Oh Zach Miller, you are grossly mistaken in your Oct. 8 column, “Most Republicans just don’t look far enough ahead” (pg. 7). While you and most Democrats believe that all Republicans can only retort with remarks that slander your patriotism, you are only stereotyping Republicans as being all Texan oilmen. Oh wait, that was stereotyping Democrats (point: stereotypes don’t have substance). You know what, let’s talk issues and not stereotypes. The real difference between Republicans and Democrats is in their policy and ideology.
About the Democrats, do they really see things as action-reaction with consequences A-B-C-D, as you put it? Absolutely not. Where was this logic when John F. Kennedy entered the United States into the Vietnam War, or launched the Bay of Pigs invasion? Where was California’s sense of liberal logic when their power went out because they blocked the construction of new power plants for over a decade? Furthermore, Clinton wasn’t only blind when he was having interns service him, we can point to the meager Afghani tomahawk missile raids or his unprecedented middle class tax hikes at the beginning of his term (not just taxes on the wealthy, but on the John and Jane Doe taxpayers of America). The reality is liberal policy is based on emotional outpourings not reason (there is a reason for the term ‘bleeding heart liberal’). Of course, midnight basketball and welfare made us all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but were they well-thought-out policies? Certainly not.
Does that mean Republicans use an A-B-C-D logic stream exclusively? No. A quick lesson in politics and policy-making: there is nothing logical or rational about it. Republicans often have a gunslinger attitude and enjoy basking in corporate America’s limelight, however, the main policy strategy of the Republicans is historically based. Why is it that the GOP wants to cut taxes? It is not because of wealthy lobbyists or because they don’t think ahead. It is because this country survived without any income tax at all until the Civil War. They know it will hurt social program funding. They also know that this country survived without these programs until FDR took office, and that many of them are corrupt and squander the money they already get while hurting the recipients. Why are troops still in Iraq? To rebuilding it like Germany or Japan. We know it will cost a fortune, and we knew the French weren’t going to help, with or without UN approval. The United States didn’t have any help rebuilding Europe either (the Russians skinned Eastern Europe rather than rebuild it). We are thinking A-B-C-D because history has shown that 20 years from now Iraq has the potential to be a great friend and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East (we know they are radically different culturally, but then we say, “Look at Japan.”)
Mr. Miller, please don’t exalt yourself and your liberal cronies as some kind of intellectual superiors. We are sorry you got a sour taste from a few errant Republicans that could only assault your loyalty to America, but you cannot legitimize your theories off weak examples, a few knucklehead comments from your opposition and your own policy opinions.
John Spisak ENG ’03
Timothy Bertrand CAS ’03