NationStates Jolt Archive

I am reposting my article threads here, along with my poll, since it vanished somehow. :P

Election 2004
by Shalrirorchia

In November, America will make a very important decision regarding the future of our country. The issue, of course, is whether or not to re-elect George W. Bush to the Presidency of the United States. While attempting to remain open-minded (with
hopes that my fellow citizens will follow suit), I will make the case against George Bush with rational thought.

Failures in Economic Policy
George W. Bush has presided over a tremendous loss of American jobs (although to be fair, not all of these two-million jobs were as a direct result of his policies). He recently touted one month’s results, claiming 300,000 new jobs. But many of these jobs are entry-level. They don’t provide the salaries and benefits that Americans need to protect their families. And what’s worse, the President has done nothing to stem the onrushing tide of American jobs to firms in India, China, and other nations where cheap labor can be had. The outsourcing of jobs has become so prevalent that business executives are having American workers train the very overseas workers who will be taking their jobs.

Failures in Leadership
President Bush has made a complete mockery of the United States in he eyes of the world community. Even our own allies are questioning our motives; George W. Bush typifies the worst of the foreign perception that America is filled with shoot-from-the-hip cowboys. Although his invasion of Afghanistan was both justified and commendable, his performance after the war has left much to be desired. In addition, his invasion of Iraq has proven to be a major strategic blunder. No links to Al-Qaeda have been discovered there, nor have any weapons of mass destruction been found. Testimony from former Bush Administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke consistently describe the President as being blind to all but what he wishes to see. The very day after 9-11, George Bush was demanding links be uncovered between the attacks in Iraq when no such links have ever been discovered. Our diversion in Iraq has, however, given time to Al-Qaida to regroup and prepare for more attacks. Although it is of vital importance that we keep America safe, we should be sure of what we’re doing before we start killing people! Bush has acted in a consistently reckless manner unbefitting of the leader of the Free World.

Failures in Honesty
Evidence suggests that George W. Bush has not dealt with the American public in good faith on a wide variety of issues. He deliberately misled Congress on the costs entailed by his Medicare reforms, claiming that banning the government from negotiating on drug prices would somehow save taxpayer money. His oft-quoted “No Child Left Behind” philosophy has, in practice, been a miserable failure; George Bush refused to spend the money to ensure that America’s children are given adequate education. The Bush Administration is still refusing to turn over records of who they met and what was said in meetings with energy industry lobbyists; meetings that eventually spawned a Bush Administration energy bill loaded with perks for the industry. Bush’s government has also awarded billions of dollars in non-competitive contracts to companies friendly to the Bush Administration (and whose executives are in some cases actually serving IN the Administration itself!). The Bush Administration has also claimed the right to keep the details of these contracts from the public by labeling them as national security interests. In effect, the Bush government is claiming the right to spend an undisclosed amount of your tax dollars on an unknown project that benefits a mysterious company that they refuse to tell you about. Come on, America! You deserve better than THIS!

George W. Bush has not earned my trust, he has not earned my respect. He does not speak for me, nor do I feel confident in his ethereal leadership abilities. And most importantly, he has not earned a second term in the White House.

In The Name of Liberty and Morality

On gay rights and the United States
by Shalrirorchia

The sudden onset of court actions both for and against gay marriage has, without doubt, been breathtaking in the last few weeks. Same-sex couples are tying the knot in San Francisco, while across the country in Washington President Bush angrily denounces “judicial activism”.Where did all this come from?
The entire question of gay marriage can perhaps be boiled down into one inescapable question: Just how will we, the United States of America, interpret the concept that all citizens shall be equal under the law? It is not as easy a decision as it might seem at first. There are many arguments against gay marriage; I have not been particularly impressed by any of them. There are those who argue that heterosexual marriage is a pillar of society, that accepting gay marriage is a prelude to the very collapse of the United States. They claim that countries who have accepted gay marriage in the past have shown just such a decline (which they should know is an assumption of pure folly). Any student of history could tell you that nations collapse because of many different factors, not just one social event. Others claim that gay relationships are morally wrong, and that marriage is meant only for unions between a man and a woman. Such a claim is totally subjective. I would challenge anyone who retains this viewpoint to think deeply and honestly about where their morals came from. Time and time again, the arguments I have heard used to support this opposition are religious arguments. The ultimate goal of the United States is earthly freedom, and as such the law was written not by God, but by men of integrity. A definitive wall was built to separate Church and State, and both conservative and liberal courts have refused to breach that wall. Such was the will of the Founding Fathers themselves. And we must not forget that we are talking about people here. I suspect that whether you are religious or not, you would agree that pain is evil and that inflicting pain on other people is also evil. In refusing to allow gays and lesbians to enter loving, permanent relationships we are hurting them. We are refusing to recognize that their love for each other is genuine; indeed, in some states we are refusing to even allow them basic economic and legal protections. In our modern, free United States, we can force one member of a homosexual couple to testify against the other in open court; in a case involving a heterosexual couple, spousal privilege can be claimed and a wife cannot be compelled to testify against her husband or vice versa. At every turn we shame homosexuals, forcing them to hide in plain sight, causing untold psychological injury in the process. We hurt them because some of us cannot learn to tolerate what and who they are. And it is all done in the name of religious belief that, in the name of Washington and Jefferson, should not even be present in public policy.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, ordained and established the Constitution. It is both our highest law and the moral backbone of our nation. It is the tool of the Declaration of Independence wherein we emphatically stated that all men are created equal. It created the judicial system whose job it is to interpret the Law, and thus the Supreme Court of Massachusetts did its’ Constitutionally-ordained job when it proclaimed that homosexual couples ought to have the same right as heterosexual couples. We stand at a moral crossroads: Hatred or acceptance? Prejudice or honor? If Americans really want America to be the leader of the Free World, we need to accept the responsibility that position entails. We need to take a stand and grant these people the rights that they have hitherto been denied. And we need to understand that, in so doing, we are rising to the call of morality that this country was founded on, the principles that our oldest and proudest legal documents put forth. If we fail to remain true to our promises in the Constitution, then how can we call ourselves just, ethical, or moral without feeling the prick of the thorns of hypocrisy?