The Independent Liberal- A Lion Deciphering America: Happy Holidays...Political Ones Anyway

Greetings to you friends and also to those of you who belong to my small but loyal reader base. I've had trouble deciding what's important in politics this week. Ok fine- it's all important, right? After all, there's the usual bickering between Democrats and Republicans as each group tries to one-up the other by proving their party is better and the other is worse and all that jazz. That's important, isn't it? In the meantime, Christmas and New Years are fast approaching and it seems that both sides of the aisle have failed to improve this year- they just keep getting more dishonest and more corrupt on the whole. Do you think either party has lived up to its promise to leave the nation better off than it found it this year? You won't find evidence of that anywhere because it doesn't exist.

As the end of the year approaches, I find myself becoming more and more certain that the United States doesn't have a good, major political party. We basically have a bad party and a worse party- the identities of which each of us either decide for ourselves or are led to accept by those we trust. Despite the rhetorical certainties of others, I myself can't say that one party has been worse than the other throughout history. If we are honest, both sides have had good and bad leaders, glorious and evil days, eras of triumph and times of decay. No, we can only judge with any objective fact the parties as we know them today and in the last few decades. Based on that simple truth, I can only conclude that the Democratic Party is the bad albeit stupid party and the Republican Party is the worse, nay, fallen party. Briefly, I will explain why I draw these conclusions.

Back in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Democrats more or less ran the United States. I'm not just talking about Congress, the White House and Washington- Democrats ran the nation at both local and national levels. Many good things came out of this prolonged era of progressivism including increased realization of civil rights, working conditions that were good for both employees and employers for the first time ever, the most powerful military the world had ever seen, the end of Communism as a world threat and finally the economic boom-time under the fairly liberal-conservative President George W. Bush and conservative-liberal President Bill Clinton. Americans were happy, healthy, employed and on the move in a good direction. Sure, many liberals did bad and stupid things during their reign but they left America better than they found it.

Of course, starting in 1994, conservatives took control of American government. Most of them look back and blame America's current decline on the progressive era. Many of them say the stronger economy of those times was not the result of liberal leadership but rather the result of corporate America- the very same corporate America that began shipping jobs overseas when those evil liberals tried to make them offer employees the opportunity to earn decent wages and benefits with their hard work. Most conservatives say the rise of Islamic terrorism came about because liberals did not take a strong stand against it- which of course is the reason President Reagan funded militant Muslims including Osama bin Laden as long as they would fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Conservatives say almost to a man that America would have been better off with conservative leadership these past several decades- which of course is proven by the great Republican leaders like President Nixon of Watergate fame, President Ford who pardoned Nixon for no good reason, President Reagan who fired air-traffic controllers for complaining that fatigue from too much forced overtime was making air travel dangerous, and finally President George W. Bush who fights consistently to give tax breaks to corporate America even as corporate America continues to ship American jobs overseas. Truly, America is better off because of Republican leadership- there can be no doubt.

The truth as I see it, whether it is believed or not, ridiculed or not, accepted or even considered at all, is that while America has seen both benefit and suffering at the hands of liberals and conservatives in recent years, most of the good things have come from the Left, not the Right. The Republican Party, the main realization of the conservative wing of America, has done little but hurt the nation and it is growing more and more apparent that this isn't going to change any time soon. See how the GOP is trying to legalize spying on American citizens without a warrant? That's what the Patriot Act is, at least if the GOP has its way. How can a land truly be free where a person can't even buy a book without the government finding out about it? Does constant surveillance make us feel better? Does the constant risk of government spying make us safer? Does the potentiall loss of our Constitutional rights make us more secure in our lives? If it does, the US is truly a nation of the undeserving.

I think of these things as the holidays draw near and I ponder anew what the New Year will bring. I don't know really because I'm not a truth-sayer, a seer, a prophet or a visionary. The only thing I can say for certain, and so can all of you out there, is that America is not heading in a good direction. We need a new captain, a new and good leader, a rallying point to lead America forward. I don't know who this person is but her or she is out there. Therefore, I am going to weigh every vote next year extra carefully and I hope you will all do the same. Weigh candidates and ballot issues on merit and potential consequences- not the rhetoric of false promise that we so often are subjected to. Open your eyes wide and keep them open for the long haul. Trust me when I say we have fallen too far already. Thank you, Happy Holidays and God bless!