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Elective Issues

Authored by Michael Pate on January 6th, 2004 at 12:04 PM

I hope this exchange is as useful to its participants as it is to me. Lately I have found myself too easily seduced into a belief that no one who is neither crazy nor dim-witted nor TV-psychotic nor pretending to be asleep could actually support the policies of the Bush Administration. But the Bush supporters who have arrived here are, with a few exceptions, intelligent, articulate, and more courteous in debate than many of my own cohort. This discussion is a great reminder - as if I should need one - that the other side deserves to be taken as seriously as I would have them take me. - John Perry Barlow

An important point in online discussions that we all need to be reminded of from time to time. It must better to attack your opponents with arguments with clear, reasoned facts than just attack your opponent.

One of the things that has bothered me more than anything else over the past few months has been the decision by certain members of the Democratic Party to divide the country. I still remember the unity that existed in the weeks after September 11th and I miss it.

For about a year, Republicans and Democrats agreed on the need vigorously to prosecute the war on terror. No longer. Nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror. - Daniel Pipes

The other thing that bothers me is the fact that it seems more and more to me (and many others) that this election has become a referendum on the War of Terror. That if George Bush loses, it will either end or be rendered so ineffectual as to be meaningless.

Personally, I think there were lots of economic and social issues to have used in an effective campaign against George Bush. But it is beginning to look extremely likely that that is now what this election is going to be about.

But comments like this still give me hope.

It breaks my heart whenever anybody dies, but we liberated 25 million people who were living under a dictator. It puts us on the side of democracy in the Arab world. Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort. - Bob Kerrey

Links in this entry:

Democrats Unlearn 9/11
Leveling with the public, enduring what Israel endures, pardoning Lenny, and more
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