Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism
By Mike Hersh, Feb 24, 2005

Almost everyone is fed up with rancor and rudeness in US politics. The problem is one side - the right wing - has been running amok with that crap while the other side - moderates and liberals - indulge the right wing spoiled brats. Right wingers act like the omnipotent little boy in the Twilight Zone episode who tortures and kills people he doesn't like. No matter how powerful right wingers are, or how much they scream and try to abuse us when we try to stop them, their non-stop tirades and abuses have to stop.

Right wingers always want everything both ways, and their way. They don't even see fairness as a virtue. They want to "win" at all costs, even if it means cheating, lying and betraying every principle they claim to support. Bush's top campaign official for the Southeast - one Ralph Reed formerly of the Christian Coalition - wrote in his book that it's OK to lie and deceive to further right wing aims. "Bush's Brain" Karl Rove instructed Republicans to "run on the war" even while Bush was swearing to Congress and the American people he was doing everything he could to avoid war.

This immoral "ends justifies the means" approach defines the right wing movement. They live it and sometimes they even admit it! When people questioned Bush on their lies and misleading us into war, top GOP leaders accused them of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" - the definition of treason. This although Dick Cheney helped Saddam as recently as 1999! Wouldn't that make Cheney - who was breaking US laws against trading with Iraq - a traitor? Since dissent is the highest form of patriotism, those who attack Bush/Cheney lies are the real patriots - not traitors.

Not all Republicans are right wingers. Most are moderates or actual conservatives who respect American traditions like counting the votes, the US Constitution, and not risking our young people to slaughter innocent people in needless wars. Right wingers are different. They attack liberals for too much tolerance - saying we accept, embrace and endorse all sorts of things we don't - because we insist free speech is better than oppression. Then they attack us as intolerant when we call them on their oppressive, fascistic tendencies. Which is it? We can't be too tolerant and too intolerant. As usual, right wingers don't care that their accusations and attitudes make no sense.

What do right wingers really mean when they attack liberals and moderates - even conservatives who tell the truth about their failed policies? They mean we dare to disagree with them and *gasp* support our views with facts right wingers cannot refute. So rather than discuss the facts they rant about how liberals (and even conservatives like John McCain, Paul O'Neill and others) are big ol' meanies. When we try to persuade them using facts, they slam their minds shut and cry and scream that we're not "tolerating" their opinions. What nonsense.

Honest Republicans admit Bush didn't do very much to thwart terrorism before 9/11 but claim he got a wake up call when terrorists killed 3000 Americans. If that's so, then some time since then he and Cheney hit the snooze button and went back to sleep. Cheney told voters if they didn't support Bush, terrorists would attack us - possibly with nuclear weapons. That was last October.

Earlier this month, Bush's top intelligence officials - Porter Goss the new DCI included - warned it isn't a matter of "if" the terrorists would attack us again, it's a matter of "when." If that's so, we are extremely unsafe. If it's not true, then the Bush team installed someone incompetent and / or dishonest to direct the CIA.

Speaking of the CIA, that agency admits the illegal invasion of Iraq turned that nation from an enemy of al Qaeda into a hotbed and training ground for Islamicist terrorists. Simply put, and as several experts predicted, the Iraq War made us less safe. If it was not about making Americans safer, what was the "Operation Iraq Liberation" all about? Spell it out: OIL.

With this gathering storm of terrorism threatening American lives, what are Bush's top priorities? Bush is exacerbating American divisions by threatening to loot Social Security and sending the same liars who attacked John Kerry to attack his erstwhile allies the AARP. Why was Bush recently touring Red States with Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2006 - engaging in bitter partisan politics - rather than leading a bipartisan effort to address monumental threats to US security his own officials testified about under oath to Congress?

Instead of pre-empting successful weapons inspections in Iraq and rushing to an unnecessary war, why didn't Bush and Cheney really address our security crisis? Why are they still indulging the most venal partisan politics and waging ugly class and generational warfare when people who hate us might get nuclear weapons? Instead of turning Americans against each other, why isn't Bush leading efforts to unify us and making critical investments to prevent massive - even nuclear - terrorist attacks? Is there anything more important than that?

Why didn't Bush buy up all the "loose nukes" from the former Soviet states? That key step would have actually improved our national security and cost a tiny fraction of the $billions squandered killing innocent Iraqis. And don't forget the 1200+ American troops killed and additional 1000s maimed for life. How is ignoring nukes and lying us into war against Iraq - and maybe Iran next - keeping us safe? It isn't.

For that matter, why did someone in the Bush White House "out" Valerie Plame - an undercover CIA operative who was working to keep terrorists from getting nukes? Why did they use her to punish her husband - Bush I's Ambassador to Iraq - for telling the truth about Bush's State of the Union lies? Why did they do that when it exposed all of our intelligence assets as collaborators and crippled our ability to keep terrorists from detonating nuclear bombs in our cities? Wouldn't that make whoever exposed Plame a traitor?

Some liberals complain that I'm too mean to right wingers. They blame people like me for stirring up trouble. Don't they recall the obsessive jihad against Bill Clinton? Considering the $millions of tax dollars spent and FBI resources wasted over obsession with Clinton's consensual messing around, why aren't the "liberal" media - cheerleaders for the Republican witch hunt - all over Bush / Cheney failures to address life-and-death issues?

Because most people suffer from right wing policies and reject extremism when they know the facts, right wingers have to keep that divisive dynamic going to stay in power. It's working for them. Even though the extreme right wing wins only about half the votes, they've gained - and abused - almost all of the power. Not just in government where they control or dominate the White House and the entire executive branch, as well as the House and the Senate and Supreme Court. They also control almost all businesses, media empires, and more.

Until recently, almost all liberals just sat back, taking the high road. Like Charlie Brown with the football Lucy always pulls away - most liberals and moderates keep falling for right wing dirty tricks and fake calls for bipartisanship over and over. Now those of us who care about each other and want to protect revered American traditions have to decide. Will we just keep taking it and taking it and taking it, or will we stand up for our beliefs? We know the right wingers will attack us as traitors if we do, and gutless wimps if we don't. We've tried to indulge the right wing extremists long enough. We see where it's gotten us. It's time to try another way.

This quotation expresses what I mean by patriotic dissent:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

- President Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

The problem isn't those of us who tell the awful truth about right wing jihads, failures, corruption and crimes. The problem is right wingers set a "divide and conquer" dynamic in motion. Those who push - and those who don't oppose - the right wing ideology keep making new problems and making current problems worse.

"Nice liberals" think they're helping when they lash out at those of us who speak out. They think they're being fair and enlightened when they attack those of us who oppose the failed and immoral right wing creed. They're wrong. All they do is help cruel, abusive extremists hurt and kill innocent people by the thousands if not millions.

I will not support someone who claims to be Commander in Chief, but when his own officials admit his administration cannot keep us safe, uses his time and our resources to divide Americans against each other. I will not "tolerate" right wing lies about Social Security and Iraq and now Iran when lives are at stake.

I will not accept "advice" from wimpy liberals who want to reason with unreasonable thugs. I will not stop asking the critical question: Why does anyone who cares about America and American lives still support Bush? I will not stop my patriotic dissent against horrendous policies, lies and failures that keep hurting and killing people. Will you?

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