The lesser of two evils.
Published Fri, Nov 2 2007 2:25 AM
Technorati Tags: Politics
Some things just can't be hidden. A house on a hilltop is one of them.
When you live in a house on a hill, your life isn't easily hidden either. Maybe the inside is, but the outside is there for all to see, especially when there aren't a lot of trees to block the view.
How much do appearances matter? In politics I guess it's quite a bit. What's inside doesn't seem to matter that much in the political arena. There it's all what's on the surface that matters, at least as days like next Tuesday get closer.
This afternoon I heard Michael Medved say that he doesn't like the expression "the lesser of two evils" as it's applied to politics. He would prefer the term "the greater of two imperfects" (or did he say "the better", I don't remember his exact words).
Looked at that way, it seems to make it possible to vote "for" someone in our elections rather than "against" someone. It's still hard for me to see it that way though.
I'd prefer it if our politicians cleaned up the hill. Right now there's a lot of junk and trash on the political hillside. I'd like to see a politician that fights corruption by exposing it to the light of day.
I'd like to see a politician that considers whether a bill is "permissible" rather than "popular". I'd like to see my representatives go a bit further than that though and consider whether a bill is "necessary" rather than merely "permissible".
We have too many laws as it is. Altogether too many of those laws are neither necessary, nor permissible when you get down to it.
Our Constitution says that Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech. Yet our Congress has made laws that prevent ordinary citizens from speaking out against a particular politician or candidate in the sixty days leading up to the election. Our president has signed them. Our Supreme Court has upheld them.
We can't choose the Justices on our Courts. We can choose our President and our Representatives and Senators. But we can't say anything about them just before an election unless we say it without the benefit of media to transmit our message.
It's legal for politicians to lie to us. It's illegal for us to expose those lies. Not one of our Presidential candidates will do anything about that.
This is just one of the things our politicians do, and will continue to do that violates our rights and violates the spirit of the Constitution. Next year, on Election Day, we will be voting for new federal officers. Unless one of them promises to uphold the Constitution and to work to restore the limitations on our federal government we won't have a choice of "the better of two imperfects". Instead our choice will be the "lesser of two evils".
Even if we found a politician that would make the promise, how long would it be before it was broken?
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