Karl Rove once said, “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” As backwards as this statement is, it has been embraced by the Right to attack educated progressives and to make “liberal” into a dirty word. Conservatives have long been proponents of denying public access to information about how their policies just don't work.
The problem with this strategy is that, as the lies ultimately surface and the public becomes disillusioned, the Right continues to undermine our collective intelligence by attempting to bandage over our outrage with a new set of lies. We have reached a point where the lies have become so abundant that we are now adept at spotting them. Taking a look at this week's news highlights:
-An investigative report into the documents obtained by the New York Times from their lawsuit against the Pentagon revealed a six-year long strategy for the Bush administration to co-opt a team of “military analysts,” and groom them to deliver war testimony manipulated in the administration's favor. These analysts were paid $500-$1,000 each per appearance on a mainstream news network.
-After human rights groups joined together in a lawsuit to investigate whether senior officials of the Bush administration authorized the use of torture, the CIA announced that it possesses some 7,000 documents that it will not be handing over. The CIA cited “presidential communications privilege,” a classic stonewalling strategy for hiding immoral and illegal acts.
-Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing entitled: Domestic Abstinence-Only Programs: Assessing the Evidence. One would assume the study that broke earlier in the month exposing a 1 in 4 STD infection rate among teen girls would be evidence enough that abstinence-only programs are indeed what Planned Parenthood has called “a $1.5 billion failure.”
It's up to us, members of the progressive movement, to make it known that, despite what the administration believes, the American public has eyes and ears and brains. We can see through their charades. It's time for all of us to demand to know what our leaders are doing to protect our security. It's time to ensure that the unprecedented magnitude of deceit brought forth by the Bush administration will never happen again. Join Progressive Future's commitment to the values of security, fairness, community and liberty by signing our Priorities for a Progressive Future.
