The last soldiers have come home over the last several days. The war is finally over. Now we will be told the most fundamental lies that democracy is flowering in Iraq, that we are a stronger and more secure nation, and that we didn't attack and destroy a sovereign nation for oil but as righteous vengence and the right of self defense. It is a self deluding lie
When a nation repudiates its own morality and its own ideals of justice, honor and fairness the way our nation has for the last thirty years it destroys the moral fiber of a nation. As George Monbiot pointed out on Common Dreams if we allow freedom for some to mean the freedom to exploit and degrade the lives of others then the system is not free it is unjust and immoral. The freedom to exploit and degrade the lives and opportunities of others for the profit of the 1% is one definition of Colonialism as practiced in Iraq, Afghanistan and now as we are learning from our totally dysfunctional Congress, even against the majority of the American people over taxes and unemployment.
The defense appropriations act recently passed by both houses of Congress contained the right of the president to detain and hold without charges and trial even Americans who are just alleged to be terrorists. If that doesn't cause Americans to understand how even average Americans are now connected to marches in Tahrir Square and other places maybe understanding that unemployment, rising food costs and lack of input into governmental decisions are the main causative factors in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.
But then we have been treated to thirty years of Right Wing beliefs in their ideological. moral, ethical, and economic superiority to even their fellow Americans. While the Conservative War on Terror needs to be seen as a religious Holy War, their political philosophy of Libertarianism has been an economic war on the middle class and poor. Unemployment is a form of economic oppression as is out sourcing, and taxation is redistribution of wealth even when it is tax cuts for the rich.
Milton Friedman in his 1962 magnum opus Capitalism and Freedom brought into reality the idea that regulation is tyranny, but this concept of freedom from regulation has meant dirty water, dirty air, defective products, tainted food, declining incomes, destruction of public education, banks destroying the economy, and endless war and destruction of our Bill of Rights under a phony pretense of security. Obviously freedom for the 1% is tyranny for the 99%
What the Right refuses to admit is that no one's behavior is free from a negative impact on someone elses freedom. Governmment is there to referee and to impose legal restraints on freedoms that interfere with other people's freedoms.- or freedom's that conflict with fairness, justice and humanity. One mans freedom is another man's tyranny which is something Conservatives refuse to accept. That is because like all Colonial ideologies before it Conservatives have convinced themselves that they are superior racially, economically, and as a class. Some would say those are the seeds of fascism. They have destroyed this nation economically, morally, and spiritually which are always the consequences of Colonialism and ideologies of superiority.
Comments