Fearful Symmetry

Thom Hartmann digs up a few choice quotes:

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

- archconservative Grover Norquist, May 25, 2001 on National Public Radio.

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

- Ronald Reagan

Hartmann says it's no surprise that GOP governments fail the people they are elected to serve, because these people don't even believe in "government" to start with:

Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations.

Let the corporations handle your old-age pension. Let the corporations decide how much protection we and our environment need from their toxics. Let the corporations decide what we're paid. Let the corporations decide what doctor we can see, when, and for what purpose.

This is the exact opposite of the vision for which the Founders of this nation fought and died. When Thomas Jefferson changed John Locke's "Life, liberty, and private property" to "Live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it was the first time in the history of the world that a newly founded nation had written the word "happiness" into its founding document. The phrase "promote the general welfare" - another revolutionary concept - first appeared in the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.

Here's another timely quote which has coming been in my head over and over again for the past few years:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Bush & Co have been running on fear since before they were even elected: they won power by demonizing Bill Clinton as an irresponsible womaniser, they magnified the terror of 9/11 into an excuse for endless global war, they created colour-coded Homeland Security alerts to bring on panic whenever their poll numbers dropped, they scared voters away from John Kerry with lies about his service in Vietnam, they are still trying to get people scared of the UN and their own Social Security system...

It's one thing to engender fear, but protecting people is quite another thing.