Back when the Taliban were ruling Afghanistan, they protected their fiefdom with a Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Protection of Virtue. The Department had a cadre of enforcers called the DPVPV police. Their job was to see to it that women were kept jobless and uneducated and completely covered except for their eyeballs. The enforcers would beat women who had so much as an ankle showing in public.
Then, our Great Decider dropped off democracy in Afghanistan, on his way to Baghdad. Now Afghanistan has a President—Hamid Karzai—who’s idea of democracy includes reviving the old Taliban Department for the Prevention of Vice and Protection of Virtue.
I happen to think President Karzai may be on to something. We could use a Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Protection of Virtue to defend our democracy--- against terrorists, liberals and the ACLU! It’s true that we do have the PNC (Protective Neo-Con Cabinet) and the RWEG (Right Wing Evangelical Guard) who are working day and night to protect us from an invasion by Osama bin-Laden. But we need protection from our internal terrorists.
A Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Protection of Virtue, could, for example, order subversives like Cindy Sheehan to wear a burka. That way the public could only see her eyeballs and not be corrupted by her "bring our troops home" t-shirt. It might require an occasional beating to keep her in line.
Also, the Department could follow the lead of Saudi Arabia, our democratic allies in the fight for freedom, and ban women from driving automobiles. That way these femi-fascists would not be able to follow our Great Decider from state to state disrupting his lessons on the sanctity of war.
Of course it would fall to the Protection of Virtue enforcers to help guide young girls away from the path of these subversive older women. This could be done by simply enforcing the law forbidding females under 18 from getting the "morning after pill" to prevent pregnancy. That way, young girls would be protected from promiscuity and the resulting babies would keep them at home instead of protesting against the Great Decider.
One of the biggest jobs would go to the Prevention of Vice enforcers. That would be to keep these terrorist sympathizer cells in the United States from aiding and abetting the enemy.
The first order of business would be to get rid of the likes of federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor—who had the temerity to declare the Great Decider’s warrantless wiretapping program illegal and unconstitutional.
Adding insult to subversion, Judge Taylor said, "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution". Can you believe that? Why, its common knowledge in the White House that when the Great Decider was elected, it automatically bestowed upon him the inherent power to do anything he wants in the name of 9/11.
As our Great Decider has told us, over and over—we are either for him or for the terrorists. Or—as in the words of that great Demopublican Joe Lieberman, "we undermine the president’s credibility at our nation’s peril." The Decider needs this protection against the vice of criticism.
And finally, with a Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Protection of Virtue, we would not have to worry about the Taliban Democrats in Congress continuing to facilitate Al Quaida’s quest to invade America. The DPVPV would have the authority to vacate those terrorist sympathizers and install the staff of Fox News.
Bill Sanders
Monday, August 28, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Friday, August 04, 2006
Good Night and Good Luck Today!
I finally got around to renting and watching the movie Good Night and Good Luck, the Story of Edward R. Murrow and the "McCarthy" era. I found it particularly pertinent because I lived and worked in Wisconsin for 25 years as the political cartoonist for the Milwaukee Journal. One could not be involved with Wisconsin politics and ignore the infamous career of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
At the peak of the McCarthy tyranny, however, I was, more or less, a typical student at Western Kentucky University. My interests did not extend beyond, playing football, girls, partying and staying in ROTC to avoid being drafted and sent to Korea. In 1953, if someone had asked me who was Joseph McCarthy—I would not have had a clue.
In 1955 I was married. By the end of that year I found myself in the Army in Korea, rather than trying out for the Cleveland Browns. It was there that I discovered two things that changed my life: The real world and a book by Herblock, the great Washington Post political cartoonist.
Herblock, early on, saw Joseph McCarthy for what he really was, a dangerous, arrogant demagogue. On March 29, 1950, he drew a cartoon of the Republicans pushing the elephant (their party symbol) to the top of a stack of tar buckets labeled "McCarthyism." It became a standard term in the American lexicon of political discourse as a euphemism for smear tactics.
Watching the movie on Murrow—and contemplating my retrospective knowledge of the McCarthy era—I was struck by a sort of deja vu as regards the Bush administration.
In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded an Atomic Bomb and Mao Zedong took power in China, sharply increasing the sense of threat from Communism in the United States. While the expansionist ambitions and brutal tactics of communism were a legitimate concern, McCarthy shamelessly exploited people’s fears at the expense of basic American values. He nourished the ultraconservative view that equated Franklin Roosevelt’s programs with communism.
Those who opposed him were publicly branded as un-American communist sympathizers. He ruined lives and was Godfather to court and corporate decisions that shredded constitutional rights. His tactics included lies, deceptions and distortions. His success depended on the acquiescence of a public indoctrinated by propaganda and paralyzed by fear—and by a Congress with no political backbone.
Today, we have a legitimate concern over the ambition and brutal tactics of terrorist religious fanatics. Today, we have a leader who has shamelessly exploited 9/11 with lies, deceptions and distortions and used them to abandon the real pursuit of terrorists and start a phony "war on terrorists" in Iraq.
Today, we have a leader who panders to the fear of those terrorists by repeatedly accusing his critics of, at best, being terrorist sympathizers---or, at worst, being terrorist facilitators. "You are either for us---or for the terrorists!"
Worst of all, we have a leader who declares himself to be the soul "decider"of when our constitution protects us ----and what laws he feels obliged to obey. Sadly we have a substantial population willing to trade their civil liberties for dubious "security."
In 1953, Edward R. Murrow eloquently spoke these words--- which should apply to this day and to this President--George Bush:
" We must remember always that accusation is not truth and that conviction depends on evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak and to defend the causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who opposed McCarthy’s methods to keep silent–or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We can proclaim ourselves-- indeed as we are--the defenders of freedoms wherever it continues to exist in the world but we cannot continue to defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay among our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And who’s fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear-- he merely exploited it—and rather successfully.
Caesius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars–but in ourselves.'
Good night and good luck."
At the peak of the McCarthy tyranny, however, I was, more or less, a typical student at Western Kentucky University. My interests did not extend beyond, playing football, girls, partying and staying in ROTC to avoid being drafted and sent to Korea. In 1953, if someone had asked me who was Joseph McCarthy—I would not have had a clue.
In 1955 I was married. By the end of that year I found myself in the Army in Korea, rather than trying out for the Cleveland Browns. It was there that I discovered two things that changed my life: The real world and a book by Herblock, the great Washington Post political cartoonist.
Herblock, early on, saw Joseph McCarthy for what he really was, a dangerous, arrogant demagogue. On March 29, 1950, he drew a cartoon of the Republicans pushing the elephant (their party symbol) to the top of a stack of tar buckets labeled "McCarthyism." It became a standard term in the American lexicon of political discourse as a euphemism for smear tactics.
Watching the movie on Murrow—and contemplating my retrospective knowledge of the McCarthy era—I was struck by a sort of deja vu as regards the Bush administration.
In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded an Atomic Bomb and Mao Zedong took power in China, sharply increasing the sense of threat from Communism in the United States. While the expansionist ambitions and brutal tactics of communism were a legitimate concern, McCarthy shamelessly exploited people’s fears at the expense of basic American values. He nourished the ultraconservative view that equated Franklin Roosevelt’s programs with communism.
Those who opposed him were publicly branded as un-American communist sympathizers. He ruined lives and was Godfather to court and corporate decisions that shredded constitutional rights. His tactics included lies, deceptions and distortions. His success depended on the acquiescence of a public indoctrinated by propaganda and paralyzed by fear—and by a Congress with no political backbone.
Today, we have a legitimate concern over the ambition and brutal tactics of terrorist religious fanatics. Today, we have a leader who has shamelessly exploited 9/11 with lies, deceptions and distortions and used them to abandon the real pursuit of terrorists and start a phony "war on terrorists" in Iraq.
Today, we have a leader who panders to the fear of those terrorists by repeatedly accusing his critics of, at best, being terrorist sympathizers---or, at worst, being terrorist facilitators. "You are either for us---or for the terrorists!"
Worst of all, we have a leader who declares himself to be the soul "decider"of when our constitution protects us ----and what laws he feels obliged to obey. Sadly we have a substantial population willing to trade their civil liberties for dubious "security."
In 1953, Edward R. Murrow eloquently spoke these words--- which should apply to this day and to this President--George Bush:
" We must remember always that accusation is not truth and that conviction depends on evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak and to defend the causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who opposed McCarthy’s methods to keep silent–or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We can proclaim ourselves-- indeed as we are--the defenders of freedoms wherever it continues to exist in the world but we cannot continue to defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay among our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And who’s fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear-- he merely exploited it—and rather successfully.
Caesius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars–but in ourselves.'
Good night and good luck."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)