Haloween in Milwaukee, Chuck and Margie. 

Walking the 409! 

Bush on Liberty

Bush tried to pass himself off as an expert on liberty. Here on Illinois for Kerry/Edwards we talk about a real expert On Liberty

Tonight John Kerry again debated Bush and won. John talked about real plans to bring our country back on the right track on jobs, education, health care and the war on terror. Bush made fun of the idea of having plans, and admitted he has none of his own. My debate watching partner and I just laughed. "Oh great, no plan at all; what's worse, a plan or no idea whatsoever."

During much of the debate, Bush talked about Liberty, suggesting that he was bringing liberty to Iraq and America, and it got me thinking about the concept of liberty. In 1859, John Stuart Mill a British philosopher of the Victorian era Utilitarian movement, wrote his book, On Liberty. To Mill, liberty involved an individual's right to think and act for himself, with responsibility for his beliefs and actions. So, what have we brought to Iraq (aside from mayhem). We brought the loss of infrastructure and disruption of food supply and distribution. We brought Iraq to a state where it is virtually impossible to do business in any meaningful way. We brought the hope for elections, but most likely the installation of a leader who will need our support to stay in power (oh, that has worked so very well in the past, hasn't it--Iran in the 1970s, for example). We brought increased fear in women many who now wear headscarves when they did not before because they believe it will keep them safer. Thinking about what we have brought to Iraq, I fail to see how we have brought about Mill's idea of liberty. Mill protested against external authority over the individual, but that exactly what we have brought about in Iraq.

Individuals cannot function when their basic needs are not met and they have to look to others to provide them and they are subject to external authority when they fear to act as they typically act and cannot follow leaders of their choosing.
Then, I thought about Bush's record on liberty at home. Mill's liberty is civil or social liberty. The "nature and limits of the power which can legitimately exercised by society over the individual." Mill argued that the founders of the US aimed to "set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community." Bush's record on liberty as viewed from a Mill perspective is abysmal. Bush wants to curtail a woman's right to choose. Bush and his attorney general, Ashcroft, want to allow law enforcement to obtain warrants without court approval. Under Bush's watch, people have been taken into custody without the ability to see an attorney or notify their families of their fate; librarians have been used as government spies; our rights of assembly and free speech have been challenged. According to Bush their are few limits on the power his administration exercises over the people.

Remember Ari Fleischer telling us that we cannot disagree with the president after 9/11? I can never forget that as it was the incident that brought me to the Kerry campaign. They kept saying that the world had changed forever. They wanted that message clear because they were putting us on notice that we could not express dissent. Mill said "Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood." Truth to Bush is his opinion unfettered by the opinions of others.

It is clear that Bush has brought a decrease in liberty at home, but nonetheless, pretended to be the president of liberty during the debate. How can Bush stand at the lectern and discuss liberty. He has no idea what it is and he has probably never even heard of John Stuart Mill.