ok, one more political update…
i’ve had an email exchange with one of the conservative republicans who occasionally
reads my updates.
my experience is that when people communicate directly and not anonymously that they tend to be much more civil and respectful towards one another.
here is my response to his email.
-moby
hi,
i guess that my biggest problems with the current crop of right wing republicans are their logical/ethical inconsistencies, and their inability to own up to problems created by their hubris and ineptitude.
some examples.
a-a culture of life. great idea. for republicans shouldn’t this then be a guiding principle that would protect the rights of the unborn but also look after the born? i.e-providing health care/day care to children once they’re born. providing contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies/children. protecting the environment so that children are not made sick from pollution, etc. promoting legislation that protects children from corporations who knowingly produce and promote products that are harmful.
and then war…if the republicans believe in a ‘culture of life’ shouldn’t that potentially stay their hand from killing innocent civilians overseas? close to 100,000 dead iraqi civilians since the war began?
it just seems depressingly inconsistent to say ‘we believe in a culture of life’ and then do nothing to help/protect people once they’re actually born.
b-the war. the war is a disaster. and it was started out of neo-con hubris and deceit. iraq had no wmd’s. the inspectors knew this. the cia knew this.
even the administration knew this.
so now we’re stuck in a bloody and expensive quagmire while countries that do have wmd’s test them and flaunt them in our faces.
that’s just bad foreign policy, and i have yet to see anyone responsible step up and say ‘we’ve made a huge mistake, we’re sorry, and we need to come together to try to fix this huge mistake.’
the last time that saddam hussein committed genocide against his people was in the 80’s, when he was an ally of the reagan/bush administrations.
by the early 21st century he had become a largely toothless despotic figurehead, without weapons of mass destruction, and with no ties to al qaeda.
c-stem cell research. the embryo’s that could be used to harvest stem cells will, about 99% of the time, be thrown away.
i don’t need to point out the absurdity of this, do i?
who benefits from discarded embryo’s?
how is throwing embryo’s in the garbage protecting or promoting a culture of life?
as an aside, one of the big differences between liberal disdain for conservatives and conservative disdain for liberals is that liberal disdain for conservatives tends to be issue oriented and conservative disdain for liberals tends to be jingoistic.
when liberals complain about conservatives it’s usually focussed on things that conservatives have done while in power.
when conservatives complain about liberals it’s usually(based on listening to rush limbaugh and bill o’reilly, etc)focussed on jingoistic slogans(‘they hate life’, ‘they love saddam hussein’, etc)that have nothing to do with any of the serious issues with which we’re confronted.
i stand by my earlier statement that a man who:
a- starts a war based on deceit and ends up killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians
b-sends soldiers into harms way without adequate armor and strategy
c-promotes fiscal policies that subsidize the wealthy and harm the poor
d-promotes environmental policies that decimate gods creation
is quite possibly evil, especially if he does these things in christ’s name.
i’ve read the new testament many times, i don’t remember christ compelling his followers to lie, kill innocent civilians, befoul gods creation, and favor the rich over the poor.
christ never mentioned homosexuality or protecting the family.
he did, however, repeatedly compel his followers to look after the poor and practice forgiveness and non-violence.
-moby