How Far We've Come America, We Can't Go Back

As far back as I can remember, it's always been the same. It's one of the very reasons I started blogging in the first place. It's what controls the line of thinking of a national political party that is mindbogglingly absent in any reasoning on my part. What is it? It's the automatic self assumption by Republicans that everything they do, say and believe is what's best for America. That they are the only True Americans left and everyone and anyone that does not believe EVERYTHING they do is cast aside as being anti-American. Those that disagree with them are immediately an enemy bent on destroying the country.

That line of reasoning is foreign to me. I can't even comprehend the logic much less the resignation of it. Who in their right mind thinks that way? What kind of person with blood flowing through their veins can immediately accept the notion that someone with different ideas than them is an enemy?  I don't even know how it's possible, but it is.

Today's news of Republican Michelle Bachmann's rant about slavery and freedom is nothing new, either from her or the GOP. It's been going on for way too long. It didn't begin 18 months ago. It was the same way during the 8 years of George Bush (and all throughout Clinton's two-terms-- as long as I can remember, like I said). If a Democratic member of congress had said about George Bush what Bachmann just did there would have been hell to pay. Why? Because saying such things about a Republican is, in their warped minds, saying that stuff about a True American that loves Freedom and upholds the Constitution. And, more importantly, the Democratic mindset is not programmed to immediately assume someone that disagrees is an enemy.  It's all too common the very first assumption for the GOP.

Here's what Bachmann proposed in her speech we do:

• Privatize Social Security
• Eliminate capital gains tax, estate tax, amt tax
• Limit individual income to 20% of income
• Limit business tax to 9%
• Total repeal of Obama's HCR

Got it?  Those are her plans and goals for this country.  I disagree with her with every fiber in my being.  But I would not dare call her an enemy.  Nor would I ever say that her policies create slaves out of us.  None of that would even come to my mind.  Why can't we discuss the merits of each others policies and quit with the anti-American, enemy of the state crap?  Why can't we have a civil debate without all the fear mongering?  How in 2010 can this be the leading charge coming from the major opposition party in America?

We've done all this before America.  We've seen every fear mongering smear hundreds of times.  We have long endured our Civil War where such rhetoric as today's actually led to bloodshed and the lives of over 600,000 of our countrymen.  We have overcome our anti-immigrant divisions of WWI and its fear mongering squashing of dissenting views.  We have lived already once through McCarthyism and the paranoia it creates.  We have witnessed as harshly as any nation has the racist fear inducing rhetoric of Civil Rights and the promise of equality for all.  And we have prevailed through it each and every time.  Some times were not as easy as the others.  But we learned and lived as a country vowing not to go back.  There's no reason to go through this again.  There's no reason to turn America back in time where fear and lazy rhetoric rule the day.  There's no reason America to take for granted how far we've come.