We keep getting told how bold President Bush is, on Iraq, on Social Security, you name it. People like him, it is said (well not really if recent polls are any indication), because he seems willing to say what he believes regardless of what others say, or the circumstances may be.
This has kind of gotten me to thinking about what sort of boldness we should hope for in our next batch of Democratic presidential aspirants. At the risk of bringing down the wrath of blogdom, I am going to be bold today, and list some of my bold wishes, in the hopes that other bloggers will pick up on them, or add some bold wishes of their own.
Boldness #1: End the Cuba embargo and all the associated nonsense about travel restrictions and cigars. It is a dumb policy, with absolutely no relevance to the nation's security or interests. And it's been a spectacular failure, Castro is still in charge (after 40+ years), and the embargo hurts only the country's poor citizens. Tell the cuban exiles in Miami, we're sorry, but $%& off. Will we lose Florida? Probably. But we lost it last time and the time before that. Ignore the electoral college. Just be bold.
Boldness #2: End the Drug War. It is a war against people. It's a violation of civil liberties, and like our Cuba policy, it's a spectacular failure. The only beneficiaries are the police, prison industries, and justices who are employed as a result of it.
Boldness #3: Support the Constitution, the separation of church and state, and judicial review. Not exactly bold, since they're only our nation's laws and 200 year old precedents. But as Donald Rumsfeld might say, you go with the bold wishes that you have.
Boldness #4: Scale down the military and the armaments industry. What is our military for? If it is for defense, than we can get by with a lot less than we have now. As a Democratic society, we should be discussing these things.
Boldness #4a: End our occupation of Okinawa. That's an island off the shore of Japan, that our military has pretty much been running since the end of WWII. Tell us what purpose our military installations serve there or dismantle them.
Boldness #5: Bring our socialized health care system out of the closet. Right now we socialize medicine in pieces (unequal ones) through employers, public health insurance, and various forms of subsidized indigent care. Let's end the hypocrisy of acting like the socialized medicine through employer coverage is somehow OK and free marketish, but the socialized medicine through public health plans is somehow bad.
That's my bold list for now. But I reserve the right to be bold later.
1 comment:
hell yeah, i'm in total agreement with the democrats going boldly into 2006 and 2008 and beyond, and with these specific bold moves, esp. #1 and #2 and most esp. #5. #3 and #4 are interesting in that defense seems like such a complicated area with so many players and doing a lot of good and bad things so i think these issues would be much tougher to address, though still worth discussing as ya said, but 1, 2, and 5 seem really clear cut and if these were asserted with unwavering passion i think most people could be convinced
Post a Comment