Baby Steps
Nancy Pelosi, congresswoman from California's 8th district and current minority leader, is poised to become the first female Speaker of the House if the Democrats take control of the House in the coming election. In the digg story linked below, a few of the commenters asked why her gender is important.
It's important because it's a milestone in the agonizingly slow progress in weeding out misogyny from our society. Between that, the racism, the homophobia, and other forms of hate in our political process, I'm embarrassed to be American.
Now, that's not to say that all Americans are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic, but the fact that a large enough percentage of the electorate is that parties need to take those factors into account when selecting candidates is deplorable. The fact that that is more true among conservatives should be enough to make any reasonable person think twice before voting Republican.
I long for the day when being sexist is more damaging to a candidate than being female, being racist is more damaging than not being caucasian, and being homophobic is more damaging than being homosexual. At the current rate, the nation, if not the entire human race, is likely to destroy itself before that day comes.
read more | digg story
2 comments:
George W. Bush has appointed dozens of women to senior White House positions — more than any other president in history. Bush appointed the first African-American Secretary of State in the history of this nation; and the second - a black woman. The GOP is the party of Lincoln. Not only shouldn't "reasonable person think twice before voting Republican", but if this is really important to you then YOU should vote Republican.
One of the first actions of this administration was to impose the Global Gag Rule, preventing any Federally funded international family planning program from teaching about birth control methods. How pro-woman is that?
President Richard Nixon came up with the "Southern Strategy", taking advantage of the racism in the Southern states to win the White House in 1968 and 1972. How anti-racism is that?
General Colin Powell called himself the "token black" in the first Bush II administration, and they sent him to the UN with a pack of lies that destroyed his credibility with the international community. How anti-racism is that?
When the Republican Party formed in 1856, they were the party of reform, of change. They WERE the progressive side of the equation. That's why they won in 1860. After the Civil War, and after Lincoln was taken out of the picture, the corporations pretty much took control of that party and control of the country. So in the 1896 election, the Democrats were the progressive party. During TR's second term, he started to move things in a progressive direction, but was stopped by the courts who had been appointed during the conservative Republican years in the last 20 years of the 19th century. Taft was completely controlled by big money interests, which is why the Republican Party split in 1912 into Conservative and Progressive factions. Wilson brought in many of the progressive ideas before WWI, but had to fight that war which gave more power to the corporations. Then the guilded age allowed Wall Street to dominate again, until the Republican Great Depression occured in 1929. FDR brought back the middle class in the 1930's after fighting the courts for 5 years, courts again appointed by conservative corporate controlled Republican presidents over the previous 10 years.
We are in a war against the forces of empire. It's been going on for 7,000 years, and we're not going to see it end in our lifetimes. We have to choose which side we are on, empire or earth community. The current Republican Party is at the end of a 30 year reign of corporate control. It is ending, no matter how hard they fight. This country has two choices on which way to go, either following Germany in the 1930's, or returning to a Progressive mentality for the purpose of restoring the middle class. It might be delayed, but those are the only two options. That's the choice in 2006, and that's the choice in 2008.
Vote however you wish. But Lincoln would be raging against the corporate machine as much as Howard Dean is right now. Lincoln hated the railroad barons of his time.
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