Fantastic article about Cindy Sheehan

[Elwood P Dowd]

from an unusual source, the libertarians at the Mises Institute.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., more commonly known as Lew Rockwell, is a libertarian political commentator. Rockwell is the founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, and publisher of the political weblog, Lewrockwell.com.


http://www.lewrockwell.com/

On September 15, 2005, radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh asserted that Cindy Sheehan’s story of her dead son was "nothing more than forged documents." Two days later, he pretended he had never said she was a fake and asserted that he had expressed sympathy for her loss on his program of September 12, but saw her actions as merely an opportunity to bash Bush. The facts of Casey’s death are public knowledge and indisputable; in fact, on Monday April 4, 2006, a memorial dedicated to all the members of the 1st Cavalry Division who died on April 4, 2004, was dedicated at Fort Hood, Texas. Casey’s name is among those listed. It is tempting to regard Limbaugh’s conflicting statements as merely a case of his oral r.p.m. exceeding his mental rate, with the torque at the low end of the scale. He is, after all, a political pornographer. But, in his obvious recklessness Limbaugh presented himself as either a fool or a malicious liar. Either way, his actions seem conscienceless. One can only speculate on the personal and professional ethics of a man or woman who will publicly repeat unfounded rumors or tell deliberate lies about a mother grieving for her dead child and demanding that the man responsible for that death explain himself.

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The George W. Bush presidency is one that has made the act of lying to the public the centerpiece of its administration. This is a regime that appears to be dedicated to shredding the last tattered vestiges of the Constitution of the United States for purposes that the members of that regime either cannot or will not reveal. Kidnapping, torture, imprisonment without due process, violation of the Geneva Conventions, ad hoc trial procedures forced on prisoners brought to military tribunals, domestic spying in violation of federal law; all of these are features of the Bush regime.

To date, almost 2400 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died and over 17,000 have been wounded in a preemptive and unconstitutional war and occupation waged by the Bush regime. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children have suffered the same fate. Cindy Sheehan has single-handedly and publicly called the President of the United States to account and has demanded the return of U.S. forces from Iraq if he cannot provide a clear explanation for their being there. And he continues to run from her. Rather than branding her as "unpatriotic" and accusing her of aiding and abetting the enemy, of being "a hardleaning leftie" (Jeff Quinton) or a "fascist fishwife" (James Taranto), some of her critics need to refresh their memories about what the United States of America used to represent to the rest of the world. Ronald Reagan called it "a shining city on a hill"; few outside its borders see much shine to that city anymore. In spite of his almost constant use of the word "freedom," George W. Bush has taken us closer to the Britain of V for Vendetta than to the "Atlantis" of Atlas Shrugged.

Those same critics should also look within themselves to discover how they managed to join the lowest common denominator in the vulgarization of public debate over this war. They should be celebrating Cindy Sheehan for her patriotism and love of country, rather than vilifying her with terms that would have caused their mothers to wash out their mouths with soap.

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The author of this article

Samuel Bostaph is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at The University of Dallas. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles on topics in intellectual history and economic theory. A former enlisted Marine, who later served as a U.S. Army intelligence staff officer during the Vietnam War era, he is the proud father of Katie and Megan Bostaph and prays that they may never go to war