vote democrat today

please, everyone, vote democrat today. at least in the elections for u.s. congress and u.s. senate. every citizen must do his or her part to preserve this democracy, with 3 branches of government, and checks and balances, a limited government, governed by the constitution, as amended. if you do not vote for democrats, you are enabling the continuation of one-party rule. no democracy can survive for too long under one-party rule. even the soviet union had fake elections. many nations around the world are so-called democracies, but are actually under one-party rule and are little more than dictatorships disguised as democracies. this is actually much more common than actual functional democracies. we cannot allow our nation, the united states of america, the greatest nation in the history of this world, to fall into that same fate, the fate of lesser nations. we must vote to preserve the liberty that we have earned, or rather, that past generations have earned for us, through their noble sacrifice. the founding fathers laid the foundations for freedom, with the constitution and bill of rights, but the system only allowed rich white men to vote, and was quite unfair. we fought a civil war to end slavery, which was a divisive issue, because some people were conservative, and wanted to hold onto the discredited system of morality of the past that said that slavery was okay. then, we gave women the right to vote, but women were still not equally powerful as men. we fought two world wars and one cold war, to save the world from tyranny. meanwhile, we continued to expand liberty at home, eventually granting equal rights to women and minorities, and now we have started to do the same for homosexuals. the republicans are elitists, who believe rich white men should control everything, that women should obey their husbands, that homosexuals are evil and need to repress their urges, and that the poor should work hard and the rich should be allowed to make enormous profits. their beliefs are quaint and outdated, to say the least. every other wealthy industrialized nation has universal health care, except one: turkey. our nation has one of the highest violent crime rates of the wealthy industrialized nations, one of the highest infant mortality rates, and some of the lowest scores on standardized tests. this is despite the fact that we have more people in jail than any other country, we spend way more on education than any other country, and we spend way more on health care than any other country. no country can compare with us, because we are the only country that combines the following 3 things: large population, large land area, and great wealth. we are 3rd in land area, after russia and canada. russia and canada are both rather lacking in terms of population density, and russia is a poor country. we are 3rd in population, after china and india. both of those countries are poor, and have less land area than us. and as for russia, canada, india, and china... none of them has land which is as good as our land; the united states has remarkable natural resources, and a great deal of arable land. we are a large geographic area, with one common language and one common culture, led by one government. and our nation is much more unified than other nations of this size. in china, i doubt the people of tibet and the people of manchuria have much in common. but people from california and maine have a lot in common! that is the greatness of the united states of america! as divided as we may be politically, we are still quite unified. harry reid, the democratic leader in the u.s. senate, is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, both of which are much more likely to be the positions of a republican than a democrat. lincoln chaffee, a republican senator from rhode island, votes with democrats more often than republicans, and is a staunch opponent of bush’s war in iraq. arnold schwarzenegger, california’s republican governor, supports gay marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, and abortion; he basically agrees with liberal democrats on all the divisive social issues. and still, arnold looks up to ronald reagan as his biggest hero. joe lieberman, democratic senator from connecticut, was such a big supporter of bush’s policies in iraq and critic of those who questioned those policies, he ended up losing a primary to ned lamont, because he seemed to have more loyalty to a republican president than to his own democratic party. all across the nation, it is the middle-of-the-road moderates who are going to be making the biggest gains in congress. oh, the rhetoric and condemnation of the other side may be harsh, but never for one moment doubt that politicians of both parties are quite similar. they are all fallible humans who make mistakes, and most of them are so constantly bombarded by ideas from other people, they never have any original ideas of their own. politicians simply parrot the ideas of other people, whoever seemed to make the most sense to them. the more campaigning a politician has to do, the more brain-dead it makes them get. so what is the difference between democrats and republicans? the difference is what set of ideas they tend to believe in more, and where there loyalty is. the difference is in what their priorities are for this country, and what kind of policies they think would exist in a perfect utopia (or in the closest thing possible to a perfect utopia that could be achieved on earth). and democrats, by and large, tend to believe in equality. they believe people are inherently equal, and should be treated the same, and that every citizen of the greatest nation on earth ought to have the greatest opportunities on earth to achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. well maybe not beyond their wildest dreams. but at least, the american dream: being middle class, being able to afford to pay the bills, get married, send kids to college, and have a house and a car and cable or satellite tv and a new computer with high-speed internet, and being able to have consensual sex with any other adult who agrees to it. democrats believe in freedom. like the freedom for anyone to vote, as long as they are a citizen. the freedom of sex, to have sex with anyone you want, as long as they are at least the age of consent, and they give you their consent. freedom of religion, and freedom from religion. freedom of speech, the ability to criticize and/or praise anyone at all, the ability to speak truth to power, or tell lies to idiots. we believe if medicare covers viagra, it ought to cover breast implants too. we believe the best way to fight crime is to legalize prostitution, drugs, gambling, and anything else where all the people involved in the activity consent to it and there is no violence. we believe the best way to fight terrorism is by having lots of allies, and the way you get allies is by being the clear and obvious force for good, the force of righteousness, who does what is right and not what is wrong. and this means no torture, no secret prisons, no military tribunals for enemy combatants, no wiretapping of domestic civilians. we cannot defend liberty at the barrel of a gun, by using overwhelming force to defeat our enemies. you cannot defeat an ideology of hate, by promoting your own ideology of hate instead. the people of the world want to be free, and they do not want us to tell them what to do. so instead, we ought to mind our own business in foreign affairs a bit more, and fix some of our problems at home, so that perhaps we may set a better example for the rest of the world to follow. then, once we have our house in order, we can start telling everyone else around the world the correct way to do things, but not until then. think about iraq for a minute. the people of iraq need to fix their own damn country. it is not our problem. it is our problem if terrorists attack our country. but, if we withdraw, it will force the iraqis to fill the power vacuum, and someone will emerge to bring order to the chaos. if whoever emerges on top at the end is someone amiable enough for us to deal with, then we can be allies. otherwise, we can destroy them with our military (since we will have only withdrawn from the cities and countryside into our permanent military bases throughout iraq, of course) and then withdraw back into our bases again, and let another new iraqi leader emerge. with this algorithm, we are guaranteed a successful outcome. that is just the computer science major in me talking. anyway, the democrats can bring some change to washington, which for too long has been a one-man show, dominated by an arrogant elitist moron from connecticut who pretends to be from texas (yes, that is dubya i am talking about). his man-of-the-people texas-cowboy act has gotten so tiresome. and who is he to dis on john kerry for making verbal gaffes, when it was dubya who said we coudn’t win the war on terror, and dubya who said he wasn’t interested in catching osama bin laden? it is just not possible for congressional republicans to do any oversight of this bull-in-a-china-shop president who has gotten completely out of control. only the democrats can tighten the leash and tell dubya he is a bad dog! someone needs to make him sit in the corner and wear a dunce cap. and if you vote democrat, that someone can be you!