The Binary Circumstance

President Bush gave quite an inspiring speech in accepting the nomination of the Republican Party for a second-term as President of the United States.

If only it was true.

The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our Nation’s founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.

This from a man who wants to amend the Constitution of the United States of America, unique because it was designed to protect individual liberty from government, so that is specifically denies full liberty to anybody but heterosexual couples, the only people who would be allowed to call themselves legally married?

This from a man who proposes one taxpayer funded program after another, to be financed on top of the budget deficit he has already run up, the largest in history.

This path begins with our youngest Americans. To build a more hopeful America, we must help our children reach as far as their vision and character can take them. Tonight, I remind every parent and every teacher, I say to every child: No matter what your circumstance, no matter where you live — your school will be the path to the promise of America.

Nice words. Who can disagree with such sentiments? But who’s going to lose their freedom to pay for it?

We are making progress — and there is more to do. In this time of change, most new jobs are filled by people with at least two years of college, yet only about one in four students gets there. In our high schools, we will fund early intervention programs to help students at risk. We will place a new focus on math and science.

Great idea. But at whose expense?

I believe we have a moral responsibility to honor America’s seniors — so I brought Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen Medicare. Now seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine. Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back.

At whose expense? The prescription drug benefit in Medicare was really a HUGE gift to the pharaceutical industry which donated heavily to Bush’s campaign. Thanks to Bush and his comrades, it is now illegal for the government to negotiate lower prices for drugs even though Medicare will probably be the largest buyer in the country.

America’s children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government’s health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need.

Again, nice broad generalizations and sentiments that few would disagree with. But, at whose expense?

Not the taxpayers, according to Bush.

To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation, and making tax relief permanent.[emphasis mine]

If we don’t pay off the current debt and all these new programs with taxes, we pay for them with the hidden tax of inflation. The Federal Reserve just prints more money, diluting the value of currency in relation to hard assets.

Taxes don’t sell politically, so it’s best to get the money another way. People have been conditioned to believe that inflation, like shit, “happens.” They have been taught to believe that prices just go up by themselves, just as the sun comes up every morning. In fact, there’s a reason why inflation happens and that reason is the Federal Reserve System and its ability to fabricate currency out of thin air whenever it wishes. Every time the Federal Reserve prints more money, that means more money chasing after the same amount of goods and services. Prices go up. It’s not by accident or inevitability.

President Bush promises to simplify the tax code. Last time he ran for president he promised smaller government and the U.S. would not engage in “nation building.” He’s given us a much larger government and nation building to boot, so his pledges should probably be considered as contrary indicators of his real intentions.

A simplified tax code is a laudable goal. The current code, besides legalizing the “right” of some citizens to steal from others, is an enormous drain on the economy, with billions being spent every year on paper pushing and legal tax dodging rather than productive work.

If the history of Bush’s past tax policies are any indicator, his simplified tax code will read something like this:
If you’re a working class American, send us all your money. If you are a major corporation that has made large campaign contributions, get in the corporate welfare line for your share of the money. It’s yours for the asking.

Can’t get much simpler than that.

Because family and work are sources of stability and dignity, I support welfare reform that strengthens family and requires work. Because a caring society will value its weakest members, we must make a place for the unborn child. Because religious charities provide a safety net of mercy and compassion, our government must never discriminate against them. Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law.

You’ll notice that in this speech gays and lesbians are not the enemy but “activist judges.”

You’ll notice that for all his talk of expanding liberty, he’s really talking about rolling back choice so that other people are forced to choose his own faith-based morality.

Of course the government shouldn’t discriminate against religions. It must therefore not force the people of one religion to pay for the programs of another religion. In addition, it must not force rationals and athiests to pay for faith-based programs in violation of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

Bush doesn’t get that you can’t have your freedom and eat it too.

He also doesn’t get that the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect individuals from government.

But I guess we are supposed to feel reassured by his belief that he understands the way God thinks:

I believe all these things because freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is the Almighty God’s gift to every man and woman in this world.

Great words, George. So why is your speech full of ideas and programs that will take individual liberty away? Been talking to God again? Does he answer you back?

All of Bush’s compassionate conservative rhetoric reminds me of a quote by George Bernard Shaw, one of the early leaders of the Fabian Socialist movement (from The Creature from Jekyll Island , by G. Edward Griffin, pg. 101):

Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well. (George Bernard Shaw: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928, pg. 470)

The Fabian crest contains a wolf in sheep’s clothing! (Griffin, pg. 88) That’s like religious fundamentalist statists all dressed up to look like compassionate conservatives fighting to defend individual liberty.

Are there any genuine small-government, pro-liberty Republicans at this convention? I don’t think so.

Andrew Sullivan has a wonderful article on the Bush campaign tactics. He foretold the tone of the Republican convention:

Last week, in this space, I crunched the numbers and found that, from the polling so far, this race was John Kerry’s to lose unless the dynamic of the election suddenly changed. It appears that the Bush campaign has realized the same thing. And when the Bush family finds itself in difficult political waters, they have a long-established, sure-fire tactic. They find a way to detect their opponent’s strongest card and discredit it. They do so using surrogates to keep their patrician hands clean, and they are absolutely not above the vilest of smears. And so last week, they made their move.

[…]

In some ways, you have to hand it to president Bush. He has cojones. Most politicians who found a cushy domestic out during Vietnam might be leery of attacking the war record of a man who volunteered for duty, took shrapnel, and got Purple Hearts for his courage and heroism. But not Bush. Recall that in 2000, at a very similar juncture in a tight presidential race against John McCain, the Bush campaign also unleashed the hounds against a man who had been imprisoned and tortured at the hands of the Viet Cong. Flyers appeared throughout South Carolina claiming that McCain had a black child, that he was the “fag candidate,” that his wife was a drug addict, that his experience under torture had made him unstable, that he had “betrayed” veterans, and on and on. None of this could be traced directly to Bush, but no one was under any illusions. In public, Bush said he honored McCain’s service. But his surrogates smeared him relentlessly. And McCain told Bush to his face in a debate that he should be “ashamed” by his campaign tactics.

But shame is not something that comes easily to this president. He had used similar dirt-ball tactics against Ann Richards, the single female governor of Texas whom he defeated. Rumors emerged from East Texas in that race, as CBS News’ Dick Meyer recalled last week, that Richards was a lesbian and that she had appointed “avowed homosexuals” to her administration. This year, Bush has played the anti-gay card by backing a constitutional amendment against marriage rights for gays and also the Vietnam card against Kerry. It’s a two-fer: the summation of every Bush dirty trick of the past twenty years.

[…]

And so next week, in a classic maneuver, he will present a moderate convention that will have “compassion” at its center. He will trot out all the social moderates, including McCain and Giuliani and Schwarzenegger. He will remind voters of 9/11 and the continuing war. And he will be in a far stronger position to do so having slimed his opponent beforehand. Call this strategy: smear and pivot. Get your low-life buddies to trash your rival and then appear above it all at your own convention. It worked for Papa Bush against Dukakis in 1988. It worked for W against Richards and McCain. It could work again against Kerry. But this time, of course, the opposition knows what this strategy is and might very well respond in kind. Everything is now “on the table,” one Kerry adviser warned last week. Bush’s past sex life? Drug use? Some other nasty smear? Mud-wrestling was never this sleazy. And it’s still only August.

Sullivan also notes, as I did previously, that the Swift Boat ads were pure smear, long on generalizations and short on facts, or “the truth.”

Just like Bush’s speech tonight.

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