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Originally Posted by MoonDog
Hmmm, I'm a Republican, and I'm conservative on many issues.................
..........I base my positions on my own moral compass, which is different from Hosts, and is different from KMA's, etc. etc. etc. As a result, I find myself cringing each time another "conservative mouthpiece" states that the GOP and the Religious Right have some sort of lock on morality...its absurd!
But yet, it seems that every time I read a post like Hosts, with the thinly-veiled venom and hatred of many (if not all) things right-wing and conservative ("thug" being a word of choice I often run across), the unspoken point is that the other side - in this case the liberal side - is in actuality the side in possession of the "superior" moral position.
If that is indeed a subpoint of all these threads, then I reject it, just as I reject the message from my very own GOP that Republicans hold the moral high ground. Sweeping generalizations about parties and party members are fine and dandy most of the time, but it bears mentioning that the party is also there to function as a gathering point for people who share SIMILAR opinions and values - not IDENTICAL opinions and values.
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MoonDog, you don't know me, but I understand that all of us here, are "what we write". We probably won't meet face to face, but IMO, it makes sense to
share with you some personal details to add to the impression that I've made via the content of and the tone in my posts.
I grew up in a conservative family, (my father served in the USMC), in a small. New England, conservative blue collar town.
In the late '60's, my high school english teacher insisted that his students subscribe to the NY Times and receive and read the weekday editions during the school year. I read the front page and ed and op-ed pages every day.
I learned what was heppening in Vietnam and in the Nixon administration. When the time came to register for the draft, I decided that it was not right for me to cooperate with the selective service system. My informed opinion about the Nixon admin. then, influenced me to see it as deceitful and criminal in it's prosecution of the war, it's transparency and accountibility, and in it's covert monitoring of, and operations against dissenters.
Today, I see the Bush administration acting in a similar, but much broader, criminal and secretive manner than during Nixon's tenure. I view anyone who
voted for Bush last november as an enabler and a supporter of a war criminal who has treasonously subverted numerous provisions of the U.S. Constitution and initiated and prosectuted illegal war of aggression in Iraq after intentionally misleading congress, the American people, and the UN security council, by knowingly and grossly exaggerating the threat level of Saddam's
Iraq, and by presiding over a systemic campaign of intentionally fabricated statements, speeches, and PR concerning non-existant Iraqi WMD's and WMD making capabilities, as justifiication to launch and prosecute the war.
The war was preceded by the Bush admin.'s questionable conduct on 9/11 and it's failure to account for it's performance in the areas of domestic air defense on 9/11 or of it's reaction to pre 9/11 intelligence info, or it's intentional stonewalling of a timely post 9/11 "what went wrong" investigation. This week, the long awaited report on the results of investigation of the pre-IRAQ intelligence assessment failings will be released.
On orders from the Bush admin., the report will avoid assessing how the influence or interference of VP Cheney or other Bush admin. officials, contributed to the unreliable and false determinations of WMD's and of Iraq's actual abiltiy to threaten it's neighbors or the U.S.
Quote:
<a href="http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00107">http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00107</a>
.................The commission's members were carefully selected by the White House. Commission chairmen Laurence Silberman and Chuck Robb are political, quintessentially, and the rest of the members – with the exception of former deputy CIA director William Studeman -- have little or no intelligence background. If the object was to create a commission that was not going to look too deep, and would pay attention to White House interests, it was well selected. If the object was a serious study of intelligence on proliferation issues, then you could argue that their skills were not well suited for the job........................
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I offer some anecdotes as to why I believe that I am openminded and tolerant to different and opposing views and opinions.:
In the last ten years:
1.) I had a close and mutually respectful relationship with a now former father-in-law who for ten years was a member of Hitler youth in Nazi Germany training near the end of WWII to be a Luftwaffe pilot. He was of the opinion that the holocaust did not happen or was exaggerated. We could disagree and still maintain peaceful but animated exchanges of opinion.
2.) I was romantically involved for two years with the chief of staff of a moderate Republican member of congress. We calmly discussed all political issues and accepted our numerous differences of opinion.
3.) I lived in Manhattan for 4 years, until shortly after 9/11 2001, and I supported many of Mayor Giuliani's law and order policies because I personally benefitted from the huge police presence and dramatically reduced crime rate.
4.) I moved to a southern, bible belt state, 3 years ago, to renew a relationship with my long lost first love. In the long interim since our last contact, she became a born again Christian, attends a small Southern Baptist church ( I now accompany her there for Sunday services), and displayed a "Bush-Cheney 2000" bumper sticker on the back of her car. We've been married for 2 years and I enjoy the mild winters here too much to move back to New York. My wife has been persuaded to withdraw her former support for Bush. She abstained from voting for any presidential candidate last november.
She believes in a literal interpretation of the bible, and is inclined to believe that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old. She sits through my tirades when I yell at the talking heads on TV, and my long, but informative monologs about the content of the posts I make on these threads. Her son joined the army and is a Bush and Rumsfeld supporter. We calmy trade our opposing points of view long into the night when he comes home on leave.
MoonDog, I hope that you've read this and now have a more developed sense of who I am. I thank you for posting on this thread. Can you please share your reaction to my opinion that everyone who enables the Bush admin. to
remain in office by voting for it's political leaders, is culpable, if not complicit,
in it's alledged crimes. My informed opinion is that the Bush presidency is the most criminal and treasonous in modern times. I have no choice but to call on all Bush admin. supporters to re-examine the justification for that support and to demand transparency and accountability of Bush and Cheney, instead of whitewashed, window dressing. like the above mentioned "intelligence report".
I am a reasonable man, living under the rule of unreasonable, unethical, anti-constitutional, and law breaking elected officials in the federal executive and legislative branches. I've decided that I have to tolerate opposing opinions of family members and friends in my community, but I also have to voice my informed opinion and frequently protest against the actions and policies of the Bush government.