Beyond the California Recall
Why are Republicans so Anti-Democratic?
No. I’m not talking about the Democratic Party. I’m talking about the refusal of the Republican Party to accept elections, obey the laws and the Constitution, and play by the rules.
The California Recall Spectacle is not by a long shot the only attempt by Republicans in recent times to overturn legitimate elections and contravene the usual political laws and rules.
Over the last five years, we have seen a shocking refusal of Republicans and right-wingers to entrust Americans with democracy. How else do you explain:
— the Clinton impeachment?
— the lawless refusal of the five right-wing Supreme Court Justices to count the votes in Florida because, as Scalia put it, counting the votes would deny candidate Bush the “legitimacy” he claims as President? (In other words, Scalia ruled that Florida had to stop counting the votes because counting them would ensure a Gore victory. For more information, click here.)
— the Bush Administration/Tom Delay Texas gerrymandering scheme, including the illegal but unpunished diversion of Homeland Security resources to the task of tracking down and arresting Texas Democrats to force them to approve a plan to segregate Texas into white and non-white districts, thus ensuring a Republican majority in the House of Representatives?
— the Republican Colorado gerrymandering (which few have discussed)?
— a Republican chairman calling the Capitol Police on Congressional Democrats who insisted on reading a bill before voting on it?
— Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch’s sudden conversion from using Senate procedures to stop Clinton judicial appointments to demanding Democrats not use these very same procedures?
— the refusal of the Administration to have open government, to disclose donors who have purchased the right to a private audience to the President and the favors the donors received for their bribes (oops, I mean political donations)?
In other words, folks, it goes way beyond California…..
Do you think Democrats should continue to play by the rules while Republicans break them?
Or do you think that Democrats should join the Republicans’ scorched-earth, undemocratic attempts to take over government, if only to get equal playing time?
Or do you want to call in to challenge my very premises? Any Republicans out there want to defend their party’s fundamental attacks on democracy?
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Zero Tolerance March 15, 2006 5:05 am
If our modern-day government re-education camps, otherwise known as public schools, actually taught our kids about our nation’s founding history, perhaps they would come across this quote by Thomas Jefferson: “A person once surrendering reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous.”
Government schools, especially those embracing “zero tolerance policies,” have completely surrendered reason in their operations. Let me give you just three recent examples of “absurdities the most monstrous.”
* In DeKalb County, Georgia, two high school honor roll girls were suspended for ten days for using a kitchen knife to cut a birthday cake brought in for a fellow classmate. The girls posed no threat to anyone, yet a teacher ratted them out for possession. As a result, they were barred from participating in their schools baccalaureate ceremony.
* In Bend, Oregon, a 14-year-old girl was given detention for giving her boyfriend a hug in the hallway of her Middle School. A spokeswoman for the school district assured the world that school officials weren’t trying to be “the hug Nazis,” but said the school had to be careful that students didn’t make other “people uncomfortable.”
* And in Frederick, Maryland, an 18-year-old senior was barred from attending her prom for being quoted in a local newspaper as saying she might drink alcoholic beverages at a party after the prom. Note: She wasn’t barred for actually drinking; she was barred for thinking about and talking about drinking.
And these are just the tip of the “absurdities most monstrous” iceberg being foisted on our children by education apparatchiks in public schools these days.
Everybody knows the public schools suck rotten eggs; however, the biggest problem is that white folks in the ‘burbs think it’s only the public schools in the ghettos which turn out modern-day Forest Gumps. “Their” public schools are different. Their kids can read and write (sort of). Why, their public school is ranked in the Top Ten compared to all the other schools in the area, don’t you know.
Well, here are two major problems with that line of thinking, and the republic is in serious jeopardy until parents wake up to these realities.
1.) Like it or not, for better or worse, our kids live in a global community today. Kids in Omaha aren’t just competing with kids in Chicago any longer. They’re competing with kids in England, Japan, Korea, China, Germany…and maybe even France. And not only are our kids failing to measure up against these developed-nation competitors, they’re lagging behind kids coming out of many third-world countries, as well.
It’s one thing to compare your baseball team to the Bad News Bears. It’s another thing altogether to be thrown up against the New York Yankees. Fortunately, our kids still lead the world in one category: self-esteem. They may stink in math and science, but at least they feel really, really good about themselves.
2.) It’s not just learning how to read, write and add two-plus-two (the correct answer is four, no matter how good you feel about yourself) which make up an education – though it’d be nice if the government schools could at least reach that level of competence. It’s learning HOW to learn. How to think critically and independently. How to use common sense. And dare I say it, how and when to challenge authority – especially government authority when Big Brother gets too big for its britches.
Our government schools today aren’t about mind development. They’re about mind control. Sure, many of the kids coming out of public schools in the ‘burbs can right…er, write a complete sentence. But that sentence will likely only express ideas pre-approved by the Ministry of Politically Correct Thought. And that is the true danger of government-run schools – be they in the ghetto or the suburbs.
Chuck Muth
Citizen Outreach