Molly Ivins: Noble ideals, nasty actions

[Dudley_DUright]

I don't get it. The divide between the rhetoric and the reality in this administration is larger than I can span. The dissonance between the noble ideals expressed and the nasty actions carried out is too raw for me.

For example, Bush announces: "Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men." (I got that nugget from the 2003 State of the Union via an article by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully.) So how come we give less to the afflicted than any other advanced nation?

And how come we're torturing people? How come we're putting people into high office -- attorney general, Department of Homeland Security -- who unleashed the whole torture scandal? The International Red Cross says torture is still going on today at Guantanamo. Torture has blackened our name around the world and made the president's words about bringing freedom and democracy sound hollow and hypocritical.

<snip>

Dogged if I know what these people have against SS, a program that works just fine and has kept elderly people from having to eat cat food for many years now. Because the right wing has somehow become a cult of anti-government nuthatches, I have no idea where we're headed. The purposes of government, according to the U.S. Constitution, is "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18490