Maybe I’m just not “getting it” but the only people that I hear that are saying the right things are Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and sometimes John Edwards. I’m talking about the laws that were passed that water down our freedom under the Constitution. I’m talking about the influence that the corporate sector has on our political system. I don’t hear Hillary Clinton standing up for anyone’s rights. All I hear from her is that Bush is a bad man. Same with most of the others, it’s safe to say Bush is a bastard. That doesn’t take any guts. It’s a very “safe” thing to say.
Where are the candidates that ask why we are torturing people we designate as terrorists? Where are the candidates that want to repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006? Where are the candidates that want to repeal the Patriot Act? The same thing goes for the Insurrection Act that gives the executive branch the power to use the State’s National Guard for Federal law enforcement authority that goes against everything Posse Comitatus has stood for. Not using a standing Army to give the Federal government police powers over the population. This is remarkable that no candidate except Kucinich, Gravel and Paul have mentioned this. This goes to the very fabric of our democracy and ‘nary is a word said by “the big boys” who seem to be happy with this expanded Executive Power that Bush has created.
Since the attacks on the United States on 9/11, the US has gone from a fairly open society, to one of mistrust and more stringent laws. This is understandable to a degree, but the laws that are most restrictive and abhorrent have been directed not at foreigners that visit or that want entry into the US, but at ordinary working class citizen’s. Why is it that when we were attacked by people who were not citizens, does the Federal Government need to use the power of the military on its own citizens? Where is the practicality of that? Why haven’t Clinton and Obama and the others addressed it?
There are many reasons that Bush is looked at as an enemy of democracy. The Iraq War is only part of it. Yet, if you look at the rhetoric of the people that want to succeed him, the Iraq War is the ONLY thing that they harp on. That is because some of them were culpable in the Federal Governments attack on the Constitution. We need a candidate that will address ALL of the issues that have weakened the Constitution.
Let me make a case in point. Ron Paul is a Conservative Republican. Yet he is the darling of some progressives. The reason for that is because Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist. With this sense of what is lawful under the constitution, he has brought up the very same things that progressives have been fighting against, the same things that I mentioned in the second paragraph. The constitution has become so abrogated by Bush and the 109th Congress, that a Republican Conservative candidate has become attractive to progressive thinking voters and for good reason. He defends what can and can’t be done lawfully.
I’m waiting for the Democratic candidates to start speaking out against the run around the FISA Court that Bush pulled with his illegal wiretapping. I’m looking to hear them talking about reinstating Posse Comitatus. I’m looking to hear them talk against National ID Cards and against computerized touch screen voting, and the repeal of the Patriot Act. I want to hear about taking big corporate dollars out of Federal Elections. So far I haven’t heard enough, a snippet here and a snippet there, but still no real discussion. These people know what we want, but they in their haughty frame of mind don’t think that we know enough to change the status quo.
They are wrong. We can be trusted to tell them what we want and also what we want them to do. They forget that they work for us, and not the other way around. When I start hearing these candidates start taking seriously about serious issues, I’ll be happy. In the meantime, to me they’re just more of the same. No real leaders there when at this point in our history, we defiantly need one.
