Friday, September 24, 2010

A Pledge to an Ideal Rather Than to the People

Perhaps I’m nitpicking, but I can’t help but notice that the Republicans made a pledge to an ideal rather than to the American people.

The Pledge to America is not titled A Pledge to the American People; a pledge to someone; a pledge they’d need to honour. Rather it’s a pledge to an ideal; something that doesn’t really exist; a pledge that need not make sense nor be honoured.

The Pledge to America is a pledge to their ideal of an idyllic America that never existed. They’ve pledged to take the country back to the time when the government didn’t interfere with business and businessmen treated their employees with fairness and dignity and sold quality products at fair prices.

Of course, they’re really dreaming of the 1800s when children were employed at starvation wages to clean mortar shells because their hands were small enough; a time when there were no safety regulations and a laid-off or crippled worker was on his own.

Pledging to an ideal rather than to the people allows the party to make meaningless promises because the promises aren’t made to any identifiable people.

*** Notice that I ignored the Republican’s fanciful math here … like … where budget cuts of $100 billion will wipe out a deficit of $1,400 billion dollars. oops.

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