While the rest of the world has Jeff Schapiro, we in Fredericksburg have Richard Amrhine. Amrhine, noted recently for his screed against Catholics, has decided to go after a more opportune target; this time the many errors (perceived and otherwise) of President George Bush.
So what did President Bush do wrong today?
Let’s be frank, Ralph. Public radio and television programming has been perceived as having a liberal slant, just as all mainstream media are. That’s why you want to do away with it. But perceptions don’t make it so. This is speech that could be censored by axing its budget, so that makes it fair game. But that doesn’t make it right. That you have the power doesn’t mean you’re required to abuse it.
I was impressed, maybe even a little disappointed, with how balanced PBS and NPR 2004 campaign and election coverage was. So many stories on public radio and television tell us of the less fortunate, here and around the world, and of those who have overcome hurdles to succeed. Should stories about the toll American actions have taken on others not be told? I wonder what Native Americans might think about that.
Indeed, $400 million is a small price to pay for stories that might not otherwise be told.
Newsflash. If the programming is so popular, then why not let the individual who appreciate such programing fund it themselves?
Next batter. . .
Last week it was reported that government lawyers, apparently at the Bush administration’s behest, backed off of monetary penalties being sought from Big Tobacco–funds that were to be used for smoking-cessation programs.
The result of the 11th-hour change of direction is that the Justice Department won’t ask for the $120 billion from Big Tobacco that would have targeted the 45 million Americans who smoke. It will settle instead for $10 billion earmarked for preventing future smokers from taking up the habit.
The result is a break for big business, and a greater number of long-term smokers whose habit-related ailments will further overburden the nation’s health-care system as the boomer generation ages. It’s a typically short-sighted view from a short-sighted administration.
This type of logic mystifies me. Tobacco causes lung cancer. So we squeeze the tobacco companies to pay for the health costs associated with it. Seems good at first, until you realize you are enshrining continued cigarette use as the only method of maintaining the cash flow for the health care costs. In the end, it’s a Cartesian circle. Bush wants to end that.
Next batter. . .
This is the perfect example of dangerous policy that combines two Bush administration favorites: the politics of fear and the abuse of power. By using the former, he is seeking permanent authorization of the latter.
…
It’s the U.S. government’s responsibility to keep us safe, but to accomplish that without compromising the personal freedoms that set us apart. Big Brother isn’t welcome here, but no matter how the president tries to justify it, that is what he wants.
Yeeeeesss. I’m sure he spends countless nights wondering how to restrict your freedoms.
And for the grand finale:
What he also wants is Big Moral Brother, a compass that always points toward the GOP conservative wing’s view of things. The president approves of the precedent the government set by taking sides in the case of Terry Schiavo, the Florida woman who was allowed to die after subsisting for 16 years in a vegetative state. But about 80 percent of Americans, no matter where they stood on the issue, think government should have kept its nose out of it.
The same holds true for embryonic stem-cell research. Large majorities of Americans, up to 70 percent, want the research to proceed based on the promise–not the guarantee–that it could hold the key to various maladies and diseases from which actual living people suffer.
Let me get this straight. Big Brother saving the life of Terri Schiavo? Bad. But Big Brother telling you to “pay for stories that might not otherwise be told” on public television? Good?
I’ll say it as many times as it is necessary for liberals to understand: lawmaking is an inherently moral process. We expect lawmakers to enact moral laws, reject immoral laws, and have the ability to discern between the two.
Nevermind that the polls applauding the death of Terri Schiavo were already cast into doubt the moment they emerged. Polls aren’t the point. We let another human being die of thirst, whom otherwise would not have died.
As for embryonic stem cell research, private firms can do as they please all day long. My tax dollars aren’t being used to do something many in the bioethics field find to be offensive to the dignity of human life. I can appreciate that it is controversial, and I condemn the practice of using embryonic stem cells when human fat cells are just as productive. But why should the hand of government be involved?
As for the closing Susan B. Anthony quote:
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
It sums up Mr. Amrhine’s distaste for all things theistic quite nicely, naturally in a cloak of ignorance, but still it demonstrates a salient point. Belief in God, it would seem, must be tantamount to fanaticism. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, wrote that fanaticism was something God disdained because it resigned one’s free will – a gift that God has given to us all. What God truly desired was a marriage of your will with His will.
With that marriage inevitably comes the conclusion that what God desires is what you assent to doing. While I’m sure the late Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa could easily tarred by Mr. Amrhine’s misuse of Susan Anthony’s quote (she used it as an argument for religious toleration, not a secularist quote at the expense and exclusion of religion), the veneer is seen through rather easily.
So ends another downward spiral of liberal ranting. Not quite the level of “Good Copy”, but regardless quite exemplary of the disjointed criticisms conservatives are facing these days. Yes, I’m sure the pendulum of political power will swing back to the Democrats one day, but by that time the Democratic Party will barely resemble the bygone days of 1960’s radical liberalism. Already libearls too ashamed to carry the name are re-inventing themselves as “progressives.”
Democrats lost in 2004 because of a Bush-bashing platform. At some point, the die-hard liberals need to take the advice of their benefactor George Soros and simply move on.