Why does Wisconsin’s Democratic congressional delegation go along with Bush’s notion of "decency"?
Doughface Democrats
By
Tom Hermann
Doughface (historic definition): A Northern Democrat with Southern sympathies. Used in regard to the issue of the expansion of slavery into western territories.
Doughface (current application): Those Democrats who cannot vote against the stupidities of the Bush Administration because they are afraid of blow back in their districts. Used in the context of failure to resist caving in to assaults on the Constitution from the Bush Administration.
My 80-year-old father keeps asking me how the Democrats became such wimps. He asks me because I am a member of the party and he thinks I should know. I have to confess it mystifies me too.
Keep in mind that my father is a man who grew up and fought a war under Roosevelt and Truman and got a break with some job training after WW II. He bought and paid off his house under Kennedy and Johnson, and he made money on his retirement investments under Clinton. He has seen it all from Herbert Hoover to George Warbucks Bush, and after a lifetime of voting Democratic he is truly disappointed in the party and the Democrats we send to Washington. I can only conclude that we have nothing left but Doughface Democrats.
The latest stunt from our modern Doughface Dems was the vote to go along with assaults on the First Amendment in the form of the so-called Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act. All four of Wisconsin’s members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of limiting free speech in the name of “decency.” You have to really wonder what these people are doing. We have just seen an election where just about every Democrat in the book tried to portray Bush as the Great Satan incarnate and now they fold and go along with this nonsense.
I'm sorry Pa. I really am. You and your family weathered the Great Depression. You dragged your young self through the mud and blood of the Philippines and helped liberate Manila 60 years ago. Part of that effort was in defense of what we stood for as a free country as exemplified by our Constitution. You were there with the first occupation troops in Tokyo and our Constitution served as a model for post-war Japan. This past Veterans Day you could not watch "Saving Private Ryan" on TV because someone deemed it “indecent,” and people like Baldwin, Kind, Obey, and Moore just gave a green light to the idiots, despots, and cowards who made that decision possible.
I wonder what their sworn oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic means to them? I can only guess that these people are more afraid of riding out some temporary ire at home than they are of tyranny.
Tyranny is the end result of surrendering your rights, usually in increments. The people who make up the current administration seem to think that they are in their power due to some God-given Historic Imperative. When the Constitution is in their sights we can only surmise that there are bigger things that matter to them. I would assume that establishing some kind of permanent Republican regime similar to Franco's Spain is the goal.
It is well known that would-be dictators make ignorance on the part of the people their first objective. That is done by controlling the media and through censorship. We have the historic examples of Hitler and Stalin. Of course these are extreme examples and maybe that is what is throwing people off. Our current set of anti-freedom regressives is not that crass. They don't have to be. They can afford to be more incremental in their approach.
They operate from the safe assumption that we are voluntarily dumbing ourselves down. We let libraries close, we no longer read newspapers, the TV in every home is usually tuned to some kind of mindless escapism and we laugh at our own stupidity during the "Jaywalking" episodes on Leno. Why worry? We will take any assault on our liberties if we can just have it under the cover of "decency." Just do not ask us to think or to extend the First Amendment to something or someone we might not agree with.
Is a lot of crass and coarse programming on the airwaves? Sure, including the likes of Limbaugh and the nitwit in a bow tie. But I have an "off" switch on those appliances and I can think for myself. Am I worried about the children? No, I am not. I am far more worried about the lack of parental attention and supervision, but I am not about to sacrifice my First Amendment rights to protect their failures.
When our Democratic congressional delegation fails to see this, and fails to stand for the First Amendment, then it is time to give them the bum's rush. They have become Doughface Dems and we do not need them.
It is time to challenge the Doughface Dems. Each of them should face a hard primary from a good challenger. They should lose and lose big. When that happens maybe the Doughface faction will finally pack it in and go home. We have seen enough of these wimps and it is time for Democrats to get a spine and vote for people who will protect the Constitution.
March 8, 2005
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Tom Hermann lives in Egg Harbor, is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Door County, is a two-time candidate for the Wisconsin Assembly, and is no longer associated with any political party.
