January 6, 2004 - I don’t know how I lived so long, using the English language daily both in my private discourse and professional communications and yet never learned the true meaning of the simple English word – hate. Yet I seem to have done just that.

Daily I learn that what used to be viewed as reasoned political discourse is now simply - hatred. What was once expression of principled political dissent from an administration’s policy has been transmogrified into expression of hatred toward that administration’s titular head.

Support for protection of America’s working men and women and their jobs has been distorted into class hatred in the new political rhetoric of the rabid right.

Asking pithy questions as to the wisdom of eliminating job retraining and re-employment programs when the warmth of an economic brew of tax breaks and incentives for the investor class has yet to drip down to families slowly slipping into poverty as those investors export American jobs is enough to get you labeled as a “Bush Hater.” Point out the flawed justification for the Second Iraqi War; question the existence of the WMD chimera; express the slightest doubt that the President and his surrogates told the truth to the Congress, the Security Council and the American people in selling that war and you are rapidly accused of hating America and supporting Saddam Hussein.

I don’t hate George W. Bush. I don’t find much in his character to inspire affection, but as a wise man once wrote, the opposite of love is not hate – it is indifference and that most aptly describes my emotional response to the gentleman from Crawford. But I am far from indifferent to the effects that his Presidency has and will continue to have upon my country, its people and the
world.

At home the policies of this Presidency have destroyed its economic foundation; subsidizing speculation instead of investment; presiding over the greatest depreciation of its currency since the Nixon Administration abandoned the gold standard; and has made a nation of builders and innovators into a nation of clerks ringing the cash registers for the sale of foreign manufactures. Our national liberty has been colored orange and sacrificed in the name of Homeland Security.

Abroad this Presidency has abdicated this nation’s position as a beacon of democracy in a stormy sea of oppressive regimes, quick to extend the hand of friendship and support but slow to raise a threatening hand of anger. In the place of that policy dictated by our history and heritage of freedom this Presidency has raised the mailed fist of preemptive war and coercive occupation.
Across the political landscape this President has ignored our brightest virtues and appealed only to our darkest impulses; abandoned the politics of hope and confidence and replaced it with greed and fear and to that no Patriot can remain indifferent.