Yesterday, I ran across this tweet from Willard “Mitt” Romney, as he was shamefully trying to woo and court supporters of Ron Paul, after Paul himself retweeted it:
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These are all the replies that tweet has received. I couldn’t help but laugh and share (forgive the language):
https://twitter.com/mrboetel/status/225744624772329472 https://twitter.com/popfreeradio/status/225742673892503553 https://twitter.com/martinthegrate/status/225742379066470400
“Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” –Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[UPDATE: Part 3, “specific abuses of Executive Power” is up]
Yesterday, I wrote a post about how I’ve become so burdened by the abuse of civil liberties by the Executive branch, that I have decided that this is a big enough of a deal–and the time is crucial enough–to warrant this being the one issue I use to determine who I’m voting for this Presidential election.
I knew I was brief yesterday, but wow. That post ended up causing a lot of emails, texts, comments and Facebook posts from people really cautious about what I had said, and had a lot of clarifying questions for me. Some issues will become clearer as I continue to write about this, but I wanted to address some crucial things up front.
First, some definition
As Wikipedia puts it: “Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations.” To put it another way, our “civil liberties” are what is clearly laid out in the Bill of Rights.
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1- I really wish the entire idea of teleprompters would die a quick, painful death. I would much rather get back to the days when Presidents wrote out their speeches and had sheets in front of them during the speech that they were speaking from, rather than reading from.
2- I’ve got to admit it, Mitch Daniels did pretty darn good in his response. It was a very refreshing change in style from Paul Ryan and (oh my god) Michele Bachmann last year. It still had a definite ideological twinge, and still sounded more like a stockholders meeting where the executive must, under any circumstance, talk about how good their company is and how weak their competition is, no matter the results or numbers. But in the end, it was far more thoughtful and intelligent than anything else the Republicans have put out in the past few years, even if it was completely devoid of real, genuine suggestions on moving forward on anything.
3- The media is already painting this as a speech primarily about wealth disparity. First, he talked about a lot more than just that, and secondly, he proposed nothing more radical than letting temporary tax cuts expire for them. Wow.
Here we go again. This usually happens every four years in the summer after the major Party Conventions, and the full-blown presidential campaign is in full swing. This time, though, it’s happening about six-months early in January (I wrote about this quadrennial event back in ’08).
And so, I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads-up that my political self is rousing from his hibernation, and I tell you what–he’s more passionate and (this is new!) clear-headed about what he thinks and why.
(Attached to this post, you can see a picture of my inner “political animal”. He’s been around for a while now. Thanks, Dad.)
So expect a shift in the content of this blog. Yes, there will still be plenty of pastoral and theological musings, but you’ll also see an increasing number of political posts on this site in the coming weeks and months (hey, maybe I can try and start writing for Patrol Magazine again!).
I feel like I’m finally settling into a cohesive and articulate (and defensible) set of beliefs concerning politics-influenced-by-faith: where we’re off the mark, we’re we need to be, and how to get there. So, expect some ideological posts on that stuff, but also expect some commentary on the unfolding politics as they move forward toward November.
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the long way home | the blog of Paul Burkhart 