Republican no more—an open letter to President Bush
Dear President Bush,
I have been a conservative since I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I believe in free markets, small government and a strong national defense (not to be confused with military adventurism). There was a time when that made me a Republican. Not any more. Mr. Bush, you and your cronies have thoroughly disgraced the Republican party and destroyed whatever was left of the principles and morals that gave conservatism the high ground.
Today, the high ground belongs to the anti-corporate, peacenik, blame-America-firsters. And today, I consider myself one of them. How could I not? You’ve done more damage to the Right than the Left could ever have hoped to.
You have robbed the national treasury with more abandon than Ted Kennedy on a four-year binge. You have lied with such blatant arrogance you could make Bill Clinton blush. Ralph Nader could never dream of discrediting corporate America the way that you and your Enron-loving, Halliburton-enriching, corporate-welfare-state mobsters have.
Republicans once had the country’s confidence in foreign policy. Let’s check your record. You took an oil-rich country led by one of the world’s most brutal, corrupt dictators and made it more violent, more oppressive, and more poverty-stricken than Saddam Hussein could in thirty years. Nice work! Mission Accomplished. Your “War on Terror” has created more terrorists than Bin Laden could in a lifetime. (Though to be fair to Osama, he didn’t have $200 billion in taxpayer money to spend like you did.)
Support our troops? Yes, why don’t you, Mr. Bush? Buy them some armor and spare parts and get them the hell out of that God-forsaken sand trap and back home into counseling. They’re going to need it after the horrors you’ve put them through.
As a conservative, I’ve always been against national health care. But we may have no choice when hundreds of thousands of troops come home with amputations, brain injuries and—mark my words—a new, improved version of Gulf War illness that will make the original look like a case of the sniffles, and in the process make “depleted uranium” a household word. (Depleted uranium: also known as “DU”—the shell shock that keeps on giving. Google it.)
Family values, morality, Christian principles. Slam-dunk issues for the Republicans, right? Not when you get through with them. By the time we extricate ourselves from this Mesopotamian hellhole once known as Iraq, you’ll have sent more Red State families to the Democrats than FDR. Because sooner or later, even the most die-hard, Fox-watching flag-wavers are going to figure out that you sent their sons and daughters off to die based on a blatant, premeditated lie. And you’re not even man enough to admit it.
If that’s your idea of family values and morality, I’d sooner give condoms to middle school students and “Heather Has Two Mommies” to kindergarteners. I’d sooner vote for Hillary. (Well, perhaps I’m getting carried away.)
And speaking of societal decay, liberal activist judges around the country must surely be awestruck by the ease with which you stretch and mangle the constitution like silly putty to fit your agenda. That crafty socialist Orwell must be marveling from his grave as you trample our proud constitutional heritage with a doublespeak masterpiece of legislation you have the audacity to call the “Patriot” Act.
Of course, it’s not all your fault, Mr. Bush. Our congress, Republican and Democrat, has probed new depths of spinelessness, with scarcely a squeak of dissent lest they appear “unpatriotic.” The mainstream press has completed its transformation from junkyard watchdog to whimpering lapdog (Where’s the “liberal media” when you need them?) but at least the traditional gumshoe detective is alive and well, albeit banished to cyberspace for not parroting the party line.
We certainly needed a national consensus after 9/11 but, true to form, you shamelessly exploited the tragedy to further your preplanned agenda. (By the way, I have a few questions about your explanation of 9/11, but that’s for another rant.)
To sum up, Mr. Bush, you and your PNAC neo-con traitors have done what all the liberals among my family, friends and media couldn’t do—you’ve made me leave the Republican party. Or perhaps I should paraphrase Reagan: I didn’t leave the Republican party—the Republican party left me. And if there are any true, principled conservatives left in this country, I suspect I’m not the only one left behind.
Sincerely (look it up),
Scott Pettersen
I have been a conservative since I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I believe in free markets, small government and a strong national defense (not to be confused with military adventurism). There was a time when that made me a Republican. Not any more. Mr. Bush, you and your cronies have thoroughly disgraced the Republican party and destroyed whatever was left of the principles and morals that gave conservatism the high ground.
Today, the high ground belongs to the anti-corporate, peacenik, blame-America-firsters. And today, I consider myself one of them. How could I not? You’ve done more damage to the Right than the Left could ever have hoped to.
You have robbed the national treasury with more abandon than Ted Kennedy on a four-year binge. You have lied with such blatant arrogance you could make Bill Clinton blush. Ralph Nader could never dream of discrediting corporate America the way that you and your Enron-loving, Halliburton-enriching, corporate-welfare-state mobsters have.
Republicans once had the country’s confidence in foreign policy. Let’s check your record. You took an oil-rich country led by one of the world’s most brutal, corrupt dictators and made it more violent, more oppressive, and more poverty-stricken than Saddam Hussein could in thirty years. Nice work! Mission Accomplished. Your “War on Terror” has created more terrorists than Bin Laden could in a lifetime. (Though to be fair to Osama, he didn’t have $200 billion in taxpayer money to spend like you did.)
Support our troops? Yes, why don’t you, Mr. Bush? Buy them some armor and spare parts and get them the hell out of that God-forsaken sand trap and back home into counseling. They’re going to need it after the horrors you’ve put them through.
As a conservative, I’ve always been against national health care. But we may have no choice when hundreds of thousands of troops come home with amputations, brain injuries and—mark my words—a new, improved version of Gulf War illness that will make the original look like a case of the sniffles, and in the process make “depleted uranium” a household word. (Depleted uranium: also known as “DU”—the shell shock that keeps on giving. Google it.)
Family values, morality, Christian principles. Slam-dunk issues for the Republicans, right? Not when you get through with them. By the time we extricate ourselves from this Mesopotamian hellhole once known as Iraq, you’ll have sent more Red State families to the Democrats than FDR. Because sooner or later, even the most die-hard, Fox-watching flag-wavers are going to figure out that you sent their sons and daughters off to die based on a blatant, premeditated lie. And you’re not even man enough to admit it.
If that’s your idea of family values and morality, I’d sooner give condoms to middle school students and “Heather Has Two Mommies” to kindergarteners. I’d sooner vote for Hillary. (Well, perhaps I’m getting carried away.)
And speaking of societal decay, liberal activist judges around the country must surely be awestruck by the ease with which you stretch and mangle the constitution like silly putty to fit your agenda. That crafty socialist Orwell must be marveling from his grave as you trample our proud constitutional heritage with a doublespeak masterpiece of legislation you have the audacity to call the “Patriot” Act.
Of course, it’s not all your fault, Mr. Bush. Our congress, Republican and Democrat, has probed new depths of spinelessness, with scarcely a squeak of dissent lest they appear “unpatriotic.” The mainstream press has completed its transformation from junkyard watchdog to whimpering lapdog (Where’s the “liberal media” when you need them?) but at least the traditional gumshoe detective is alive and well, albeit banished to cyberspace for not parroting the party line.
We certainly needed a national consensus after 9/11 but, true to form, you shamelessly exploited the tragedy to further your preplanned agenda. (By the way, I have a few questions about your explanation of 9/11, but that’s for another rant.)
To sum up, Mr. Bush, you and your PNAC neo-con traitors have done what all the liberals among my family, friends and media couldn’t do—you’ve made me leave the Republican party. Or perhaps I should paraphrase Reagan: I didn’t leave the Republican party—the Republican party left me. And if there are any true, principled conservatives left in this country, I suspect I’m not the only one left behind.
Sincerely (look it up),
Scott Pettersen
posted by Scott Pettersen at 12:25 PM
3 Comments:
Great blog, Scott. I found it after I read your article about the Monopoly game on lewrockwell.com
Your comments there, and in this open letter to Bush are right on. I agree 100%.
I was a Republican, too, until Nixon. In fact, I was a Goldwater Girl in 1964! That is how I cut my libertarian teeth. Now I am active in the Libertarian Party.
And, now I have a blog of my own. At the top there are a couple of open letters to Bush, not nearly as sophisticated as yours, but underneath them is an essay I wrote last winter season on how I think we lost our freedom. It has been a long, slow decline for about 150 years.
It points out how the Republican Party started out as a collectivist, mercantilist party, and had a brief flirtation with freedom about the time we were growing up, and ran fairly good people like Barry Goldwater. Lewrockwell.com and the Mises Institute, mises.org, were so helpful that I would never have learned all that without them.
It is at http://www.alicelillieandher.blogspot.com .
Hooray for Blogspot, for giving us little guys a chance to express our opinions at no charge. It's wonderful.
Thanks Alice, I enjoyed your blog too. I would go a step further on the idea that 9-11 was the result of America trying to be the world's policeman. I think 9-11 was a manufactured event to provide a RATIONALE for enlarging our role as the world's policeman. As to who manufactured it, I don't know, but I don't believe the fairy tale about the Evil Osama and his band of hijackers. Only the NWO has benefited from 9-11, and the first question a detective asks is "who benefits? An interesting site on this subject is whatreallyhappened.com.
Cheers,
Scott
HIJACKERS
The hijackers, by their cabal
Hijacked the ship of state, that´s all,
And commandeered it toward a reef,
Which is to say, steered toward mischief.
The passengers on board applauded
(Except for two who felt defrauded)
And kept applauding all the way
(Their echoes still ring out today).
Or maybe it was not a reef,
For then excitement would be brief:
Rather it was an iceberg toward
Which they steered, the motley horde.
Looming in the distance bright
Shone brilliantly beneath starlight,
Yet only one or two looked forward
Labeled each one a traitor, coward.
(Why was each one, who said "slow down"
Labeled a villain, all of his own
In league with heinous enemies?
Mocked, stymied, threatened, such were these.)
It was a looming spectacle
Titanic in proportion--hell
Could not be any more secure
As steered they forward, calm and sure!
Hell bent it was, their attitude,
Though analytically quite crude--
Yet no one dared be bold and rude
Upon illusion to intrude.
You hear it breaking of the bow,
You hear it cracking even now--
Cracking and straining--Ah, this is
Just short of the apocalypse!
--imsmall
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