I The Person
columnist: John Armstrong

Topic: Campaign for Liberty
Republican Campaign Lies Through Libertarian Eyes

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Decoding Election Cycle Political Speak to see what it really means.

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by John Armstrong
(libertarian)
Monday, August 4, 2008

The other day, I checked my email, and found that I had an email from President Bush.  No, not a personal email, but an email explaining why I should support John McCain and the Republican Party this November. You really should register on the GOP's website, because some of the stuff they send you for free offers more comedic relief than a paid admission to a comedy club. I really should register with the Donkey Party site as well.  Their stuff is probably even funnier. 

I suppose I get these emails because I was a Republican until I grew up sometime over the course of the last year and realized the people who told me that there was no difference between the Democrats and Republicans were right after all; at least in terms of what the parties' continued "success" means for the future of America. 

Anyway, I thought I'd share part of this Presidential Email with you and then help you see it through the eyes of an American who's more interested in being an American than being a cheerleader for a winning team.  Here's the email:

"The American people want strong national defense and they want the government to protect them from further attack . . . they want lower taxes and less government . . . they want strong, principled leadership . . . and that is precisely what Republicans will give them." 

Let's start at the top: "The American people want a strong national defense, and they want the government to protect them from further attack." Yep, sure do.  Always good to start with a statement nobody would disagree with.  

That's like saying, "The Brentwood High football team wants shoulder pads and helmets, and expects the school officials to keep the opposing team's fans off the field during the game."  

Without shoulder pads and helmets, a football team isn't much of a football team.  Without a strong national defense, a country isn't much of a country.  Of course we want those things. 

So how "precisely", as promised, will the Republicans give us what we want?  

Using the football analogy, they would buy lots and lots of shoulder pads and helmets with taxpayer dollars.  Then they would take that equipment and scatter it all over the world. While the players are searching for their gear, the other team is streaming across the border, er, goal line.  It's hard to play good defense when your equipment is in the wrong place.

And how would they keep the other team's fans off the field?

Well, that's simple.  If they were a school, they'd either raise taxes significantly or, more likely as Republicans, they'd raise money through school bonds, i.e. public debt, in order to get the equipment needed to listen to everyone's calls and read everyone's emails.  If you mentioned anything about how your team's defense could be improved by actually using the equipment that had been purchased and giving it to the players on the field instead of strewing it across the world, you would be put on a special list or detained until football season was over, or in some cases until football was no longer a sport.

It matters not that you are actually a hardcore fan of your team, and really detest the opponents. It doesn't matter that you want to find a way to not only beat the other team this season, you want to instill the type of principles into the players that will be passed down from year after year and allow them to continue to win championships for years to come.  But if you don't agree fully with the way the team is being run, you could potentially become a fan of the other team and run onto the field. And this isn't acceptable.  After all the team wants to keep opposing fans off the field, so the school is just giving them what they asked for, right?  And if you support the team, you support the decisions of the school. Otherwise, you aren't a real fan.

Or maybe your school would use the TSA method.  Just hire about 50 unnecessary people to stand around, making lines to get into the game endlessly long and causing people to miss the game they'd paid to see.  You'd have to show your driver's license, because if you didn't have one, that would likely mean you are a fan of the other team. Then they'd force you take off your shoes, and coat, and make you keep your ticket in your hand at all times.  I guess it's possible that you could be sporting some of the other team's socks or something that would give you away. Naturally, if you had earmuffs on because it was cold, you'd have to go put them back in the car or leave them with the ticket takers never to be seen again because one fan out of a few billion once threw his earmuffs onto the field; nobody was hurt, but they could have been.

Of course, if you refused to submit to these rules, that would definitely mean you were a fan of the other team--not that you were in a hurry to go support your team.  And if you were a fan of the other team, that would mean that it's possible that you could run onto the field, and that is what must be prevented.

Perhaps the school would enlist the some brave volunteers who believed that keeping the other team's fans off the field was incredibly important after they saw it happen once and decided they'd do whatever it takes to make sure it never happened again. These volunteers probably believed that they'd either be used at games to stand around the field, or perhaps used to usher out people who obviously were fans of the other team and clearly had rushing the field on their minds, because they had so much school spirit and believed the school would only ask them to do things which would clearly provide a solution to the problem, they would be willing to do anything the school asked, even if it really didn't make sense. After all, that's what they signed up to do.

So when these brave volunteers are sent over to all the of schools in your district on Friday afternoon before the game, including the ones you aren't playing, the volunteers simply follow orders because that's what they're asked to do. When the volunteers overwhelm these schools and change school policy requiring the students to stay there until Saturday morning when the threat of rushing your field has passed the short term goal is accomplished--you not only kept some the rival school fans off the field, you kept anyone who may have become a fan of that rival school off the field.  

But football season doesn't consist of one game, and unless there are enough volunteers willing to stay permanently at those schools and enforce the new policy, one thing's for sure, even if you managed to get rid of the mean principal in the process, if you make enough kids stay overnight at school on Friday nights, there's a really high likelihood that they'd not only never be a fan of your school, but they'd probably become fans of whoever was playing against you and you'd be lucky to ever get a play in once the next season rolled around because of all the people standing on the field from all over the place throwing their earmuffs.

You see to these other schools, you are the just the evil school that made them spend Friday nights locked up even though all you were really doing was trying to prevent further rushing of the field by fans of opposing teams. If they weren't fans of yours, then they could potentially be fans of whomever you were playing. The school spirit may have been high enough when the policy was initially enacted to get enough volunteers to enforce this policy, but as the policy spreads from every school in the district to every school in the state, morale will wane and major problems won't be far behind. Eventually, volunteers get sick of spending their Friday nights corralling kids instead of actually watching the game and supporting their team. But at least for one season, no opposing fans would rush the field.

Okay, we've taken that one far enough.  Now to the next funny little sentence:

"They want lower taxes and less government."

You know what, I'm not even going to address this one.  If you are really still voting Republican because you think the party gives the backside of a large rodent's care about either of these things, then you probably also believe that terrorists hate us because of our freedom.  After four years of an Obama presidency, where the power is abused to increase entitlements at home instead of enforcing ridiculous policies abroad and the Republicans have to figure out exactly how they lost, they may actually start caring about these things again; but it will only be to regain power so they can abuse it--not because they actually care about taxes or the size of government.

Which leads us to the next humorous statement:

"They want strong, principled leadership."  

Again, this is one of those truths which nobody can deny.   But what does it mean to be "strong and principled"?  If it means to be powerful, and convicted in one's personal beliefs then we've had someone for the last eight years who fits that description to a tee.  

Which is why if Obama is elected, no Republican should say a word when a Democrat Congress passes a national healthcare bill that is the brainchild of President Obama. Nevermind that a President doesn't have the Constitutional power to create legislation (and although he wouldn't technically create it, it would be certainly be his idea).

Nevermind that absolutely nothing in the enumerated powers of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives the national government the authority to create something like a national healthcare plan because by that measure there is nothing that allows a war to be fought without being declared or allows the government to listen to your phone calls or read your emails without a warrant signed by a judge who found probable cause that you were committing a crime.  All of the things the Republicans created because of their conviction in Neocon ideology stating that "this is what the country wants and needs to protect us from terrorists" could just as easily lead to the creation of whatever programs the Democrats' socialist ideology states that the country "wants and needs to protect us from evil insurance corporations and hospitals." 

You may not even know it, but there is another way to let the government know what we the people actually want and need, and to show that they are the entity we want to give it to us. And if they screw it up or there are unforeseen consequences to granting them this power, there is a way to take it back.  We did it back when drinking was seen as a major problem, and then we took the power back when we saw that the problems stemming from outlawing it were much worse.  It's called an "Amendment."  Say it with me one time, "A-Mend-Ment."  

And what is it exactly that we are amending?  The Constitution, silly.  It's that little contract between the people of the United States and our Government where we tell them exactly what they can do, and unless we say they can, it means they can't. Of course since the New Deal days when the country "needed" a bunch of things, the Supreme Court has read the Constitution from the perspective of "how can we interpret this to give the government what it "needs" to do the things they think the people want" instead of performing their actual role and considering whether or not the people have actually given their government the power to do the things they do "for" us. Why does it seem like we "want" these things?  Because "we", as in the majority of election voters--not "we" the majority of 75% of the people of the states as an amendment requires--elected someone into office from a particular party.  

When I think of strong and principled leadership, I don't think of "powerful and convicted."  I think of strong enough to deny the tempting lure of power and principled enough to keep one's word.  In case you don't know, this is what the President of the United States of America swears he will do when he takes office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. 

It really is a shame Ron Paul didn't get the Republican nomination.  He is just about the only man in D.C. who is "strong and principled" enough as a leader to take his oath seriously. 

If you think that these funny Republicans or their Democratic friends intend to do that, just read what they have to say and then spend a couple of seconds considering how they plan on doing it while keeping their Oath of Office.  Hint:  99 percent of the time it isn't possible.  And if the Oath of Office doesn't mean anything, the Constitution doesn't mean anything, and your "unalieanable rights" aren't far behind.

If you are a hell-bent on seeing your party win this November, think of it this way: If your favorite football team could win every game this season, but afterwards football could never be played again, would you still want that?  Elections come and go, but with each one our country and what it stands for is only going.  That's why the Revolution is coming.

Your fellow American,

John Armstrong

strongarmedjohn@yahoo.com

As always, unlike the NFL, any rebroadcasts, retransmissions, repostings, or accounts of this article are not only permitted but encouraged for the cause of the Restoration of our Republic. 

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©2008 John Armstrong, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Monday, August 4, 2008
Last modified: Monday, August 4, 2008

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