Texas gave us George W. Bush, but it also gave us Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower. The title of this essay is "Living In a Kleptocrat Nation," but it could equally be read as a call to arms.
The unforgivable transgression of today's leaders is that they have abandoned this common wisdom of the common good and quit striving for that world of enlightenment and egalitarianism that the founders envisioned and that so many throughout our history have struggled to build. Instead, whether from the top executive suites or from the White House, the people in charge today are aggressively pushing a soulless ethic that shouts: "Everyone on your own, grab all you can, and if you've got enough money, secure yourself in a gated compound."Not only are the Kleptocrats stealing our country from us, they're stealing our democratic ideals-the very idea of America. And it's time to take them back. (Emphasis in original)
Matt Miller has a similar theme today in the NYT.
What American politics urgently needs, in other words, is not a new left, but a new center. Democrats need to refocus domestic debate around a handful of fundamental goals on which all Americans can agree — goals that in turn become the new basis for setting fiscal priorities and tradeoffs.Yes, there will be fights over details. But if we first ask what equal opportunity and a decent life in America mean, can't we agree that anyone who works full time should be able to provide for his or her family? That every citizen should have basic health coverage? And that special efforts should be made to make sure that poor children have good schools?
Good point, Matt. Why is it "liberal" to want those things for all Americans? If the Democrats have lost their way in not embracing those few things, what does one make of the Republicans, whose way it never was? Look at the trouble Governor Riley of Alabama is having trying to sell a revised tax system which would put in an income tax floor of about $15,000, below which no state income tax would be levied. Riley, a staunch Republican of the no-tax school, is phrasing this in Biblical terms; comfort the afflicted. Yet nearly every business and Republican group in his state opposes it, including the Alabama Christian Coalition. (For more on Alabama, see Mac Thomason's work; he lives there and has been blogging about it for months.)
Why do the Republican elites hate Americans?
Posted by Linkmeister at September 4, 2003 12:01 AM