Do You Like Apples?

America is under attack from cowardly terrorists. They are attacking us because they hate freedom. These terrorists use fear and violence in their quest to overthrow the secular governments in their region and seek to replace them with a twisted and extremist version of the dominant religion.

Naturally, I'm talking about Republicans.

For far too long, neocons have been projecting their own secret self-image onto others, and labeling everyone around them as enemies. They continue to insist upon falsities so blatant they could come right out of Alice in Wonderland: warrantless wiretaps "have oversight," we are "winning the war" in Iraq. I would not be suprised at this point to see Dick Cheney on Face The Nation stating categorically that up is down. The world simply has not seen this level of nonsensical babble in public discourse since the height of Soviet Communism.

It's high time that we simply took their insane statements and threw them back in their faces. There's more support for it. Consider the following points:


Republicans are radical extremists

This first point is tricky, because they try to confuse us with this one all the time. Typically, the neocons like to scream that any centrist position is "far-left extremism" and that their position is the "middle." But they have forgotten what real far-left extremism actually looks like. Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front are examples of extreme leftism. Hillary Clinton is decidedly not. Walter Cronkite and Jim Lehrer are examples of the political middle. Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto are not.

As it stands presently, the Democratic party has been dragged far from its left wing and now stands solidly in the middle; no major Democrat even bothers to try to agitate for actual liberal positions these days (except for perhaps Dennis Kucinich). On the other hand, the Republican party has been held captive by their most extremist elements for a long time now. Compared to them, even Ronald Reagan would count as a "left-wing radical."


Republicans are cowards

They react to danger from a position of fear, rather than one of confidence. A courageous response to 9/11 would have been to take a comprehensive and intelligent analysis of the causes of attacks on the U.S. and then to face those causes directly. Instead, we invaded Iraq, overreaching wildly and inappropriately to the actual threat. A natural response to fear and confusion is to lash out blindly; we have done, and continue to do, just that.

To make this point more clearly, ask yourself: what would a brave leader look like? A brave leader would have calmed the nation, and made the nature of the threat clear and thoroughly understood. A brave leader would have used all the tools at his or her disposal to deal with that threat: not only military retaliation, but also international police cooperation, improved port security, careful intelligence, and diplomatic engagement. Compared to such a creature, Bush is clearly its antithesis: a coward.


Republicans raise taxes

Economics 101: if you spend money, you have to get enough money to pay for it. You can either pay for it now or add some of it towards your debt. Either way, it has to be paid for. And if you add it to your debt, it will cost you more to pay it off than you got. The government gets its income through taxation. So when the government spends lots of money, youre taxes get increased, whether now or at some point in the future with interest.

In 2000, the Republicans inherited a country with a balanced budget, and have since then increased the national debt to 8.6 trillion dollars. That's 8.6 trillion dollars that will have to be paid by us with our taxes. Dividing per capita, the Republicans have raised your lifetime tax burden by $28,666 and counting.

So before you parrot "Democrats raise taxes" you should ask yourself exactly when was the last time that the policies of a Democrat-controlled government led to stagnant economic growth and relatively high taxes? The 1970's? Certainly not the Clinton years. But when was the last time the policies of a Republican-controlled government led to exactly the same situation? Right now!


Republicans are terrorists

Merriam-Webster defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror (a state of intense fear), especially as a means of coercion." The Republican party has been attempting to coerce us into maintaining their power using a state of intense fear for the past five years. Therefore they are terrorists, as the word is correctly defined.

Now, I'm not one of those who claims that the Bush administration ever knocked down any of our own buildings. But the fact remains that he has knocked down the buildings of another country without provocation. He has killed people in order to support his own power base. Shock and awe.

That's terrorism.


Republicans hate freedom

See warrantless wiretaps, torture, and suspension of habeus corpus, just for starters. The protections of individual rights are viewed as obstacles to a party which lacks the ability to deal with foreign threats without violating our freedoms. Thus, their ineptitude becomes totalitarianism. Such protections as are afforded by individuals against the state in the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions are labeled as "quaint" by those who see us as operating under a "new paradigm."

Such a paradigm, if one asserts that it exists, could only be called "post-American."


Republicans hate Democracy

The "plenary executive" argument is a demonstration of just that. Bush himself has stated that he would prefer to be a dictator. Everyone involved in the Bush administration has at one time or another expressed the feeling that they have the ability to defy other branches of government. Cheney has stated that he intends to refuse the subpeona power of Congress.

And then there's the electronic voting thing, and the gerrymandering, and the voter suppression, and the 2000 election intervention by the Supreme Court, and so on ad nauseum.


Al Qaeda wants you to vote Republican

The Bush administration blunders and overreacts to every provocation, while behaving as a caricature of the "great Satan" enemy that Islamic extremists would have America portray. By doing so, this administration, and the Republicans who consistently support their actions provide material aid and comfort to other extremist terrorist groups who need someone to play "bad guy" for their recruiting efforts.

Seriously, if you were Osama Bin Laden, would you rather have Bush in office mired in Iraq continuously while leaving America undefended in any reasonable way, or someone like John Kerry, who would most likely make intelligent choices right off the bat? Would you rather have someone who refuses to engage in dialogue with the Middle East or someone who might very likely attempt to sway the region towards moderation? So long as Bush stays in office, a large subset of the Islamic world is given a clear example supporting every one of Bin Laden's talking points.


Republicans are in league with the Devil

Most end-time Millenial Christian scenarios involve our secular institutions of power falling under the sway of someone who pretends to be a Christian while at the same time fomenting war, poverty and hatred throughout the world. Bush presents himself as a Christian while at the same time fomenting war, poverty and hatred throughout the world.

Jesus didn't have much to say about abortion or gay marriage; in fact, he said exactly nothing about either of those issues. But he did talk quite a lot about social justice, equating wealth itself with a state of sin, and excoriated the heresy involved in striving to appear publicly pious. He promoted the peaceful resolution of conflict, as well as respect for people of different faiths. Today's Republican party attempts to fool Christians into believing that their own religion is less about the issues Jesus actually spoke about and more about divisive issues of their own making.

As classically defined, the Devil is an entity who attempts to lie to Christians about what their own religion entails so that they will go against its original precepts. Republicans do this. Therefore, they do the Devil's work.


In Conclusion

Now, one might say "I'm a Republican but I don't do those things." You might say that while you decry certain actions or subsets of the Republican party, you still feel that overall they're the good guys. But that's a cop-out. Because the Republican Congress of the last twelve years has repeatedly and consistently appointed the worst among them to positions of leadership. If they get caught, they try to change the rules to keep their lawbreakers in power. The Republican Congress has refused Bush nothing, and has supported him at every turn. They have actively dismantled institutions in charge of investigating executive malfeasance and misappropriation.

Whenever you vote for any Republican, you vote for those who either are, or who themselves support, these radical extremist, cowardly, freedom-hating, tax-and-spend Satanic terrorists. Whenever you call yourselves a Republican, or give your voice to their positions, you lend material aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States of America. The Republican Party itself constitutes a clear and present danger to the security of our nation.

Republicans are evil, as evil is defined.

How do you like them apples?