Bush Haters Association - debate,discuss

---

Thanks to [Rondel] for the idea. You can all thank her however you wish (as long as it's friendly -- harassing messages don't count).

This page is for those who wish to express their feelings in deeper ways, rather than having to use lots of comments sections to get across an opinion. It is where you can hold debates and discuss things in ways you may feel uncomfortable doing so in the main wiki.

I have left this page with no password so new topics for debates and discussions can be added and comments written. I trust you however, to not write anything stupid, unecessary, offending or down right rude, as it will be removed and so will the person responsible. This wiki was made for YOU to use and we would hate to have to take this privelege away from you but if we are forced to we will. That is a promise. Please use the wiki responsibly.

---

[Dil*]:One of the important things about democracy; Seperation of church and state. Whatever the hell happened to that? We can't have any seperation of church and state with bush's constant rabble about how god gave him is bloody position. No, god didn't give you your positon, your fat wallet did.

---

[Darth Wobble]'s statment:

So Bush is looking for Osama bin laden because he killed lots of people in the world trade centres and that I don't mind because bin laden is proved to be guilty, but why suddenly start a war against Iraq, someone who has done nothing to affect the USA? (plus they havent got any proof that Iraq has weapon of mass destruction). I was very annoyed with that, so thats why i joned this wiki.

[Lord Kügenheim] - Please write in proper english, i dont want to have to clean everyones statements.

---

[mnightshade]
During this presidency there have been many horrible decisions made to debate. In articles in Rolling Stone I have read of things that happened here at home that the 'War Coverage' seemed to neglect, or rather to distract us from. In the northwest (I believe Idaho-but don't quote me on that) trees that were long considered safe from harm were cut down with government approval literally overnight, without the permission of local inhabitants. Proposals were made by the administration to cut down part of the Everglades in Georgia(though they were denied), maximum pollution output levels were raised, tax cuts were made for the wealthiest, and the famous 'No Child Left Behind Act' cut money to schools that were most in need of funding (for instance the highschool I went to and the middleschool my brother attended). Efforts were and are still being made to ban the right to abortion(when the country is already over populated with welfare babies), and the war on drugs, esp. marijuana, was taken to an even higher level under the supervision of Donald Rumsfield(which in my opinion wastes tons of taxes that could be spent on catching murderers and rapists). And, of course, Freedom of speech took a hard blow after 9/11, when Bush protesters were deemed 'unpatriotic' because they protested for peace and certain songs(some that have been around for decades) were even banned from the radio because they were 'offensive'.War ? It seems to me like it's already within our borders.

---

From [Rondel]:

I know this is long, but I ran across these quotes (in the context of the short editorial comments which cause them to be part of a longer column, quoted here in full) and immediately thought of this group, but wasn't sure which forum to post them to, or how. So I mentioned it on the main page, and someone agreed that this would be a good place to post them. I'll let the reader draw their own conclusions -- and please, feel free to verify the quotes' accuracy for yourself. A thinking, informed opinion is always the best one to hold, in my (thinking, informed, yet humble) opinion.

---begin quoted material---

Notable, Quotable Presidents
Kevin Nelson, AlterNet
February 13, 2004

Forty-three presidents have served the United States in these past 228 years, overseers of the longest running democracy in the world.

While the Bush II Administration's "War on Terror" and its Orwellian progeny -- Patriot Acts I & II -- demand that Americans relinquish their civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and Constitution in exchange for Homeland Security, we must never forget that this country has survived a Revolutionary War, a Civil War, two World Wars, a Cold War, and half a century of CIA malfeasance, without devolving into a totalitarian state.

America's greatest presidents were keenly aware of the fragility of liberty and freedom of expression, and worked steadfastly toward their protection.

Consider how the following sentiments would be interpreted by today's media pundits, were each of these men currently campaigning for the office of the presidency. Which candidate would be endlessly derided as the "peacenik," the "America hater," the "anarchist," or the "lunatic fringe" candidate? Which candidates would be placed on terrorist watch lists?

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864, five months before his assasination

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -Teddy Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -Abraham Lincoln

"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans' freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Columbia University, 10 days before his assassination, Nov. 12, 1963

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison, June 16, 1788

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." -Woodrow Wilson

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -Ronald Reagan, March 2, 1977

"There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress ... than I had any conception of, before I became President of the United States." -James K. Polk, December 16, 1846

"When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were." -John F. Kennedy

"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation." -James E. Carter

"There is nothing wrong in America that can't be fixed with what is right in America." -William Clinton

"The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people." - Andrew Johnson

"The more I study it [the Constitution], the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity." -Calvin Coolidge, 1929

"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world." - Benjamin Harrison

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." -George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli, 1796

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." -Thomas Jefferson, February 10, 1814

"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed." -William McKinley, March 4, 1897

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." -Thomas Jefferson, August 19, 1785

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." -Harry S. Truman

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." -Teddy Roosevelt, December 3, 1907

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." -Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 4, 1933

"In the field of world policy; I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor." -FDR, March 4, 1933

"I will never apologize for the United States of America -- I don't care what the facts are." -George Bush, Newsweek, August 15, 1989 (Commenting on the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the U.S. warship Vincennes, killing 290 civilian passengers.)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

"Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present." -Lyndon B. Johnson, July 21, 1964

"Peace is more than just the absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom. And true peace dictates the recognition of human rights." - Ronald Reagan, September 22, 1986

"Depends on what your definition of 'is' is." -Bill Clinton, August 17, 1998

"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office." -George W. Bush, 1989

"I don't know whether I'm going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just the way it goes." -George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." -George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier -- so long as I'm the dictator." -George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

Honorable Mention: Scottish jurist and historian, Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813) summed up the natural progression of self-governance thusly: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Kevin Nelson is editor of the weekly column Drug War Briefs, which appears on AlterNet (alternet.org).

---end quoted material---

---