Notes and Summary of the Broadcast
PRESIDENT BUSH:
Good morning. At this hour, America's brave men and women in
uniform are engaging our enemies around the world.... [read
more] [listen]
PRESIDENT JOHN
QUINCY ADAMS:
America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to
destroy."
Kevin Craig's Platform: Foreign
Affairs
-
Note the clearly expressed position of
America's Founding Fathers:
"I deem [one of] the essential principles of our
government, and consequently [one] which ought to shape
its administration,…peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with
none."
— Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Kevin Craig's Platform: Iraq
The 2004 Libertarian Party Platform: Foreign
Policy
- The
Bill of Rights: Antipathy to Militarism
- America's Founding Fathers would be horrified
at the Bush Administration's "War on Terror" and
the "Patriot
Act."
The Democrat Party Response: Chuck
Schumer
- "On Tuesday, we in Congress sent President Bush an
emergency spending bill that did two things. It fully
funded our troops - because we will never leave our troops
stranded. And at the same time, it required the President
to change the mission in Iraq to what should be our first
and foremost goal -- counter-terrorism.
"This war has
devolved into something the President never mentioned when
he asked our country to go to war in Iraq, and something
that we never bargained for - policing a civil war between
Sunnis and Shiites."
The Libertarian
Response to the Democrat Response: How
do the Democrat and Republican positions differ?
Both would fund unconstitutional military
intervention in Iraq. Both would put U.S. soldiers in harm's
way in order to promote the interests of Unocal
and the oil industry. Schumer and the Democrats would fund
armed conflict between the same people ("us" and
"them") but the Democrats call their action
"counter terrorism" while calling Bush's action
"policing a civil war," even though Bush says he's
fighting a "war on terrorism." What would the
Republicans call the exact same actions if promoted by a
Democrat Administration? Probably "policing a civil
war."
Demoblicans and Republicrats promote
identical policies, pejoratively label the opposing party's
identical policy, and continually criticize each other
for doing exactly the same thing they would do if they were in
power.
"The
argument that the two parties should represent opposed
ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the
other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to
doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties
should be almost identical, so that the American people can
"throw the rascals out" at any election without
leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy....
But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired,
unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to
replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other
party, which will be none of these things but will still
pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic
policies."
Carroll
Quigley, Georgetown Professor and mentor of Bill Clinton
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