Where Did All The Flags Go?

You remember the flags, right?

Remember 9/11? You know, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania? You do remember, don’t you? Of course you do. Remember all the flags? They were everywhere; we put them on car windows, we made bumper stickers; we flew them on lawns and porches; and yes, they were even in classrooms. They were everywhere. So what happened? Where did all the flags go? Of course that is a rhetorical question because we all know where they went—we took them down and we put them away.

So the big question is: “Why did we put all the flags away so quickly?” But first, let's understand why we put them up in the first place. No one made us go to the stores and buy American flags by the millions and put them on almost everything we could think of. Unlike some countries, no one ordered us to do it. We did it spontaneously. In fact, some of us did it instinctively. Men, women, and children of every color, religion, political persuasion, rich, middle class, less fortunate, young, old, whoever—bought flags and stuck them on and flew them from all kinds of things. At the time, I thought we did it because vicious, heartless zealots had attacked us and murdered almost 3,000 of our fellow countrymen without warning and we were apalled and angry and defiant and we were expressing our outrage and solidarity against the attackers. I thought we put the flags up to tell the world we did not deserve that kind of treatment nor would we sit idly by and do nothing about it or fail to defend ourselves from further abuse. I thought we displayed the flags to tell each other and the rest of the world that we were proud Americans and to show them we stood as one, determined to bring justice to the despicable terrorists who had attacked us.

To see the flags everywhere and to witness the apparent expression of patriotism they represented produced conflicting emotions in me. My first emotion was pride—pride in my fellow Americans for responding so swiftly and unequivocally to the biggest most atrocious attack on our homeland, ever. These monsters had not even bothered to limit their attacks to military targets; instead they consciously chose to murder innocent, defenseless men, women, and children. So the intitial response of my fellow Americans reminded me of the America I knew as a boy growing up during the Second World War. Still, to be honest, part of me was uneasy—unsure of the genuineness of it all. I saw a lot of flags during the long years of the Second World War too, but there was at least one essential difference back then: There was a clear sense of national identity that had its roots in the same fundamental values held by our founding fathers. We had an unambiguous national character. In other words, we knew who we were and what we stood for. We understood very clearly that we were at war against enemies who wanted to destroy us and the flags we put up then stayed up for the duration of the war. Another difference was that back then we often reminded each other to “Remember Pearl Harbor” because that was something we never wanted to forget, nor did we want to let anyone else forget it. It was a rallying cry.

So you see, it was different back then. During WWII, we were proud to be Americans and patriotism was as natural as breathing. We flew the American flag because it symbolized all the good values our country stood for so we flew it proudly. There was no equivocation. There were no grey areas. There was nothing to “nuance.” We were Americans. It wasn’t Pollyanna; we knew our history and we knew we lived in the greatest country that ever existed on planet earth.

So what happened so quickly after September 11, 2001 to make us take the flags down and put them away?

Just as surely as we had reasons to put the flags up, we had reasons to take them down. Yet I believe the reasons we took them down are not as clear nor as honorable as why we put them up. I think we, intuitively, got it right when we put them up and then got it wrong when we took them down. We did not put the flags away because the terrorists had a change of heart; nor had they surrendered. According to all credible estimates, the War On Terrorism had no immediate end in sight. So why did the flags disappear so quickly? First, let's try to understand exactly who put them up. I now believe that immediately after 9/11 certain groups of Americans expressed their patriotism more than others by displaying more flags than those who were slow to display flags or those who abstained completely. I also believe that those who did not display our flag were the same people who later influenced millions of Americans to take them down. They made it uncomfortable for proud Americans who displayed our flag for all the right reasons and embarrassed some into taking them down by defining patriotism as something bad—as some kind of intellectually deficient concept to be shunned and derided.

While it was common to see Republicans and others of moderate to conservative persuasions wearing small American lapel flags—with only a few exceptions, one was hard pressed to find any “street” Democrats with them on. In fact I'll venture it was more likely to find a hundred albino mules wearing purple top hats and singing God Bless America before you could find a street Liberal Democrat wearing an American lapel flag. So maybe it just seemed like almost everyone was flying our flag. Maybe it was overwhelmingly Republicans and Independents with some conservative Democrats who put them up. I think the Liberal Democrats took a pass on the entire patriotic, flag waving exercise. Apparently not even the most horrendous attacks on our homeland, ever, motivated them enough to feel at least some sense of indignation, not to mention outrage. There is certainly a large amount of evidence to support this proposition.

How many of you remember that even before the smoke had cleared at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and at the field in Pennsylvania, Liberal Democrats were already telling us that we should have expected such a thing, that we deserved to be attacked because we are not good people—that our sincerity, our intentions, our very reason to exist as a nation are all suspect. Time and time again, they tried to convince us that we are a dishonorable, greedy, imperialistic nation with a singular desire to suck the lifeblood out of every other nation in the world. They had already convinced millions of their Liberal followers—our fellow Americans—to, essentially, hate America. They attempted to make us feel ashamed to be American. They ridiculed and demeaned anyone who unabashedly expressed their patriotism. I think it a safe bet that not a single Liberal Democrat ever said, “Remember 9/11.” Even though we were at war against a demonstrably real enemy whose sole purpose was too kill every American they could, we had no battle cry because thanks to the Liberal Democrats and their left-leaning media affiliates, there was no clear, clean, robust sense of identity and pride among millions of Americans. While millions of Republicans and some Independents displayed full-fledged patriotism in the best sense, millions of Liberal Democrats were acting like America-hating-bashers of the worst kind.

For years, Liberal Democrats have been playing a deadly smoke and mirror game in which they have convinced their political base plus much of the world, including our enemies, that the United States of America is a bad country not to be trusted. Of course they could not be more wrong and if they had the desire and took an honest look at our history compared to all other nations in the history of mankind they would know that we are the most honorable and the most giving nation ever.

But for now the answer to “Why did we put all the flags away so quickly?” is that too many of us allowed a minority of our citizenry to confuse us about our national identity and to intimidate us into feeling embarrassed by our patriotism. Of course, that, my friends, is not only unacceptable on its face—it is a threat to our very existence. By any honestly informed measure, the United States of America is in fact the greatest nation in the history of the world. We must not only know that to be true, we must also truly appreciate our great good fortune to be among its citizens and to speak out and stand up against all unfair criticism and attempts to destroy our true national identity.

So it is imperative that we have a clear understanding of what our flag represents. It is the symbol of all things good in America and of the uniqueness of those things. Our constitution stands alone in the history of mankind. No other political document guarantees such freedom to its citizens or the protection against tyranny as does ours. It should also remind us of those who have sacrificed so much for the freedom we enjoy each and every day. But it does not end there. Our flag also stands for what we aspire to going forward toward an ever-improving nation of people of goodwill. This is America! People want in, not out. Fly our flag and feel pride in what it represents. It represents us and tells the world who we are.

© Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.

Media Bias = Liberal Democrat Propaganda

Don’t believe what they tell you

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson

I was always curious and inquisitive. At a very young age these traits led me to question the veracity of adults because sometimes things just didn’t seem to add up. The most troubling discrepancies usually had to do with contradictions between the ethical values I was being taught and dishonest adult behavior. For example, if I read a newspaper report in which some politician claimed this or that, only to be contradicted by another politician who seemed to have different “facts,” I would ask my parents how that could be. After all, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that one of them was either ignorant or dishonest. In time, it was clear that some of our elected so-called leaders lie—and that realization was not easy to accept. Did their parents not teach them the same values that mine were teaching me? Did they not know it was wrong to lie? Even more baffling was that if they were liars why did the newspapers print their lies and why did other adults vote them into office? Had they completely fooled the voters with their lies? That didn’t seem likely since even I—a naïve young boy—was able to catch them lying! Then there was the famous statement by Abraham Lincoln, “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." Didn’t they know this? 

 

When I discovered an outright falsehood printed in a newspaper and disguised as the truth, I would ask my parents how this could happen. Wouldn’t the readers soon catch on and stop buying that newspaper? Their answer was almost always the same: “Don’t believe everything you read.” Okay, but who and what and when can I believe anything for certain, I wondered. It was my age of disillusionment. It was troubling. It still is. 

 

Over the years I have found answers to those early questions, yet the answers trouble me even more than the questions did when I was a boy. For example, I have learned that most American voters that I’ve spoken with are not well informed about the candidates, the issues, our political parties, our government, or American history. This partially explains why and how dishonest politicians get elected. Their lies go unnoticed and unchallenged by the general public because they don’t know the facts. This unfortunate condition denies the inherent promise of great and good things for the citizens of an honest republic.* An uninformed or misinformed citizenry is not capable of rendering the kind of good judgment required to maintain a vital and healthy nation or government “… of the people, by the people, for the people.” Ignorant people are more readily "worked" by skillful propagandists than are the informed. They can be persuaded to a particular view by those with the desire and means to do so, and that is precisely what is happening in America today. 

 

The media are not what they would have us believe they are. Instead of being our guardians of truth who seek out and expose corruption in government, they are part of the corruption. Their bias is evident everywhere any serious observer cares to look. Among other things, they selectively report or withhold facts and slant their reporting so as to promote their political agenda. The majority of the American media today are propagandists. To be sure, the media does expose abuse and corruption in government, however they do that selectively, as well.

 

Countless studies by credible organizations have confirmed that both the American media and the American education system are predominantly left-biased politically and that their bias is actively applied to their work and their product. As recently as six days ago, the title of a new study reads, “Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist.” As countless studies before have shown, this new study confirmed that, “…almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.”

 

The following are just a few examples of biased media reporting:

• The media gave far more coverage to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal than to the grossly worse abuses of terrorists, such as the videotaped beheading of Nicholas Berg. Even though the military itself had discovered the abuses at Abu Ghraib, had already begun an investigation, had informed the media of the abuses, and told the media that an investigation was underway, the media took the story and hyped it all around the world in a manner and with an intensity well beyond the actual significance of the story. The New York Times ran Abu Ghraib stories on their front page over 50 times—far more often than they ran stories dealing with the horrible atrocities being committed daily by al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists. In this one example, The New York Times and others made America look like the bad guys and the terrorists look good in comparison. Of course, precisely the opposite was true.
• Notwithstanding protestations from CBS to the contrary, I believe that Dan Rather's attempt to discredit President George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential election campaign is just one more blatant case of gross media bias. As we know, the Dan Rather/60 Minutes story about Mr. Bush's alleged misconduct during his National Guard Service was based on what credible analysts described as counterfeit documents. Without relating the entire list of particulars, it is my opinion that Mr. Rather lost his job as a direct result of his use of phony documents in order to influence a U.S. presidential election. Given the next two examples, it is extremely difficult to arrive at any other conclusion.
• Neither Dan Rather nor anyone else in the mainstream media seemed at all interested in doing a high-exposure story about Bill Clinton when he was running for president even though Mr. Clinton is a well-documented, bona fide draft dodger—which is obviously shoddier than anything Mr. Bush never did. For the record, we still haven’t heard that story from the "mainstream" media. To the contrary, they are currently in the process of resurrecting Mr. Clinton’s reputation and if they are successful, they will have millions of people around the world believing that Bill Clinton was a great president. Incredibly, a few months ago Esquire magazine actually named Mr. Clinton the most powerful man in the world. Do they know that he is not even president? Of course, we should never be surprised at these outrageous positions. After all, there were those who suggested that Tookie Williams should get a Nobel Prize.
• Finally, the despicable treatment by the media of the "Swift Boat Veterans" during the 2004 campaign was another manifestation of their grossly anti-Republican bias. In this instance, a very large group of veterans who had served with John Kerry did something which seems to be unprecedented in U.S. history: Based on their service with him in the Vietnam War, this very large group of veterans—many highly decorated—publicly denounced Mr. Kerry, asserting that he was unfit to be Commander In Chief of the military forces of the United States of America. Over sixty of these men signed affidavits in condemnation of Mr. Kerry's military service and his character in general. The “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” came from a variety of backgrounds and political affiliations. There were Democrats, Republicans, and independents among the over two hundred members. Despite the “political mix” of the group and the fact that many of them were war heroes, the media did their best to suppress news coverage of the story and (when that failed) to discredit the group. Here was an extremely well documented story presented by highly credible war heroes and the media did not want us to know about it because it could have hurt Mr. Kerry’s chances of becoming president. Instead, they produced a story based on lies to help prevent a Republican from becoming president. Any questions?

 

Multiply these few examples by thousands and you can get a sense of the magnitude of the deception—the incalculable number of distorted news stories being fed to us daily by the "mainstream" American media. A preponderance of our so-called reporters and journalists now seem like nothing more than well-dressed, highly paid propagandists promoting their personal and collective political agendas. They produce news stories that we cannot trust for objective reporting, honest content, fairness or balance. They are con artists all dressed up to look like legitimate professional newsmen and women. So, what is to be done? Fortunately, the Internet offers some hope. If more people speak out with articles like this, it is entirely possible that we can bring about change. Meanwhile, make no mistake about it: What the American media are doing every day is very dangerous to all American citizens at home and abroad. Their anti-American output in print, radio, and television portrays our government and our military in such a dishonest negative manner that it divides our nation, weakens our resolve, and at the same time emboldens our enemies and provides them with propaganda material to turn millions of people around the globe against us. 

 

To use the Abu Ghraib example once more: With the distorted and thereby dishonest reporting of the Abu Ghraib story, The New York Times managed to convince millions of people here and abroad—people who were not informed enough to know better—that the abuse was a direct result of Bush administration policy, which they claimed encouraged such abuse. They offered no proof because they found none. Yet the damage was done, which most certainly must have been what they had wanted to accomplish because they are neither stupid nor naive. I believe they knew exactly what they were doing. Did they consider the global implications of their behavior? I must conclude they did. How inept would they have been if they had not? Therefore, I not only believe that The New York Times knew their Abu Ghraib stories would inflame Muslims throughout the world who would then use the exaggerated and hyped up stories to stir up anti-American hatred—I also believe that as a direct result of their stories, their irresponsible (treasonous?) stories, Americans died. I repeat; this is just one example of a preponderance of politically motivated media bias. 

 

The undeniable truth that we need to accept if we aspire to the high standards of truth and decency we teach our children is that the majority of our current media are propagandists and we cannot trust them to inform us honestly. It means that my parent’s advice to not believe everything one reads (or hears) is more appropriate than ever and that it applies to all media outlets. This has been called “The Information Age,” yet with the media factored in, it would be more accurately described as “The Misinformation Age.” 

 

The major media outlets have refined and perfected the art of propaganda well beyond anything imagined by past propaganda practitioners. It is not difficult to imagine that well-known fascist propaganda masters of recent history would have marveled at how effective our American media propagandists are in a free society. They would have been very impressed at the ease with which our media successfully manipulate the American masses on a daily basis without so much as a passing glance of recognition, least of all protest, from us—the manipulated. 

 

There is much more to this story than I describe here. Our education system, from public schools to our colleges and universities, are at least 90% left-biased and over the past several decades they have chosen to de-emphasize the teaching of honest, comprehensive American history and national civic literacy. Add that to widespread dissemination of media misinformation and we now have perhaps the most ignorant American electorate in our history. What should be clear though, and what we need to address, is how very much this problem affects us, and how important it is to begin immediately to formulate ways to protest and to demand the changes necessary to ensure a different future for our children, one in which they can be certain of honest, unbiased, fair and balanced media information and reporting. We need to shake off our apathy and rid ourselves of the belief that the problem of media bias is bigger than we are. Once again: An uninformed or misinformed citizenry is not capable of rendering the kind of good judgment required to sustain a vital and healthy nation and government “… of the people, by the people, for the people” and, notwithstanding protestations to the contrary, presently the vast majority of Americans are critically ignorant on such matters as American history, current affairs, and politics. I offer an oft-repeated slogan of a large clothing chain. It goes like this: "An educated buyer is our best customer." It is a good slogan and the message is clear: The more you know about clothing and value, the more you will appreciate what we sell. The analogy is obvious. An educated voter is our best citizen. Conversely, an ignorant voter is our worst citizen, and, in the majority, ignorant voters pose a threat to our national security and the future of our nation. To summarize, the liberal left dominates our educational system and our media, and they have an agenda. Therefore, is it not rational to suspect that when our reporters and journalists betray the trust we have vested in them through the First Amendment to our constitution (behind which they so often hide) and our educators fail to properly educate our children on the fundamentals of American history and current affairs, perhaps their slogan goes something like this: An ignorant voter is our best mark? What else can explain the steady, insidious decline of a once well educated, informed American electorate? Keep them dumb and keep them voting for Democrats, because for Democrats, it is always all about power. You need look no further than the events of the last six years to see how they so often and so easily put party before country. 

 

America is the first ever great hope for people all over this planet and if we fail to properly grow and protect it, it might never appear again. Our founders had it right, so right that America has become the most free and powerful nation in the history of the world. But our founders warned that it was fragile and that our very existence would require "eternal vigilance." Yet the liberal Democrats are attempting to change the essential nature of our political system. What they envision is far different than what our founders designed and what has worked so well for so long. If they succeed, it is more than likely they will set into motion the slow but inexorable decline and fall of America. I urge you to reread Mr. Jefferson's cautionary quote at the top of this article. If you understand the once-in-the-history-of-the-world phenomenon that is the United States of America and you want it to survive and evolve for those who follow, then you must take this message seriously.  

*Republic: A state in which the sovereign power resides in a certain body of the people (the electorate), and is exercised by representatives elected by, and responsible to, them.

 

Copyright © 2005 Robert D. McKinley All rights reserved.

 

Reagan Was Stupid Too

Just ask the Democrats and their media affiliates

Every day, the Democrats criticize President Bush on the Iraq War—and anything and everything else they can think of. More accurately, they degrade, humiliate, debase, and demean him. Their purpose is to destroy the President’s credibility and if possible to assassinate his character in the process. Besides their propensity to lead us into war after major war, and their skill at rewriting history, destroying the credibility and reputations of their political opponents is what Democrats do best. They do these things as a matter of practice and policy in order to gain political power. Make no mistake about it: The first priority of Democrats is to gain and keep power. The prime prerogative of each and every Democrat candidate is to get elected and to get reelected for the sake of the party and the far-reaching benefits and consequences of political power. National security and the general welfare of American citizens are distant considerations. While such statements inevitably provoke Democrats to claim they are being abused by virtue of being called unpatriotic, the facts reveal their objections to be nothing more than angry cries from overly defensive, guilty operators attempting to hide from the truth of their political sins.

Let’s review:

According to the always lurching left Liberal Democrats and their propaganda affiliates, the mainstream media, Ronald Reagan was stupid. No, not merely stupid, he was a simpleton, a shallow, unsophisticated, unschooled and unthinking dunce. As “… the silver-haired Brahmin” of the Left, Clark Clifford, put it: Reagan was an “amiable dunce.” Furthermore, as the Democrat propagandists repeatedly (Repetition is the key.) told us: being stupid and being president of the most powerful nation in the world, made him the most dangerous man in the world as well. So as to leave no doubt, they also said he was a warmonger!

So there it was: We had a bloodthirsty, war crazed, dunce for a president who, unless brought down yesterday, would destroy the world by inciting the Soviet Union to launch their huge arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles—loaded with multiple nuclear warheads—against the U.S.A. and its allies. Not only did the Democrats keep telling us these things; they told the world—including our enemies. That’s right, they told our enemies that our president was a stupid, dangerous man—exactly what they are now telling us, our allies, and our enemies about our current president.

Satisfied that they had sown their seeds of deceit so well—that they had convinced the American public and much of the rest of the world that our president was a dangerous buffoon—the Democrats now attempted to panic the world by convincing us that as long as Ronald Reagan was president, nuclear destruction was imminent! They demanded that we “freeze” all nuclear weapons, immediately. As Charles Krauthammer put it, “Like George W. Bush today, the U.S. president was seen as a greater threat to peace than was the enemy he was confronting.”

The Democrats wanted us to stop the arms race and above all, to not make the Soviets angry with us. But President Reagan had a far different view and a plan to go with it. Contrary to virtually every position espoused by the Democrats, Reagan took a very hard line on the Soviet Union, which had placed missiles in Europe, thus ending the nuclear status quo. With the backing of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain and Helmut Kohl of Germany, Mr. Reagan stood firmly against the Soviets. He faced them down and they dismantled their missiles. Fundamental in his strategy, he:

• Took a nuclear hard line
• Aggressively expanded our military capability
• Strongly backed the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) and
• Defined and promoted the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-communist guerrillas everywhere (especially Nicaragua).

He did all of these things and more despite relentless negative criticism and demeaning, dishonest attacks on him from the Democrats—and in the face of highly publicized, media-hyped “peace” rallies here and abroad, including the largest one in U.S. history in New York City in 1982.

In their obsessive determination to destroy President Reagan, the Democrats managed to panic millions of people in order to get a nuclear freeze—something they would rather not speak about today. Why? – Because the insights, policies, and strategies of Ronald Reagan worked astonishingly well. Moreover, history has wasted little time in establishing Mr. Reagan as perhaps the second greatest U.S. President of the twentieth century.

Ten months after Ronald Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. After decades of failed policies of various U.S. presidents, the Cold War was over. The “amiable dunce” had accomplished what none before him could. For eight long years, while his Democrat opponents and the Liberal media kept up their dishonest, often disgusting, attacks on him, he forged ahead buoyed by his sense of optimism and his unwavering belief in himself and the nation he so loved.

Historians have long since discovered volumes in Reagan’s own handwriting of his thoughts and ideas on a great diversity of subjects spanning decades of his life. They have been greatly impressed with his breadth of knowledge, his ability to find core meanings, and his clear vision for the future. Of course to those who knew him well, none of these “discoveries” came as a surprise. For countless years, they had been telling his critics that they had it all wrong—that the Ronald Reagan they knew well was a smart, insightful, decisive, and wise leader as well as an honest and decent man. That he was also a very likable and charismatic man was a bonus and something that was ultimately apparent to a vast majority of Americans. In time he was referred to as the "Great Communicator," which became just one more Ronald Reagan trait that dismayed and irked the Democrat attack dogs who, apparently, could not be even slightly fair minded toward this fair minded man of goodwill—a man who accomplished almost everything he set out to do and which others had failed to do for so very long.

To quote Charles Krauthammer once again, “This success is an understandable embarrassment to the critics who opposed his every policy. They supported the freeze, denounced the military buildup, ridiculed strategic defenses, opposed aid to the Nicaraguan anti-communists and derided Reagan for telling the truth about the Soviet empire. Ultimately (Reagan’s strategy) brought about the collapse of the overextended Soviet empire. The result was the most profound peace the world had experienced in 60 years -- since the very beginning of the totalitarian era in the early 1930s.”

So what did the Democrat Propagandists learn from their failed attempts to destroy Ronald Reagan and the Republicans? - Apparently nothing of value. Since the destroy-Reagan days the only things that have changed are the intensity and the cruelty of the Democrat/media attacks, which are now viciously aimed at George W. Bush. Beginning with the Bush-Gore campaign in 1999 until the present, their attacks have been predictably persistent and destructive. They have also been more outrageously dishonest, more cruel, and at times, borderline treasonous.

I will address these things more fully at another time, but for now I can say with confidence that the dishonest Democrat Propagandists will, once again, be proven wrong. Accordingly, they will again become mired in their own cesspool of false accusations and political deceit.

Until then, I have a few nagging questions:

• If Ronald Reagan was a stupid man, how did he manage to defeat the Democrats time and again?
• How did Reagan manage to accomplish the very things that Democrats had tried but failed to accomplish for so many years?
• If, as Democrats claimed, Al Gore was intellectually superior to George W. Bush, why did Mr. Bush repeatedly outscore Al Gore at Yale?
• If, as Democrats claimed, Al Gore was more intellectually curious than George W. Bush, why did Mr. Bush consistently select a far more diverse and challenging curriculum than Al Gore?
• Why did Al Gore flunk out of Seminary School?
• How is it that George W. Bush is our only president to have an MBA from Harvard?
• With his “limitations”, how did Mr. Bush manage to pass the very difficult tests and meet the high IQ standards required for acceptance into officer/fighter pilot Air National Guard training? (Note: No, his father did not and would not have helped even if he could—which he could not. George W. passed the tests and went on to become a highly skilled jet fighter pilot.)
• How did Mr. Bush beat the best of the Democrats in Texas to become the only person in Texas history to be elected governor two consecutive times?
• How did Mr. Bush beat the best of the Democrats in the country to become President of the United States two consecutive times?
• If John Kerry is smart and George W. Bush is not, why, during the 2004 election campaign, did Mr. Bush accept virtually every request for interviews from major media outlets and agreed to answer any and all questions without any prescreening while Mr. Kerry rejected virtually every request for interviews from major media outlets, thus declaring his unwillingness to answer any questions at all?
• If John Kerry is smart and George W. Bush is not, during the 2004 election campaign, why did Mr. Bush agree to an unconditional interview with Bob Woodward in which he answered the over one hundred non-prescreened questions he was asked while John Kerry declined to be interviewed by Mr. Woodward even after Woodward sent Mr. Kerry twenty questions in advance—something Mr. Woodward said he did not normally do?
  
  Considering all of the above, just exactly where does that put the Democrats on their Smart-Stupid scale? Feel free to answer at will.

Copyright © 2005 Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.

Democrats hate all wars that are not theirs

Most of them are theirs

The Democrats constantly bash President Bush over the Iraq War. Some say it’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Others say the president lied to us about WMD while they ignore indisputable facts to the contrary. Then there are the “He has no plan”- group of bashers who know very well that Mr. Bush and others in his administration have been communicating and articulating their Iraq planning for years.

Of course the Democrats in Congress want you to forget that most of them gave the president the authority to invade Iraq—essentially, at his discretion, and yes, they did have the same intelligence available to them as the president had. So what is the payoff for the Democrats? Why do they behave this way? Perhaps because they are corrupt, political opportunists doing what corrupt, political opportunists do: Lie, mislead, cheat, obstruct, destruct, and everything else they can think of to totally discredit their political opponents in order to gain power. It’s what Democrats do best—that is, except taking us to war.

If you know American history, you know that when it comes to war, Democrats are experts. After all they led us into every major war in our history, starting with the First World War. Apparently, they think that makes them the experts. So who does this Republican President think he is, anyway? War is Democrat turf and don’t you Republicans ever forget it! So what if we let Republican Presidents bail us out of a couple of wars we screwed up, like Korea and Vietnam? Just don’t let it go to your heads! Furthermore, as our own John Kerry once said, “America doesn’t go to war because we want to, we go to war because we have to.”

Yes indeed, Democrats are experts at knowing when, where, and why America has go to war. For example, any fool knows that the Koreans and Vietnamese were going to invade us at any moment. We were in imminent danger! We had to invade them! Geez, don’t you Republicans know anything?

Daily, Democrats demand to know how long our troops will be in Iraq. They insist that the president tell us exactly when he will order them to come home. Yet what these same Democrats never tell you is that we still have tens of thousands of troops deployed around the world, most put there by Democrat presidents over fifty years ago, and some by President Clinton more recently! Oh, yes, I forgot it’s okay if Democrats do it because war is their thing; they are experts.

Then there are the Democrats (most of them) who constantly badger the president to admit any mistakes he may have made in Iraq. Additionally, they have demanded the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld more times than I can remember for more reasons than I can remember—not to mention a few demands for the impeachment of Mr. Bush. These are among a long list of disingenuous and ad hominem arguments and attacks on the present administration. Here, as with most things, they completely and intentionally avoid comparison—which is necessary for all serious political argument.

To be sure, Democrat presidents, others in their administrations, and military leaders made huge mistakes in all of America’s four major wars yet there were no similar outrageously opportunistic—sometimes borderline treasonous—charges and demands made by Republicans against the Democrats during those wars.

If the same demands for firing, resignation, and impeachment had been made against Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and members of their administrations, according to and applying the same Democrat criteria and arguments now made against George W. Bush and his administration, they would have all been thrown out of office.

When you listen to the Democrat war “experts” and their media propagandist affiliates constantly tell us that everything the President is doing is wrong and who, daily, use the casualty count in Iraq to shame and disgrace President Bush—consider this:

• Democrat presidents have led us into wars in which we suffered approximately 1,747,278 American casualties. That is one million, seven hundred forty seven thousand, and two hundred and seventy eight casualties!
  
• Republican presidents have led us into wars in which we suffered approximately 18,977 American casualties (including Iraq War casualties to date).
  
• Democrat presidents have led us into wars in which we were engaged for 15.8 years!
  
• Republican presidents have led us into wars in which we were engaged for 2.7 years.
  
  Note: Total casualties include military deaths plus wounded.
  

The matter of responsibility, which Democrats should clearly bear for their war record, is rarely if ever portrayed accurately in history books or in the Democrat-dominated media. In truth, their record is very disturbing. Even now, while we are in the midst of a war unlike any before, instead of offering sincere constructive criticism and acknowledging significant accomplishments, they exploit any and every misstep or setback in order to discredit President Bush and to defeat virtually everything he aspires to accomplish. They constantly tell us that he has bungled the war in every aspect and that in so doing he has cost American lives. Yet we must not forget that Democrats have led us into every major war we've had and they managed to make some monumental mistakes in the conduct of those wars—mistakes that cost more American lives than any of us want to think about. Now they would have us believe that they know best? I think not.

In the final analysis, it is all about power. Far too many Democrats are livid at their loss of power and are saying and doing anything and everything they can to get it back—even posing as war experts! Not.

Copyright © 2005 Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.