9/12/2004
CLEMENTS: Dick Cheney needs to get real
By CYNTHIA HALL CLEMENTS, The Lufkin Daily News
“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.”
— Vice President Cheney, Sept. 6, remarks to supporters in Iowa
Voters of America, be afraid, be very afraid of Vice President Cheney’s recent ultimatum.
Myth: The will of the government supplants and suppresses individual freedom.
Reality: If we make Cheney’s “right choice” this November, we unwittingly deny ourselves hard-fought and hard-earned freedoms, guaranteed in our Constitution and the First Amendment, in favor of partisan politics. It is clearly the “wrong choice” to limit personal freedoms, even to protect the safety of our country, as alleged by our vice president.
Cheney would have us forget freedom of conscience. Dismiss freedom of political participation and preference. Ignore freedom of religion. Set aside freedom of speech. Disregard freedom of individual choice.
Be leery of Cheney’s distorted perception that homeland security, as defined and defended by the Republican Party, is the higher good. Memories of 9/11 still haunt all Americans and are seared into our national consciousness. We live each day after 9/11 a little more fearful of subsequent attacks. It is the question that will define several generations of Americans, “Where were you on 9/11?”
Yet, as traumatic as the terrorist attacks on our country and as tragic the deaths of nearly 3,000 of our own were, we cannot renounce our individual freedoms even to guarantee the safety of the nation. Cheney’s statement reeks of hints of fascism or totalitarianism, extremist government tactics authorized by life-threatening circumstances, the ends justifying the means. Know this, though, a loss of individual free will is too high of a price for us to pay.
Myth: The American electorate is at fault for 9/11 and will be responsible for subsequent terrorist attacks on our country.
Reality: Cheney suggested that those voters who make the “wrong choice” in the ballot box in November are personally and corporately responsible for any future terrorist attacks on our country. To this, all Americans should say to Cheney, “Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.”
Please do not blame us, Mr. Vice President, for being victimized by ideologically-inspired fanatics in 2001. It was not our fault. Other than being highly offensive, the “blaming the victim” approach is not even novel or creative.
Voting for the Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, as opposed to the Republican candidate, President Bush, does not in any way authorize, entitle, or inspire al-Qaida or other terrorists to attack our country. Partisanship is not linked to terrorism, and conservative political ideology is not a guarantee of homeland security, regardless of what Cheney thinks.
Do a quick reality check on Cheney’s statement and ask some important questions. What does it say about the choice that the voters made in the 2000 presidential election since our country was attacked by terrorists in 2001 when Bush-Cheney were in office? Did we make the “wrong choice” then?
Or the flip side of the coin, what does it say if voters make the “right choice,” according to Cheney, in 2004, re-elect Bush-Cheney, and there are subsequent terrorist attacks on our soil and against our people, God forbid? Would our choice to re-elect them be the wrong one?
What should be obvious to our vice president and to all Americans is that there are no “right’ and “wrong” choices at the ballot box. Voting is simply an expression of individual preferences and an act of our personal freedoms guaranteed to us.
Myth: The war on terror is a moral issue, and the morally correct choice this November is to vote for the Republicans.
Reality: The debate about Cheney’s statement is not whether morality should affect the voting preferences of each individual. Without question, it does. We all have individual preferences, even if those opinions are ambivalent, that influence how we vote. As we step into the voting booth this fall, or for any election, our religious faith, or lack thereof, our mores and values affect our individual perceptions of political candidates.
Voting requirements in this country do not demand that we set aside our convictions or doctrines to cast a ballot.
<b.The dispute that we should have with Cheney is that he deliberately forced a showdown between voting and morality by redefining the war on terror in this country as a moral issue. The designations of “right” and “wrong” imply some standard of morality to which we should ascribe to the fight against terrorism and partisan politics, according to our vice president.
Continued.........
lufkindailynews.com!-1806619782?urac=n&urvf=10949822638930.09260764050642667 |
