Real Thought

According to Reuters, Mark Foley is going to name his suspected abuser as part of his “healing process.” Frankly, I could care less. What Mr. Foley did is reprehensible and as far as I am concerned his blaming his perverted behavior on “child abuse” is just a poor justification. He was caught sending salacious instant messages to an underage Congressional page. I don’t care that he was abused as a child.  The alleged abuse took place thirty eight years ago, for Christ’s sake!  It took Mark Foley that long to realize that was the cause of his perverted behavior?  Frankly, if he was ass raped by a 300 pound gorilla last Tuesday, that would be no excuse.  An adult, especially one who holds a position of public trust, should know the difference between right and wrong. Everyone in the United States knows that solicitation of a minor is a crime. Period. End of discussion.

I don’t care what Mr. Foley’s excuse is, he should plead guilty to what ever criminal charges are brought against him and serve his penalty. Since when do Republicans and conservatives take the coward’s way out? The essence of being an adult is that you suffer the consequences of your actions, both good and bad. Trying to avoid them is simply the mark of a coward, a liar and a person who does not deserve one iota of my or anyone else’s respect or consideration.  Of course, if Mr. Foley does the right thing, he’ll get plenty of hot man on man lovin’, from his cellmate.

Our cousins in England have quite a controversy on their hands. It appears that the issue of Muslim women wearing the veil is quite a problem. First, Labour MP Jack Straw made a request that his female Muslim constituents unveil their faces when visiting his office to aid communication. Straw’s point is that if you can only see a person’s eyes, you cannot communicate effectively with them. Now, a Muslim teaching assistant, who teaches English to non-native speakers has been suspended because her students could not understand her and were haveing a hard time learning English because they could not see her facial expressions nor see her lips move.

So, in jolly old England, there seems to be a problem with veiled Muslim women. Well, of course there is! Keeping a woman veiled is simply a way to further their subjugation. If a woman has to hide her face from the public, she effectively becomes what George Orwell called an “unperson”. We all know why there are strictures in Islam about women exposing themselves in public, it is that men cannot control themselves and might work themselves into a sexual frenzy, forgetting Allah. We also know that is a load of camel dung! The real reason for keeping women veiled today is to render them subservient in the patriarchical Muslim world. In many Islamic countries, Afghanistan to name one, women are seen as little more than chattels, used to produce male heirs and married off to cement alliances between families and clans. Keeping women behind a veil, in public, takes away their political and social voice.

Of course, the Muslim community is up in arms about the “cultural insensitivity” that is being expressed in England. Well, here in the western world, most of us like our women liberated and independent, not hidden behind a veil or treated like a beast of burden. Perhaps it is time that the Muslim community adapted to the culture to which they voluntarily immigrated and show some cultural sensitivity of their own. Failing that, perhaps they shoud return to a place where their cultural norms of disrespect for other religions and subjugation of women are appreciated. I hear that Iraq is lovely this time of year.

If you read this, you should know that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area; a place well known for it’s liberal and tolerant politics. Being a libertarian here is like being a jellyfish in the Mojave Desert, it is very hard to survive and the residents don’t seem to understand at all. Simply because I believe that we are individually responsible for the choices we make and that government is not the answer to every perceived social ill that comes along, I have been called every name in the book, but most commonly I have been labelled a “fascist”. I hate to tell you all but I am the opposite of a fascist, I stand for the freedom of the individual vis a vis the state. All of those who want more governmental regulation and interference in our lives are the fascists. If this seems strange to you, take a political science course or two and get back to me.

More importantly, there seems to be a disease that has spread among my liberal friends, neighbors and colleagues, that being the making of political decisions based on the perceived dislike of a political party or leader. I refer, of course, to George W. Bush and the Republican party. Too many of my friends state that they simply “hate” the President and yet can give no rational explanation for their hatred. Even the leaders of the opposition seem to have fallen into this trap. If really pressed, those who hate Bush fall back on the Iraq War. OK, let’s discuss that for a moment. We know that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons, he used them against the Iranians and the Kurds. We know that his regime was brutal and fascistic. We know that thousands of Iraqis were murdered, raped and tortured during his rule. Do we sit by and allow this to go on? I say not. It is our moral duty to overthrow such regimes, where ever and when ever we can. Is Iraq a mess now? Yes. Why? Because we were concerned, in the beginning, with limiting our involvement and “collateral casualties”. This is the Viet Nam mistake. There is no such thing as a limited war. Either you go in and eliminate the enemy’s capacity and will to fight with overwhelming force or you commit to a long and protracted conflict. That is the lesson of the American Civil War.

In Iraq, we have done neither. We have adopted the British model of low intensity conflict. While this can be successful in the long run, it takes a very long time, much like the British struggle with the IRA. We are talking decades, not months or years. What we should have done is disarm the populace and imposed martial law. We should have killed anyone who did not ally with us and did not disarm We did not because that would have seemed cruel, especially to those on the left. We are now paying the price.

When you ask those who want a “regime change” in Washington what their specific plans are, you get vague mumblings. We will “bring the troops home”. From where? Iraq? Bosnia? Liberia? Germany? Korea? The UK? Turkey? Afghanistan? Where? Be specific! How will you do this? What is your “exit strategy”? If you want my vote, you will have to convince me with cold, hard facts, not platitudes. What are the specific steps which the Democratic leadership proposes? Does anyone really know? I’d love to end the conflict in Iraq, but, are we just going to cut and run? If so, are we going to leave the Iraqi people to the same fate as the Cambodians and the Vietnamese? How will we ever be able to stand against those who wish to do us harm if we do? How can we ever build trust if we abandon those who side with us, like the Kurds and the “marsh Arabs”? How can we convince the world that terrorism is illegitimate if we are defeated by terrorists? These are questions which must be answered.

The problem is that when people allow hatred to guide their political decisions, those questions don’t even get asked, let alone answered. Instead, the masses will vote for a demagogue who says that he or she has all the answers but instead leads the people down the path of enslavement, if not outright destruction. The rise of the NSDAP and the destruction of Weimar Germany is an excellent example of this as is the rise of the Bolsheviki and the destruction of the very brief Provisional Government in Russia. We must have answers here, not simple slogans and we must have them now. I am not asking for you to agree with me here, I am simply asking that you put aside the “anyone but George Bush and the Republicans” emotions for a moment and ask some real questions of those who want your vote. That is real democracy and that will bring a true representative government to the American Republic.