Position paper
Guess who:
Part of a great nation’s responsibility for keeping peace in the world is the threat it must pose to those who would upset that peace. Therefore, we must act as a deterrent to outrageous activity when our interests are involved. And America’s response in this matter should set a lasting example of what happens to those who unleash bloody attacks especially on our own soil.
The time for carefully measured pinprick responses to terrorists activities has passed. But we in this Body, and in the House, do not have the luxury of simply expressing our outrage or demanding retribution. We, along with the President, set policy and we must quickly reconcile ourselves to some of the things that we must do.
They’ve done nothing of the sort, and Americans haven’t demanded it, either. Read the rest; if there’s any hope at all, it’s here.
- Entries
As Shakespeare said, "there's the rub." We slam W righteously for failing to "lead" with his inarticulate, mumbly-joe style of speaking, but there's a thornier issue out there, and it is this: Do we, as a nation, want to be "lead?" Clinton always got great points for "leadership" but if you look closely you'll see that his was the "leadership" of the path of least resistance.
As I was taught in the military, real leadership is getting people to want to do things they might otherwise not want to do, whether it's cleaning the latrine or charging that machine gun nest.
Every now and then some politician will call for sacrifice and it seems like the words haven't even finished echoing before the childlike bickering begins: "why should I have to sacrifice when that guy over there hasn't sacrificed as much?" "Why should we sacrifice at all when there are CEOs making X billion dollars?" "Why should I have to be inconvenienced just so the president can have his illegal war/Halliburton Profits/Blood for oil/etc?"
I'm coming to the depressing conclusion that the reason we keep electing non-leaders is that we, as a people, don't want to be lead, at least if being lead means sacrifice. We want a president who tells us that whatever we want to do is fine. Instead of calling for Americans to go shopping in the wake of 9/11 the president should have exhorted young men to flood the recruiting stations.
So, tragically, the question that needs to be asked re: Thompson is not, should we elect him as president, but rather, do we really want a president who will ask us to work hard, to sacrifice, to suffer? And do we really deserve a president like that? Whether we need one or not is irrelevant because of the American people choose comfort over substance, we won't get the real leader we need anyway.