Letters to the Editor
Ben Sen
Published Letters: 539 Editor's Choice: 97
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Chest Beating with Iran
[Read the article: Bush's Iran madness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Gary thinks the Neocons are going to pack up their bags at the end of the Bush administration, he'd better think again. The US has become a country that is "interventionist." The precedent has been set; and even though the war was proven to be based on a fraud, THEY STILL RE-ELECTED BUSH!
That voter coalition isn't going anywhere, and everybody knows it.
I'm not sure it pays to suggest their reign is over for any reason whatsoever. No doubt, they will do what they can to provoke a war with Iran in the next two years, and beyond that with whatever candidate they can influence. William Pfaff makes the case from the foreign policy standpoint in the Feb. 15th edition of The New York Review Of Books.
It is worth learning just how far this country has leaned to the right.
Pfaff calls it "Manifest Destiny: A New Direction for America," It is a neo-colonial mentality in a form close to oligarchy. The government is currently bankrupting itself to perpetuate it, and still liberals are sitting back on their asses saying it will be too bad if the Dems nominate Hillary because she can't win! They still aren't taking the threat seriously.
The Neocon/Rove coalition did not gain the control they have with that sort of thinking. Something bigger is going to have to happen soon in moderate circles to wake these folks up. Call me the alarmist and the paranoid, but after the election in '04, I don't see how you can dismiss the possibility.
That Bush escalated the war since the mid-term election only further proves the point, as does the chest beating with Iran. He's not going to quit, and either will his successor until a new coalition is created that wants to go forward instead of backward.
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A Matter of Conscience
[Read the article: Edwards campaign fires bloggers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not writing anything new--just something to clear my conscience about Mr. Donohue.
I've watched him time after time defend a Catholic Church that is unsurpassed in attracting and protecting some of the worst perpetrators and hypocrites this country has seen in the last half century. He does it with a rightousness that makes it clear he is a fool.
The problem with the Church in this country is that it has been surpassed by the morality of the collective. The majority knows it is better to practice birth control than have unwanted children. That people are born preferring their own sex and don't need to be judged for it, and that we want to decide when its time to die--not a religion run by a heirarchy pledged to a belief system whose time has passed in the developed countries.
I was born and raised in the same church as Mr. Donohue in a family that had generations of priests and nuns. I know what I'm talking about. He believes in the "old paradigm," where somebody else decides what we are supposed to believe, and that obedience to authority is superior to a genuine faith where people actually believe what they profess. He wants everybody to be just as much a hypocrite as he is.
He might ask himself why millions upon millions have left his brand of religion, or simply lie about their faith in it. If they ever took a legitimate poll: What Do Catholics Really Believe, and stayed away from the zealots, it would be a shocker. Many of the few priests and nuns left don't believe in much of the old faith.
I think democracy itself is the undoing of the religion in the Western countries. The educated new generations simply are not going to succumb to the heirarchy, which has proven itself to be untrustworthy, and a code that eliminates individual belief and privacy. It may still work, and even have great value in the undeveloped countries, but that doesn't leave much room for those who still feel the need for a faith without being repressed by it.
Mr. Donohue is riding a dead horse. The next thing they're going to have to do is import the priests and nuns from third world countries if the religion is to continue. One suspects Donohue's own children don't believe him--and if they do--I feel sorry for them.
Of course, it does Edwards no good to have aliented himself from one of the few constituencies not in the hands of the reactionary movement, which was how he was positioning himself. It makes the case he is unprincipled.
For my part, I enjoy that a record is being kept, so it is clear what side I am on. If we are known by our enemies, I don't mind making it clear I am not on the side of someone as defiantly unconscious as Mr. Donohue.
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Here is What's Scary
[Read the article: The Pentagon's not-so-little secret]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's encouraging somebody spoke to a former assistant in the Clinton administration about this, especially following the latest order by Bush to circle the wagons.
The Republicans don't have to play ball because the next Democratic nominee may be either a woman or a black. They know that's all it takes to get their constituency back to the polls regardless of their candidate. (Bush proved that twice, and not against a woman or a black.)
As long as nothing approaches their voter coalition on the Democratic side, the ball is in their court. A whole lot of things are going to have to happen first to insult the moderates, and/or get the liberals to put down their magic wands, and get off the yellow brick road to munchkin land.
If I'm the first to bring this up after sixty or seventy posts, that's scary.