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I kept going back and forth and settled on CSPAN-1, as there was no comentary.
The conservo's look more scared that angry, and Hannity looks like he is rather upset as this has so far been the best Democratic convention in memory. I remember as far back as John Kennedy's convention (week tyke that I was).
The Democratic Party has been very carefully studying the emotional methods of that the Republican driven media has been utilizing from the start of Rush Limbaugh and has used it to great effectiveness tonight. Tonight was the culmination of studying all of the methods that the neo-cons have used against the Democratic Party, from the besirching of the word "liberal" to the renaiming of "anti-abortion" to "pro-life" and the attempts to show abortion as murder, along with the behavior of people like Rick Santorum, having his children hold and speak to the body of a miscarried child, and other similar attempts to use strong emotional impact to get their message across, while assigning the responsibilitry for "murder" upon anyone who dares to support anything that is "Pro Choice".
Recently, a number of organizations are now effectively trying to equate pro choice with murder at every opportunity. EWTN, the Catholic version of the 700 Club, started out as a politically neutral media outlet for the Catholic Church, but over the last year, much of its programming is directed towards training its viewers in becoming politically active in the area of "Pro-Life" legialtion.
Much if this is actually due to the fact that many recent converts to Catholicism are coming out of the evangelical world, and many evangelical and protestant ministers are actually converting and entering the priesthood. If they were married prior to joining the church, they are allowed to remain married and still enter the priesthood. But they have brought with them an alarming trend of politicising the Catholic Church, and bringing the methods that evangelicals have used in the past. One of these methods is to "PRIORITIZE" their legislative agenda. Prior to these recent converts becoming so powerful within the Catholic Church, there was an insistance among Catholics concerned with legislation, that along with condemnation of abortion, all realted legislation must also take into consideration economic and social aspects attached to this condemnation. That is to say, if abortion is to be made unavailable, the goverment must provide for the financial well-being of the children brought into the world under such legislation, and the mothers must be provided, with at least the means to live with dignity, and the government must also provide a minimal means of support if the children that result from the unavailablity of abortion cause economic hardship. The recent coup d'etat of local churches by ex-evangelicals, with a more conservative view of economics, has led them to separate out the social message of the Catholic Church, stating that the issue of protecting the unborn child has a higher priority than the life that this child may lead after it is born. In short, the neo-evangelico-catholic message is taking on the American Protestant economic idoeology of "protect them in the womb, but once they are out, screw them, your on your own kid, pull yourselves up by your own umbilicals".
Kerry and Edwards and Terry Mc Aufliff have rather brilliantly brough an almost religious aura to this convention. Though I had some doubts about the selection of Edwards.Choosing a Southerner, who is religious, but is a member of a relatively liberal arm of the Methodist Church was a very brilliant move. Choosing someone who is a member of the same branch of Christian Protestantism as George Bush was another brilliant move. Edwards and Bush, both Methodists. But the Methodist Church has condemned many of the decisions of George Bush, from the war in Iraq, to his tax cuts that favor the wealthy, to his complete and utter failure to abide by "compassionate conservatism" and Bush's neglect of issues regarding affirmative action which the Methodist Church criticized Bush over. Edwards is far more in line with the traditions and judgements of the Methodist Church than George Bush.
Amazing Grace was a very, very, very good indication that the Kerry/Edwards campaign us going to take back the moral/ethical highground from the conservative evangelicals who helped Bush come so close to Gore in the popular vote in 2000.
Kerry/Edwards are taking religion to the ballot box this time. Democrats have attempted to play the 'Faith" card every since the election of Jimmy Carter, but never very comnfortably. Kerry/Edwards are not sitting back and letting religious Neo-Cons like Pat Robertson define morality and ethics this time around, and we can expect to see both Edwards and Kerry starting to define religious morality and ethics fron a totally differnt angle than conservatives have.
Conservatives base all their religious/legislative ethins on things sexual, or in some way related to things thatresult from sexuality. Denying gay couples to the same legal rights that heterosexuals have under the law is an issue that conservatives will try to use, but Kerry and Edwards can easily deflect this by pointing out the fact that gays must be taxed in order to pay for the benefits that heterosexuals receive under tax laws that favor married couples.
Gays get to pay the salaries of judges who marry people. They pay for the multiple forms that are required for people to be married. hey pay for the storage of these records. They get to pay for the schools that the children of heterosexuals go to. They do not get to deduct a dependent significant other, while married heterosexual couples get to deduct spouses who do not work, deduct children. Deduct expenses for the support of those dependents. Gays essentially pay for services and the deductions that allow heterosexuals to pay far less taxes. Essentially, gays are forced pay far more taxes than heterosexuals in similar circumstances, and also must pay taxes for the very government that chooses to deny them rights to government services that wishes to deny them the rights that are extended to heterosexuals. While a good portion of those who consider themselves Christian oppose marriage for gays, making the case for getting rid of a system of deductions in the tax system that requires gays to pay more to the government than heterosexuals will not only make a good case when expressed to the more moderately religious, the option that remains will concern them as well. The elimination of all deductions for dependents would be the only just solution under our form of government if one wishes to deny gays the rignt to marry. At this point, the only option that remains to the moderate voter, is to do what both Kerry and Edwards suggest. That is to leave it to the states to decide.
Getting away from the negative use of religion in this campaign, using the issue of homosexuality, both Kerry and Edwards have a very powerful message that they seem to be trying to begin to direct from a religious angle. That is the socio-economic angle. Conservatives avoid the socuil message of caring for the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the orphan, the widow, while focusing wholeheartedly on choices that are personal in nature, which is to say again, sexual, or in some cases issues dealing with personal choiuces regarding drugs or alcohol. Conservatives seem totally focused on controllinh private life, and use religion almost continually to attempt to force their beliefs into the public arena. While Democrats have always tried to show themselvbes as the caring party, the party that wants to help the unfortunate, they have never tried to attach religious obligation to this aspect of the democratic ideology. Kerry/Edwards are drawing a line in the religious sand and asserting that it is the Democratic Party that represents the real ethical and moral message of religious America. During the Great Depression, churches did not run around condemning personal choice regarding ones private lives. They started soup lines. Found work for people so they could put food on their table and keep a roof over their head. Kerry and Edwards (and Howard Dean as well) have spent the last two years asserting that the flag and patriotism does not belong to Republicans and George Bush alone.
They have been fairly sucessful at doing this. Kerry and Edwards patriotism is now beyond reproach. Voting for the Iraq Resolution is largely responsible for this.This vote shows that Kerry and Edwards were willing to defend the U.S. against Saddam if he was seen to be som kind of danger to the U.S., as well as if it appeared that Saddam would not abide by the decisions of the international cimmunity regarding his willingness to show the rest of the world that he was in no way developing or planning to develop weapons systems that he himself signed treaties to not develop. The difference between Bush's ideology, nad that of Edwards and Kerry, is that the two democrats have are firm internationalists. They beleive that the U.S. has the right to make decisions reagaring its own internal governance, but that the U.S. should also defer to the international community, its rules, its courts, and its laws, when it comes to international events. They would only go to war to defent the U.S. under imminent threat, or only if called upon by the international community if it deemed there was a need to go to war with a recalcitrant nation.
The fact that they greatly differ on how the events that led to the war were handled, and in fact, that if handled with greater diplomatic ability and international co-operation, war may not have been necessary at all, or if necessary, the U.S. could have done so at the head of a co-alition supported by the United Nation, as well as paid for by many other nations, leaving the U.S. in far better financial shape. Two people who supported going to war with Iraq only after all peaceful and diplomatic efforts had been exhausted (which is what the the U.N. ambassadors on the Security Council asked Kerry to get into the resolution if he could), as opposed to Bush's approach, which was to go to the U.N. but demand that it was Bush's way, or the highway.
Both Kerry and Edwards had totally different approaches to dealing with Iraq than the Bush Administration, and the resolution they voted for had far more leeway in the direction of peaceful diplomatic efforts than they did to simply go to war with Iraq regardless of the opinion of the United Nations and the Security Council. It took Bush and Blair making the decision to not put forth another resolution before the Secrity council which insisted on immediate war with Iraq, becasue they knew that the Council would insist on attempting further diplomatic methods, some of which had not yet been completed under U.N. Rules, and walking away from the United Nations, for Bush to go to war. Which was something that was not allowed under the Iraq Resolution of October 2002. Once Bush went to t5he U.N. and got them to pass resolution 1441, Bush was obligated to allow the inspectors to finish the inspection process as defined by the resolutions that created them, and those resolutions required an initial inspection regime of SIX MONTHS. The date that Hans Blix gave his final report was actually the earliest date that U.N. rules required George Bush to wait for before he could even ask the U.N. to engage in the "serious consequences" mentioned in Resolution 1441. Bush placed himself in a situation, under the Iraq Act, which required him to wait at least until June of 2003 before he could even consider using military force in Iraq. There is continaul debate as to whether this act allowed Bush to go to war. And much of this debate was made even more confusing by Howard Dean making statements abou the resolution that were incorrect, even so far as to his assertion that Biden Lugan would not have allowed Bush to go to war, which was later proven to be incorrect, just before the Iowa Caucuses. This misrepresentation was a powerful factor leading to Deans downfall, especially when Dean asserted that Beden Lugar was somehow different than the Iraq Resolution. and that Bien Lugar Required Bush to go back to Congress for a second vote. When Kerry, in a one line statement said that Biden Lugar did not require a second vote, gave Bush exactly the same authorization to go to war with Iraq, and that the only difference between Biden Lugar and the Iraq Resolution was that Biden-Lugar prohibited the United States from removing Saddam from power. Biden Lugar allowed the same war, allowed Bush to attack Iraq if Iraq was proved to constitute a threat to the United States or its interests, and oddly enough, did not require all peaceful and diplomatic efforts to be exhausted before war could be engaged in, but only required that the point be reached in which it appeared that the U.N. seemed unlikely to enforce the resolutions passed after the first Gulf War. If the UN. seemed to be at a stalemate, and if it appeared that Saddam was not co-operating in efforts to determine if he had disarmed himself after the Gulf War and assisted UNMOVIC to work out the differences between what their lists said Saddam still possessed and the later lists that Saddam presented, thne Bush could have gone to war without all diplomatic measures being exhausted. Kerry was quite clever in waiting untl two weeks before Iowa before pointing out that the resolution that Dean supported gave Bush exactly the same powers as the resolution that Dean opposed, and in fact, in some ways gave Bush more freedom to act than the resolution that Kerry and Edwards supported.
In the end, the Kerry/Edwards campaign is doing something that will set a precedent in campaign history. They are moving the party in the direction of defining ethics and morality in terms of the social values of the moderated in the mainstream churches in the United States, and not the values of the extremists of the evangelical churches.
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