Here's are some quotes from a recent speech Bernie gave at the recent "Take back America" conference. I found this text on Bernies website: http://www.bernie.org/documents/20050609.asp , but apparently it originated at The Nation:
Bernie was talking about how the Bush administration has numbed our sense of outrage with their constant assault on our sense of truth and honesty:
"What does "outrage" mean anymore when we have an Administration that took us into a war under false premises--a war that has cost us over 1,600 dead, 12,000 wounded and $300 billion--in addition to the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people?"The world appears to have forgotten that the "decision" to go to war was bumbled through because of Saddam Hussein's alledged threat to our national security vis á vis his "weapons of mass destruction." With no weapons found, the double-super-secret real reason for the war was later revealed to be to give Iraqi's their political freedom, and help them die to get it. Whether they wanted it or not.
"What does "outrage" mean anymore when we have a Majority Leader in the House who threatens our independent judiciary; who leaves the voting rolls open for three additional hours while he secures the votes he needs at five in the morning to win a prescription drug bill written by the pharmaceutical industry; who calls a special session of Congress to address a tragic situation affecting one family?"Conservatives have found the perfect solution to their perennial problems with ethics: change the rules, either by rewriting the actual rulebook, or by pretending your ethical lapses are just the normal course of business in American government. "Nothing to see here folks, please move along." If you pretend long enough, as their grand poobah George Bush discovered long enough, your mistakes will soon be forgotten, even celebrated.
"What does "outrage" mean anymore when we have a White House that tells us how much they love our troops but threw 140,000 veterans off of VA health care several years ago, and brings forth a budget this year which devastates health care for our veterans and leaves the VA totally unprepared to take care of the thousands of soldiers who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan?"I am a veteran. My father is a veteran. Our country asked us to make certain sacrifices, sacrifices that others were unable or unwilling to make, in return for promises of certain compensation. The Bush adminstration has reneged on the deal. It's just another way the Bush administration has scrapped honesty and integrity. And it makes us mad.
"What does the word "outrage" mean when, at a time when the US already has the most unfair gap between the rich and the poor in the industrialized world, we have a President who provides hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the very richest people in our society and cuts back on health care, education and affordable housing for low and moderate income people?"I'm always amazed when conservatives call us liberals "elitist." I don't really know what they mean, although I do understand that they despise lofty humanist ideals, and that they believe the liberal concept of fairness is, well, unfair. Maybe we are "elitist."
But if we are, then conservatives are "elite," by which I mean they are clearly trying to establish for themselves an elite caste in our society. This new aristocracy will rule the economy and the government to their benefit, and their benefit only. The goal will be to maintain their superiority, and to maintain the desperate position of the lower classes.
Gone will be the "elitist" humanist concepts of the 20th century, ideas like a progressive tax code, and so on. Gone will be the the "elitist" idea that those who have benefitted most from our system of goverment and finance bear a proportionately greater burden to support those systems.
"What does "outrage" mean anymore when the White House and the Republican leadership are some of the very few people in the world who do not understand the profound dangers of global warming and who, day after day, aide and abet those who are destroying our environment?"This we need not worry about. The rapture is coming soon, and it turns out God loves those who destroy his planet.
"What does "outrage" mean when we have a president who tells us in every speech how much he believes in "freedom," but who proposes legislation like the USA Patriot Act and other bills which are undermining the basic freedoms and constitutional rights of the American people? All this talk about "freedom," and yet he wants to deny the women of this country the freedom to control their own bodies."If a police state is good enough for the free Iraqis, it's good enough for us! What I find most amazing is that conservatives, who have created for themselves the mantle of "protectors of our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms," have so blindly and hypocritically failed to give a damn about the Bush administrations invasion of our rights. I'm outraged by the lack of outrage, if you will.
-Maus