Friday, August 06, 2004

Ron Reagan vs. George Bush

The irony of growing up Catholic and having gone to Catholic schools for twelve years is that I received an education based on religious dogma -- an education that developed my ability to think, then question what I'd been taught.

I think that Ron Reagan grew up similarly... growing up with the political dogma his father embraced, then learning how to question it because he was so close to its center.

Originally published in Esquire...


The Case Against George W. Bush

Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on.

[...]

Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that's not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy's critique of George W. Bush.

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