The Heart of a Blogger (Part I)

We hear way too much about George W. Bush's "compassionate" heart. But few supporters of this administration care to look into the hearts of those they'd prefer to demonize. I've been listening and reading attacks on anyone who questions this authoritarian regime in Washington and I can hardly believe what passes for acceptable broadcast.

Bill O'Reilly calls for the FBI to arrest the folks at Air America Radio. He wants all donors to the ACLU investigated. In America! He equates a legitimate media watch group, Media Matters for America, with the Ku Klux Klan. For an hour every weeknight and for hours on talk radio, this man tries to stir to a frenzy the worst in us, turning fellow citizens against one another. He bullies people before cameras and creates a hostile environment for anyone dissenting from government policy. The subtext is: Americans, be too afraid to stand up and speak out. (Stop by MediaMatters.org for hundreds of examples.) And he calls some of the very people who, through the past half century, have spoken most ardently in support of those victims of Holocaust, Nazis. Yes, the world is upside down.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter says people should talk to liberals (if they must) with baseball bats. And the pundit network of the extreme right is quickly circling the wagons around Cindy Sheehan. Bullies will savage any target, even a soft-spoken woman whose heart aches for her lost son.

Writers to newspapers call those who report the truth "traitors" and those who question "terrorist sympathizers." Thomas Freidman thinks America needs an enemies list for those whom he calls "excusers," those who think Bush is making the world situation more volatile. Obviously the terrorists are responsible for their deeds. But even a hint that someone sees Bush as making the situation in Iraq worse gets that individual on the list. What have we become? Does Thomas Friedman hear himself.

Elsewhere on the net, I've noted that many have given countless hours to make a difference. Bloggers do too. And yet, in the so-called MSM you'd think that progressive bloggers are bringing on a host of ills. The real truth is we give our time to our communities and our country because we care. We care about showing spine when it is called for. Courage even. When many of our national leaders of both parties failed us in giving Bush an unwarranted blank check in Iraq, we took to our computers and wrote letters to try to make a difference.

It's way past time for more of us to blog as if our country depends on it. It does. By the thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands, or even millions) bloggers are pouring out their hopes and dreams for our country. One could argue, Who needs another? The old adage "in unity there is strength," applies. And so, it is with a heavy heart of my own, but one who'll never give up on the country I love, that I enter this moveable type into the blogosphere.