Lady Liberty is Broken

As the Republican faithful gather in Tampa to nominate the Romney/Ryan ticket, it is astonishing to observe what has befallen the party of Lincoln and, in fact of Reagan. No longer is there a willingness to compromise and hence to govern. It is in fact now viewed as treasonous to their cause to even contemplate reaching consensus. No longer is there a willingness to listen to new ideas or opposing views, to be guided by facts, to be guided by basic principles of science, to even consider how or to what extent their philosophy for governing will affect tens of millions of Americans. Fundamental to the founding principles of this country are the words that adorn the Statue of Liberty, facing to the east and beckoning the world to take comfort in the protection of the United States and all that it stands for. "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" The Republican party of today, dominated by some of the most extreme views since the Union was torn apart during the 1850s and '60s, has no interest in the tired or the poor or those who have lived under the heel of tyranny. Rather, the Republican Party of today is the party of intolerance, hatred and exclusion. The Republican Party has become the school yard bully, either espousing violence to gain the upper hand or not having the courage to stand up against violence and the fanatics who would threaten the very fundamental fabric of our democracy. They are a party of the gun, in both literal and figurative sense, unwilling to do anything to protect Americans from the explosion of gun violence that continues to sweep across the land and intent on holding a figurative gun to the head of the American people in order to push down their throats their vision of legitimate governing...the debt ceiling debacle being the latest and most dangerous example. This is the party that attracts people to its ranks who ridicule the disabled, for having the audacity to ask for help from the government in the form of healthcare reform;  this is the party that wants to rid the country of help for the poor in every form and help for the elderly in the last years of their lives. This is the party that denies women rights and equally standing, made emphatically clear by a perverse view that rape isn't so bad and then not surprisingly advocates positions that would rape both the land and our economy. This is the party that offers no solution for the tens of millions of people out of work and facing the loss of their homes other than to let them know that if they wait long enough, the huge tax breaks afforded the very rich will eventually make their way down to them without explaining how that will happen or why that strategy will work when it has never worked before.

Across the country, in every state and locality in which Republicans dominate, the theme is the same and provides a vivid example of the what this country will look like should they come to control the government. The poor will be cast off because local governments, already placed on the precipice of bankruptcy by a Republican dominated Congress which slashed federal subsidies to the states for social services, will be unable to provide the services they are already obligated to provide. Our infrastructure will continue to crumble because again the Republican-led Congress places a far higher premium on cutting taxes than providing the government with the resources needed to provide even the most rudimentary services. Our schools will continue to decline because, again, the states, faced with providing broad services to its citizens with limited resources, will not be able to support public education; and, of course, millions of Americans will go without medical insurance and thus be unable to afford basic health care.

Republicans, obviously tired of the "tired" and "poor" hope and pray that the downtrodden simply go away, perhaps hoping that if they stop providing the revenues necessary to provide the "huddled masses" with the basic necessities of life, they will simply die off and leave, in their wake, the utopian existence essential for the Republican philosophy to have any chance of success. What their increasingly extremist views do not seem to understand or acknowledge is that these people are not going away. These people are the very soul of this country and, having fought for the liberties that the Republican platform would so blithely strip from them, through their service and their work, they have every right...nay, a greater right to share in the nation's bounty and opportunity.

One can only trust that what we are witnessing is cyclical and will die of exposure to the light in the same fashion a vampire cannot stand the light of day.