The real subject here is freedom of speech and the openness that is necessary to search for answers to what many still have questions about today. The editorial concentrated on what appears to be Barrett’s own perspective and opinion about 9-11, which everyone is entitled to, and not the actual course he will be directing, which is an introduction to Islam. From my understanding, Barrett will open the class with recent events and past American/Middle-east history in a quest to find out what drives Islamists to kill Americans and themselves. That Barrett wants to begin the Islamic class with 9-11 is sort of an acknowledgment that he believes they were involved. My point here is, we will never defeat an enemy if we are not willing to understand them and talk about it. Bullets and bombs will just fuel more hatred.
President Bush said they want to kill us for our freedoms, which is not a good enough explanation for me. But if Bush had suggested that middle-east countries are tired of our ability (freedom) to oppress them, take their resources and impose our culture on them over the past century, I would want to hear more and be able to draw my own conclusion.
The JM editorials often stoop to juvenile name calling using cheap buzzwords like, ”the loopy left,” “crackpots ” ”craziness,”and ”hateful delusions” in their effort to explain why we should ignore Barrett. Unbelievably, the Janesville Gazette ran an editorial on the same subject actually defending free speech and Barrett up to a point. This came to me as a surprise because both papers editorials usually believe our Constitution was meant to limit individual rights, not expand them.
The next article on page six titled ‘Congress removes its feet from the fire’ was written by Brandon Arnold of the Cato Institute. Here he explains an unsolicited Bush program called the Program Assessment Rating Tool PART as some well intentioned complimentary accountability program that Congress should embrace. But introducing it into the decision making process in Washington is akin to hiring an extra accountant to run your business with the goal of increasing profits by only cutting costs. In reality, PART was defunded by Congress because they read that right into it.
The Compassionate Conservative Republican agenda is all about cutting programs to the neediest Americans, they view community grants as “handouts,” while helping low income people is “welfare.” If you don’t earn enough to pay taxes, you are here on a “free ride.” Our country is being hi-jacked right in front of our eyes beginning by defunding Federal programs with tax cuts and the selling out of publicly held property to greedy profit driven private investment.
Before reading it, I thought for a moment the last article titled “The price of leaks: Its time to crack down on offenders” was about the Bush Administration’s betrayal of the public trust when they leaked CIA identities during wartime in retribution against Joe Wilson. But I was wrong, Here, Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation went on a rampage against the NY Times and how important it is to prosecute leakers of classified information without one mention of the Plamegate incident. A completely inconsistent and useless article.
One last note: at the top of the editorial page the paper asks five area residents the question: What is the most important issue in this year’s Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign? The answers given probably did not satisfy the political hacks at the Messenger because they all centered around high gas prices, conservation, youth crime and affordable health care. No doubt the paper hoped that a marriage amendment, immigration, flag desecration or the Governors financial campaign contributions would have been the top concerns, but they must realize, not everyone is crazy.
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