Edwards: Does He Mean It?

By Hank Edson

(This Post was published by CommonDreams.org on August 30, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/30/3504/)

The Sincerity Question We Don’t Need to Ask

For the last seven years, we have been asking ourselves, “Does George W. Bush really believe the stuff he says.” For example, while campaigning for office, George W. Bush reportedly told a group of supporters in 1999, “I believe God wants me to be president.” In July of 2004, he re-asserted this faith, stating, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” When Bob Woodward asked Bush if he asked his father for advice regarding going to war with Iraq, Bush replied: “ He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher Father that I appeal to.”

The sincerity question is beside the point when it comes to George W. Bush, however. Time and again, pundits have essentially defended the President by asserting their opinion that he actually believes that he is a vehicle of God’s will and that his connection with God is a reliable means of directing the course of our nation. The implied logic behind such defenses goes as follows. If Bush believes what he says, then he is not a corrupt and manipulative politician engaging in the worst kind of hypocrisy and abuse of the political process. Instead, he is a legitimate participant in the public debate regarding what is the best course for our democracy. Accordingly, his views must be taken seriously.

This defense is a distraction from the real issue. The real issue is that the policies Bush seeks to advance in the name of God are in direct conflict with our democratic principles. Because they are in direct conflict with our democratic principles they are in direct conflict with...READ MORE!                                                                                                       Subscribe to MP³'s RSS Feed!

Overlooking the Obvious

On Impeachment

By Hank Edson

Does One More Outrage Really Matter?

It may seem completely unnecessary to pursue yet one more ground for impeachment when we already have so many. In their book, The Case for Impeachment, journalists David Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky have cited, for example, seven classes of impeachable offenses Bush and Cheney have committed:

1. Lying to Congress and America about the need to invade Iraq, about the existence of an imminent threat to the United States, and about the existence of a link between that alleged threat and 9/11.
2. Refusing to cooperate with congressional and 9/11 investigations;
3. Violating the bill of rights by detaining US citizens indefinitely without charge, by detaining and deporting legal residents, and by illegally authorizing the national Security Agency to spy on American citizens without a court order.
4. Abusing power by adding over 1000 signing statements to legislative acts passed by Congress.
5. Obstructing justice in the investigation of the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA operative, and possibly intentionally leaking Plame’s identity as a means of retaliating against Plame’s husband who accused Bush of making false statements in his State of the Union address.
6. Committing criminal negligence in failing to appropriately prepare and respond to Hurricane Katrina.
7. Committing war crimes, including the authorization, use and cover up of the “extraordinary rendition” policy of kidnapping and torture of suspected enemies in violation of the Geneva convention and by committing a “crime against peace” under the Nuremberg Charter by waging a war of aggression.

Others, such as Elizabeth Holtzman and Elizabeth de la Vega have added additional criminal negligence and war crime offenses, but propose a similar grouping of classes of offenses as do Lindorff and Olshansky. I want to talk about an additional class: Election Theft.

It may seem a pointless exercise to do so. No one is doing anything about impeachment as it stands. No one did anything about the theft of the election in 2000. No one did anything about the theft of the election in 2004. How can combining all these “no one did anything’s” in one more futile plea for action be worth a moment of our thought in these trying times of war, debt, economic instability, global warming, and the daily grind?

Undermining Democracy:

Party Politics and Pelosi's Priorities 

by Hank Edson

Political Pragmatism

Many well-meaning, pragmatic politicians espouse party loyalty because the party’s general vision of how to promote the public's general welfare is sufficiently in line with their own. Under such circumstances, the compromises a politician chooses to make out of loyalty to his or her party is off-set by the benefits that result when party strength is applied in service of the general welfare. The goal remains government of, by, and for the people. Such pragmatic loyalty, however, still diminishes the integrity of the political process and the value of the political debate on which wise policy depends for its formulation.

To appreciate that this is true it is helpful to compare the political process with the scientific process. Both processes involve an open critical discourse aimed at identifying the most accurate understanding of reality. In science, the goal is simply to understand the laws of the universe. In politics, the goal is to understand the laws that will most benefit society.

The Self-Interested Pursuit of Inequitable Advantage

Some take issue with this goal, arguing instead that the goal of politics is to allow individuals to pursue their own self-interest. This argument implies that there is no connection between the human equality in which we all profess to believe and the conditions upon which our individual self- interest depends. Our self-interested pursuit of happiness thus occurs in a perfect isolation that has nothing to do with anyone else. This argument also implies that there is no connection between our human equality and our individual support of the social contract. That is, we all believe in democracy only because we think we will all be able to use the system to our own advantage without concern for others.

Such individuals would argue I am dead wrong in my pursuit of the general welfare. They would say that, in fact, most of us do agree to the democratic social contract, not because we believe the goal of society is to serve the best interests of the whole, but because we believe the best interests of the whole can only be achieved through pursuit of self-interest. That is, the general welfare can only be achieved by disregarding it.

Even Cowgirls

  
Get The Blues

By Hank Edson

James Carroll published an insightful column the other day, entitled: “Questions for Hillary Clinton.” In his column, Carroll makes the point that like her husband, Hillary has attempted to co-opt the Republican’s posture of being “strong” on foreign policy, meaning “dangerously prone to destabilizing violence.” My favorite observation from Carroll’s column is this one:

“Coming into power as the world’s relationship to military force was being fundamentally altered by such figures as Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Óscar Arias, Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, John Hume, Corazon Aquino, and Pope John Paul II, [Bill] Clinton was unable to claim what should have been his natural place among them.”

Carroll's column can be found at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/20/3283/.

Copyright © Hank Edson 2007

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I Want a Candidate!

by Hank Edson

I want a candidate who has the guts to stand up for gay marriage. For crying out loud, it’s just positive human commitment to care for each other. Where are our principles anyway?

I want a candidate who says she is going to raise taxes—a candidate who wants to make taxes on investments equal to taxes on hard-earned salaries—a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the top 5% most wealthy who have captured all of the gains in economic growth over the last decade and more, while the rest of us have flat-lined. We all make this society possible; 95% of us are entitled to more equity.

I want a candidate who will bust up monopolistic conglomerations of market share among too few corporations. We need a new Teddy Roosevelt to fight these Robber-Barons of Big Oil, Big Media, and Big Business. I want a candidate who will get serious about the environment. Again, we need a new Teddy Roosevelt. We need someone even better. I want someone who will take on Big Business for the sake of the environment, someone who will sign the Kyoto Agreement, take the former-Big Three auto companies in hand, and impose crisis proportion fuel efficiency and anti-pollution standards on industry and transportation.

I want a candidate who will expose the business agenda motivating the war...READ MORE!

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