Beginning Anew With a New Attitude

THERE'S A FORMER male caucasian congressperson from the great John c Calhoun state of South Carolina who wishes to see the republican party, of which he is a member, modernize. He wants it to become, I think he said, the "great opportunity party", or some such, rather than the "grumpy old party". He really made it sound appealing. He predicted that the fifty percent who deny climate change will soon come out of denial, and will begin offering free market solutions, in the grand old tradition of modern American conservatism. Huzzah for him. Make it so! Wouldn't do our conservative half any harm to up the progressive ante a bit more, at that. I've a friend, a staunch conservative who recently came out in faovr of gay marriage, probably because one of his family mambers decided to give it a whirl. This, beyond all dispute, is progress. Progressive conservatism. Retaining traditional values while embracing reasonable progress, which always means change. Maybe there'll come a time when conservatives realize that the American public education system has not been systematically hijacked by a bunch of screeching liberal extremists, revising and rewriting American history to make us sounds like the bad guys. No, our modern high school text book writers have simply decided to start telling the truth. And that truth is; American history aint all its cracked up to be, in terms of manifest virtue. The United States today maintains a military base in Cuba, of all places, becuase it used deception, violence, and extortaion to acquire it in 1898, for example. Same way we got into this twenty five year and counting mess in Iraq. Our noble enterprise of kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1990, leading to.... ISIS! Isn't that lovely? All because of deliberate diplomatic deception, the companion to rempant, voracious imperialism. We seek to rule the world...because we can? Try googling "United Fruit Compamy, Guatemala, 1954." Or how about "Chil,e 1973, CIA"? And the point of these exploits was? The bestowing upon the world of American freedom and prosperity. That's got to be it! We'll all be a lot better off, in the long run, if we start telling the truth 'long about now. the truth about our past, and about our present. So let's begin anew, with the G.O.P. and that liberal hoax of all liberal hoaxes; global warming.