Beware Of The Party Of Hardships

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By Cornelia Maier

The financial priorities of the Republicans are highly distressing and extremely alarming, to put it mildly. While they would abolish even the slight improvements Obama has managed to get passed re: health care if they could, they see nothing wrong with the high expenses the Afghanistan war has been causing. Some of them would have been willing for Americans to pay for 100 years more. And at the same time, they would raise hell over wealth and stock exchange taxes while they see nothing wrong with people being made homeless and getting deprived of sufficient welfare. They want a balanced budget at the expense of those whom they have most disadvantaged and whose rights they would further abridge. They have no budget issues whatsoever when it comes down to the Iraq war and the problem they have with “Bail out the people, not the banks!” doesn’t even make sense when it comes down to figures. While it would be very possible and feasible technically to get something back from the banks they have bailed out, it can’t be ruled out that it seems to be the Republicans’ earnest and utmost ambition to extort the last cent from those who have “no estate left” and no money either. It doesn’t count that this approach could hardly help any budget for they won’t get anything from those they basically can’t get anything from. The math is that simple. But with the Republicans, it’s only hell to pay if it’s them and the rich who must pay up. And many people have ended up the wrong way of Republican’s propaganda. If people vote Republican, if people vote Democrats who don’t stand up to the Republicans properly because they still believe the scapegoating directed at people who don’t have much money and need assistance not secondary victimization and worse to come, they might come to regret it when it goes hard with themselves. Many people have held human rights and common humanity and enlightened self-interest in such contempt that they would not have wanted to pay taxes for sufficient welfare but were at first willing to pay for the Republicans’ agenda. When they ended up on the receiving end of it, they might have thought twice. But all too often, it’s too late when people finally realize that the problem is not with “welfare queens” but with the “kings of exploitation”. Republicans try to sell their policy as (allegedly) necessary and when unfortunately Bill Clinton agreed to the grievous cuts on welfare, he said he found it necessary, too. Well, William Pitt the Younger stated as early as: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.” So much on that.

If people have lost their jobs and have “no estate left them” aka no more money left, the Republicans will only be too pleased to have them evicted. And at the same time, there would be hell to pay if they got more taxes to pay and yet, no hardship would result from any wealth tax and stock exchange tax. They would still have plain enough and neither their need nor their human rights would be endangered. But they have no issue whatsoever if poorer people get restricted and their human rights get abused in the direst way, they would find it extremely bad and unpleasant if they could not get away with everything themselves and if they were taxed just a little bit more in accordance with their plain and clear ability to pay. Even back then, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (yep, Eleanor’s husband) had stated:

“While they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal.”

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars. Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people. In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down. It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. People are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal. Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”

But with the Republicans, it’s not a new deal, it’s a bad deal Americans get. And all too often, they get politically shortchanged. Much hardship has come to pass and the crisis and the problems resulting thereof are not over yet. And isn’t it weird that America who has protected freedom all over the world won’t even protect and assist those of her own people who stand in the utmost need of protection and assistance? America has helped the liberation of many a country, including both Germany and Kosovo but she won’t help the poorest of her citizens? Isn’t that a sorry state for a State to be in, a poor state of affairs, so to say, particularly for the land of the noble free, the sweet land of liberty? Haven’t a few things gone amiss for the situation to come to this? It has gone very hard with many people at the Republicans’ hands and many tragic things have come to pass. Under human rights, the need for remedy and redress is rather urgent, of course. But having a right in terms of human rights is not yet tantamount to getting the very same right realized in actual fact. But those who agree that they don’t like how the situation has been deteriorating due to the authoritarian-conservative agency (and agenda!) can at least remember that, as Susan B. Anthony has stated, “the ballot is (a) pivotal right protective of other rights”. The torch of freedom can be passed on to truly progressive Democrats who are happy to cooperate with the Fund for a Feminist Majority, NOW, Ralph Nader’s party instead of the Republicans and also with all the progressive movements for social justice and prevention and remedy of sore hardship. As Katha Pollitt has stated, for example, if Conservatives had always carried the day, no improvements would have been achieved. Republicans have thrown down the gauntlet. The storm has been unleashed. Hopefully, it will blow misery and hardship away. And hopefully election day will become PAY DAY for Republicans (and those Democrats who haven’t stood out against them). Ladies and Gentlemen, be encouraged, for people can lay hold of their birthright of freedom and keep it a sacred trust for all coming generations, as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton have put it so aptly. For Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth. For we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.