Guilt, Bloodlust and Presidential Politics

Ol' "Blood and Freedom" Thompson

"We must never forget that America has shed more blood defending freedom here and abroad than all the other countries in the world combined."

--Republican Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson

I heard Fred Thompson (on TV) make the above statement to his supporters after losing the South Carolina primary. It drew great applause, and struck me as one of the oddest utterances of the tedious 2008 presidential campaign. It is a risible assertion, patently impossible to substantiate, even if the term "freedom" were objective. Yet it drew wild applause.

As a search of the Internet shows, Thompson trots out this enigmatic and grisly phrase a lot. What can it mean? Why does it strike a chord? Here is a hypothesis: It at once assuages repressed guilt for the mass violence wreaked by our country on Iraq, and validates the collective bloodlust so prevalent among hardcore Republicans. It also implies that, in a manner befitting the Aztecs, the GOP - if returned to power - will continue to sacrifice humans as a talismanic ritual.

'Rudely Stamped's' First Political Endorsement: Ron Paul for Republican Presidential Nominee

Ron Paul (right) Stands Up to the Jingoists of the Republican Party

Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for president in 2008, has shown that his political party still has some integrity, vigor and sanity left in it. With the nation suffering through some of the most noxious times in its history -- due in large part to incompetent, cynical and sadistic officials in Washington, DC -- Representative Paul stands out as an eminent exception. He has refused to bow to his party leadership's insistence on patriotic platitudes and capitulation before the military-political-industrial complex.

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"When we (Americans) make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people through their elected representatives to correct the mistake, not continue the mistake," Paul says during a September 5th debate, asserting that the US government should end the lethal legacy of neo-con warriors and withdraw its invading forces from Iraq. Paul thus courageously punctures on national television the vacuous bravado of his fellow presidential candidates. In Ron Paul's candidacy, Republicans and Americans have the chance to put US foreign policy back on a sustainable and moral track. With truth-telling in the national discourse increasingly rare, it is an opportunity wasted at our peril.