Introduction
In 1949, George Orwell published a novel called 1984. In the story, totalitarian regimes have conquered the world. These evil governments keep power by enforcing "doublethink" on the population. According to Wikipedia, "Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct... Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance -- thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction."
In the following essay, I will examine a number of quotes from the most recent Republican Party Platform.
Running for political office is expensive. To my understanding, the Republican National Committee will not fund the campaign of any candidate who does not sign on to this statement of principles.
The platform is sixty-two pages long, and examining every phrase is beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, this study will focus on two things.
First: hypocrisy. From 2001-2007, a Republican held the Presidency, and Republicans had majorities in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court. The Republicans controlling all three branches of government paid lip service to many of the principles written in this platform -- and did the exact opposite when they were in power.
Second: contradictions. This focuses on logically inconsistent statements within the platform (i.e. those that contradict each other.) Believing both requires "Doublethink."
Many of my friends are conservatives. I know several who left the Republican party out of disgust at the party leaders' hypocrisy. The people responsible for the platform's hypocrisy and contradictions are Republican officials -- not ordinary Americans who are members of the Republican party, and certainly not voters who favor Republican candidates.
Ronald Reagan was a great American who said "Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty" and "Man is not free unless government is limited." The Republican Party no longer embraces Reagan's values. I was one of the many millions of Americans who believed the party still stood for Reagan's principles when I voted for a Republican in 2000. I was duped. The current Republican officials give lip service to Reagan's principles and betray those principles with their actions. Today's Republican leaders no longer support the republic, i.e. a representative form of government. They support a plutocracy, i.e. rule by the wealthy.
Section 1: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
"This platform affirms that America has always been a place of grand dreams and even grander realities; and so it will be again, if we return government to its proper role, making it smaller and smarter." - Preamble
A "smaller and smarter" government is a key conservative principle. But what do the Republican leaders do when they're in power?
From 2001-2006, Republicans completely controlled the government. While they gave lip service to the idea of a "smaller and smarter" government, they did the exact opposite. The Washington Times wrote this about George W. Bush's presidency: "No president since... World War II -- has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy."
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Bush -- the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy -- increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels." It goes on: "...Regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of regulations were added to it. In 2007, more than 78,000 new pages were added."
The "smaller and smarter" line in the platform is a lie. Then-President George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress turned the Federal Government into the biggest bureaucracy in American history. If Republican leaders truly believed in a "smaller and smarter" government, they would have done that when they had the chance.
"[Obama's] policies... for the last three and a half years, have stifled growth, destroyed jobs, halted investment, created unprecedented uncertainty, and prolonged the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression." - Page 1
That's not true, either. Barack Obama's presidency has created growth, jobs, and investment. It's true that Obama has not done enough to promote growth, jobs, and investment, but the reason he hasn't is because Republicans in Congress -- who have equal say in government spending -- would not let him. To Republican leaders, it's far more important to make Obama look bad than it is to create economic growth, jobs, or investment.
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Obama took office in the midst of the biggest financial crisis to hit the global economy in 80 years. The much-derided stimulus bill, the auto bailout and the Wall Street regulatory package passed under his leadership were not as comprehensive as they should have been, but given the political situation, they were all that was attainable."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in Rolling Stone:
"Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries."
Krugman continued: "You often hear Dodd-Frank, the financial-reform bill that Obama signed into law in 2010, dismissed as toothless and meaningless. It isn't. It may not prevent the next financial crisis, but there's a good chance that it will at least make future crises less severe and easier to deal with."
Later: "Unemployment in America rose to a horrifying 10 percent in 2009, but it has come down sharply in the past few years... Meanwhile, Europe has had barely any job recovery at all, and unemployment is still in double digits."
He went on: "...there's overwhelming consensus among economists that the Obama stimulus plan helped mitigate the worst of the slump. For example, when a panel of economic experts was asked whether the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus, 82 percent said yes, only two percent said no.
"...Couldn't the U.S. economy have done a lot better? Of course. The original stimulus should have been both bigger and longer. And after Republicans won the House in 2010, U.S. policy took a sharp turn in the wrong direction. Not only did the stimulus fade out, but sequestration led to further steep cuts in federal spending, exactly the wrong thing to do in a still-depressed economy."
Krugman concluded: "The bottom line on Obama's economic policy should be that what he did helped the economy, and that while enormous economic and human damage has taken place on his watch, the United States coped with the financial crisis better than most countries facing comparable crises have managed. He should have done more and better, but the narrative that portrays his policies as a simple failure is all wrong."
"To that end, we propose to: Extend the 2001 and 2003 tax relief packages-commonly known as the Bush tax cuts-pending reform of the tax code, to keep tax rates from rising on income, interest, dividends, and capital gains; Reform the tax code by reducing marginal tax rates by 20 percent across-the-board in a revenue-neutral manner; Eliminate the taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains altogether for lower and middle-income taxpayers; End the Death Tax; and Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax." - Page 2
The truth: When George W. Bush took office, he inherited a balanced budget from the Clinton Administration. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress then initiated a series of tax cuts based on the plutocratic principle "the more money you make, the less taxes you pay." Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, protested these tax cuts because they overwhelmingly favored millionaires -- the richest 2% of the population -- and would create a new deficit. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney famously told him "Deficits don't matter" and fired him a few months later.
The result? According to the New Republic:
"Critics of President Obama never tire of blaming him for today's high deficits. But if blame belongs with one president, it belongs with Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush."
Although the deficit did continue to rise during Obama's first term, it rose at only half the rate that it had under Bush. Why did Bush grow the deficit so quickly? First: the government lost a huge amount of money because Bush lowered taxes on millionaires. Second: Bush then ran up enormous deficits invading Iraq even though the government didn't have the money to do so. Contrariwise, Obama's first-term deficits resulted from his efforts to reverse the damage Bush did to the economy -- efforts Republicans in Congress strongly opposed.
According to Forbes magazine, the deficit has gone down considerably in Obama's second term.
This article from the Center for American Progress demonstrates that Bush's tax cuts for millionaires were a disaster for the economy.
Professor William Barclay writes that Bush predicted that cutting taxes for millionaires would encourage them to invest in the economy. Bush was dead wrong, and the millionaires did not invest any more than they had before. His tax cuts hurt the economy instead of helping it.
Barclay's analysis is backed up by Professor Joseph Stiglitz.
There is no "death tax" to end. It doesn't exist. The Republican leaders made it up. Death isn't taxed and never has been. The Republican leaders use the misleading phrase "death tax" for the federal estate tax, where someone has to pay taxes on property they inherit under someone's estate. The catch is, according to the IRS, no one has to pay any inheritance taxes to the Federal government unless they're inheriting over five million dollars!
I think if anyone inherits over five million dollars from a deceased relative -- more money than 96% of Americans will ever seen in their lifetimes -- they can afford to pay a little of that in taxes. But that doesn't matter to the Republican leaders. They're plutocrats. They're interested only in helping the rich get richer, no matter what that does to the economy.
The Republican leaders -- who are themselves millionaires -- know perfectly well that they can't come out and say they want the government to help the rich get richer and ignore everyone else. If they did, no one would vote for them. So, they claim that lowering taxes on millionaires will benefit the economy when they know perfectly well that isn't true.
(According to Time Magazine, over half the people in Congress -- both Democrats and Republicans -- are millionaires. The Bush Administration was even worse. According to the Washington Post, they were all multi-millionaires.)
"Elected officials have overpromised and overspent, and now the bills are due. Unless we take dramatic action now, young Americans and their children will inherit an unprecedented legacy of enormous and unsustainable debt, with the interest alone consuming an ever-increasing portion of the country's wealth." - Page 3
This is true -- but the elected officials who overspent were Republicans. Vice President Cheney said "deficits don't matter." Bush's tax cuts for millionaires created this "enormous and unsustainable debt" -- and the platform endorsed those tax cuts on the preceding page! Tax cuts for millionaires create deficits and cannot reverse them.
The Republican leaders aren't interested in fixing the economy. All they're interested in is making Obama look bad and making the rich richer.
"We salute Republican Members of the House of Representatives for enshrining in the Rules of the House the requirement that every bill must cite the provision of the Constitution which permits its introduction. Their adherence to the Constitution stands in stark contrast to the antipathy toward the Constitution demonstrated by the current Administration and its Senate allies by appointing “czars” to evade the confirmation process, making unlawful “recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess, using executive orders to bypass the separation of powers and its checks and balances, encouraging illegal actions by regulatory agencies from the NLRB to the EPA, openly and notoriously displaying contempt for Congress, the Judiciary, and the Constitutional prerogatives of the individual States, refusing to defend the nation's laws in federal courts or enforce them on the streets, ignoring the legal requirement for legislative enactment of an annual budget, gutting welfare reform by unilaterally removing its statutory work requirement, buying senatorial votes with special favors, and evading the legal requirement for congressional consultation regarding troop commitments overseas. A Republican President and Republican Senate will join House Republicans in living by the rule of law, the foundation of the American Republic." - Page 9
The truth: the use of executive orders to bypass the separation of powers and checks and balances was widely used by President Bush, who -- as I described in my essay George W. Bush Versus the Bill of Rights -- used executive orders for such purposes as unconstitutionally giving Federal money to churches early in his presidency. He later used an executive order to direct the government to spy on innocent Americans without search warrants. As his presidency continued, he issued an executive order directing his subordinates to torture people. The Republican platform reads that "a Republican President and Republican Senate will join House Republicans in living by the rule of law" -- but the last Republican President ordered his subordinates to break the law. Republicans in Congress spent eight years cheering him on.
If the current Republican leaders think Bush was wrong, they certainly don't condemn him in the platform or show any remorse for cheering on Bush's abuses of power when they were happening. They reserve all their ire for President Obama, who they blame for the deficit they themselves created.
Regarding "evading the legal requirement for congressional consultation regarding troop commitments overseas" -- Obama has not done this. Obama used his powers as Commander in Chief to bomb Libya -- exactly as Ronald Reagan did -- but there were no troops involved. The recent President who evaded "the legal requirement for congressional consultation regarding troop commitments overseas" was George W. Bush -- who violated the Constitution by diverting money Congress had allocated for fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan to prepare for his invasion of Iraq. This diversion of funds took place two months before Congress approved the use of military force to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime.
When journalist Bob Woodward revealed this in his 2004 book Plan of Attack, no Republican that I'm aware of condemned Bush's actions -- even though they were illegal.
The other faults the Republican platform lays at Obama's feet - "appointing “czars” to evade the confirmation process," "unlawful “recess” appointments," and "ignoring the legal requirement for legislative enactment of an annual budget" -- happened because the Republicans in Congress forced him to.
Here's why. As I mentioned earlier, the Congressional Republicans' goal is to make Obama look bad. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in 2010 that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
So, the Senate Republicans -- led by McConnell -- decided to filibuster everything the Democrats proposed or that Obama asked for.
In the past, the filibuster has been used to stop the majority party from bullying the minority party. Majority rule is a central tenet of democracy, but the other side of the coin is that the minority has a right for their voices to be heard and their rights to be respected. Otherwise, we'd be in danger of a situation like German Jews faced in the 1930's, where the Nazi-controlled German parliament voted to take away their citizenship. Historically in America, the minority party has used the filibuster only in extreme cases.
McConnell and his supporters did something unprecedented. They decided to filibuster everything.
Republican obstinacy paralyzed the government. The reason Obama had to make recess appointments is because Senate Republicans literally refused to confirm anyone to vacant offices. (In some cases, Obama nominated Democrats to vacant government positions, only to have the Republican senators filibuster them. In an effort to keep the government functioning, Obama then nominated Republicans to the same vacant offices -- and the Republican senators filibustered them too!)
The reason it took so long to pass budgets is because the Democratic-majority Senate and the Republican-majority House could not agree on one, so there was literally nothing for Obama to sign. This is hardly Obama's fault.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has made some new regulations to keep the air we breathe clean. That isn't illegal.
In contrast, the last time we had a Republican President, George W. Bush ordered the EPA not to enforce the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
There is no way "a Republican President and Republican Senate will join House Republicans in living by the rule of law." Considering House and Senate Republicans looked the other way when the last Republican President broke the law -- and nowhere does the Republican platform acknowledge this, let alone condemn it -- there is no reason to think the Republican leaders are telling the truth.
As far as "openly and notoriously displaying contempt for Congress, the Judiciary, and the Constitutional prerogatives of the individual States," it was George W. Bush, not Obama, who displayed contempt for the separation of powers. Bush defied Congress by violating the McCain Amendment and overruled the Florida State government in the Terri Schiavo case.
"A Republican President and Republican Senate will join House Republicans in living by the rule of law, the foundation of the American Republic." - Page 9
The Republicans champion the rule of law?
The Republicans who spent eight years cheering on the most lawless president in history?
Considering the last Republican President had utter contempt for the rule of law -- and that Republicans in Congress, far from trying to stop him, cheered him on -- there is no way the Republican Party believes in the rule of law. The only Republicans who did -- Senators Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee -- left the party in protest over Bush's contempt for the separation of powers.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman details the laws Bush broke in her book Cheating Justice. She writes that there is no question Bush knew his actions were illegal. Otherwise, he wouldn't have tried to cover them up.
Likewise, the late prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. His case:
* Bush claimed he ordered the invasion of Iraq to destroy Iraq's supposed huge and lethal arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
* When it turned out Iraq had no such weapons, Bush claimed this was a failure by the American intelligence services. However, Bugliosi traces the document trail where the American intelligence agencies told Bush Iraq had no weapons. Bush continued to insist Iraq did. In one case, when Bush was handed a National Intelligence Estimate showing that Iraq had disarmed, Bush rewrote the document to reach the opposite conclusion.
* Therefore, Bush knowingly sent American troops to invade another country under false pretenses, knowing full well that the Iraqis would fire on invading American troops in self-defense. Bush ordered the murder of 4,500 innocent men and women in uniform.
Regarding "...the current administration... refusing to [enforce] the nation's laws...": Bush used "signing statements" to say sure, I'll sign this bill into law, but I won't obey it or enforce it. Bush did not invent signing statements, but he used them 1,200 times -- more than all other Presidents combined. The Republican platform never mentions signing statements, and certainly does not condemn a President using them in an attempt to circumvent the law.
Other examples: the Republicans in Congress cheered for Bush when he broke the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the War Crimes Act. They applauded when he issued an executive order violating the Geneva Conventions. No Republican objected when Bush commuted the sentence of a subordinate who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. When Bush was caught spying on innocent Americans without search warrants, the Republican-controlled Congress passed laws retroactively decriminalizing Bush's unconstitutional wiretaps.
There were between 269 and 287 Republicans in Congress during their six-year Bush-era majorities. After Jeffords and Chafee left the party, no Republican members of Congress (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) stood up for the rule of law when they had the chance. If the Republican Congressmen really cared about the rule of law, they would have impeached Bush instead of cheering him on. If any Republican Congressmen cared about the rule of law, somebody would have at least protested.
"The current Administration is weakening America at home through anemic growth, high unemployment, and record-setting debt. " - Page 39
The platform is behind the times here. It was written in 2012, but is describing the Bush Administration, not the Obama Administration. The current Obama Administration has done all it can to promote growth, fight unemployment, and reduce debt. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Congressional Republicans believe that making Obama look bad is more important than fighting unemployment and reducing debt. So, they blocked most of Obama's attempts to do so. Obama ultimately succeeded -- the economy has grown, unemployment is down, and the national debt is smaller. However, it took Obama six years to achieve an economic recovery that would have taken three if the Republicans hadn't refused to work with him.
"We support opening the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for energy exploration and development and ending the current Administration's moratorium on permitting; opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for exploration and production of oil and natural gas..." - Page 16
Obama opposes digging for oil in the ANWR because the public opposes it and it wouldn't reduce oil prices.
"The current President personally blocked one of the most important energy and jobs projects in years. The Keystone XL Pipeline--which would have brought much needed Canadian and American oil to U.S. refineries--would create thousands of jobs. The current President's job-killing combination of extremism and ineptitude threatens to create a permanent energy shortage. We are committed to approving the Keystone XL Pipeline and to streamlining permitting for the development of other oil and natural gas pipelines." - Page 16
Contrary to the platform's claims, President Obama's opposition to Keystone XL is by no means a done deal. He said in 2013 he might approve it.
If he did, it would be a disaster! According to Friends of the Earth,
"...Keystone XL will carry one of the world's dirtiest fuels: tar sands oil. Along its route from Alberta to Texas, this pipeline could devastate ecosystems, pollute water sources and jeopardize public health.
"Pollution from tar sands oil greatly eclipses that of conventional oil. During tar sands oil production alone, levels of carbon dioxide emissions are three to four times higher than those of conventional oil...
"During the tar sands oil extraction process, vast amounts of heat, water and chemicals are needed to separate the tarry substance (known as bitumen) from sand, silt, and clay and to flow up the pipeline. The water used in the process comes from rivers and underground aquifers. It takes three barrels of water to extract each single barrel of oil. Ninety-five percent of the water used to extract the oil, which is about 2.4 million barrels per day, is so polluted that the water must be stored in large human-made pools, known as tailing ponds. As the heavy bitumen sinks to the bottom of these ponds, the toxic sludge, full of harmful substances like cyanide and ammonia, works its way into neighboring clean water supplies.
"The tar sands oil are underneath the world's largest intact ecosystem, the Boreal forests of Alberta. The forests not only serve as an important carbon sink, but its biodiversity and unspoiled bodies of water support large populations of many different species. They are a buffer against climate change as well as food and water shortages. However, in the process of digging up tar sands oil, the forests are destroyed. This valuable forest and its endangered caribou are both threatened by the pipeline.
"The probability of spills from this pipeline is high and more threatening than conventional spills, because tar sands oil sinks rather than floats, making clean ups more difficult and costly. TransCanada's first pipeline proves that this threat is real, as it spilled a dozen times in less than a year of operation.
"Refining tar sands oil is dirtier than refining conventional oil, and results in higher emissions of toxic sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. These emissions cause smog and acid rain and contribute to respiratory diseases like asthma."
The Republican leaders have no problem with any of this.
"We also call on Congress to take quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations that will harm the nation's economy and threaten millions of jobs over the next quarter century." - Page 19
Under Obama, the EPA has used its legal mandate to protect the environment to regulate carbon dioxide and methane pollution. Republican in Congress oppose regulation of carbon dioxide and methane because they don't believe pollution causes global warming.
During the Renaissance, the Catholic church -- the only legal religion in Italy at the time -- arrested the astronomer Galileo and threatened him with torture unless he "recanted" his "heretical" discovery that the Earth orbits the Sun. What everyone accepts as obvious fact today was controversial back then. The Church leaders fervently believed that the Sun orbits the Earth. They were so convinced that their beliefs were right -- and of their own infallibility -- that they refused even to look through Galileo's telescope. They believed Galileo's conclusions were an attack on everything good, everything moral, everything they stood for -- and were so outraged they refused to consider the evidence. Today we know that Galileo realized there had been a mistake, and that correcting that mistake wasn't an attack on the Church -- it was his duty as a Christian. His contemporaries were incapable of understanding that. Even though the Church leaders did everything they could to suppress the truth, they couldn't change the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
The same principle holds true today. The industrial age has burned an enormous amount of fossil fuels in factories, power plants, automobiles, and so on. The carbon exhaust that humans have pumped into the atmosphere has added 14% more carbon than would be there naturally.
That may not seem like much, but it's enough to create a greenhouse effect. Under normal circumstances, light and heat from the Sun reach the Earth, but much of that energy is reflected back. (Sometimes you can see this effect when you look at the crescent moon in the night sky and can see, faintly, the entire moon.) When there's lots of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, these gases reflect that heat energy back to the surface of the Earth -- trapping warmth.
The problem with this is: hotter summers are melting the glaciers on Greenland and Antarctica. That melted ice flows into the ocean, causing the ocean to rise. Areas at sea level -- such as Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands, the Maldive Islands and the Tuvalu Islands -- will sink beneath the waves.
Longer summers mean that malaria-bearing mosquitoes -- which have been eradicated from the United States -- will be able to breed here again.
Hotter summers mean a longer hurricane season in the Atlantic.
Hotter summers mean that the breadbasket of America -- the Midwest -- will be too hot for crops to grow. The temperate climate -- the right temperature for farming -- will shift north to Canada. The problem is: the Midwestern United States is gifted with rich soil, which feeds millions of people. Canadian soil isn't as rich and cannot support the millions that depend on American grain.
None of this matters to Republican leaders. They refuse to believe that 150 years of digging up fossil fuels, burning them, and releasing all that carbon gas into the atmosphere could affect the climate. Like the authorities of Galileo's day, they won't believe the evidence. Since they believe that global warming is a hoax and climate change isn't happening, they refuse to believe what 98% of the world's scientists have told them and refuse to do anything to limit carbon dioxide and methane pollution.
At this writing, the only countries that have not taken steps to curve carbon pollution and reduce climate change are the United States, Canada, Andorra and South Sudan. Every other country in the world has faced reality.
Climate change deniers try to suppress the truth, but the facts remain the facts whether they believe them or not.
EPA regulation of carbon pollution is legal and imperative. By pretending that reality isn't happening, the Republican leaders are pushing for a return to the Middle Ages while the rest of the world moves into the Twenty-First Century.
"But no peril justifies the regulatory impact of Obamacare on the practice of medicine, the Dodd-Frank Act on financial services, or the EPA's and OSHA's overreaching regulation agenda." - Page 23
Professor Sidney Shapiro explains why it's important to regulate financial markets with laws like the Dodd-Frank Act: bailouts cost far more.
"Protecting Travelers and their Rights: Reforming the TSA for Security and Privacy: While the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks brought about a greater need for homeland security, the American people have already delivered their verdict on the Transportation Security Administration: its procedures –-- and much of its personnel –-- need to be changed. It is now a massive bureaucracy of 65,000 employees who seem to be accountable to no one for the way they treat travelers. We call for the private sector to take over airport screening wherever feasible and look toward the development of security systems that can replace the personal violation of frisking." - Page 25
This is true: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has abused its authority extensively by harassing innocent travelers at airports. However...
"All security measures and police actions should be viewed through the lens of the Fourth Amendment; for if we trade liberty for security, we shall have neither." - Page 13
After the TSA, the worst abuses of power under the Obama Administration have been committed by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The NSA has engaged in widespread surveillance of innocent Americans without search warrants. However, aside from the above vague sentence about the Fourth Amendment and the above call for TSA reform, the Republican platform says nothing on specifics. It never mentions the NSA, illegal wiretaps, or surveillance without search warrants.
But why would it? The party of George W. Bush doesn't have a problem with the government illegally spying on innocent Americans. They're so busy making bogus claims about President Obama's "antipathy toward the Constitution" that they've ignored the real abuses committed on Obama's watch.
You'd think that the Republican leaders -- whose primary goal is to make Obama look bad -- would jump on his illegal surveillance. They'd call for Congressional investigations and an independent prosecutor. So why don't they?
The unconstitutional surveillance of innocent American citizens began under George W. Bush. The Republicans in Congress have ignored it ever since. Although some of Bush's surveillance programs have continued under Obama, if Congress investigated the NSA, they would have to reveal that Bush bears most of the blame. It would be impossible to investigate or prosecute Obama's abuses of power without revealing that Bush's abuses of power were much worse.
The bottom line: if the Republican leaders get a court order preventing President Obama's NSA from spying on innocent Americans without search warrants, the next time a Republican is elected President, he won't be able to do it either.
"We renew our call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with abstinence education which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior. Abstinence from sexual activity is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against out-of-wedlock pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS when transmitted sexually. It is effective, science-based, and empowers teens to achieve optimal health outcomes and avoid risks of sexual activity." - Page 36
There's a problem with this: Abstinence-only education doesn't work.
Such programs have no effect on whether unmarried youth are sexually active or not. Abstinence-only education is not "science-based." In fact, states that require abstinence-only education have a higher rate of teen pregnancies.
That's not the end of the story. Abstinence-only education makes things worse.
While it's true that contraceptives aren't foolproof, abstinence-only education oversimplifies this with the false claim that contraceptives don't work at all. People who are taught that contraceptives are useless don't use them (surprise, surprise.) This results in unplanned pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases.
As a society, we need to reduce teen pregnancy. In order to do this we need to focus on techniques that work.
Abstinence-only educators will never focus on techniques that work because their goal is not to reduce teen pregnancy. That's only a cover for the real goal. For them, abstinence is not the means to an end -- it's the end in itself. The only goal of abstinence-only education is to promote abstinence. They don't care about anything else. If they were interested in reducing teen pregnancy, they would look at the situation realistically and adopt techniques that actually reduce teen pregnancy. Instead, all they do is insist that educators use methods that don't work and never have. Make no mistake: if America needed to increase the birth rate, abstinence-only educators would champion abstinence as a way to do that.
Abstinence-only education would be great in an ideal world where every teenager in the country would save sex for marriage. Teenagers having sex is generally a really bad idea. However: we don't live in an ideal world -- we live in the real world. Parents should teach teenagers to be responsible, and while abstinence is an ideal goal, no society in history has ever achieved that. Real problems require real solutions.
"Our wounded warriors, whether still in service or discharged, deserve the best medical care our country can provide. The nature of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in an unprecedented incidence of traumatic brain injury, loss of limbs, and post-traumatic stress disorder which calls for a new commitment of resources and personnel for its treatment and care to promote recovery. We must make military and veterans' medicine the gold standard for mental health care, advances in prosthetics, and treatment of trauma and eye injuries. " - Page 44
Last time the Republicans were running the government, they did the exact opposite. According to the Washington Times, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress cut veterans' health care.
According to Consortium News, Bush sent our soldiers to war in Afghanistan and Iraq while keeping veterans' benefits and health care (more or less) at peacetime levels -- far below what was necessary for wounded soldiers returning from combat.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: your actions are speaking so loudly I can't hear a word you're saying.
It's true that "Our wounded warriors... deserve the best medical care our country can provide." However, the Republican leaders have no intention of making "military and veterans' medicine the gold standard for mental health care, advances in prosthetics, and treatment of trauma and eye injuries." If they did, they would have done that when they had the chance. Instead, they did the opposite.
If the Republican Party has truly done a complete about-face and miraculously turned over a new leaf, the platform would acknowledge their abysmal record on veterans. The party would acknowledge past mistakes and pledge to do better. No words like this are found anywhere in the platform. In fact, George W. Bush -- the President who was idolized and obeyed by the Republican-controlled Congress and the Republican-majority Supreme Court for six solid years -- is only mentioned three times. (He is first mentioned regarding his tax cuts. He comes up twice more regarding a disease prevention program in Africa. That's it.)
Section 2: The Republican Platform Versus Itself
"Prosperity provides the means by which individuals and families can maintain their independence from government, raise their children by their own values, practice their faith, and build communities of self-reliant neighbors." - Page 1
Here is the core message of the Republican platform.
1) Government is too powerful, so we must make it more powerful. Government is too big, so we must make it bigger. To reduce the deficit, we must implement policies that increase it.
2) People have the right to live their lives according to their own values, independent from government interference. So, the government must deny people the right to live their lives according to their own values.
That doesn't make any sense.
That's why this essay is entitled "Doublethink." Republicans in Congress may honestly believe that "the more money you make, the less taxes you pay" makes some kind of financial sense. Republican leaders may truly believe that, after cutting millionaires' taxes hurt the economy, the best thing to do is cut millionaires' taxes even more. It's possible to be so committed to an ideology that an otherwise intelligent person can refuse to believe overwhelming evidence against it. (For instance: there's overwhelming evidence that cutting millionaires' taxes hurts the economy -- but Republicans in Congress still want to do it. There's overwhelming evidence that carbon pollution causes climate change -- but Republican leaders still refuse to believe it.)
However: no rational person could believe that innocent people have the right to live their lives independent from government interference, and at the same time believe that innocent people do not have the right to live their lives free from government interference. Yet that's exactly what the Republican platform says.
"We support the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and of our country's Judeo-Christian heritage..." - Page 12
It is already Constitutional to display the Ten Commandments in public -- in churches. It's unconstitutional to display them in courtrooms. The First Amendment reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
James Madison, father of the Bill of Rights, wrote: "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?"
To answer President Madison's question: modern Republican leaders. They don't see a problem with posting the Ten Commandments in courtrooms. They don't see a problem with American citizens walking into a courtroom and seeing the tenets of someone else's religion carved into the wall. Indeed, it's not "the current Administration and its Senate allies" displaying "antipathy toward the Constitution." It's the Republican leaders who openly call for "the public display of the Ten Commandments" who show "antipathy toward the Constitution."
How far would they go? Would they allow courtrooms in areas with Catholic majorities to post the Nicene Creed? Should courts in areas with Mormon majorities be allowed to post the Articles of Faith? What about Protestant-majority areas? Should Martin Luther's 95 Theses be engraved on courtroom walls?
The Constitution itself answers this question in the Fourteenth Amendment.
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
If a Jewish American saw the Apostles' Creed on a courtroom wall, what message would that send? It would say: this is not your country. This courtroom does not respect your religion. In this courtroom the Bill of Rights does not apply. Don't expect equal justice in this court -- you won't get it.
The government cannot promote the teachings of one religion over another. If a courtroom can post the Ten Commandments -- promoting Christianity over other religions -- it sends a message to agnostics and atheists that the Constitution does not apply to them. It tells Buddhists and Hindus they will not get justice. It tells Confucianists and Taoists that the government does not respect their beliefs. It tells Shintoists, Pagans, and some Native Americans that America is not their country. It tells Sikhs and Muslims that the government considers another religion better than theirs.
The platform condemns "antipathy toward the Constitution" while calling for the unconstitutional display of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms. This doesn't make sense.
"Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and wellbeing of women, and we stand firmly against it." - Page 33
All of those studies have been debunked.
"We also salute the many States that have passed laws for informed consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to an abortion, and health-protective clinic regulation. We seek to protect young girls from exploitation through a parental consent requirement..." - Page 14
"We urge enactment of pending legislation that would require parental consent to transport girls across state lines for abortions." - Page 34
I read an article several years ago where a Planned Parenthood representative said that the vast majority of underage women who came to them seeking abortions had been raped by their stepfathers. These head-of-household rapists told their stepdaughters they'd kill them if they told anyone, and the victims were living in terror for their lives. In some cases the girls did tell their mothers, only to have the mothers refuse to believe them.
Of course the great majority of parents love and protect their children and are involved in their lives. The young women who need abortions don't come from those households. If Congress wants to save fetuses from abortion, they should pass laws helping get underage rape victims to safety. Instead, parental consent requirements -- at best -- will force a pregnant rape victim to ask her rapist (or her rapist's enabler) for help. If the rapist then kills the mother, how does that protect the fetus?
"Defending Marriage Against An Activist Judiciary: A serious threat to our country's constitutional order, perhaps even more dangerous than presidential malfeasance, is an activist judiciary, in which some judges usurp the powers reserved to other branches of government. A blatant example has been the court-ordered redefinition of marriage in several States... It is an assault on the foundations of our society, challenging the institution which, for thousands of years in virtually every civilization, has been entrusted with the rearing of children and the transmission of cultural values." - Page 10
In the past, some states passed laws denying the right of two single adults to marry if those adults are members of a minority. For instance: in 1967, Mildred and Richard Loving, two Virginians, married in nearby Washington, DC.
When they returned to Virginia, they were arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a year in prison for violating a 1924 state law forbidding a white man from marrying a black woman. They appealed. The result? Nine activist judges on the United States Supreme Court unanimously redefined marriage in Virginia and sixteen other states, striking down laws forbidding two people of different skin colors from marrying.
Does anyone have a problem with this? Apparently the Republican Party does. After all, they believe a court has no business striking down state marriage laws forbidding innocent American citizens from getting married. They think we should go back to the era when people of European ancestry and people of African ancestry can't get married. If a state wants to make that illegal, that's their business, right? Courts shouldn't get involved.
"The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty, stands for the rights of individuals, families, faith communities, institutions – and of the States which are their instruments of self-government. " - Page 10
Hang on a moment. The Republican Party opposes the denial of liberty? The Republican Party stands for the rights of individuals? If that's true, then it shouldn't be up to the government to decide that two single adults can't get married. Innocent people have the right to live their lives in peace, free from government interference.
So which is it? Do states have the right to pass laws forbidding two American adults from getting married? Do states have the right to deny liberty to individuals and faith communities? Or is it all right for "activist judges" to intervene and stand up for the rights of individuals, families, and faith communities when state laws deny them liberty?
Either innocent American adults have the right to get married or they don't. You can't have it both ways.
"A Sacred Contract: Defense of Marriage: That is why Congressional Republicans took the lead in enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of States and the federal government not to recognize same-sex relationships licensed in other jurisdictions." - Page 10
The majority of Americans are free to obtain a marriage license -- so long as both parties are adults who aren't already married. But, according to the Republican platform, this freedom should not extend to same-sex couples.
But I thought "The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty, stands for the rights of individuals." So the Republican Party doesn't stand for the right of two innocent American individuals to get married after all? I thought the Republican party opposed the denial of liberty. Republican leaders, make up your minds. What do you stand for?
"The current Administration's open defiance of this constitutional principle – in its handling of immigration cases, in federal personnel benefits, in allowing a same-sex marriage at a military base, and in refusing to defend DOMA in the courts –makes a mockery of the President's inaugural oath." - Page 10
Wait a minute. They said that "The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty, stands for the rights of individuals." So, by standing up for the rights of individuals, the current Administration is making "a mockery of the President's inaugural oath?" President Obama is standing up for the rights of individuals, just like the Republican leaders want him to!
So the Republican Party doesn't really believe in the rights of individuals. The Republican Party doesn't really stand up for the rights of innocent Americans who are different. Is that correct?
"We commend the United States House of Representatives and State Attorneys General who have defended these laws when they have been attacked in the courts." - Page 10
What? I thought the "The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty, stands for the rights of individuals." But the Republican Party also commends those who deny the liberty of innocent American adults to get married, and condemns single adults who ask the courts to strike down laws that forbid them to marry.
Either you believe in freedom or you don't. You can't have it both ways.
"We reaffirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We applaud the citizens of the majority of States which have enshrined in their constitutions the traditional concept of marriage, and we support the campaigns underway in several other States to do so." - Page 10
So the Republican Party "stands for the rights of individuals" but also "support[s] a Constitutional amendment" denying marriage rights to two individuals of if they're members of a minority. Well, which is it? Do all Americans have equal rights or not?
Or maybe it's true that all individuals have equal rights but some individuals don't. "Doublethink," anyone?
George Orwell's other famous novel is Animal Farm, a satire of Stalin's Russia. At the end of the novel, the totalitarian regime adopts the slogan "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
In 1967, many Americans could not understand why a white man would want to marry a black woman, and several states had laws against it. But the Supreme Court -- and most people today -- understand that two single adults who want to get married should be free to do so. Some people today cannot conceive of marrying someone from another ethnic group, but they realize it's absurd to tell innocent people they've never met that they can't married if they want to.
In 2014, most Americans can not understand how two innocent single adults of the same gender could possibly fall in love and get married. But many of us also realize that it's absurd to tell innocent people we've never met that they can't married if they want to.
By 2061, same-sex marriage will likely be a settled issue. Most Americans will see how illogical it is to have laws forbidding two single adults from getting married. Even if we can't understand why two people -- of different skin colors or of the same gender -- would want to get married, it's no one else's business, and certainly not the government's business.
"...the Tenth Amendment: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' In fidelity to that principle, we condemn the current Administration's continued assaults on State governments in matters ranging from voter ID laws to immigration, from healthcare programs to land use decisions." - Page 11
Slow down here. I thought the Republican party "reaffirm[s] our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman." But the platform just said that the Republican party believes in the principle of the Tenth Amendment, reserving powers "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution... to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Republican platform has told us told that the government should be smaller and smarter, and that the powers the Constitution does not give the federal government are rightly reserved for the people. But at the same time, the Constitution must be amended to give the government -- not the people -- the power to decide who is legally allowed to marry whom. We've been told that the Republican Party stands for the rights of individuals -- but not individuals who want to get married. We've been told that "activist judges" have no right to strike down laws denying innocent couples the right to get married. But the Republican party wants to amend the Constitution giving "activist judges" this power after all.
How far we have fallen. "The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty" uses Orwellian "doublethink" to deny some American citizens the right to get married, and at the same time calls for preserving individual liberty. They think the government should be "smaller and smarter," but they want to amend the Constitution to give the government more power. They say people have the right to live their private lives free from government interference, but they call for a Constitutional amendment empowering the government to interfere with people's private lives. And they don't see the contradiction!
Doublethink: the government is too big and too powerful, but it isn't big and powerful enough. The Republican party stands for individual freedom, but individuals should not have freedom. The EPA should not regulate clean air, but the government should regulate which single adults are allowed to marry.
They can't both be true.
"It has been proven by both experience and endless social science studies that traditional marriage is best for children. " - Page 31
How does it help children to teach them that members of a minority do not deserve the same rights as everyone else?
In any event, the proponents of "traditional marriage" don't know much about history. As three Bible scholars point out, looking at human history in its entirety, the idea of marriage consisting of one man and one woman is quite recent. Throughout most of history, "traditional marriage" meant a harem -- one man with several wives. This was considered normal in the time of Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon.
The Republican platform calls for "marriage as the union of one man and one woman" on page 10, but on page 31 calls for "traditional marriage." Before using that term, the Republican leaders should look at history and find out what that really means.
"We believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage. We embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity." - Page 31
If "the union of one man and one woman must be upheld... through laws governing marriage," that requires that laws governing marriage outlaw same-sex unions. Same-sex couples should be an underclass, undeserving of the marriage rights possessed by everyone else. But the Republican leaders claim -- in the next sentence, no less -- that "all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity."
The Republican leaders want to pass laws discriminating against a minority while at the same time calling for the respect of all Americans. Either members of a minority are second-class citizens, or they aren't. You can't have it both ways.
The totalitarian regimes in 1984 and Animal Farm would applaud. The Republican party believes that all innocent Americans "should be treated with respect and dignity," but but some innocent Americans should not "be treated with respect and dignity." They don't see the contradiction.
"...We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children." - Page 14
By calling for a ban on all abortions no matter the circumstances, the Republican leaders demand more doublethink. The platform "assert[s] the sanctity of human life" and "affirm[s] that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life" -- and never once mentions a situation where a disease threatens the life of a pregnant mother. Ectopic pregnancies and early-onset eclampsia are very real diseases where it's medically impossible to save a terminally ill fetus -- and unless an abortion is performed, the mother will die as well.
If the Republican Party succeeds in passing a so-called "human life amendment to the Constitution," this will outlaw all abortions, regardless if the mother's life is in danger.
Surely "the sanctity of human life" applies to pregnant women as well. Surely an innocent mother unlucky enough to contract a disease also "has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed." But should the so-called "human life amendment" pass, doctors and families will have to watch a pregnant woman die of curable diseases -- because it will be illegal to abort a fetus that has no chance of surviving.
So, the Republican Party "assert[s] the sanctity of human life" as far as a terminally ill fetus is concerned, but denies "the sanctity of human life" for the pregnant mother carrying it.
Either human beings have a "fundamental individual right to life" or they don't. If two people are dying of a disease, and you can save one of them, who would claim that it's immoral to save the one that can be saved because it's physically impossible to save both?
Congressman Joe Walsh simply refuses to believe that such conditions exist.
The Republican party's position is that if pregnant women get sick, the doctor should let them die if it's medically impossible to save the fetus. They call this pro-death position "pro-life." Doublethink, anyone?
The platform also contains no exceptions for rape. As I pointed out in my essay "What will happen if Mitt Romney becomes President?" this position is misogynistic. As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
The platform claims that the Republican Party "embrace[s] the principle that all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity," opposes "the denial of liberty," and "stand[s] for the rights of individuals." But the platform also insists that the government intrude on a woman's and a family's most private and personal decisions, regardless of the circumstances. Either individuals have liberty, respect, and dignity -- or the government has the power to force unwanted medical decisions on people at their most vulnerable. You can't have it both ways.
There's a common thread linking the Republican platform's statements on abstinence, the Ten Commandments, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Religious fundamentalists want to establish laws forcing people who don't share their religious beliefs to abide by them anyway. Well, such laws exist in Iran, Burma, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. Those are great models for America, right?
"...Our government must continue to ensure the protections under our Constitution to all citizens, particularly the rights of habeas corpus and due process of law." - Page 39
This is unreal. The government must ensure that all American citizens are protected by the Constitution. However, America must pass a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, because the rights of some American citizens should not be protected by the Constitution. Those two statements are mutually incompatible.
Again, look at what the Republican leaders actually did when they were in power. The Bush Administration's total disregard for due process was demonstrated most clearly by the Jose Padilla case.
An ex-convict and former gang member, Padilla was arrested in Chicago on suspicion of being a terrorist. The Federal Government threw him in solitary confinement, denied him habeas corpus, and imprisoned him there for the next five years before charging him.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, there were "No voices in the hallway. No conversations with other prisoners. No tapping out messages on the walls. No ability to maintain a sense of human connection, a sense of place or time.
"According to defense motions on file in the case, Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress. He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years. For significant periods of time [he] was denied any reading material... The mirror on the wall was confiscated. Meals were slid through a slot in the door. The light in his cell was always on...
"Extreme isolation, in concert with other coercive techniques, can literally drive a person insane... US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment."
When the Federal Government finally put Padilla on trial, Dr. Angela Hegarty interviewed Padilla to determine whether he was competent. She said later: "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind."
Hegarty told an interviewer: "His family... who had a chance to see him by the time I spoke with them, said he was changed... He was a different man." Padilla was in an "...absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness... It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like... a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would... pay a price if he revealed what happened.
"We know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time -- ...the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years -- really do, in fact, impair higher brain function... the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage...
"'You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney.' Essentially, what happened to Mr. Padilla was designed to reassure him that this was not in fact the case... He told people that his family had been threatened."
Hegarty determined that Padilla was not competent to stand trial. However, the Bush Administration overruled her, and Padilla was convicted.
The Republican-controlled government brutally denied "protections under our Constitution... particularly the rights of habeas corpus and due process of law" to Jose Padilla.
(For more information on how long-term solitary confinement damages the brain, see PBS Frontline.)
Padilla is a career criminal and is not a good person. Nevertheless, if the Federal Government can treat an American citizen like this for five years before they are charged with a crime, they can do it to anyone.
Then there's the case of Abdullah al-Kidd. He's an American citizen and graduate student who was arrested, thrown naked into a freezing cell, and imprisoned for over two weeks. He spent the next year under glorified house arrest, during which time his wife left him and he was fired from his job. The government finally released him without charging him with anything. Unlike Padilla, al-Kidd was completely innocent -- but the Bush Administration ruined his life.
"The Republican Party, born in opposition to the denial of liberty, stands for the rights of individuals... Our government must continue to ensure the protections under our Constitution to all citizens, particularly the rights of habeas corpus and due process of law." Right.
If they can do that to Abdullah al-Kidd, they can do it to any of us.
In other cases, the Bush Administration literally arrested the wrong man. That happened to Sami al-Hajj, Murat Kurnaz, Lakhdar Boumediene, Fouad al-Rabiah, and Khalid El-Masri.
In another case, the Bush Administration arrested an Army veteran working as a translator for the Marines during the Iraq War. This American contractor -- whose name is still classified -- was tortured for nine months before being released. He was never charged with a crime.
The same thing happened to Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two private military contractors in Iraq. Both were FBI informants, and Vance is a Navy veteran.
That is one reason why everyone under American jurisprudence has the right to due process. The authorities cannot commit crimes in the name of national security. If they do, they're no better than the Soviet Union.
Last time the Republicans were in power, instead of "ensur[ing] the protections under our Constitution to all citizens, particularly the rights of habeas corpus and due process of law," the Republicans systematically violated due process and the writ of habeas corpus. This wasn't a mistake or an oversight. According to retired Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served in Bush's State Department, then-Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew perfectly well that over half the detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison were innocent. Wilkerson said that about 55% of detainees were imprisoned there "without regard for whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all." Cheney "had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent." To Wilkerson's knowledge, Cheney and Rumsfeld decided that "innocent people languishing in Guantanamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror."
The Republican platform gives lip service to the rule of law -- but there is no repudiation of the Bush Administration's abuses of power, and no remorse from Republican leaders for cheering Bush on the whole time. If the Republican leaders really cared about the right of the accused to due process, they would have upheld it when they had the chance.
Conclusion
The Republican Party platform is an exercise in paradox. It calls for the Federal Government to lower taxes on millionaires in order to reverse the economic damage done when the Bush Administration lowered taxes on millionaires. It demands a "smaller and smarter" government, but the last time the Republicans were in power, they increased the size of government dramatically. It pledges that a Republican President and Congress will live by the rule of law, but the last Republican President used the power of his office to commit crimes, and the Republican-controlled Congress cheered him on. It pledges to aid veterans, but the Republicans cut veterans' benefits last time they were in power. It calls on the government to ensure the Constitution protects all citizens, but the last Republican Administration tortured American citizens, in two cases on American soil. The platform gives lip service to improving the economy, but Republican officials' actions tell another story. All they want to do is make President Obama look bad and help the rich get richer.
The platform demands liberty for all innocent American citizens, but calls for a Constitutional amendment to deny liberty to some innocent American citizens. The platform claims to stand for individual rights, but condemns "activist judges" for protecting individual rights. The platform champions "States which are... instruments of self-government" -- but calls for a Constitutional amendment to override state laws. The platform "embrace[s] the principle that all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity," but calls for a Constitutional amendment giving politicians the power to override doctors and force unsafe medical decisions on people whose lives are on the line.
The platform requires "Doublethink" -- believing contradictory ideas at the same time.
Do Republican leaders actually believe this nonsense, or are they trying to deceive the public?
What do you think?
Update: In August 2015, former Governor Jeb Bush -- a Republican presidential candidate -- said: "I would say the best part of the Obama administration would be his continuance of the protections of the homeland using, you know, the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced." Bush was referring to the NSA's illegal surveillance of innocent American citizens without search warrants.
Bush continued: Encryption "makes it harder for the American government to do its job while protecting civil liberties to make sure evildoers aren't in our midst." Bush didn't mention that encryption also protects innocent Americans' personal information from identity theft.
This is a personal essay by C. Colvin.