By DAVID SCOTT
NR Writers Group

The following essay was written in November of 2006 before the last election. I feel it is still timely.

Don’t you absolutely love Karl Rove’s mastery of the English language? He can summarize a whole theology, a political platform, a complete philosophy, or the history of western civilization into three- or four-word phrases or slogans. Unfortunately for Karl and his band of Washington outlaws, his “Cut and Run” slogan is a two-edged sword. They have……

Cut and run from fiscal responsibility, and have run up the national debt to all-time highs, jeopardizing our future, and threatening to make our children indentured servants to the Chinese,

Cut and run from our country’s education and healthcare systems and spent the money instead on an unnecessary and immoral war,

Cut and run from our Social Security and Medicare systems, leaving our old and sick to fall through the cracks,
Cut and run from the middle class, disillusioning them with a tax structure favoring the rich,

Cut and run from the U. S. Constitution by taking a wrecking ball to individual rights, rights to privacy, and the writ of habeas corpus,

Cut and run from the Geneva Conventions and given a “thumbs up” to torture, putting our own soldiers at risk,
Cut and run from the Declaration of Independence by declaring the rich and powerful “more equal” than the rest of us,

Cut and run from American pride and perverted it to American arrogance,

Cut and run from Christian moderates and cast their lot with the extremist religious entrepreneurs such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and James Dobson,

Cut and run from “WWJD” and replaced it with “WWWD” (What would “W” do?) and made “In Jack Abramoff We Trust” our nation’s motto,

Cut and run from our Biblical charge to stewardship of God’s creation by gutting 20 years of hard-earned environmental law. Pronounced global warming and the Kyoto Treaty as a liberal, communist plot,
Cut and run from international law by starting a pre-emptive war killing more than 600,000 Iraqis in return for 3,000-plus dead Americans,

Cut and run from our American sense of hope and optimism and replaced it with fear, despair and paranoia,
Cut and run from domestic social programs and foreign aid in our national budget and replaced it with defense spending,

Cut and run from truth in government and replaced it with cherry-picked intelligence and domestic propaganda. Appointed Tom Delay as chairman of our country’s Department of Morality and Ethical Government. Given Jack Abramoff the key to the back door of Congress so he, Ralph Reed, and their colleagues in crime (lobbyists) can play poker with the national treasury,

Cut and run from the noble Republican Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower and perverted it into the amoral, ultra-partisan, power-hungry party of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Delay. Robbed our country of the two-party system we so desperately need,

Cut and run from sound accounting policy and opted for smoke and mirrors, spending $600 billion on the Iraq War and calling it an “off-budget expense.” borrowing $177 billion from Social Security in exchange for a worthless IOU payable against our children’s inheritance,

Cut and run from modern science by ignoring global warming, neglecting stem cell research that could save millions, and trying to discredit evolution. Next on the Far Right agenda may be rescinding the law of gravity and declaring it “intelligent falling.”

Cut and run from healthy political and religious discourse by declaring disagreement a traitorous offense and dooming non-fundamentalists to burn in liberal Hell.

Cut and run from American camaraderie and the common good and replaced it with a paralyzing national polarization that pits Republican against Democrat, liberal against conservative, father against son, friend against friend, Christian against Muslim, and church member against church member, tearing apart the fiber of our country to better serve Karl Rove’s political engineering and voter manipulation,

Cut and run from international cooperation and goodwill and replaced it with pathological hyper-patriotism and faith-based unilateralism,

Cut and run from a political system based on reason and replaced it with one based on religious zealotry and selfishness,

Cut and run from our nation’s belief in religious freedom and the division of church and state, and forged an unholy marriage between the Republican Party and the Religious Wrong — an incestuous conspiracy that has sullied democratic politics and given Christianity a bad name. Well-meaning Christians have gone to bed with the Washington political vermin and both have gotten up with fleas,
Cut and run from the American Dream and adopted a policy of, “I’ve got mine, now you get yours.” Preached the worn-out “boot strap” motto when many poor Americans don’t have boots. Replaced capitalism tempered with compassion and encouragement for the disadvantaged with the cold-blooded ruthlessness of the marketplace. Cut taxes when significant portions of our population are hungry and without health insurance and without hope.

Is this what politics has come to? Is this what Christianity has come to? Is this what America has come to?

The Republicans and our president have “cut and run” from American camaraderie and the common good and replaced it with a paralyzing national polarization that pits Republican against Democrat, liberal against conservative, father against son, friend against friend, Christian against Muslim, and church member against church member, tearing apart the fiber of our country to better serve Karl Rove’s political engineering and voter manipulation.