“On
religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no
position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs.
There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus
Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their
position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on
a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a
loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the
political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that
if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B,"
"C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And
from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral
beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must
endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some
God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the
Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the
way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans
in the name of conservatism.”
When
you can use a quote by Barry Goldwater as a voice of sanity and
moderation, it demonstrates rather dramatically just how far to the
right our country has swung. For those too young to remember, Barry
Goldwater was considered a right wing extremist in the 1960s, today
he would be left of Obama on many issues.
The
doomsayers on the right keep telling us as a country we should do
less, to aim lower, to shrink government, to invest less in the
future, to spend less on education and to privatize everything from
prisons to medicare. For the last 30 years the right, both Democratic
and Republican, has won nearly every argument from denying climate
change to achieving the lowest taxes on the rich. The right has
gotten nearly everything they want at every turn and look at what a
mess they have made of our country. That is what aiming lower gets
you.
So
here is an idea, we have tried it their way for the last 30 years and
it clearly doesn't work, so let's try something different and
progressive for a change. Let's aim higher. Let's try investing more
in our future, more in education, more in science, more in single
payer health care (medicare for all), let's extend full human rights
to all people and invest more in the kind of infrastructure that will
make our country a technological world leader again and pay for it by
returning tax rates on the rich to the levels they were in the 1950s,
60s and 70s; you know, when we were prosperous. When the country was
run by such wild eyed liberals as Republican Richard Nixon who
created the EPA, OSHA, increased NASA and supported a woman’s right
to choose her own reproductive options.
