Yesterday's Politics
Jan. 21st, 2005 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaI was listening to The News Hour as I often do if I'm up at 11:00 PM when WNYC-AM rebroadcasts it, and as a result ended up hearing much of Rutherford Bush's speech.
People have already commented upon the almost toxic amount of irony of that man spending 25 minutes praising "freedom" while his secret police busily confiscated protest signs. But it wasn't until he praised the great institution of Social Security that this realization came to me:
Headline: Bush Promises to Privatize Freedom
Washington, 20 January 2005: In a major policy speech, mandatious president George W. Bush announced that after 215 years of securing the blessings of liberty, the American government will be getting out of the freedom business.
"Freedom is the most important part of being an American. But we are facing a crisis in freedom. For too long, people have relied on the government to protect their freedom, but really, that's just an accounting trick. People should be free to choose how to get their freedom, whether it be from Wal-Mart or their own apocalyptic church. Freedom is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington. That is why my first act as president will be to propose to Congress a system in which people will be free to invest up to 25% of their own freedom in Freedom Unlimited Grants. As the song says, 'Freedom isn't free. No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee.'"
Entering his second term with a majority in both houses of Congress and the opportunity to appoint as many as "7 new Supreme Court justices to replace the ones who get 'cancer,' if that's what it takes," Bush is expected to act quickly to assure that the US Government no longer provides freedom.
Republicans point to the terrific success of freedom-privatization over the last decade in Russia, Somalia, and Iraq as examples of where a country can go if the people no longer have to rely on government for the provision of freedom. Analyst Grover Norquist, of Citizens for Freedom Relief, pointed out that American freedom has changed over the years. "When George Washington founded the idea of freedom, America was very different from now. There were four non-free people to support every free one. Now, it's closed to 1 to 1; in some years, there are even more free Americans than otherwise. Obviously, this is unsustainable, and we need to move back to a model in which the people were able to choose their own level of freedom, from industrialist to indentured servant to house-slave. We've seen some very interesting pilot programs with that last option, ranging even up to the Cabinet."
Sen. Barbara Boxer, from an undisclosed location, responded to Bush's speech with this statement: "It's always the case that Bush lavishes the most extravagant praise on programs as he prepares to gut them. Freedom has served America well at least since the New Deal, but with this speech, it's clear that it's time to kiss it goodbye." CIA analysts consider the message likely to be authentic, though they have not been able to determine the substance used to write the message on the inside of a shipping crate.
People have already commented upon the almost toxic amount of irony of that man spending 25 minutes praising "freedom" while his secret police busily confiscated protest signs. But it wasn't until he praised the great institution of Social Security that this realization came to me:
Headline: Bush Promises to Privatize Freedom
Washington, 20 January 2005: In a major policy speech, mandatious president George W. Bush announced that after 215 years of securing the blessings of liberty, the American government will be getting out of the freedom business.
"Freedom is the most important part of being an American. But we are facing a crisis in freedom. For too long, people have relied on the government to protect their freedom, but really, that's just an accounting trick. People should be free to choose how to get their freedom, whether it be from Wal-Mart or their own apocalyptic church. Freedom is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington. That is why my first act as president will be to propose to Congress a system in which people will be free to invest up to 25% of their own freedom in Freedom Unlimited Grants. As the song says, 'Freedom isn't free. No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee.'"
Entering his second term with a majority in both houses of Congress and the opportunity to appoint as many as "7 new Supreme Court justices to replace the ones who get 'cancer,' if that's what it takes," Bush is expected to act quickly to assure that the US Government no longer provides freedom.
Republicans point to the terrific success of freedom-privatization over the last decade in Russia, Somalia, and Iraq as examples of where a country can go if the people no longer have to rely on government for the provision of freedom. Analyst Grover Norquist, of Citizens for Freedom Relief, pointed out that American freedom has changed over the years. "When George Washington founded the idea of freedom, America was very different from now. There were four non-free people to support every free one. Now, it's closed to 1 to 1; in some years, there are even more free Americans than otherwise. Obviously, this is unsustainable, and we need to move back to a model in which the people were able to choose their own level of freedom, from industrialist to indentured servant to house-slave. We've seen some very interesting pilot programs with that last option, ranging even up to the Cabinet."
Sen. Barbara Boxer, from an undisclosed location, responded to Bush's speech with this statement: "It's always the case that Bush lavishes the most extravagant praise on programs as he prepares to gut them. Freedom has served America well at least since the New Deal, but with this speech, it's clear that it's time to kiss it goodbye." CIA analysts consider the message likely to be authentic, though they have not been able to determine the substance used to write the message on the inside of a shipping crate.
