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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patsy Collins who wrote (386361)	4/5/2003 5:02:15 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 769667

You just contradicted yourself. Touting American freedoms (and I agree) then criticizing those who use freedom of speech to bring about what they believe will be a better government and world. Freedom of speech and religion making the world safer for capitalist trade. That is why we fight. Smaller issues like Iraqi human rights can also be added in. Saddam we all cheer being toppled. Wonderful to see the Brits taking down his big statue in Basra. But realistically, he in no way threatened our freedoms, unless you want to include the freedom to be able to harvest oil more easily from the middle-east. He was more of a major pain in the A than anything else. What threatens our freedoms and capitalistic system now? Two things, what's left of Al Qaida or future Al Qaidas, but mostly a possible imbalance of power giving too much control to the far right who actually inhibit free speech and would love to enforce a type of ideological tyranny in our media and public debate. Last seen during the McCarthy era. The McCarthy era proved it can happen here, so never underestimate the danger of such imbalances. And too much power in the military-industrial-big oil complex which in some ways transcends the power of our democracy and nation. To a degree it's already happening. The so-called "liberal media" of old is gone now, replaced by an era of big corporate ownership, sound bites and fear to write or report anything which might upset the status quo. Even the Wall Street and Enron crooks have been kept free without media pressure for indictments so as not to expose the corrupt underbelly of certain parts of our system. A lot more honesty needs to be injected into the debate and system. More checks and balances, not less. Deregulation of environmental rules and standards by Bushies is another egregious attack on our standards. As if pollution = jobs. Never has, never will. On the contrary. Only common sense moderates stand in the way of the far right now. That's why you have go vote moderate from now on if you really stand for our freedoms. The right-wing are also ironically very bad for our economy and social systems as they are for great transfers of wealth to the rich and favorite special corporate interests, but ballooning public debt so as to diminish the wealth of our nation and make it weaker not stronger. The end result could be that giant powers like Big Oil, the DOD and HMO's are completely above the law, and that our one outlet for information is owned by powers which do not want a lively public debate except as a sort of game on Hannity-Colmes type shows. There is a hidden crisis going on in America now which the war clouds over. The fact is, while we rally our troops to victory, the real war is back home where we need to fight for our fundamental liberties, preserving the strength of our democracy and the all-crucial checks and balances of power in our government. Our founding fathers warned us what would happen if one party or interest wrests too much control. Democracy could be lost, as well as free speech and the right to question authority. And once we stop questioning, we become sheep, led to the "slaughter" by powers beyond our control.