Thus Spake Russ

Posted By Russ Emerson on October 24, 2004 at 7:30 pm

For those of you who may still be on the fence with regard to your selection of a candidate in this presidential election, I’m going to elucidate a few of the reasons I support the re-election of President George W. Bush. You may disagree, and that’s OK. It’s still a free country, after all. But I think that if Kerry is elected, we as a nation will have made a mistake that will have repercussions for years to come, for decades to come.
And possibly forever.

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First, I support President Bush for his stands on domestic matters. There are places I disagree with him — the budget, and his failure to use his veto power when necessary — but in most areas, I support him unreservedly. I’ll cite just one example: Social Security.
The Social Security system — a Ponzi scheme if ever there was one — is broken. It will inevitably fail; the only question is when.
It has been 70 years (or thereabouts) that the system has been in place. In that time, the overall life expectancy of Americans has risen; the number of people living to age 65 and beyond has risen, and they are living farther past age 65. In other words, more people than ever before are receiving Social Security benefits, and are receiving them for more years.
The age at which people can begin collecting benefits has not increased to match these demographic trends. Nor, due to political cowardice on all sides, is it ever likely to do so.
Meanwhile, fewer workers than ever are paying into the system for each recipient. Few people age 40 or below believe that Social Security will be in place for them 25 or more years down the road. I’m 42, and I certainly don’t believe Social Security will be there for me, should I happen to defy all expectations and live to a ripe old age.
How then does the problem get fixed? Who has the best ideas?

Kerry offers nothing but more of the same. Under a Kerry regime, there are only two likely courses of action. In the first, nothing will be done and the problem will again be pushed off to yet another set of future politicians. The second option is equally unpalatable: taxes will have to increase drastically to keep the system going. To see how successful that might be, one only needs to look at the impending demographic-driven failure of the European welfare states, in which there fewer and fewer people paying into the system to keep it afloat for long. Raising taxes to fund Social Security is a scheme akin to using a bailing bucket for flood control on the Titanic.
There’s no stopping it — the ship will sink. Kerry would prefer that we form a bucket brigade and bail as fast as we can.
President Bush, on the other hand, would rather let us man the lifeboats and get off the sinking ship. He’d rather make sure there are enough lifeboats for everyone, and if it means pulling planks off the sinking ship’s deck to build them, so be it.
Privatization — the term being used to scare senior citizens — is the right thing to do, but it doesn’t mean what Kerry says it means. (Of course, anything Kerry says is usually unrelated to the truth, except perhaps by accident.) Allowing people to build their own retirement savings and to have ownership of even a small portion of what they pay into the mandated system is a major improvement over the status quo.
President Bush has a plan for the future, a plan that has a chance of working. Kerry doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.

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While there is a great deal of import in what a president does domestically, his role in foreign affairs is equally, if not more, important.

The president’s job, when dealing with the rest of the world, consists solely of making sure America’s interests are advanced. That’s all. A president has no business making other countries happy at our expense.
Kerry has already told us how he would approach the international community: on bended knee.
Kyoto? Back on the table, despite the shoddy pseudo-science upon which it is based, despite the irreparable harm it would do to the American economy and consequently to all Americans. Why? Because it would make the rest of the world respect us? Not hardly. The rest of the world, China in particular, would like nothing more than to see our economic hands tied.
The United Nations? “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…” except perhaps at the Elysee Palace. The UN has become nothing more than a debating society for tinpot dictators and kleptocrats, but Kerry would have us submit to their judgement of what’s best. Should we really care about the opinions of those who stole billions of dollars which should have gone to feed the people of Iraq? No thank you.
The Middle East? The rest of the world would like to try to make the problems of the Middle East go away, and so would Kerry — by throwing an ally to the wolves.
President Bush, on the other hand, knows that a President is supposed to look out for America’s interests — first, last and always. He knows that the de facto leader of the free world cannot actually lead if he is busy following others. And if the international community doesn’t like it, that’s just too bad for them.
And that’s good enough for me.

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All the above notwithstanding, the single most important duty of a president is to protect the nation. I am utterly unconvinced that John Kerry is ready, either by inclination or experience, to carry out that duty effectively.
I am convinced that President Bush is thus prepared. We have, after all, nearly four years of evidence.
By withdrawing from the Anti-Ballitic Missile treaty — a suicide pact with a defeated enemy — he showed that he is determined to protect America from future foes armed with the deadliest of weapons… weapons for which our adversaries can thank the Clinton administration.
I believe that Kerry would have adhered to the ABM treaty. He would place a higher value on looking statesmanlike to the rest of the world than he would on protecting the American people.

Had Kerry been president when we were attacked on September 11th, 2001, it is no stretch of the imagination to say that he would have taken none of the actions President Bush took to overthrow the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Kerry would fail to take the fight to the enemy.
Kerry has said and done nothing whatsoever to convince me that he believes we are at war with something bigger than Al-Qaeda. His “law enforcement” approach to the war against Islamofascism is bereft of any pretense of seriousness about defending America. His “wait to be hit then prosecute the offenders” stance did not work for Clinton after the first attack on the World Trade Center, and it would continue to be a failure in the future. His view of radical Islamic terrorism as something that can be comfortably reduced to a nuisance betrays a complete lack of understanding of the essential nature of this war in which we are now engaged.
Sure, Kerry talks a big game on the campaign trail. Well, you can either believe what he says, or you can look at his record. The simple fact that his words do not match his actions make him less than credible, and unsuitable for the highest office in the land.
And lest it go unsaid, his personal history of self-aggrandizement at the expense of his former comrades-in-arms, while aiding and abetting our enemies, is something I will not forgive. Not now, not ever.
By way of contrast, in little more than three years President Bush has seen our country viciously attacked, and in response set us on a course which has thus far destroyed two enemy regimes and brought freedom from tyranny to 50 million people on the far side of the world, while at the same time doing his best to make us safer here at home.
There will almost certainly be terrorist attacks against us on our own soil again in the future — perhaps even between now and the election a few days hence. I am convinced that President Bush is the better man to handle such crises.
There is one immutable, undeniable truth about the candidates: President Bush is better on national security than Kerry and will do a more effective job of protecting this country (and a few others — call it “collateral improvement”) and taking the fight to the enemy.
I take that back. There are people who routinely deny President Bush’s superiority, who will say with a straight face that Kerry will be a better leader in the war against Islamofascism.
They are liars.
They are either lying to you, or to themselves, or both. The candidates’ records clearly tell the tale.

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If Kerry is elected (or steals the election, as his followers and surrogates will attempt to do for him), we as a nation will have made a mistake that will have repercussions for years to come, for decades to come.
And possibly forever.
Yes, forever. To paraphrase Lincoln, America is the last best hope of freedom on the Earth. But if the slide into European-style socialism is not checked, if we surrender to the will of other nations, and if our enemies can strike us at will, then the guarantor of our God-given freedoms, our constitutional republic, will be doomed — and there will be no peaceful way to recover it. John Kerry would not only fail to protect us from these threats, but would actively embrace two of them, and the republic will be that much closer to collapse.
President Bush offers the hope that these all-too-real threats can be staved off. No, he is not the perfect candidate — no one ever has been or ever will be — and I think it’s safe to suggest that he’d be the first to say as much. We all know that no one is perfect. But President Bush is unquestionably the best candidate in the race this year, and that’s what matters.
And so, on November 2nd, I will cast my vote to re-elect President George W. Bush.

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