A government that supports a free nation only steps in when people are hurting (emotionally, physically, economically and whatnot) each other. Under Bush things like the Patriot Act take away your constitutional rights, and more importantly your individual, human rights.
More than any other president before him bush has pushed his personal agenda into congress. Hopefully his greed, his hate towards gays, his apparent love for war and killing, and his sinister dishonesty will not leave a lasting imprint on America.
No, my blog is not about politics, the underlying meaning of this post is philosophical.
The wonderful philosopher Kant argued that to find the true moral worth of something you did you must not look at the consequences of the action but the morals behind the action itself.
Now you may or may not have seen this comparison before, but allow me to lay it out for you the way I think it should be.
Clinton and Bush both lied. It is a world wide proven and accepted fact that Bush lied about the need for war in Iraq. It is also widely thought that it is not moral to lie. If everyone in the world lied the state of things would be very sorry indeed.
Now, I don't know about you, but there's a bell ringing here. Why hasn't Bush been impeached? Why did he slip through the cracks.
Perhaps you don't like Kant and won't accept this rag on Bush. Would you rather expand your moral judgment on these two men?
Clinton screwed the intern.
Bush sent 432 Americans, 53 British, 17 Italians and one Polish, to death in the Iraq war as of November 25, 2003 (CNN.com). Also remember that over 10,000 Iraqis died by last July and tens of thousands more humans have lost their limbs or been injured.
Clinton apologized and created a national surplus.
Bush insists that we continue the war and has created record breaking deficits.
Get rid of the trash in the next election.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Al Barger
Yeah, yeah, typical shallow generic and unsubstantiated pinko name calling. You all need to get some fresh material.
2 - Bat Boy
If you had an acceptable defence of bush I would proceed onto enviromental ethics and how bush is doing horrible things for our earth.
3 - Craig Lyndall
Last time I checked, Bush hasn't done anything impeachable. Nobody has brought up any charges that I can think of. In the case of Clinton lying (while I STILL don't think he should have been impeached) HE COMMITTED PERJURY! This post is really ignorant.
"It is a world wide proven and accepted fact that bush lied about the need for war in Iraq."
This statement for example is pure unadulterated crap.
4 - Joe
I've noticed many attempts at satire at Blogcritics, but this is the superior effort so far.
With the title alone the author is able to take a wry jab at the immaturity and impatience often displayed in political discourse today. Obviously, the "but things aren't perfect right now!" mindset doesn't get very far with bat boy.
The demonstration of fatuous hyperbole and gross exaggerations serves as an excellent parody of what has come to pass as thoughtful political dialogue to many.
I was particularly taken with how bat boy dragged Clinton into the discussion to highlight just how silly it is for people to dig up the past every time they want to avoid the current reality. This provides a nice illustration of the old "they just can't get over it" syndrome that has become so pervasive.
The line "It is a world wide proven and accepted fact that bush lied about the need for war in Iraq. It is also widely thought that it is not moral to lie." was laugh out loud funny. It cuts right to the heart of the whole "Bush lied..." meme. Here bat boy is throwing down the gauntlet to those who would make gross generalizations. The assertion that it is, in fact, a world wide proven and accepted fact is a subtle exhibition of the ease of twisting of the facts.
Particularly amusing was the way the author examines the oversimplification that is so often used as cudgel in modern discourse. The contrast between a former president screwing an intern, apologizing, and creating a surplus vice a numerical accounting of lives lost in Iraq, notwistanding the fact that the international members of the coalition were deployed on the order of their own leaders, not Bush, serves to point out how tenuous a grasp of the situation many people have.
Hats off to bat boy on a satire well done.
5 - Natalie Davis
Joe, your satirical statement deserves all the plaudits you mention.
6 - Joe
Indeed, that's the great thing about satire!
7 - Eric Olsen
Whoa! The meta-parodic implications leave my head aswim.
8 - Joe
Yes, I like to think of myself as the Ouroboros of the Blogosphere
9 - Eric Olsen
Yes, but having swallowed one's own tail, does one enter another universe that quivers between the seams of our own? And what of the role of digestion?
10 - Joe
WEll, I'd describe it more as oscillation than quivering, as for digestion, I have Blogcritics - Metamucil for the psyche.
11 - Eric Olsen
I was thinking more of the ontological ramifications of the digestion process upon the snake's head.
12 - Joe
That's the beauty of it, instead of having its head up its ass...
13 - Eric Olsen
Oroboros was also one of the first jam bands.
14 - Bat Boy
Joe I cant tell if you are trying to contradict me or just dont like my style.
Im not a prolific writer and my Kant reference requires prior knowledge on the part of the reader.
If you read Kant he tells you to universalize your maxim and if it doesnt sound good than you should lay off. If everyone lied the would would be a sorry place to live. If every president took away constitutional rights like bush than soon we would have none at all.
What if every nation went to war against someone they felt threated by? Well I assure you we would have quite a few countries bombing our ass.
CNN - Impeachable Offence?
World Net Daily - Moral?
World Net Daily - Lies
15 - cjones
Ouroboros starts with an O. I just added that to feel like I am an intelligent part of this blogversation.
16 - Pete Nelson
Bat Boy - or whatever your name is:
Why did you bother writing this? I suppose it could pass as an opinion piece, but it is completely devoid of facts or support.
"It is a world wide proven and accepted fact that Bush lied about the need for war in Iraq."
Well, basically, no it isn't. In case you haven't read the polls, a large percentage of Americans supported the president, both before the war started, and since.
Recently, reports have come out showing that Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein did have contacts prior to the war. Take a look at this
I don't know how reliable the source is, but there certainly is evidence that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein did, in fact, cooperate. Saddam also provided payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel. So, it is really indisputable that Saddam Hussein supported terrorism. I am not saying that he supported directly the 9/11 attacks, but he certainly did support terrorist efforts against the U.S. and our allies around the world.
Officials in George H.W. Bush's administration, Bill Clinton's administration, and George W. Bush's administration have all said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The latest report from David Kay said this: "Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom." You can read it here if you are interested in actual facts.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like Bush lied to me.
You know, it is certainly your right to dislike George Bush, but if you're going to write an attack piece, you might try getting at least a few facts right. Your "analysis" is pathetic.
17 - Al Barger
But he mentioned the name of an academic philosopher, so he must be really smart. I'm sure there's some Profound Truth here that we're just not smart enough to see.
18 - Bat Boy
Maybe I just articulated the point badly. Then again if you dont like Kants philosophy than you would not care for the argument anyway.
19 - BB
Ouch! Perhaps I can waylay this barbecue in a more proactive direction. Bat Boy in his own way has paid homage to our fallen soldiers so let us not forget the Canadians who were also killed in Afghanistan by so-called 'friendly fire'.
20 - Al Barger
Well, you didn't make the point very well, but it was a dumb point even when you clarified it. Your premises about Bush were unfounded, and also your universalizing principle was poorly applied.
Your business about Bush being a liar is unfounded. Now, being a politician and under incredible pressures from all directions, he's going to spin and cut corners a bit. Keeping the temptation for politicians to do that down to a bare minimum is the main function of a free press.
That is still not, however, the same as Clinton blatantly lying under oath in front of a grand jury, which is not even 1% of the lying that bastard did, much of it about things far more significant than a blowjob.
I have not seen clear evidence of even ONE outright lie from Dubya. The main one the pinkos like to throw at him is the SOTU yellow cake business, but those words were absolutely true- and even carefully qualified if you think them through.
Plus, this "universalizing the maxim" doesn't really communicate any significant profound truth. What, it would suck if everybody lied all the time? Well, duh! That's one of the reasons we didn't elect Al Gore president.
However, all lies are not equal, and a little bit of fibbing is not equivalent of everybody lying all the time. It's a slippery slope, and you can lose credibility quickly. However, a little carefully placed prevarication can be one of the great greasers of politics and diplomacy.
Again, your premise that Bush is taking away our civil rights just assumes the case in order to make a cheap shot. What constitutional rights has he taken away, exactly? Where is the line between legitimate law enforcement and national security versus infringing on the Bill of Rights? It's not always entirely clear cut, and there is room for argument.
I'm not totally thrilled with the Patriot Act. There are a few provisions that might need to be checked, but playing a little loose with the habeus corpus laws for terrorists does not equate to Bush or Ashcroft being jackbooted fascists.
In any case, it's just not intellectually credible to simply declare that Bush is destroying our civil liberties. He's got a goddam deadly serious job to do, and it's going to take more than a smirking college boy talking down from the sidelines to impress me.
And it's not just whether people decide to "feel" threatened, but whether they have legitimate grounds of actually being threatened. If we were whacking shitloads of people for no legitimate reason as Saddam has, or financing terrorism and offering bounties to terrorists as Saddam was doing openly, we would DESERVE to have other countries bombing us.
21 - BB
Well, I tried - so much for "waylaying". Carry on with the barbecue.
22 - Pete Nelson
Mmmm, roast bat...
And I was certain I'd be having turkey for Thanksgiving. ;-)
23 - Anonymous Moderate
Well, well, well. Pretty typical. Post anything critical of Bush, and the right-wing nutters come out of the woodwork to defame the critic and defend his 'stewardship' (cough, cough) of the country.
FACT: Bush sold the Iraq war to the American public with two premises:
1. Iraq was an imminent threat to American safety (mushroom cloud!! mushroom cloud!!).
2. The 'after the war' stuff in Iraq would be pretty easy.
FACT: We have now found out that neither of those two premises were true. Iraq had no WMDs. None. Period. Nada. Zilch. Now, after the war, a lot of Iraqis want us out -- not just some little minority.
It's now pretty obvious to anyone who has info sources other than Fox News that Bush and his buddies had already decided to go to war, and cooked and falsified the data to support what they already wanted to do.
Where I come from -- Houston, Texas, incidentally -- we call that 'lying.' And now we have guys over there dying every day because of that big lie.
FACT: The only folks that seriously still try link Saddam and Al Qaeda are the uber-conservative-loonies like the the guys at the Weekly Standard and that Moony rag in Washington. Oh, and our vice-president, God bless his soul. No serious journalist or intelligence professional believes that now.
Sure, Saddam supported Palestinian suicide bombers -- just like our 'friends' the Saudis. Are we going to invade there next, you morons?
I also have to note that one of the shrieking, reactionary, conservative dipshits up there wrote:
"That's one of the reasons we didn't elect Al Gore president"
What a completely fucking retarded thing to write. Just a reminder, lest you forget -- we did not elect Bush, either, you fuckwit. He was installed by a single-vote on the Supreme Court.
So, the reality of the situation is that Bush dragged this country into a totally unnecessary war, and as a result, his popularity is dropping. This war has not made us more safe, it has made us less safe. And wrapping Bush in the flag, and calling everyone who criticizes him a 'pinko' isn't going to work forever.
I'm a moderate, and I'm pissed at what Bush and his cabal of neocon-nutjobs are doing to our country. The guy is completely incompetent, and his circle of 'advisors' are totally out of control.
BTW, correct me if I'm wrong, but Clinton was never found guilty of any wrongdoing -- criminal, civil, or otherwise, right? He was acquitted in the Senate, right? You Clinton-haters are such a bunch of hypocrites. Clinton parsed his words carefully, and never actually out-and-out lied about anything -- under oath or otherwise, and according to you, he's this terrible prevaricator. But when your boy Bush does it -- in the State of the Union, no less -- it's all fine and dandy.
However simplistic and inappropriate the conservative pile-on up there may think it is, I think it's a pretty useful comparison:
Clinton cheated on his wife, and used a definition of 'sex' so narrow that a lot of people don't agree with it.
Bush exploited a national tragedy to start a completely unnecessary war with a country that was no threat to the US or US interests, based on falsified and trumped-up info.
24 - Al Barger
First of all, "Anonymous Moderate" you lack credibility for basic honesty based even just on the lie that is your monicker. Every stitch of your response is pure pinko boilerplate. Simply labeling yourself "moderate" does not fool anyone.
FACT: Bush sold the Iraq war to the American public with two premises:
1. Iraq was an imminent threat to American safety (mushroom cloud!! mushroom cloud!!).
2. The 'after the war' stuff in Iraq would be pretty easy.
No, those aren't facts. You just made those statements up wholecloth. In fact Dubya specifically did NOT claim that Iraq was an imminent threat. He said specifically that it was a "gathering" threat. That's a significant difference.
Also, no one in the administration said that the war or the aftermath would be a piece of cake. They just did not. You made that up.
The fact that it might be difficult or expensive or cost some American lives does not mean that it shouldn't have been done. If it was worth doing, it was worth paying for.
Now, there is legitimate argument over whether the whole deal has been worth it, or whether we had a fair right to act. But your cheap lying and smug name calling does not constitute a legitimate counter argument.
And your tired thing of Bush being "elected by a single vote on the Supreme Court" is simply one more big fat lie. Bush was elected because he got a majority of votes in the Electoral College. He won that vote because he got a few hundred more votes than Gore in Florida. They were recounted during and after the election several times. Deal with it.
Even your reference to the Supreme Court vote is a lie. Bush v Gore was a 7-2 decision, not 5-4. But then you knew that.
Please come back when you wish to discuss issues in an honest manner, as in without lying.
25 - Joe
Damn, AM has now just risen to the top of the depth chart for best satire. Keep up the good work guys.