Posted by
Arik on Sunday, March 08, 2009 10:00:50 PM
This is the paper I wrote for my ethics class, a day late but not a dollar short. In fact, it is about twice as long as it should be. I hope he doesn't want me to edit it down, becayse it was so much fun to write.
The endnotes are essentially the links that are provided through the text, so I'm not going to reprint them here.
Hope you like it!
Arik
How to Be a Democrat
1 Timothy 6:10 states: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I don’t necessarily disagree with Paul of Tarsus, but I don’t think the statement goes far enough. I think that the love of money is merely an aspect of the root of all evil. Money is in essence nothing more than an expression of power. Money gives one the power to do what one wants, to purchase one’s desires, and to influence people, if desired. Therefore, I think the phrase should be more accurately: “The love of power is the root of all evil.” I think this pretty well sums up today’s Democrat Party.
Today’s Democrats believe that the rights of the people are given by the government, not by some Creator, or through some mystical ancient text, like the Constitution. They believe, therefore, that those in power determine what rights the people should have, and so want to accrue power to themselves and are willing to do just about anything to get it. Democrats have much less trouble than Republicans in living up to their own, self-imposed moral and ethical standards, generally because they set the bar so much lower.
During the Presidential campaign of 2008, Democrats ridiculed Republican candidate John McCain for having a rich wife, whose wealth allowed them to have several homes. Missing from the debate was the fact that marrying and inheriting wealth is a favorite means for Democrats to enrich themselves. We can look, for instance, at John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts, and former Presidential candidate. Kerry has spent his entire life living in the style to which Democrats prefer to become accustomed: Off of Other People’s Money. His elite private school education was funded by a wealthy aunt, and his campaigns have benefitted financially from both his wealthy first wife, and his incredibly wealthy second wife, who, incidentally, also inherited that wealth. Taking into account the Clinton family, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to suspect that marriage, for Democrats, is more of a career move than anything personal.
Another perfect example of inheriting wealth would be the Kennedy family. The Kennedy family is a prime example of wealth eclipsing accomplishment. The family patriarch, Joe Kennedy, is believed to have built a large portion of his fortune during Prohibition, by bootlegging liquor, and consorting with organized crime. Money confers legitimacy, and so Joe started his sons running for office. The family fortunes reached a pinnacle with the election to the Presidency of John F. Kennedy.
Which brings us to the next tactic Democrats like to employ: Stealing Elections. In the election of 1960, there is credible evidence that Kennedy was elected to the Presidency by a number of voters in Chicago who were no longer eligible to vote, i.e. deceased. There were likely shenanigans going on in Texas at the time, as well. Fearing that a request for a recount would tear the country apart, his opponent Republican Richard Nixon declined to contest the election, an example not to be followed in later years by Democrat Al Gore, who preferred the nation be torn asunder, rather than accept the inevitable, in the only close election I can find that Democrats weren’t able to steal.
In this fine state of Ohio, we are privileged to have as Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, who is linked to ACORN, the unofficial Election-stealing arm of the Democrat Party. ACORN is the group responsible for such interesting anomalies as registering people who live, apparently, in the middle of the Ohio River, or the Cleveland man registered 72 times. This pretty much makes a mockery of our system of government, which is, of course, why the Democrats are so keen to use billions of taxpayer dollars to fund such groups.
Speaking of mockery, Minnesota still has a recount going on in their Senate race. Incumbent Senator Norm Coleman, in what is certainly a moral, if not electoral, defeat, won the election by a handful of votes over his challenger, occasionally almost amusing comedian and failed talk-show host, Al Franken. The fact that this election was even close is a sad statement on the sorry state of modern America, but that’s beside the point. Franken has since, after calling for a recount, taken a slim lead over Coleman, primarily by counting ballots twice or thrice, and “finding” stacks of ballots (amazingly all for Franken) in the cars of election officials. The statistical probability of “finding” a few hundred ballots, all for the same candidate, is so unlikely as to be indistinguishable from impossible, outside of Chicago or New Orleans.
New Orleans is the next stop on the tour: Taking Bribes. New Orleans favorite son, Representative William Jefferson was charged almost two years ago, in June 2007, with accepting bribes and other assorted corrupt activities. In fact, Ninety-Thousand dollars was found wrapped in his freezer and he was videotaped taking bribe money. Despite calls for him to resign his seat, he remained in office until a narrow defeat in November 2008. To date, he still has not been brought to trial.
In contrast, Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was charged about a month after Jefferson, and was tried and convicted before the election ever occurred. He was convicted, essentially, of not paying enough for renovations to his Alaska home. The evidence was much less clear than in the Jefferson case, and the amounts involved much smaller. I feel the difference in delay between the charges and trial of Stevens, and the charges and still pending trial of Jefferson is indicative of the way Democrats use the Justice system to destroy their opponents and give them an electoral advantage.
In late 2008, it was almost impossible to avoid hearing about then Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was eventually impeached and removed from office for attempting to sell the Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. He and members of his staff were recorded requesting favors from those seeking the seat. The man he eventually appointed, Roland Burris, despite copious prior denials, continues to reveal, little-by-little, how he paid for the seat Blagojevich was selling. And I won’t even go into former Illinois Congressman Dan Rostenkowski. Illinois is kind of a cesspool of Democrat politics.
Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha was found soliciting bribes in the ABSCAM scandal of the early 1980s. He escaped prosecution by testifying against two of his fellow Democrat Congressmen, and avoided any sort of censure in the House by a partisan vote in the House Ethics Committee. Recognizing the difficulty and sacrifice inherent in military service, I frequently hesitate before criticizing a veteran. In Murtha’s case, the decision is easy, his words and deeds prove a point that is obvious to most casual outside observers: Murtha is Scum. He is still in Congress to this day.
Murtha provides a perfect segue into the next tactic of Democrats: Promoting Racism. I n the last presidential race, the race of the Democrat candidate was never far from the front page. The campaign did its best to keep it there. It began, as such things often do, In Pennsylvania. Conceding that race was the Code Pink elephant in the room, Then Candidate Barack Obama gave a highly publicized speech on race in America, and telling how Republicans would use his black heritage against him, which, presciently enough, was indeed how it didn’t turn out. The years of shellshock Democrats had inflicted on Republicans came home to roost: Candidate McCain did not say a word about race, to the point of not even mentioning the race-baiting black-supremacist pastor at the church Obama attended for twenty years. He did his level best to keep from injecting race into the conversation. It didn’t keep the Democrats from repeatedly bring it up. Obama himself did it again in San Francisco, letting everyone present, and the nation, by extension, that white Americans are afraid of black Americans, and so get bitter, and cling to guns and religion, speaking of the voters of Western Pennsylvania.
John Murtha did the same, once more biting the hand that feeds, by declaring his own constituents to be racists and rednecks. And yes, this is the ABSCAM Murtha, as well as the Murtha that declared, without investigation or substantiating evidence, U.S. Marines cold blooded killers in Iraq. Though most have been exonerated, there has been no apology issuing forty from Murtha. I hate to insult a fellow military veteran: Knowing what it’s like out there to some extent gives a respect for ones fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that is hard to even explain. That said: Murtha is a scum.
There are a few out there who are rabble rousers, people who try to trumpet their cause by getting members of their community and family members to protest loud and long, regardless of the merits of the individual case, Chief among these at this time is Al Sharpton, who has founded a long winded career on what is, at its core, a lie. Sharpton takes everyday occurrences that nobody of sound mind would consider racist, and find outrage there. Witness his outrage over a not-even-very-good cartoon. Most of us look at the dead chimp and see a dead chimp, and assume the punch line is aimed squarely at House Democrats. Of course, Al takes a gander at it and sees Obama behind those chimp ears. Democrats are highly skilled at creating dissent where there is no dissent, and advancing their plan to fill the chaos.
In fact, Sharpton appears to have a larger goal for his protest of the monkey cartoon, which leads right into the Democrats next strategy: Stifle Dissent. If an idea does not fit with Democrat ideals, or what passes for ideals with them, not only the idea needs to be attacked, but the person holding that idea will be crucified as well. Sharpton, not content to merely humble the cartoonist, his editors and the newspaper, but wants to bring down the owner, Rupert Murdoch, as well. Sharpton is attempting to get the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Murdoch, in order to force the conservative owner to change his programming or divest himself of several television stations in the area, using what the liberal Democrats like to refer to as the "Fairness Doctrine," an obsolete regulation from an era when mass communication was much more difficult than it is now, and which conservatives call censorship.
The practical result of enforcement of this doctrine would mean the end of talk radio as it is currently configured. The Democrats complain that talk radio is dominated by conservative talk, which it is, and that it should be regulated to include liberal talk, which it shouldn’t. Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins tried an innovative approach with two stations he owns in Washington D.C. He renamed one “Obama 1260,” and staffed it with liberal hosts, and named the other “McCain 570,” staffing it with conservative hosts. Even in this era of Obama-mania, Obama 1260 failed miserably, with the political talk being replaced by financial talk.
The flagship of the liberal (or “progressive” as they like to refer to themselves) talk establishment is Air America. You may have heard of Air America, but chances are you’ve never actually heard it. That would be because it’s on in approximately two major markets. The grand experiment in liberal radio bombed so badly that it is now little more than the punch line to a not-particularly-funny joke. This is why they are so anxious to impose regulation on on-air content. The fact is that in a free market, nobody really wants to listen to liberal talk radio, unlike conservative talk radio, which is flourishing. The Fairness Doctrine is intended to do nothing more than stifle the conservative voice, since television, magazines and newspapers are fairly dominated by liberal content. It’s instructive to note that Fox News Channel, owned, incidentally by Rupert Murdoch, is the only television network with a conservative lean, and its ratings are equal to all of the others combined.
Recently, the Obama Administration has been attacking Rush Limbaugh, a conservative talk show host, with a very successful radio show. He said that, in that he wants America to succeed and prosper, he has to hope that Obama fails to implement many of the programs that he has stated his intention of implementing. This sounds like a pretty honest assessment of, basically, politics in general: One party wants the other to fail in implementing programs that the first party disagrees with. This is what happens in a two-party system. If you dare oppose Obama, you are cowardly, a fool, and, most importantly, unpatriotic, because, well, Obama’s the president, and opposing the President is just plain Un-American. This may come as a shocker after the venom and bile aimed at George W. Bush over the last eight years, but, hey, when has contradictory behavior ever been a problem for the Democrats?
The Democrats, who trumpeted all the supposed abuses and crimes those in the Bush Administration were apparently guilty of, didn’t hesitate to trample all over the privacy rights of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known to America as “Joe the Plumber.” Joe had the temerity to ask then-candidate Obama about his plans for increasing taxes, leading to what, in a sane world, would have been a rather embarrassing answer from the contender. This lead to illegal searches of his state records, and a massive smear campaign by a complicit press to try to destroy any credibility Wurzelbacher may have had. Some of the searches were done in the upper echelons of the state government of Ohio. It was found that, gasp, Joe owed some back taxes. The media pretty well crucified him for that. A few months later, Obama appointed tax cheat Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, with little to no opposition or even real coverage from the media. For those who aren’t aware, the Treasury Department is the one that administers the Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for inflicting the Tax Code on the average taxpayer. Geithner aggressively avoided paying taxes he owed for several years, until it came time to morph into Obama’s “Indispensable Man.” Again, no big deal to a Democrat, just ask Charley Rangel, who as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is responsible for actually writing the tax code that he then either ignores or claims ignorance of. It seems that almost every third member of the Obama Administration has tax problems. But since Joe happened to question the Messiah, he must be brought down, humbled and humiliated.
Joe actually got off fairly lightly. The Democrats just tried to destroy him and his credibility. It could have been much worse: they could have tried to “help” him. It seems that the people the Democrats try to help always end up worse for the effort. That is the last tactic I’d like to touch on here: Creating Victims. In today’s society, everyone is required to be a member of at least one victim group that the Democrats can minister to, usually to the detriment of those being helped. It is instructive to note that of the ten poorest big cities in the United States in 2008, the number run by Republicans was zero. In fact, most of the City Governments, from mayors to city council members to the school boards, the majority of government in our biggest cities is Democrat.
In fact, the schools in Washington D.C., which are administered by Democrats, are considered among the worst in the country, both educationally and in terms of violence, despite one of the highest per-pupil expenditure rates in the nation. To Democrats, the obvious solution to the problem is to spend more. They are so beholden to the teachers’ unions that they would rather force students to attend these failing school programs than allow them vouchers to choose schools that might actually teach the children. But education is really secondary, in any case. An ill-educated electorate is necessary for them to work their political magic.
The poorly–educated tend to end up on some sort of Democrat-inspired entitlement program, which are sort of like crack or heroin, but more insidious. Everyone knows that drugs are bad for you, but helping the poor is a good, Christian Value, isn’t it? Who could oppose a plan to help the poor? The problem is that the programs tend to the symptoms of poverty, rather than attack the causes of the problem. There is an old proverb that says “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” Liberals not only want to be praised for doling out the fish, they want to be praised for doling out someone else’s fish. They like to dole out just enough to make sure the poor have to come back for more, becoming dependent on them for their very survival. Then they promise just a little more, for the low, low price ofone single vote. Being generally uneducated, the poor think that that little bit extra will put them over the top, onto easy street, but, of course, it just makes them need just a little more. At least drug dealers don’t tout the health benefits of their products.
The worst example of hurting people by pretending to help them finally bit back last year: The Mortgage Crisis. Precipitated by the Democrat sponsored Community Reinvestment Act, passed during the Carter Administration and strengthened by the Clinton Administration, banks were forced to give loans that they knew were excessive to people they knew wouldn’t pay them back, all in the name of “Affordable Housing.” “Affordable Housing” is Democrat code for “Houses that the people buying them could no way, never in-a-million-years buy without government intervention.” The thug wing of the Democrats, ACORN has started with “civil disobedience” to stop foreclosures on some of these homes, despite the fact that their poster child would be better of in a criminal proceeding for “Predatory Lending.” The mortgage crisis led to the collapse of several financial corporations, with the Democrats riding to the rescue of people they put in danger in the first place. The financial crisis led to uncertainty on the part of investors, causing the market to lose half of its value in just about one year, leading to the current recession. The current recession is causing the Democrats to once again ride to the rescue, with large bills that pretty much no one thinks will do what they are supposed to, leading, possibly, and frighteningly likely, into a prolonged depression.
The reason for the whole mortgage crisis?
Racism, according to Congressman Barney Frank, the architect of the disaster. Of course. It’s really like the punch line to a bad joke. Regardless of the incompetence and malfeasance of the Democrats, there is always a way to blame someone else, and it is the safe bet that they will do it, because that’s what they do. A two-party system will work only as long as both parties are in agreement about one thing: That they work for the betterment of the people they represent, not the aggrandizement of the politicians in the party. The Democrats seem to have lost sight of this seemingly simple axiom, and the entire nation suffers for it.
Note: I use the term Democrat both as a noun and an adjective here, rather than employing Democratic in an adjectival usage, as I believe the party has divorced itself from pretty much every ideal that would or could be worthy of the word Democratic.
Also, I don’t use the term Reverend as a title, as a general rule, as I think it implies the person holding the title is worthy of Reverence, and, though there are many good people out their ministering to their congregations, I don’t believe people are legitimate objects for Reverence.