Privacy, my Ashcroft...

I am a die hard, card carrying, placard waving Bush supporter. (George W. Bush, supporter) Team leader, did mailings, get out the vote, community proselytizing, Bush advocate. I believe that having a President in office who respects the sinfulness of man, while pushing for the very best in all of us is a tremendous asset. That's why I don't understand the enthusiasm that the administration seems to feel for a permanent Patriot Act. Who knows when the end will come on our war against terror? Will anyone sign a treaty? Will we install a democratic government? Or will the terrorists slowly fade away into some remote country to take over, suppress and castigate a people they will then call their own. Leaving the United States with it's own lingering Terrorist, a monolithic government bureaucracy with unprecedented power unleashed by a terrorist economy based Patriot Act. A utilitarian view of this might come closest to truth. John Stuart Mill once said, ‘A people, may prefer a free government....if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; or if in a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, in all these cases, they are more or less unfit for liberty. And though it may have been to their good to have had it for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.’ Our leaders today are great men.
I trust George W. Bush. I trust John Ashcroft. But what about the future leaders of this country? Do I trust Eric Holder? Do I trust Eliot Spitzer? What about the multitude of leaders that are currently nameless, faceless bureaucrats doing the grunt work for those I currently trust. Does anybody wonder what a second Clinton Administration or the like might do with it's new found control? They were giving the Patriot Act a test run even before it became law, just ask the CIA who finally found their files in the White House residence. No, there should be serious, conscientious discussion about the freedoms we've sacrificed in the name of security. We, the people, have a significant obligation to reign in the freedoms we've given away. For Freedom given away, is freedom lost. With the Bush administration soon to be a historical footnote, it's time to take back the freedoms we borrowed to them. The Patriot Act must be fixed.

Bushes Need Weads?

It would seem that the distribution of the "Secret Tapes", will certainly offer great publicity for Doug Wead's newly released book "All the President's Children". How Mr. Wead could possibly justify tape recording and then making public these tapes is beyond me. A temporary lapse in judgement to sell more books, perhaps? I've met Mr. Wead, and believe that he truly considers himself to be a friend to the Bush family. That being said, after spending some time reading the tape transcripts from the former Bush Sr. advisor and W subordinate, one would have to conclude that the tapes can only bode well for the sake of history. It's straight talk and frankly sounds just like the W we've seen for 4 1/2 years on the world stage. There are many things that can affect the continuation of the Bush administration in an adverse way, but this, shan't be one of them. One has to reflect upon the sheer convenience of the tapes release as far as Mr. Wead is concerned. That must be the reason for his lapse in judgement. But more importantly, the tapes speak well of President Bush. Or better said, President Bush speaks well for himself. It seems that the MSM would wish this to bode negatively upon George W. Bush, but I don't see how can it help but do the opposite. It confirms what most of us expected. A non-denial, denial is truly an affirmation. Fortunately, for all of us, the methodology Bush chooses to handle his past provides exactly the ambiguous cover that is important for us as parents. Which are his intentions. Did anyone really believe that George Bush--the family clown, the college BMOC, the prankster, cheerleader and party extrovert never did drugs? By keeping it to himself, George Bush demonstrated common decency for all of us that have to answer the question to our kids. Should we address the question of drugs with our kids? Absolutely. Should we have to defend the actions of George Bush, no way. Should we have to persuade them that just because the President did it, doesn't make it right? No. But we should be able to use the information, subtle in it's release, to ask the question, to present it to our offspring. To start the dialogue with our kids we can facilitate the process of sifting through the rightness and wrongness of his actions in a way that we control. All in all I think that the Bush Administration couldn't have done better than to have these tapes released on que. The world view that President Bush seems to aspire to is that we live in a fallen world and we'd better make the best of it. We are sinners. He's a sinner. These tapes affirm that he doesn't purport to be perfect. They indicate he believes that we should aspire to, and focus on greatness. Again, not that we're always great, our choices are many times wrong. Those achilles heals' should not hinder our pursuit. And that, I believe is a critical lesson to learn from the W. Bush era. Certainly it is a far cry from the Prescott Bush, or the George HW Bush political bio fabrications. But then, I don't suppose that W has done any of this in the way that Prescott or HW would have expected.