The sad thing is that neither side can seem to grasp the other side. We are not talking about hard understanding here, we are talking about simple listening and repeating back what was just said.
There are radicals on both sides and neither side really speaks for America. America's middle is where the truth of what is going on in our country stands. But nobody really represents the middle.
I like President Bush. I know. Gasp. The Horror. I respect him for what he has accomplished. I read an article yesterday about a man filing charges In PA because the man in the next booth in a public market had a picture of President Bush. The first man wants a law passed forbidding the picture of the sitting president to be used in public places. He says that it is offensive to him because, he voted for Kerry. Does he even grasp what he is asking here? This is a federal building from what the article said. If we outlaw the use of current pictures of the President in PUBLIC and GOVT buildings, What about schools? Should we stop teaching students who the current president is as well? Should we just not teach them politics? Come on. This is going too far.
Christianity is under attack in America. And Christians are not lieing down and taking it anymore. The Declaration of Indepedence can not be read in a public school because it uses the word God. The WW2 war memorial alters a speech to remove the words God. A students elementry school play claims to "cover all the religions" while leaving out Christianity. All these are cases in the last month that made the news.
When the I mentioned to several liberal people pre-election that Christians are standing up and refusing to be discriminated against...they laughed. They told me I was parinoid. I told them that Christians were not going to take it anymore. They replied with that it is not discrimination if it is happening to the majority.
November 3rd, these same liberals were walking around saying, "What went wrong? How did this happen?" It was followed by forwarded emails with pictures of Jesusland and costal states being part of Canada. Soon after that, much hate speech was being used against those 'moral' voters who for the most part were Christians. This of course stemed from the Marriage Protection Amendment passed in 11 out of 11 states. But the problem with blaming Christians and blaming Republicans is this....It passed in 2 states that went to Kerry. And Even Kerry himself did NOT support Homosexual Marraige. He and Bush actually had the same stand on this issue and that stand was ok with civil unions and not ok for Marriage.
Was Kerry just the wrong person? I think that Kerry took a lot of heat about his role in vietnam. America as a whole would like to sweep that time under a rug and forget it happened. My uncle was a war desserter. As such, his kids barely knew him when they were small. The FBI used to follow my mom home from school when she was in high school. They would stop her and question her on my uncles wearabouts. I know my family wishes and pretends that time never happened. Kerry's mistake was not what he did or did not do during Vietnam or even what he did after he came back. His mistake was running on his vietnam record. It left him open to attacks by groups like the swifties. It also then brought his role after vietnam into play during the election.
Bush and prayer. Ok. I have to admit, this is one of the things that bothers me the most when critized. Bush is not trying to convert people. He often prays at appropriate times. He is not out there converting the nation. Yet, he is under constant attack for this. He is not the first president to pray. Geez. Do Liberals know what they are doing when they critize the man for praying? They are building an army against themselves. Because, as mentioned above, Christians are not going to lie down and play dead anymore.
Do I think the nation is just in a swing and will eventually swing back to the democrats? Honestly, It will depend a lot on what the democrat party does over the next few years. I think there is a real chance we could be seeing a party dieing out and a 3rd party moving up to take the role of the 2nd major party in the nation. It will depend on what both the Libertarian party and the democrat party do over the next few elections.
I have met a lot of people like me who have left the democrat party recently. This is the first election ever I have voted for a republican. I worked on Mondale and Clinton's campaign. I voted for Gore in 2000. And this election, I voted for the president. I feel like the democrat party has left people like me behind. They Have left the center and are too far to the left now. I actually met a ton of people this election who feel the same way I do. Most support the war because they were in someway affected on 9/11.
The democrat party wants to pretend that the President acted alone on going to war in Iraq. No President can take us to war without Congress approval. Democrats and Republicans voted for the war based on the information known at the time.
Since then every time WMD have been found. And yes, there have been chemical and biological weapons found...they are discarded for one reason or another. Well, there were no launchers here. Well, there were not enough to kill mass amounts of people just a few thousand. Well, we were not talking about excatly this compound. But WMD play such a little role in why we need to be in Iraq.
Saddam was an evil man. He killed his own people. He used chemical and biological weapons against his own people. The people who do not support the war would have you believe that nothing good has happened in Iraq. That it is all about wild soldiers killing for support. Of course, they have the right to say those things because of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech protected by the same soldiers they are critizing. Amazing how hypocritical that all is.
I could go on. The racism issue we are seeing too against any minority that supports conservatives. The people with kids vs those with out and how and why they vote. etc... So, for my little rant I will leave you with an article that appeared a few days ago in the opinion journal. This is just the first few paragraphs. click on the link for the whole article. It is long but well worth the read.
AFTER THE WAR
The Frustrated Archbishop
A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.
BY ARTHUR CHRENKOFF
Monday, December 6, 2004 12:01 a.m. ESTIt takes a lot to get a man of God annoyed, and Louis Sako, the Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk, is a very frustrated man these days. "It is not all death and destruction," says the archbishop. "Much is positive in Iraq today. . . . Universities are operating, schools are open, people go out onto the streets normally. . . . Where there's a kidnapping or a homicide the news gets out immediately, and this causes fear among the people. . . . Those who commit such violence are resisting against Iraqis who want to build their country."
It's not just the terrorists who, according to His Eminence, are creating problems for Iraq: Elections in January "will be a starting point for a new Iraq," he says. Yet "Western newspapers and broadcasters are simply peddling propaganda and misinformation. . . . Iraqis are happy to be having elections and are looking forward to them because they will be useful for national unity. . . . Perhaps not everything will go exactly to plan, but, with time, things will improve. Finally Iraqis will be given the chance to choose. Why is there so much noise and debate coming out from the West when before, under Saddam, there were no free elections, but no one said a thing?"
The archbishop has this wish for the international bystanders: "Europe is absent, it's not out there; the United States is on its own. . . . [Europe] must help the Iraqi government to control its borders to prevent the entry of foreign terrorists, [but] also provide economic help to encourage a new form of culture which is open to coexistence, the acceptance of others, respect for the human person and for other cultures. . . . Europe must understand that there is no time to waste on marginal or selfish interests: The entire world needs peace."
Archbishop Sako's frustration is increasingly shared by other Iraqis, who can hardly recognize their country from the foreign media coverage. Westerners, too, both military and civilians, upon their return are often finding to their surprise and concern they had lived and worked in a different country to that their loved ones, friends and neighbors back home saw every night on the news. "Our" Iraq is a place of violence, uncertainty, and frustration; "their" Iraq all that, but also so much more: work and renewal, hope and enthusiasm, new opportunities and new possibilities. Here are the last two weeks' worth of stories you might have missed while watching "our" Iraq on the news:
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