by Scott Esposito
You know, an interesting thing is to look at the fringes of the Democrat and Republican parties. I'll admit that some Left wing Democrats can sound kind of kooky at times, but their kookiness is of a completely different kind from Right wing Republicans. For instance, take Trent Lott's recent remarks on war in Iraq, (quoted from http://www.thehill.com/news/102903/gopunity.aspx):
"Honestly, it's a little tougher than I thought it was going to be," Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You're dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out."
Now Lott is pretty Right wing. He's anti-abortion no matter what, and recently implied that we would be better off if America hadn't integrated blacks and whites. So, the above quote about mowing down Iraqis is par for the course for Lott's kind of Right wing kookiness.
Now, let's think about some Left wing kookiness. Gray Davis drew massive fire (and may have lost the recall election) because of his support of a bill that allows undocumented Mexican immigrants to get a California drivers license. Without debating the merits of that bill, I think it's fair to say that the idea of giving undocumented immigrants drivers licenses is pretty far Left, at least so far as American politics is concerned.
Now let's compare Lott to Davis. Lott's kookiness advocated a scorched earth policy against innocent civilians in order to root out a few terrorists which our war probably brought there in the first place. Davis' kookiness advocated extending a civil right to unlawful immigrants so that their lives would be a little easier. Do we all see a difference here?
That's the thing about the Left and the Right. Even when ideas coming from the Left wing sound ridiculous, they're usually ridiculously nice. They're along the lines of extending welfare benefits, giving more rights to unlawful immigrants, giving health care to those who can't pay. When kooky ideas come out of the Right, they're usually malignantly kooky. Re-segregating, calling the Christian God better than the Muslim God, ending the Head Start program.
It makes you think about the core of Republican and Democrat ideology. Why is it that one party fringe can produce such abhorrent ideas while the other party fringe produces, at worst, misled, but well-intentioned ideas? I think its an indication that certain ideas held dear by Conservatives are simply out of step with the world we live in today. I'm not advocating an wholesale trashing of the Republicans - they do have many good ideas. Unfortunately, however, it seems that a certain subset of the Republicans has failed to change along with the rest of America and now we're seeing the result. Kooky, isn't it?