Enough Already

It is my intention to do whatever I can to ensure that John McCain does not get elected to dogcatcher ever again. First, he co-sponsors the McCain-Feingold incumbent protection "campaign finance reform" bill. Then he defends it, saying,

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.

This, from a man who swears upon his enstatement in office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

We know now how much John McCain's word is worth.

Then, last Saturday, John McCain spoke at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and said this:

When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It’s a pity that there wasn't a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.

Instead, he got a little older, kept the sense of complete superiority over all other mortals, and got himself elected Senator. There he could conclude that the only accomplishment of the Founders was that they'd been born before him, too.

Still unwilling to suffer fools gladly, he could now use his elected office to dictate to those of us with inferior intellects who had put him there, and kept putting him there.

I was reminded by the Senator's little diatribe of an excerpt from David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed on the poor state of education in Colonial Virginia:

When asked in 1671 by the Lords of Trade about the state of schools in Virginia (Governor William Berkley) made a famous reply: "I thank God," he declared, "there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these [for a] hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, libels against the best government. God keep us from both!"

Politicians haven't changed much, but at least Governor Berkley was appointed, not elected. Senator McCain makes a similar protest against the blogosphere - essentially, "Can no one rid me of of this troublesome priest?"

In McCain's eyes the blogosphere is full of nothing but opinionated teenagers.

I'm 44, and I vote. I'm a blogger, and I have a voice. And if I have anything to say about it, this is McCain's last term in elected office.

ANYBODY but McCain. He and everyone who voted for McCain-Feingold ought to be ejected from the House and Senate on grounds of violation of their oaths of office. And McCain should be tarred and feathered for good measure.