Louisiana Voice

The Republican Party, for lack of a better term, is an institutional oxymoron.

Put in the poetic vernacular, perhaps three lines from the Kris Kristofferson classic, The Pilgrim sums up the philosophy of the party:

He’s a walking contradiction
Partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home

Before you break out the torches and pitchforks, I remind you that I am a recovering Republican (33 years). Accordingly, like the recovering alcoholic, I have looked the devil squarely in the eye and decided it was time to change and I’ve been sober for 13 years now.

It’s no big secret that the Republicans are opposed to Social Security and Medicare (Sen. Rick Scott wants to phase both out completely, which might not sit well with his senior constituents in Florida. He is supported in his privatization plan by fellow Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.)

In 1935, Republican congressman John Taber claimed Social Security was “designed to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”

In 1964, Ronald Reagan said his opposition to Social Security and Medicare is why he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. He branded Social Security as “welfare” and lamented the passage of Medicare, saying, “One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

(He neglected to explain how Social Security was “welfare,” when it is a program Americans pay into their entire working lives.)

Any time any program is proposed to help lower-income Americans, the Republican Party’s automatic response is “Socialism!” Yet, that same Republican Party has no problem doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in special federal programs that benefit corporations and their board members.

In fact, if one were to put the pencil to a comparison of fraud perpetuated by the so-called “welfare queens” vs. corporate welfare fraud, one would see a system heavily weighted in favor of the corporate cheats.

So, what is the DIFFERENCE?

• Democrats support tax cuts for the middle- and low-income families while Republicans prefer to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
• Democrats generally favor choice, gun control, and gay marriage while Republicans are universally opposed to all three propositions.
• Democrats support organized labor. While burdened with a history of corruption, labor unions have nevertheless been instrumental in creating the American middle class. Republicans detest organized labor even though certain Republican (read: Richard Nixon and the Teamsters) manage to get in bed together from time to time.
• Republicans have expressed their desire to abolish the Department of Education, saying that should be left to the states. As an alternative to that goal, they support school choice through charter schools and school vouchers. Yet, they demand a say in what is taught in schools.
• Republicans bitterly oppose any government-run single-payer health care system.
• The fact that Nixon created the EPA notwithstanding, Republicans are opposed to any legislation supporting environmental protection. A lot has changed in that regard since Republican Teddy Roosevelt advocated conservation and created the National Park Service.

Republicans, to put it in as simple terms as possible, just want the government out of our lives.

So they say.

But truth be told, they only want government out of their lives, but not necessarily out of everyone else’s.

As evidence of this, I offer Exhibit One:

The passage of draconian anti-abortion laws in several states that allow no exceptions for incest or rape. In states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, for example, a woman has absolutely no say-so over her own body. That right has been usurped by men, most of whom have never been pregnant. In Texas, despite Republican’s insistence on less governmental interference, they encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors in cases of abortions (kinda reminds one of nazism and fascism).

Exhibit Two:

Saturday’s headline in THE WASHINGTON POST: “Florida rejects math books with ‘references’ to critical race theory.”

Wait. What?!!? I thought Republicans wanted less guvmint interference in our daily lives.

How the ever-lovin’ hell can a math book contain CRT? And do the imbeciles in Florida even have the faintest concept of what CRT is? When I was in electronics school in the US Air Force back in the ‘60s, it stood for cathode ray tube, but I kinda doubt that’s what it means today. Do they even make tubes for electronic equipment anymore?

Perhaps the illustration below is what they mean by CRT in math textbooks in Florida:

Exhibit Three:

Another WASHINGTON POST headline: “Censorship battles’ new frontier: your public library.”

Yep, not satisfied with purging objectionable material from those communistic, sex-saturated, woke-filled math textbooks, attention is being turned to our public libraries and the equivalent to the old practice of book burning. Can’t have all that propaganda being made available to innocent children. I suppose it never occurred to society’s self-appointed censors that the kiddies will get all that they need from the Internet.

One Bonnie Wallace, a church volunteer, wrote the Llano, Texas, library about the “pornographic filth” she found in the library. She must have been really searching hard because she compiled an Excel spreadsheet of some 60 books that she found offensive. Betcha anything the Harry Potter books, with all their sorcery and witchcraft, were on her list. I’ll go one further and bet you she never read a one of them.

It reminded me of a church lady I knew when I was a kid. She and her husband ran a small grocery store. One day, a man came in and asked for a beer. Of course, Lincoln Parish was dry at the time and she curtly told him she didn’t sell beer. “I’m kidding,” he said. “I just want a root beer.”

After he left, Church Lady, properly offended, took a knife and scraped the word “beer” off every single bottle of root beer in her store.

But back to Bonnie Wallace. She insisted that every book containing any reference to gays, sex, or race be removed from the library shelves.

Which brings up a small problem called the Holy Bible.

Gay couples in the Bible: David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18); Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1); Daniel and Ashpenaz (Daniel 1), and the Centurion and his beloved servant (Matthew 8). And just for lagniappe, there is the Ethiopian Eunuch in the New Testament.

Incest in the Bible: Okay, this one’s a little dicey. How did Adam and Eve’s children procreate? Or Noah’s children, after everyone else on earth was destroyed in the flood? And what about Lot and his two daughters who got him drunk and seduced him?

Other sexual exploits in the Bible: Two angels visit Sodom and stay with Lot’s family. That night, the men in town come for the angels. Instead, Lot offers them his two daughters “who have not known any man.” (Lot appears to be some kind of serious sexual deviate but somehow is deemed to be the only righteous man around and is saved.)

Genocide in the Bible: Well, there are just too many to list here, but two of the most well-known involve an ark and an Egyptian plague but there are references to cannibalism (when two women make a bargain to eat their own children, 2 Kings 6:24-33), murder, dismemberment, and human sacrifice.

Misogyny in the Bible: Just read Leviticus.

Slavery in the Bible: Schools are prohibited from teaching about slavery in many states now, but there are several references to it in the Bible, primarily in Exodus.

Adultry in the Bible: I give you Abraham, who fathered a son, Ishmael, with an Egyptian servant named Hagar and then a second son, Isaac, with wife Sarah. Ishmael became founder of the Islamic faith and Isaac founded the Jewish nation.

Witches and sorcery in the Bible: (“Do not allow a sorceress to live,” Exodus 22:18); Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:10-12.

I realize with all due clarity that this is going to get me into a lot of trouble with my church-going friends who will condemn me to eternal darnnation but I feel it’s important to make this comparison in order to properly drive home the point that Republicans generally insist on:

• Cherry-picking those issues with which they agree or disagree and to blow those issues completely out of proportion so that a smokescreen may be established that obfuscates other, more important issues;
• Less interference in our daily lives by government – unless that interference advances their agenda, of course;
• Gaining control over what we read, watch, hear, experience, and understand so as to secure complete control over as many aspects of our lives as possible through selective indoctrination, and
• Advancing the big lie of compassion and understanding.