(Source)
(Disclaimer-- I began this post at 6:30am but couldn't finish it in time to post before work. Coincidentally, readers posted similar views today while I was away ...)
Like moths flocking to a porch light, millions of people have cast their vote for Obama. Like moths, they seem intent on reaching only one goal -- and that goal is one of self-interest. So many of my liberal and democrat friends have made this election about the right to choose (women) and/or the right to marry (GLBT). They painted Romney as this evil man that would take away all of their basic human rights. BULLSHIT! Do you think I would vote for Romney if I thought that was true? Yes, Romney is conservative, but Romney is not a religious tyrant or demon or whatever other label they want to paint on him. I don't believe for one moment that those rights would have been violated. In fact, I think they would have continued to blossom FOR the people -- because it is the right thing.
If dems had looked at the whole picture, perhaps they would have seen the more dire issue. Our country is sliding down the constitutional mountainside, caught in a landslide of foreign policy failures, slick and sloppy health care initiatives, and atrocious economic instability. Personal human rights won't mean too much when the country is in collapse and we are all speaking Chinese.
My views? Well, this is probably where I stray from the Republican conservative agenda -- but I do use the "smaller government" perspective to justify my views. If we are all about reducing the size of government and their influence on the American people, then they should get out of people's personal business. The micro-sized government should not have a voice in a woman's right to choose. That decision must come from the woman, with only God as her judge. I don't agree with abortion, but my perspective has changed over the years. I know the decisions I have made over the years and I wouldn't want someone else telling me how to live my life. A woman needs to make the best choice she can at the time of crisis. It may not always be the right choice or the popular choice, but she's the only one who can make the choice and live with the consequences.
Gay marriage once left me torn. Having a brother whom I love dearly (heh - like a brother!) who is gay, I support his right to choose happiness. Although for a while I felt odd about calling it marriage, I always thought a gay "union" was right and acceptable. It took some time to be able to accept the term "marriage" as applicable to gay couples. For some reason it didn't seem quite right -- but I've come to think differently about that too. If two people love each other and want to commit their lives to each other, than why not join together AND call it a marriage. That's what it is, after all. My brother's marriage to his longtime partner of 21 years was the best wedding I ever attended (uh, until this summer when my daughter got married!) His wedding was attended by friends and family and overflowed with joy and love. It was an awesome feeling that only served to defend their right to join together as husband and husband.
It's a reality that their marriage is stronger, more stable, and more caring than many other marriages I have witnessed. When you have to fight so hard to be together, you fight that much harder to make it work. What purpose does it serve for government to mandate these things? How does it hurt the country or the state or integrity of our government? It simply doesn't. All that could possibly happen is that the citizens of our country grow closer together.
Yes, there are people who will throw the religion card into the mix. Again, you can believe what you want to believe, but let me be free to have and share my own opinion. Why do humans always have to validate themselves by condemning others? Can't we just respect an opposed view and live and let live? Simply put, we can't experience forward progress if we continue to tear each other down for having a different point of view.
If we want a smaller government, we can start by getting out of people's personal lives!
Back to our regularly scheduled Republican rant tomorrow ...
Linda
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I couldn't have said it better myself, Linda.
ReplyDeleteLinda,
ReplyDeleteI remember sitting in my dorm room in November of 1980 watching the country coronate Ronald Reagan as its new Savior-in-Chief, and I remember thinking "How stupid can they be? Don't they know? DON'T THEY GET IT??? I was certain that this was the beginning of the end, and I was in despair for a while after that.
Well, that was a long time ago, and in the subsequent years I've seen them come and go. Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and now Obama. Some I've cheered for, some I've despised. There have been some really good and bad presidential events. And they're randomly dispersed along the presidential timeline, so I can't honestly say that all the Rep presidents were bad and the Dems good.
And I no longer get despondent about who gets picked. Perhaps I'm wiser now, or perhaps just more cynical. But in the end, it all really does even out. That's what the country does. That's what the Framers *intended* it to do. They specifically designed the government to be an endless Push-Me-Pull-You of political wrangling, debate, argument, and (yes, sometimes) compromise. It's designed that way so that no single faction (be it a political party or a dictator-to-be), gains too much control for too long a period of time. We even have a constitutional amendment limiting the term of the president. Nobody should be in power that long.
And if you look at the history of American government (and I'm no political scholar by any means), it's all about the country swaying from one side of the ideological spectrum to the other. But the pendulum always swings back. Sometimes to center, sometimes to the opposite extreme, sometimes quickly, and sometimes over long periods, but the cycle always continues.
Now to your specific points: the country isn't ignoring the realities of the economic issues we face, and I don't truly believe Obama is either. Foreign policy failures? I believe Mr. Bush still holds the record for those with two unjustified and massively costly foreign wars. Sloppy health care initiatives? Obama's plan is modeled, in large part, after the one Romney instituted in Massachusetts. Atrocious economic instability? Everyone seems to conveniently forget that the economy collapsed *before* Obama took office. And it collapsed, in part, because of eight years of deregulation and lack of oversight of corporations taking advantage of the country's citizens.
(Need to continue in next post because there is evidently a posting size limit)
(Continued from previous comment)
ReplyDeleteDo you know why Romney lost? It wasn't because of mass hypnotic love for Obama, it wasn't because he was African American (that euphoria wore off a couple of years ago :-), and it wasn't because he showed a clear path out of this mess. Frankly, neither of them did. No, he lost because he never really gave anyone a clear reason why he should win. He was the party's reluctant nominee mostly because he was the last man standing after the primaries. Other than the bullet points of his "5-step plan" he never articulated how any of it was going to work with any sort of detail. The far right didn't like him because he was too moderate and the left saw him in his role as the party leader (quite ironically) as the standard-bearer for the ideas of the far right. Nobody could place him or define him, not even his own people, and that's what lost it for him. As one CNN commentator put it the day after the election, "When given a choice between the guy in office you don't like and the challenger you don't like, people will pick the guy in office."
And still I come back to the original premise. It doesn't matter. Because in the end, the president is only one part of the government. He still has to deal with congress, which doesn't seem to be able to find the light switch in the hall much less find compromise with each other and the president. And they'll fight and argue and posture and Republican values this and Democratic ideals that and eventually some progress will be made. But it won't be because a Democrat or Republican won an election. It will be because that's how it's supposed to work.
While I agree, Romney was not an inspiring candidate, I have to disagree with your explanation regarding my comments. I believe Obama has an agenda all his own that doesn't align with the founding father's ideas in our Constitution. It's easy to blame Bush, Romney, and the lack of support from Congress, but essentially, I believe Obama has floundered - perhaps too focused on his own agenda than improving the state of the country. I may give you that he inherited "some" of the mess, but the mess is much worse now than four years ago.
ReplyDeleteI tend to align with a lot of Stephen's well-articulated points. Things do balance out. One question I still have is why Obama was selected over Hillary to begin with, while she, the more experienced candidate, was glossed over. Because she was a woman? Our time is long overdue ( but that is another topic, I guess ). Obama WAS dealt a mess, but had he not been a political neophyte, he may have learned how to maneuver around the Washington politicos ( including those in his own party, who have said he is pretty remote ) a little bit earlier. Yes, he may be more seasoned this second term, but we really needed a candidate four years ago who could tackle things right out of the starting gate. I also agree about the push-me pull-you aspect of things evening out, but I have wondered over the past few years if the presidential term should be expanded to six years instead of four. It seems to me that only the first two years are directed toward service and the second two years center around getting re-elected. We just get rid of the robo-calls, and then there they are again. I would like to see a solid 4 years devoted to focusing on the important issues, rather than being derailed by re-election concerns.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I think Stephen hit the nail on the head when he spoke about Romney losing because he was not well-defined. I WANTED to feel good about Romney, because I was dissatisfied with our progress over the past 4 years and alarmed by the over-reaching arm of big government to regulate all things, but he leaned far right to win his party's candidacy and then, once secured, moderated his positions to become more electable to the general population. You never had a sense you could fully trust the man, because his cameleon-like tendency to adapt his color to his immediate surroundings made you feel that you never really knew what he stood for. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the voter.
ReplyDelete