Fooling the People

by Larry Sakin

One of the great things about writing a column is you get to hear from a number of people on both sides of the political spectrum. One of the frequent comments I get is about how this column has been unbalanced in favor of progressivism, and that I’ve strayed from the concepts espoused in my first piece (Polarity, June 1, 2004) for this magazine. These writer are correct, I do tend to be more critical of the right. But it’s mostly because of the marvelous irony in conservative policy- it just leaves itself open to intelligent critique.

Frankly, I’d be inclined to publish more conservative thought in this column if I could find any that weren’t completely incomprehensible. I do believe in balance, but I’m unwilling to promote ideology that has more holes in it than a pound of Swiss cheese. Take for example a report released today by the State Department which criticizes Pakistan and China over human rights abuses. Now I hate human rights violations but frankly, I guffawed while reading this report. While the US condemns human rights abuses in both countries, the US is sending suspected terrorists to other countries which use torture. There are thousands of articles on the internet sighting this practice, both condemning and supporting the action. It’s a terrific hypocrisy, and while it angers me that people accused of no crime are being subject to torture, I can’t help but laugh at the inconsistency of these two diverse US policies.

Of course our new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes in the report that the “Bush administration is on the right side of freedom’s divide.” Well what else is she going to write? Does anyone in their ‘right’ mind believe Rice is going to criticize the president? Geeze, the irony is so rich here it’d raise your cholesterol fifty points if you ate it.

Another gem of foreign policy is this notion that creating elections in the Middle East is somehow related to democracy building. This one’s a killer, because I’ve read and heard very intelligent people whom I admire get fooled by this one. Allowing the opportunity for people to participate in an election is not in and of itself democratic- it’s a baby step in the right direction, but it’s not the kind of democratic victory it’s made out to be. What’s important is how the elected serve the people. Let’s take the coveted Iraqi elections for example. The Shi ‘ite majority and the Kurds won the election, as everybody on planet earth now knows. Now, let’s say the will of the Iraqi people is to have American troops and contractors kicked out of the country and the new lawmakers vote to oust the pair. How long do you think it would be before the Bush administration started denouncing the new legislature and start throwing sticks at the Iraqi leadership? This is significant because if the legislature in a country does not represent the will of the people and only serves as a puppet regime to an autocratic force, it’s not democratic at all. It’s kind of like those old films of the Soviet Union politburo they showed to us in grade school. The president made a proposal, and the politburo all voted for it. No debate was incurred and there was no expressed opposition.

We’re witnessing the same thing happening in our country. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the conservative legislatures all believe that because they were voted back into power, they have a license from the American people to do what they want. This is a classic mistake, one that conservatives have made throughout history. People in a democratic society expect their representatives to, well, represent their interests. When officials stop doing that, they find themselves with an angry constituency. The Terri Schiavo case comes to mind. Even many conservative Christians now say the government should never have involved itself in this case, and the conservatives are going to lose big-time when Ms. Schiavo perishes. The issue is creating a huge split in the Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln’s admonition of 140 years ago still rings true. “You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” The conservatives in the White House and Congress need to re-acquaint themselves with this wisdom.

Perhaps sometime in the future there will be some conservative policy that actually makes sense. When it happens, I’ll be happy to sing it’s praises along with the policies of the left. In the meantime, you’ll pardon me for not wanting to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

http://www.mytown.ca/sakin/