Being Republican Light

It drives us crazy, Democrats acting like Republicans. Whether it is voting for the bankruptcy bill or Patriot Act, voting for awful Bush appointees, or supporting the Iraq debacle, too often our Democratic legislators and leaders abandon liberal ideals and vote with the GOP.

Well, if we are going to do it, lets do it right. Let’s embrace Republican ideals. Let’s use them as a cudgel to beat the GOP into submission. What do I have in mind?

How about this:

“We yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.” — Dwight Eisenhower

And this:

“The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government”– Teddy Roosevelt

There are many things these two great Presidents have said that I disagree with, but there are tons of quotes by each that completely contradict what the current GOP is trying to do to America.
What would Ike say about the Neo-Con agenda of vastly expanding the military?:

• “[E]ach proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy…”
• “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
• “Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it.”

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How would Ike react to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, etc?:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

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How do you think Ike would respond to Bolton? What would he say to BushCo trying to use the U.N. to justify invading Iraq?:

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
                                    _________
“If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.”

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How do you think Eisenhower would respond to the GOP noise machine?:

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

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What would Ike say about the Patriot Act?

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

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What would Ike say about “fixing” intelligence to take us to war or raising the threat level to win an election?

In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

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How would Ike react to using the WOT as an excuse to run up huge deficits while giving tax cuts to the overclass?

• “The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.”
• “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”

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What would Ike say about the whole concept of the WOT?

• “This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”
• “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
• “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

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What would Ike’s reaction be to the ChickenHawks that run the GOP?

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”

                                       ______________

Now let’s look at Teddy Roosevelt.  He was president during the progressive era, and became known as a reformer, a trust-buster, a regulator of businesses, a friend of the environment, and an advocate of labor. It was a different world and a different country 100 years ago, but much of what he said still applies.

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What would Teddy Roosevelt say about the GOP being in bed with Enron, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, WorldCom, Wal-Mart, corporate welfare, Tort reform, and deregulation?

• “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”
• “We demand that big business give the people a square deal.”
• “It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”
• “I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”
• “It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form … they shall do so under absolutely truthful representations … Great corporations exist only because they were created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”
• “The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.”
• “The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the state and the nation toward property… More and more it is evident that the State and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures.”
• “The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.”

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And what about the influence of those same corporations and other special interests on both parties today?

• “If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary.”
• “Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.”
• “One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.”
• “The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.”
• “We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”
• “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.'”
• “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done … Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”
• “There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”
• “Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.”

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The flip side of the corporate issue is how the parties treat labor. What would Teddy think about the GOP’s anti-labor bent?

• “If I were an employee, a working man … or a wage-earner of any sort, I undoubtedly would join a union of my trade… I believe in the union and I believe that all men are morally bound to help to the extent of their powers in the common interests advanced by the union.”
• “It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.”
• “No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. We need comprehensive workmen’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States.”

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What would Teddy, the father of the national parks system, say about Bush’s record on the environment, his excuse that the economy requires fewer environmental protections, and his desire to drill, drill, drill?

• “To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase it’s usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very properity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”
• “In your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.”
• “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.”
• “Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers”
• “Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”
• “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.”
• “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
• “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”

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Teddy lived before the new deals and often spoke of the value of hard work, but he also understood that the playing field is not level. How would Teddy react to the GOP desire to cut all social services?

• “Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense… We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.”
• “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.”
• “This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”
• “There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.”
• “Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.”
• “Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.”

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What would Teddy, who lived in the era of the muckrakers, say about our timid MSM and the right-wing noise machine?

• “There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.”
• “At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal.”
• “Avoid the base hypocrisy of condemning in one man what you pass over in silence when committed by another.”

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What would Teddy say about Bush’s tax cuts for the overclass, including the elimination of the inheritance tax?

• “As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual – a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax of course, to be imposed by the national and not the state government. Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.”
• “In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows.”
• “The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective – a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”
• “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.”

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How would Teddy react to the Rove-Plame scandal and the GOP’s defense of Rove?

• “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it.””Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.”
• “It is the duty of all citizens, irrespective of party, to denounce, and, so far as may be, to punish crimes against the public on the part of politicians or officials.”
• “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.”

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What would Teddy say about Black box voting?

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

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What would Teddy say about the anti-immigrant movement?

Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, or character; it is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent.

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How would Teddy react to John Bolton and the PNAC agenda?

“Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights.

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How would Teddy react to the shameful way BushCo is cutting veterans benefits?

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

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We all know that Teddy Roosevelt said “Speak softly and carry a big stick”, but what would Teddy say about the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes?

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting.

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So, what other historical Republican quotes can we use against the GOP?