The endorsement game

Let me make this clear: Nothing could make me report to a polling place at this stage in U.S. history. The differences between candidates are defined only by the priorities by which they intend to wield the forces of tyranny. Every vote is an endorsement of the state's authority to control individual lives and choices.

But as a practical matter a mainstream newspaper is not going to say that, unless you're in Las Vegas and Vin Suprynowicz is your editorial page chief. So we had to pick between the white-haired dictator wannabe and the black-haired dictator wannabe. It's an interesting intellectual exercise.

I drafted the following to guide my contributions to the discussions; I knew it would be fruitless to submit it as an actual draft endorsement. I did manage to sneak a hint of these thoughts into our final product, although you have to study long and hard to find them. Enjoy. Now I have to go wash my hands; I try and try and try but I can't seem to get them clean ...
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Newspapers across the country have begun endorsing Barack Obama for president, many using poetic words about a time of great challenge, a dramatic speaker, a change of direction. We have no poetry to offer, but we present our conclusion that Obama is the better choice for America at what could be a turning point in this nation's history.

Obama is the better choice for no greater reason than the last eight years. George W. Bush campaigned eight years ago as something better than the previous eight years, a time when America's military had been used as a vast police force, invading Somalia and Kosovo, bombing Iraq and Sudan and Afghanistan. Like his father before him, Bush promised a kinder, gentler approach, a more modest foreign policy — "I don't believe in nation building," he stated flatly during one debate with Vice President Al Gore.

Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. For a time it created a more united country, ready to chase Osama bin Laden and his followers to the ends of the earth to bring justice to those who killed innocent men, women and children on American soil. But the venture went terribly wrong.

The man who campaigned on a limited-government platform created a massive new federal department, the Department of Homeland Security, with authority to probe into Americans' private lives in the name of fighting terrorism. And that was the tip of a horrifying spending iceberg. The balanced budget forged by a Democratic president and Republican Congress was converted into a bloated deficit of unprecedented proportions. The national debt spiraled out of control — and when reckless policies led the nation to the brink of economic collapse this year, Bush's solution was more government, more borrowing and spending, a national debt of more than $11 trillion.

The nation that once stood as a beacon of freedom and human rights was infested with legalistic wordsmiths who justified nothing less than torture as a means of advancing our cause. The nation that eschewed the concept of a first strike when the Cold War was at its height now embraced the idea of pre-emptive war, invading a nation that "someday may" attack our shores even though it posed no imminent threat.

These are not the principles that the party of Lincoln, Taft, Eisenhower and Reagan stood for. The Republican Party has lost its way and needs to rethink its purpose and its values. That necessary soul-searching will be impossible if the party's standard bearer is allowed to enter the White House.

Barack Obama's political philosophy is far to the left of mainstream America, but no less a conservative authority than the Chicago Tribune has said that it knows this man and expects he will govern as a centrist. That's good enough for us. Washington, D.C., needs to be swept clean of the principles that have guided the administrations of the past 16 years.

The missing name and, again, the missing word

In a couple of nights of speechifying last week, Barack Obama and Joe Biden did everything they could to tie John McCain to Emperor Bush. In a couple of nights of speechifying this week, McCain and Sarah Palin said the word "Bush" just once. And when it came up, it wasn't tied to "George W."

"I'm grateful to the president for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history, and keeping us safe from another attack many thought was inevitable," is what McCain said Thursday night, adding: "and to the first lady, Laura Bush, a model of grace and kindness in public and in private." The Elephant Branch of The Party was not going to use the incumbent emperor's full name.

Clearly, the major players in the race for emperor sense that people who live in the US of A have had enough of the old regime. "Change" is the major theme of the day. Exactly what will they change? They'll put a new face in the Oval Office. They'll rearrange a deck chair or two.

But as with the Donkey Branch speakers a week ago, once again the proposed leaders of these independent states did not use the words freedom or liberty in their remarks. Peruse the texts and you will find neither McCain or Palin said "freedom," and you'll find McCain mouthed the word "liberty" only in the context of protecting and advancing the empire: "Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach. But we must see the threats to peace and liberty in our time clearly and face them, as Americans before us did, with confidence, wisdom and resolve."

And as he closed, he urged his supporters to "fight for the ideals and character of a free people." A free people, not free men and women. A collective, not individuals.

Freedom and liberty have become catchphrases, echoes from another era that are rolled out because they still resonate deep in our souls. After this ritual that the Donkeys and Elephants are performing now, the victors will retire to their chambers to pass more laws and new restrictions of our liberty.

I am grateful that I am allowed (for now) to write these things, to use the word emperor to describe the position that is often described as "leader of the free world," or to point out that The Party is a single monster with two heads, without being arrested or imprisoned as government critics in many places have been.

This freedom isn't free, however, because freedom has a cost: It is mine only as long as I consent to the seizure of one-third to one-half of my earnings to maintain the empire. And the rules may be changed at any time.

I do not delude myself by imagining that replacing Augustus Caesar with Tiberius will make any substantive difference. The central struggle of our day is not between the Donkeys and the Elephants; it is between the State and the Individual. I have no need to beat the State; I just want to be left alone. That's not likely to happen.

Doing the math in Barack Obama ad

One of the candidates for emperor has started running an ad that says his opponent would increase tax breaks for big corporations, especially big oil companies and companies that export their jobs, "while 100 million Americans get no tax relief at all." But lo! The ad's candidate would provide three times as much tax relief as the other guy.

Let's see, three times nothing is ...? I agree that there's not a dime's worth of difference between these two Big Brother wannabes, but this level of honesty is unusual.

An election party where nobody came

Well, it's been a quiet week in Freedomville, my hometown ... I sense a disturbance in the Force, or something. It's an uneasiness in a soul that has chosen not to participate in the charade we call a "presidential election." Or the anxiety, if that's the right word, is something other than that.

The discomfort must be something more than resigning myself to the fact that the two branches of the Party have presented the US of A with finalists in the presidential reality show who each proposes to be the dictator of our lives, improving only the efficiency of a safety net woven from chains that purports to protect us from cradle to grave while regulating, licensing or prohibiting nearly every known individual choice or course of action. Maybe it's something as easy as realizing that everyone who was voted off the island was also anxious to be our dictator.

But this is nothing new. Perhaps it's that this is my first "presidential election" since my disillusionment in this process became complete. I have reported to a polling place and voted for the Libertarian Party candidate for four of the last five of these exercises, which gave me some sense of empowerment. I never bought into the "if you vote for a third party, you've wasted your vote" nonsense. If you vote for someone who doesn't share your values or views in any meaningful sense of the words, THEN you've wasted your vote, I have always said. It's not about winning, it's about representation, and if the numbers show your viewpoints aren't representative, your views will be ignored. Or so I believed.

Now it seems clear that my views will be ignored anyway. And so I will join the majority that votes "None of the Above," who is not on the ballot. I have seen unopposed candidates fret because they received only 94 percent of the vote, wondering how they could have disillusioned as many as 6 percent. So I know the fewer people vote, the more it will get the attention of our rulers. The fewer people vote, the more it will trouble good men and women.

The dilemma is it's also true that the fewer people vote, the easier it is for a devious minority to maintain control, because all you need is 50.1 percent of a small minority to win the election. That's a motivation for voting for the "lesser of two evils." But the better choice between two evils is still evil. The only sane choice is neither, not one or the other.

I know and understand all of this, so why do I sense a disturbance in my heart? I wonder if it's something as basic as finally understanding to the core that the extent to which I am free has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with the chains so many freely choose. The extent to which I am free is up to me. The extent to which I have not been free was my responsibility. Freedom is not something granted by rulers; it's an "unalienable right" that I have given away.

How do I get back my freedom? First I understand that I never lost control of it, I merely chose not to be free. How do I get back my freedom? I take it back, gently but firmly. One small step is to note that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain represents me in any way, shape or form. Freedom is not about having the right ruler. Oh, wait, yes it is. Freedom is understanding that I am the boss of me.

House upholds Bush veto of anti-torture bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's fellow Republicans in Congress on Tuesday upheld his veto of a bill to ban the CIA from subjecting enemy detainees to interrogation methods denounced by critics as torture.

A largely party-line vote of 225-188 in the Democratic-led House of Representatives fell short of the needed two-thirds majority to override the president.

Bush maintains that the United States does not torture, but has refused to discuss interrogation techniques, saying that doing so could tip off terrorists ...

The bill vetoed by Bush was a sweeping intelligence authorization measure. A key provision would have required the CIA to comply with the rules set by the Army Field Manual in questioning detainees.

The rules forbid eight interrogation methods, including waterboarding, electric shock, beatings and mock executions. They permit 19 techniques, mainly psychological, such as trying to convince detainees that cooperation will shorten the war and save their country ...

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was tortured while a prisoner in the Vietnam war and is now his party's presumptive presidential nominee, opposed the bill.

"I think that waterboarding is torture and illegal, but I will not restrict the CIA to only the Army Field Manual," McCain said last month.

Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, competing for the Democratic presidential nomination, both backed the bill and denounced Bush's veto.

I do have this vague recollection of a country that held itself to a higher standard and wouldn't do things like first-strike nuclear weapon use or torture of its enemies. "We're better than that," its leaders would say. I must have dreamed all that or read about it in a novel.

I excerpted liberally, but the whole article's here.