing that would ever make me burn a flag would be the passage of an anti-flag-burning amendment. Perhaps that's what she's trying to ward off, but I suppose I should do the burning thing in the face of any such legislation. I suppose that possibly--just possibly--she's thinking that if we can avoid an amendment now by passing lower-level legislation, then we can overturn all that legislation in 20 or 30 years when the country evolves a bit and regains some measure of sanity. Yeah...maybe that's it...
I do hope some of you will be good enough to bake me a cake with a file in it if such legislation passes widely...
I wrote on this sort of thing before, when Wes Clark came out in favor of such legislation. Ugh, that was a hard one to take. In Clark's case, though, (a) he's do damn good I think I could even overlook this spectacular flaw, and (b) he's probably too smart ever to be elected, so whether I support him or not is irrelevant.
This is how we lose America. Step by step. Domestic spying, weakening of habeus corpus, searches of library records, warnings not to criticize the government, questioning of our patriotism, limitations on political expression...
Hell, man, the terrorists aren't winning, but they don't need to win. We're doing their job for them.
Well, now there's this.
This is about as close as I get to a political litmus test. If you don't give enough of a damn about the First Amendment and freedom of (especially political) expression to stand up to the flag fetishists, then it's virtually impossible for me to trust you with the reigns of government.
I've never really known what to make of Hillary Clinton. She strikes me as a smart and reasonably level-headed centrist, much like Bill, but I've never really been able to get a fix on her. Part of me would like to see her get elected president so that the crazies on the right would burst into flames. One benefit of this is that then I might be able to become a Republican and be shed of the hapless Democrats, the Chicago Cubs of politics.
That's a pipe dream, I realize...but less even of a dream anymore.
I've long said that virtually the only thing that would ever make me burn a flag would be the passage of an anti-flag-burning amendment. Perhaps that's what she's trying to ward off, but I suppose I should do the burning thing in the face of any such legislation. I suppose that possibly--just possibly--she's thinking that if we can avoid an amendment now by passing lower-level legislation, then we can overturn all that legislation in 20 or 30 years when the country evolves a bit and regains some measure of sanity. Yeah...maybe that's it...
I do hope some of you will be good enough to bake me a cake with a file in it if such legislation passes widely...
I wrote on this sort of thing before, when Wes Clark came out in favor of such legislation. Ugh, that was a hard one to take. In Clark's case, though, (a) he's do damn good I think I could even overlook this spectacular flaw, and (b) he's probably too smart ever to be elected, so whether I support him or not is irrelevant.
This is how we lose America. Step by step. Domestic spying, weakening of habeus corpus, searches of library records, warnings not to criticize the government, questioning of our patriotism, limitations on political expression...
Hell, man, the terrorists aren't winning, but they don't need to win. We're doing their job for them.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:52 AM
3 Comments:
So even after five years of outrageous criminality, all it would take to make you a Republican is for a Democrat to win the presidency? You know, even if they finally lost, they would still be the people who have apologized for torture, unjust war, rampant corruption and insanely improvident bugets when they were in charge. Hasn't this little incident of one-party run done enough to show what the Republican party is capable of in power?
Domestic spying, weakening of habeus corpus, searches of library records, warnings not to criticize the government, questioning of our patriotism, limitations on political expression...
I'm afraid Lincoln and FDR crossed these lines (and quite egregiously), except mebbe the library part.
Yeah, that's an important point to keep in mind. Doesn't make it right just b/c it was done in the past, of course, but the fact that it was done by two men who were uncontroversially good does carry some weight.
Also matters that the threat was greater in those two cases, of course.
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