In the midst of the furor over how bad is Bush, how good was Clinton and so on, I thought it might be interesting to have a discussion about what Presidents of the past we admire and why. I see a lot about how history will judge the current administration, about how things that seem wrong now will seem noble in retrospect. So tell me. Who do you love?
bush
3 Points Against Bush
In my original posting on this topic, I listed the following three points:
1. Illegally authorized and supported a warrantless wiretap program, and when caught had the audacity to claim he had been given the authority by Congress, and then claimed the Constitution gave him the right, anyway. Anytime you use the Constitution to justify violating the Constitution, you’re way off on the wrong track.
2. Supporting and promoting the Patriot Act. One of the most invasive, unnecessary, and unjustifiable pieces of legislation ever written.
3. Using the threat of “terrorism” as a tool to turn neighbors against each other, prevent activism against his agendas, and cow the population and its representatives into accepting more and more outrageous assaults on their liberties in the name of an indefinable sense of “safety”.
I will show here how all three of these have undermined the unity of our society, eroded our civil liberties, and laid the groundwork for a greater departure from the ideals of democracy than we have ever seen before. It is not my place here to propose counter-measures and alternatives to these problems, but I do want to state that I feel strongly that listing the problems is only constructive if action follows. It is my dearest hope that these debates can prompt their readers into responsible action designed to take back control of their government and affect a change in the direction of its growth.
That said, I will plunge on in…