On Square Pegs and Round Holes: A True-False Test for New Year’s Political Planning

"Then you ask why I don't live here,

Honey, how come you don't move?"
(On the Road Again,
Bob Dylan, ©1965)

It's 2010, an important election year, and you will soon be asked to choose which side you are on: Will you vote to keep in Congress those who supported the kind of big spending- government-can-do-it-all state being created by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine, or will you mark your ballot for those who support a smaller, fiscally responsible Washington with a more limited role in our daily lives?

This is a crucial decision, particularly for those of you who consider yourselves "independents," or "moderates" of either political party. But this fall's election is even more of a watershed event for those of you "dyed in the wool" democrats who pretty much always vote along straight party lines: For you, it is not too soon to warm yourself up to the possibility of voting for a (gasp!!) republican candidate for Congress. For in 2010, with 1000's of democrats and independents swelling the ranks of the Tea Party movement, and others filled with "Obama remorse," and with the power grab currently underway by the democrat administration and Congress, this is not your typical "politics as usual," not your "well, they're all the same anyway" kind of moment. And this is not your father's or mother's democrat party.

I speak from experience here. Like my parents before me, and like much of my generation which came of age in the '60's, I voted straight democrat tickets through the late '90's. I was not all that politically aware and tended to vote based on myopic views of one or two issues, and a disparaging view of all things republican. Disaffection with the post-Lewinsky Bill Clinton initiated the slide in my allegiance; 9/11 solidified it; and Obama-Pelosi-Reid's march toward statism has turned it into fervent opposition.

"You don't dance like a republican," one new liberal acquaintance said to me at a recent dinner-dance event, reflecting the pervasive belief among the left that a person who votes republican must have the personality of a radish, the tolerance of a prig, and the natural rhythm of an Al Gore, (or a Tom De Lay.)

"How did this happen?" some liberal friends have asked me of my political defection, the question always delivered in the same hushed tones one might use to inquire delicately about the onset of some noxious disease or a death in the family. On those occasions I can practically see the mental wheels grinding, downgrading their earlier estimate of my IQ, certainly now in question for having the weakness of mind to vote republican. At such moments, I often recall the lines from Dylan's song quoted above and rephrase them: They ask why I don't abide with the dems, and I think, honey, how come you don't move?

But the answer I give to the "how did this happen" question, is that I woke up one day, exhausted from the strain of furiously trying to pound ideological square pegs into the round holes of reality, and, like a nearly-blind woman with a first pair of glasses, I saw the world that is, and not the world that some would like it to be.

It started with the Lewinsky scandal and the knots into which democrat women lawmakers of the time turned themselves, in order to stand by their (pro-choice) man over "that woman," the phrase delivered by Clinton as he lied to us (again) while finger-pointing angrily into the camera. I could not persuade myself then that a President of the United States, lying under oath, in a sexual harassment lawsuit in federal court was simply a lie about a private matter involving recreational sex in the oval office.

And once I gave myself permission to doubt one piece of liberal dogma, I found it impossible not to turn those same clearer eyes on a whole host of liberal doctrines. Freed from the shackles of having to fit everything into a strict (liberal) view of the world, from trying to jam square pegs into round holes, I could embrace different views. To borrow a phrase from the other Clinton, I could no longer employ the "willing suspension of disbelief" required to sustain the democrat mindset.

To see if, after the events of 2009, the first year of Barack Obama, you might find yourself in the same boat, (or clinging to its sides), I invite you to take the following True/False test to see if you still have (or ever had) the right stuff to vote for the left:

1. Janet Napolitano was right earlier this year when she said that the biggest terrorist threats that face America come from returning military veterans and tea partiers. (T/F?)
   
2. Obama's sending additional troops to Afghanistan does not mean that we are "at war" with Islamic terrorists. (T/F?)
   
3. If we don't call it a war, it is not a war. (T/F?)
   
4. Soldiers can be sent into battle, fight and die, yet they are not engaged in "war." (T/F?)
   
5. If we act "nice" to our enemies, they will be nice to us. (T/F?)
   
6. We must give civil trials, and not military commission hearings, to battlefield detainees like KSM because they are not wartime prisoners or enemy combatants, but if they are released by a jury or by the President, our soldiers can go ahead and shoot them or bomb them when they retake the battlefields. (T/F?)
   
7. When a person espousing fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, who calls himself a Soldier of Allahu, and who has recent ties to a radical imam in Yemen, who in turn has ties with Al Qaeda, and that same person kills and maims US soldiers, yelling as he does so, "Allahu Ahkbar," the jihadist war cry, this act is simply "an inexplicable act of violence," as the President said, and is not tied to Islamic jihad. (T/F?)
   
8. Intelligence gathering is all important to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it makes sense not to interrogate people like the underpants bomber, but instead "lawyer" them up, because the world will see that we are a nation of principles. (T/F?)
   
9. A youth with radicalized Islamic views and jihadist fantasies who has ties to Al Qaeda in Yemen, who tries to blow up an airliner full of Americans on Christmas day is simply, as the President put it, "an isolated extremist." (T/F?)
10. Yemen is the new sanctuary for Al Qaeda, and extremists there have assisted in at least the last 2 terror plots against the US.  Half of the current 215 GITMO detainees are Yemeni nationals.  Despite a recidivism rate of 1 in 7, all detainees should be released because closing GITMO will send a message to the world that we live by our values. (T/F?)
    
11. You agree with Janet Napolitano, Head of DHS, that the "system worked," referring to the security system that failed to prevent the underpants bomber attack, despite adequate advance information received by the CIA. (T/F?)
    
12. President Obama was right when he contradicted Janet Napolitano saying it was a "systemic failure." (Note: this is a trick question.) (T/F?)
    
13. It is right to charge KSM (the mastermind of 9/11) and the underpants bomber (who tried to kill hundreds) in civil courts, even though our own Navy Seals will not get a civil trial on (denied) charges of a single punch to the stomach to one detainee. (T/F?)
    
14. We cannot tolerate any kind of profiling on the basis of ethnic looks and religion, even if the vast majority, (nearly 100%), of all terror attacks are committed by those sharing the same ethnic looks and religion. (T/F?)
    
15. If a would-be bomber uses a blanket and pillow, (or shoes, or box cutters) in his botched attempt, it makes sense to profile, even outlaw, the use of blankets and pillows and such, rather than profiling the characteristics of the would-be bomber himself. (T/F?)
    
16. In order to give the appearance of fairness to all, an 80 yr. old grandma from Iowa must be given the same type of airline screening that a disaffected radicalized youth whose own father turned him in to the CIA as being an Islamic extremist, should get. (T/F?)
    
17. A network of people with common ideological, extremist religious views, who openly express their commitment to killing infidels, particularly Americans, and who are armed by Islamic rogue nations, and who carry on battles with our forces, are not engaged in acts of war with us, but are mere common criminals. (T/F?)
    
18. Eric Holder was right when he said that waterboarding battlefield detainees was torture. (T/F?)
    
19. Eric Holder was right when he said that waterboarding our own troops to prepare them for interrogations (as we do), is not torture. (T/F?)
    
20. Eric Holder was right when he backtracked and said that if waterboarding our troops is not torture then waterboarding per se is not torture. (T/F?)
    
21. Eric Holder was right when he said that the purpose behind waterboarding makes it torture or not: if it's to get information, then it's torture; if it's to prepare someone about giving up information, it's not torture. (T/F?)
    
22. You do not find listening to Eric Holder to be torture. (T/F?)
    
23. President Obama, Al Gore, Bono, and other politicians and celebrities are within their rights to use up large amounts of carbon in their private jets to go to places like Copenhagen to chastise the rest of the world about not using carbon. (T/F?)
    
24. Climate science is settled even though serious scientists have serious doubts. (T/F?)
    
25. It is appropriate to quiet the voices of dissenting views in the scientific community through suppressing data and disallowing divergent opinions to be published, because the matter at stake, global warming (or cooling or climate change,) is a catastrophe waiting to happen. (T/F?)
    
26. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was right when, in the context of publicly funded health care coverage, she said that there was no real difference between a woman's right to abort a fetus and a man's right to use Viagra, in that both involve reproductive freedom. (T/F?)
    
27. A fetus dies during an abortion, and also when a man uses Viagra. (T/F?)
    
28. The health care crisis is so serious and grave, and so many people are dying without medical coverage that we must jam a partisan bill through Congress without showing it to the American people, even though medical relief will not be provided for at least 4 years but new taxes will start immediately. (T/F?)
    
29. You can cover health care for 25 million more people, cut Medicare by $500 billion, spend $1 trillion overall, and have better health care than ever and still save money! (T/F?)
    
30. Some law, even though it may prove ruinous to our health care system, and even though it is achieved through bought votes, and even though it has unknown consequences at a forbidding price tag that may put us in the poor house, is better than no law, as long as the goal is worthy. (T/F?)
    
31. In the pictures on the right sidebar, President Obama is not bowing at the waist, but is merely inclining his head to foreign leaders. (T/F?)
    
32. During the entire 20 years during which Barack and Michelle Obama regularly sat in Reverend Jeremiah Wright's pews, and during which the Reverend officiated over their marriage and their children's baptisms, and during which Wright served as a spiritual mentor to Obama, Barack Obama never heard any radical, racist, anti-American or other extremist views expressed by Reverend Wright. (T/F?)
    
33. When in doubt or left without an answer, it is best to blame George Bush. (T/F?)
    

If you answered True to most of these questions, it is probably too late for you and you should immediately stop reading this blog and go to the Daily Kos or Huffington Post post-haste. If, on the other hand, you, find the above hard to swallow, you owe it to yourself to stop wearing yourself out pounding those square pegs into round holes.

Do you really want to vote for a party that requires you to check your reason and common sense at the door?

Think about it. We could use more dancers on our side.

Happy 2010!!