David McElroy

Every time the U.S. military (or U.S. taxpayer money) is used to knock off some government around the world, we’re told that it has to do with freedom or self-determination for the people or whatever else politicians think it takes to get us to let them have their own way. When will we learn that they’re lying to us?

Now that Libyan rebels have overthrown the dictatorial regime the U.S. opposed, members of the rebel groups are going around the country rounding up suspected sympathizers of the old regime. Read this account of people working for The New Boss going into a hospital and summarily executing wounded men who they believed worked for The Old Boss.

Is this what you want your tax money being used for?

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I did very few things in my political work over the years that I’m ashamed of, but one case sticks out. I was simply helping a client try to win a campaign — and I made $10,000 doing it — but it was just plain wrong. It’s done all the time, though, and most people don’t realize it’s wrong.

I’m not going to mention names because I feel as though that would be unfair to people who paid me to work for them, but the names don’t matter. I was doing some last-minute work for a state gubernatorial campaign. My candidate was the incumbent, but he was weak and expected to lose. Those around the campaign were desperate for ideas and willing to throw money at the problem.

Some in the campaign leadership were obsessed with tying the opponent to a bunch of ’60s radicals. They had very shaky grounds for doing so, but the facts didn’t seem to matter. I produced a direct mail piece that went to hundreds of thousands of people that was accurate insofar as the facts it stated, but was dishonest in the implications it made. I’m ashamed of it, but that didn’t stop me from cashing the check.

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It seems as though I’m seeing stronger and stronger expressions of political anger lately. If you read that and thought, “Well, of course we’re angry. The other side is so unreasonable,” this is for you.

The people you’re angry with are just as convinced they’re right as you’re convinced that you’re right. “But they’re dishonest,” you say. “They must know that they’re wrong. They have other motives.”

I’m here to disagree with you about that. There are a very few people who get into politics purely as charlatans, but very few. Mostly, they got into it because they were attracted to the political process (and the power involved in it) and they believed that the political position they took was obviously the right one.

The vast majority of liberal progressive Democrats sincerely believe that conservative Republicans are selfish, greedy racists. The vast majority of socially conservative Republicans honestly believe that liberal Democrats are immoral, evil idiots. Various other groups have similarly distorted views about people they oppose. The truth is that almost everybody honestly believes he’s right. The problem is that we have a system that allows only one group to get its way.

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