Recently, the ex-presidential candidate Howard Dean, best known for his "Yaahhh!" speech after the Iowa primaries a year ago, said the following:
"This is a war for the survival of the United States as we know it," according to rightwingnews.com.
Was he talking about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the man who orchestrated Sept. 11, 2001? Was he talking about the importance of winning the peace in Iraq? Was he talking about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of rogue regimes?
In fact, Dean was discussing none of those topics. The "war" Dean is talking about is the Democrats' effort to reverse the growing Republican tide in America.
As most people know, Republicans have more power on Capitol Hill than Democrats, with the presidency and both houses of Congress being Republican. The possibility also exists that by the end of President Bush's second term, Republicans could control the Supreme Court.
Dean's quote is certainly not representative of the opinion of every voter who cast a ballot for John Kerry in the 2004 election. However, it's easy for the casual observer to wonder just how many left-leaning people out there are against the war on Iraq but are for a war on Republicans.
A message board called the Democratic Underground, democraticunderground.com, sheds a lot of light on the situation. Posters on this site often compare Bush unfavorably with Adolf Hitler, and consistently the government is accused of knowing about or even causing Sept. 11. Some of the posting is so far removed from reality that the political Web site Right Wing News, rightwingnews.com, quotes some posts on their site for laughs. Strangely enough, however, despite such clear evidence that this was not a Web site most Democrats would want to be associated with, John Kerry's official blog was linked to the Democratic Underground's Web site for most of the campaign.
I personally know a fair few intelligent Democrats, who I respect because they can back up their opinions with well-reasoned arguments. It's clear that just because a few individuals go nuts on a message board, this does not mean that your run-of-the-mill liberal is going to attempt to assassinate the president or believe that he's a modern-day Hitler, any more than one expects a run-of-the-mill conservative to be a blatant racist or in favor of an authoritarian government.
However, the sheer lack of respect for the leader of the free world can be disconcerting. Many people disagreed with Ronald Reagan but united with him politically to help end the Soviet Union. Who knows what Bush could accomplish if he were not so blatantly ignored by his political enemies?
In a time like this, when the United States is trying to stamp out or at least severely decrease terrorism in our world, unity is more important than anything. After all, Abraham Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Yet a fair amount of Americans do not seem to have any faith or support at all for our president or our government simply because their mascot is an elephant rather than a donkey.
Write to Andy at ndistops@hotmail.com
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