6. Humanitarians on the Home Front

Of course, there is clearly for all Americans a post-9/11 reality and a pre-9/11 reality. Is it possible that the outrages of that terrible day in September, in addition to inspiring Republicans to seek the legal right to jail whomever they please and vote massive tax cuts to benefit the rich, and to remake government to conform to the interests of a numerically miniscule group of well-connected businesses and individuals-- is it possible that the War on Terrorism could also have caused a massive growth of conscience and compassion among Republicans? Have the hearts of so many Grinches, in terms of social programs for the poor, the aging and the infirm in our own society, suddenly grown two sizes larger? Maybe, but don't bet on it.

The elderly who froze to death in the Northeast last winter while President Bush sat on $200 million in Low Income Home Energy Assistance might doubt it. So might the families of dozens of people who died in outbreaks of Listeria and E. coli.  They died after eating meat that came from processing facilities overseen by demoralized USDA inspectors who now must adhere to guidelines that do more to protect the profits of people like Bush buddy Bo Pilgrim than the meat-eating public. And then there are the people who are living across the street from Super Fund clean-up sites that are no longer being super-funded. And the employees who are being crippled by repetitive motion jobs since the administration killed regulations to help remedy ergonomic injuries that the industry claims are non-existent. And the children who depend on Special Education. And many of the children who formerly benefited from after-school programs. And the working moms who got federal money for child care. And the people-- well it goes on and on.

Republicans have rarely omitted from their stock speeches the phrase "against his own people". Saddam has imprisoned, tortured, murdered, even used weapons of mass destruction "against his own people". It is a distinction that, given the context, has always sounded a little odd to me. If you are imprisoning, torturing, murdering, or using WMD against innocent people any time, any place it is hardly less immoral if they are somebody else's people than if they are your own. However, I must say to born-again Republican conservative bleeding hearts, humanitarianism begins at home. I hasten to add that to my knowledge no American, with the exception of people like John Wayne Gacy, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and Timothy McVeigh, deserves inclusion in the same category as a monster like Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush is no Saddam Hussein. But he's no Mother Theresa either.

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