From Buckley to Bachmann

Hegel once wrote a description of man as being a “moral form of evil.” I would be willing to suggest that such is an apt description when man is either in the bodily form of Al Qaeda or the current day Republican Party – most particularly Michelle Bachmann. This presupposed leader of the congressional Tea party caucus is reflective of many a GOP members of the current party and very unlike the ones I grew up understanding inclusive of Reagan and most notably William Buckley. Not only do I recall the openly friendly and positive relationship that Regan had with Speaker Tip O’Neil, but that Republicans used to be scholarly and astute, especially Buckley with his éclat background.

I remember as a young child, not being able to wait to watch Buckley’s “Firing Line” when we got home from church. And although I was not concerned with party affiliation during that period of my life – but with civil rights and learning about the great people that lived, spoke and talked during the late 60s and early 70s, I did love his reasoning and pragmatism. So much so that I started to read the National Review – a magazine he founded with an associate. He was the first to introduce Yale (his alma mater) into my understanding He was also a plenteous writer – with more than 50 books to his credit, inordinate essays and more than seven tons of his collected papers donated to Yale University.

Most importantly, he was graceful and kind and respectful of divergent views and political positions. My favorite show was the one he had Huey P. Newton on. But who would expect Bachmann to be brainy enough to start high school at age 13 as did Buckley. For Buckley placed an intellectual face on conservatism a task that seems to be lost but attempted by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh these days.

Especial the likes of Bachman or Palin – who I would dare to say, would NEVER have appeared on Buckley’s show if he were alive today. Let us not forget that it was Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, who said that "the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States....Men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." I do not think Buckley or men of his ilk would not have know that John Quincy Adams never signed the document she spoke off, or that Thomas Jefferson -- who wrote that all men are created equal -- owned slaves. Or that a slave was equivalent to 3/5ths of a freed white man. Not only is her history bad (the founding fathers had abolished slavery) but her math is somewhat suspect also. It was she, while the cameras and microphones were on, stated that Obama’s south Asian trip will cost taxpayers “$200 million a day” and represents “the kind of over-the-top spending” that’s rampant in Washington.


The Republican coterie inclusive of the new Tea Party members did keep one promise and voted to repeal the Obama Health care reforms of last year albeit a vacuous symbolic gesture, while minutes afterwards praising sections of the law they voted to repeal. Stranger even is that Republicans laude the fact that they added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare in 2003 but never mentions it was not in the budget nor paid for just as the major spending items of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

This type of talking out the side of one’s neck is a constant. For example, folk like Bachmann love to name-call and say they will not raise the national debt limit but American cannot default on its debt – yet without an increase the government would be forced to default. There is also the new house budget rules the GOP put in place December 22. Democrats had pay as you go in place, meaning tax cuts or increases in entitlement spending must be off-set by tax increases and cuts in entitlements. This is no longer a requirement.

These modern day republicans are more interested in attracting camera time and attention than problem solving. Aside for special incantations pushed by Dinesh D'Souza or sophist jactitations frequently uttered from the lips of Bachmann, no wonder politics is imperforate to reason. I mean one should not find it strange that it were Republicans who stated the passage of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by a vote of 57 to 40 in the Senate. As well as the GOP in the Senate who initially blocked legislation that would provide medical care for (/11 rescue workers and others who became ill during and after the attacks on the World Trade Centers.

Folks like Bob Barr (a fellow libertarian), Dr. Alan Keyes, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Eric Erickson of Red Sate.Com today are a dying breed. And for the record, I am neither GOP nor Democrat, but I really miss the days when the public could openly appreciate the intellectual views of both with appreciation and respect. The days when working for the good of America came before the good of the party. Dang folk, what happened to us (USA)?

Newt - a slimy idiot with a PHD

Newt - by definition any of various small amphibious salamanders with amphibian in the latter sense meaning having two natures. For Newt Gingrich this means slimy and full is do-do. In an interview with the National Review Online, speaking of Obama Gingrich said, "This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president."

The supposedly astute scholar of history went even farther saying "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" He continued his bazaar and inaccurate proposition on Fox News Sunday, criticizing the president's economic policy saying, "The thing that the president doesn't understand and the thing that Keynesian economics get wrong is real simple: Do you want people to have enough money to invest to create jobs? If they have a surplus of income so they can create jobs, that's somehow bad and the president wants to take away the income. That means he's leaving them with no money to create jobs."

He admitted that his thought was influenced by an article written by Dinesh D'Souza for Forbes Magazine in which D'Souza extended the psychotic paranoia of the Tea Party and so-called Birthers saying "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s." This being a specific reference to Obama's father. He connected this to Obama by writing "Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa." As if to say being from Hawaii is less valuable than being born on mainland USA or being a descendent of Africa is even worse.

Both Gingrich's and D'Souza's assertions are sentiments only a country built on racism could support. It is unlikely that such would be said of a man who was president who's father was born in Ireland or any other European Nation. I would even venture to say that neither man has ever lived in Africa nor are even astute on the history of colonialism and it's impact on the political psyche of Africans around the world. We are always reminded of he impact of colonialism and imperialism in the for of both slavery and the stealing of natural resources that Europe and the West continue until this day.

The Luo comprise around 12% of Kenya's population, making it the 3rd largest ethnic group after the Kikuyu and the Luhya. If Gingrich or D'Souza had any remote understanding of African culture or history they would see the absurdity of their position since the Luo were not particularly troubled by the arrival of the white Europeans and settlers, did not have their land taken like the Kikuyu and the Luhya and were not particularly involved in the Mau Mau rebellion. What they did was help to create an independent Kenya through politics as opposed to violence. Unlike the radical colonialist who formed this nation we live in here - America. If I am not mistaken, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton all were self described ant-colonist.

Gingrich and D'Souza's are what is wrong with the republican party and they wonder why they are seen as being extremest zealots with distinct phobias against anything other than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. If this is all the GOP has to offer, and their thought is a continues to be a hodgepodge of flippant inaccuracies and attempts to divide instead of amalgamate, then I say GOD save America, and any person in America who is not white.