We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system – the greatest engine of growth and prosperity the world has ever known.
But we also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.
Barack Obama, 9/6/12
I think President Obama made it pretty clear: Americans have succeeded together, by providing the means for everyone to have a chance. And that the Romney/Ryan/teabaggR approach will leave all that in a ditch, in the name of cutting taxes on the wealthy. It will leave countless kids hungry, millions sicker, reduce access to education, allow our roads and dams and bridges to crumble, make the air less clean... all the things that support progress, all the ways in which a democracy sees that general success depends on lots of individual successes: not important enough to pay for. Because we need to make the currently low taxes on the wealthy even lower. And -- for reasons that absolutely escape me -- we need to spend trillions more on the military than even the military wants.
During every election, I suppose, politicians try to convince people that that election is the most important ever. But this one really is. There couldn't be two more divergent views of what makes America tick than Democrats' versus teabaggRs. To follow the latter is to chose not to pay for anything that helps us together, to have no concern for anyone but oneself, now. It's no exaggeration: there's no way in which that's a misstatement or an overstatement.
Given the obvious truth, is it any wonder that Rs are trying to suppress Democratic voters, and to distract their own voters from focusing on the impact of their plans?
