The Double Edged Sword

 

     Ever since the first Republican debate of 2015, I could not help but notice that of all the candidates, the only ones who sounded like mature adults seemed to be John Kasich, Marco Rubio and probably Jeb Bush.  Rubio, once a competent state legislator, actually sounds mature beyond his years when he says what he appears to actually believe.  Unfortunately, these occasions are rare, because he, like young Bobby Jindal, usually sounds like one of his more moronic colleagues has told him what to say.  Rubio, much like President Obama in 2008, is probably eight to ten years away from being ready for the presidency.  Unfortunately for Democrats, Mr. Kasich would probably be ready now.  Fortunately for Democrats, vacuous Republican donors probably don’t see in people like Kasich and Jeb Bush the ideal thug they are wishing for.  With their histories of actually mediating between warring parties on rare occasions, they certainly do not represent the ideological and intellectual paragon of the party’s current idol, their last president, Dick Cheney.  No, intelligence and grace are not advantages in this Republican primary contest.

     Even more obvious to me, but universally overlooked by the official Democratic Party of “Pretty Stupid,” is the problem of conservatives defending the federal government’s right to wiretap every single phone in the United States, keeping records of pertinent or non pertinent private conversations as a way of preventing terrorism.  Meanwhile, these same “patriots” oppose not only the federal government, but the state governments’ keeping records of people who own guns, even assault rifles.  Last I heard, one and one still equals two.  You can’t really have it both ways, now can you?  Needless to say, there are ways around this.  Personally I don’t get as upset as I used to about my phone being tapped, though I wish I could have some degree of protection if the Feds want to use information about me illicitly.  As for the Second Amendment, it’s pretty obvious that the states are required to have some sort of gun regulation and that the Feds should require special subpoenas to pry the information out of the states.  Alas that’s too logical and probably too close to a “strict” interpretation of the amendment that both conservative and liberal politicians would have trouble recognizing.

     Another more subtle but important weakness of virtually all of the Republican candidates is not their assertion that they are conservative and personally “pro life” or personally against the idea of “gay marriage,” but the association of these issues with violations of the candidates’ religious freedom.  Most Democrats fail to see that most of these men and women are the type of Christians who believe that their religion is the only true religion.  Thus,except for a few of them, violating someone else’s religion doesn’t count as a violation of religious freedom.  Since most religions permit abortion in the first trimester, for example, overturning Roe v. Wade could well violate a multitude of other religions’ freedom.  Now, I’m not taking sides on the abortion issue here, only pointing out that the argument of “freedom of religion” is almost always a double edged sword!

     Fortunately for Republicans, their party and their privately owned Supreme Court majority are quite skilled at and fight almost exclusively with double edged swords.  Unfortunately, the Democratic party of “you know what” does not seem to have any training in the use of the double edged blade nor do scores of law professors, apparently.  When the bogus U.S. Supreme Court ruled that donating to a candidate is protected by the First Amendment, no matter how large the obvious bribe with its unavoidable associated quid quo pro might be, they inadvertently protected the voting franchise, a similar expression of opinion that does not carry an unavoidable quid pro quo with it.  Unfortunately, Democrats, especially President Obama, instead of fighting back with their two edged swords, simply wet their pants when the demented Antonin Scalia called voting a meaningless act of pushing a button, a statement, by the way, which even he knows was not intended to be applied to the voting franchise.

     Yeah,  I really believe that Mr. Obama and his uncle, “Tom Holder,” should have threatened Florida’s Governor Scott and his vacuous Florida Attorney General Bondi with a free stay in the  Federal Penitentiary if they continued to illegally rob people of the right to vote as they did a few years ago.  I think that might have thrown the issue back into the Supreme Court rather quickly. Instead, “Uncle Tom” Holder wrote his usual polite suggestion to stop the naughty behavior, which Scott and Bondi politely ignored.  Holder, the Democratic Party of “Pretty Stupid” probably doesn’t remember, is the  Federal Attorney General who permitted Governor Jeb Bush and his political concubine, Katherine Harris, to forge thousands of innocent, mostly African American voters’ names onto the rolls of felons, purposely depriving them of their votes in 2000.  Holder, who had been receiving two million dollars a year from the law firm defending George Bush in his recount scandal, was afraid he would have to “give the money back” if he became involved in the case.  His official statement went something like: “The real problem wasn’t me, it’s that felons should be allowed to vote.”  Good answer, Mr. Holder, and just what I would expect...from a felon like yourself.  What’s your excuse Mr. Obama?

Al Finkelstein, 8/10/15 / Revised 10/13/15