2.  WHAT REPUBLICANS DESERVE
    by Anthony Gregory 
    Exclusive to TLE    http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/>     Issue 220

Sometimes I think Republicans deserve every tax they whine about, every gun
law they resent, and every edict that keeps them from praying in public
schools.

They also deserve all the political correctness they hate, all the
environmental regulations that destroy the value of their property, and
every social engineering scheme specifically designed by socialist
Democrats to phase conservatism out of existence.

Why am I being so harsh? Why am I saying the Republicans deserve to be
harassed by my greatest enemy -- the state?

Because for too long they've watched Lady Liberty get raped and beaten,
sitting on the sidelines and cheering on the brutality, salivating at the
sight of America's one truly singular value -- freedom -- being turned into
a pile of violated, mutilated raw meat.

I'm sorry. Call me vengeful. But those arrogant Republicans cheered the
savage ravaging of Lady Liberty in the name of the drug war, which to this
day keeps a million peaceful, innocent and potentially productive Americans
behind iron bars to be anally raped by convicted child molesters and
carjackers who will get out of those cages earlier than their drug
"offender" victims because of something called "mandatory
minimums" that Republicans essentially invented.

Call me spiteful. But those arrogant Republicans enthusiastically cheered
the predation on Lady Liberty in the name of family values in all their
attempts to tell us what we could read, what we could watch, what we could
write, and -- how dare they? -- who we could make love to.

Call me juvenile. But those arrogant Republicans welcomed the rape of Lady
Liberty in the name of fighting communism when they supported Richard
Nixon, who continued the enslavement of a generation of young men in the
most depraved enterprise ever conceived by minds belonging to those with
the audacity to call themselves human: the killing of other soldiers who
didn't want to kill or be killed.

Call me whatever you want. But those arrogant Republicans welcomed
unmentionable acts against Lady Liberty in the petty name of getting
elected. They always said that they couldn't go as far as they wanted --
presumably, in the direction of smaller government -- because otherwise
Democrats would completely take over and make things worse. Many
freedom-loving friends of mine have voted Republican with this in mind,
only to get in return for their loyalty a barrage of farm subsidies,
tariffs, economic regulations, tax increases, firearms restrictions, and
other attacks on the free market and human decency.

This has brought those of us with any brain-cells to speak of to the
conclusion that Republicans have never truly wanted to combat Democrats in
the battlefield of collectivist policies; they've only wanted to outperform
them in a friendly race.

And now, in the name of the War on Terrorism, the Republican Party -- who
once pretended to believe in the Constitution and limited government -- are
the ones predominantly responsible for America's creeping descent into the
depths of totalitarian hell.

And in the name of -- I don't even know anymore -- the Republicans are
standing by a president who is blowing to smithereens uncounted innocent
people in a poor country, made even poorer by the actions of his father.
And both belligerents never even tried to present half-credible
justifications for this barbaric brutality.

There are of course no viable alternatives. There are Democrats, who I
never liked much before, but who these days sometimes sound relatively
reasonable. Which is another terrible thing the GOP has done: they've made
Democrats look good by comparison!

In all truth I don't want any Americans to feel the
burden of draconian gun laws, confiscatory taxation, bureaucratic
regulations, and socialist political correctness. And if I were in 1930s
Germany, I wouldn't want anyone to feel the burden of
Hitler's police state tactics, either.

But those that cheer on the worst aspects of their government --
yesterday's Nazis, today's Republicans -- have little to complain about.
(Those conservatives who now say this is an unjust comparison better never
make it themselves, like I've heard them do so when they weren't the ones
in power.)

The next time some Bush-loving Republican complains about some electricity
regulation or some energy tax or otherwise tries to rub elbows with you
with talk about laissez faire economics or the absurdity of New York's new
smoking law, remember you don't have to cave in. You don't have to be his
friend on ideological grounds that are in reality made of quicksand. You
don't have to talk nice to him as you did in the 1990s -- as I did in the
1990s -- back when
Republicans and authentic freedom-lovers had William Clinton as a common
enemy and talk radio wasn't 24-hour fascist propaganda. Perhaps we
genuinely agreed on the reasons for hating Clinton; I thought we did. Now I
tend to think most Republicans were simply envious of Clinton's effortless
command of power. They were jealous it wasn't them
bombing Serbia and massacring innocents at Mount Carmel.

So perhaps when the next lockstep Republican offers his elbow to rub with
yours, you should just give him your cold shoulder instead. That's the
least they deserve.

I'll no longer think Republicans deserve any of the much more terrible
things I mentioned earlier as soon as they stop doing what they've been
doing so passionately these last nineteen months: celebrating the outright
annihilation of the America dream for the sake of advancing Bush's imperial
ambitions.

That might mean they have to stop being Republicans. In my opinion that
would be no big loss.

At any rate, Republicans who grow a central nervous system and stop
cheering on the death of America will regain a respect I had for them
before, when I thought we were in 50% agreement on things. They still
wouldn't at all be libertarians, but at least they would be close enough on
the food chain to communicate with.

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