American Savage: March of the Morally Outraged Brigade

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Collin Reischman is a junior journalism major and Opinion editor for The Journal

You’re immoral. You’re sick, twisted and morally bankrupt. Well, that’s not my opinion. But it sure as hell seems to be the opinion of just enough of our elected officials to do some kind of damage.
The GOP, led by the proud man-child John Boehner, has decided they must take their newfound political muscle right to the principles of the electorate.
On Feb. 18, the House voted on a measure to stop all federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Of course, the properly-married and honorable churchgoers have always had a sick addiction with bashing the organization, facilitating such needless evils as abortions and birth control.
Yes, the party busted for exploring X-rated dance clubs and more than one scandalous sexual indiscretion involving crusaders of decency and young boys is “showing us the way.”
Again, it’s not a sudden or new concept. For centuries, people who fancied themselves as proper, enlightened and religious have tried to inflict their insanity of arbitrary rules on the masses.
The song of the GOP, “Big government bad” has been overplayed on every major news outlet for nearly two years. Now, at the height of the noise and madness, these self-righteous suit-and-ties are going to start dictating our ethical decisions.
Remember the Republicans who said the government couldn’t dictate the health care choices of the citizens? Well they apparently were experimenting with hard drugs at the time, because this newfound restriction on abortions is simply a means of controlling a private medical procedure on the federal level.
This same party backed the Florida ruling, blasting the individual mandate of “Obamacare,” will hold a straight face while the government deducts Social Security from your paychecks.
Actually, just so we are clear about the level of my partisan-hackness, I’m not comfortable with any professional politician instructing the huddled masses on morally proper behavior. An honest politician is an oxymoron so universally understood it’s amazing we’ve ever let them crusade on behalf of our morals in the first place.
Angry voters will say the government should stay out of small businesses in one breath, and then turn around and vote to give city officials the power to ban smoking in bars and night clubs.
They’ll even say the government needs radical spending cuts, all while they gladly fork over more dollars to bomb Muslims for a trillion dollar price tag.
So the oily freaks in Congress that once got elected on populist rage — sparked by poorly educated working-class white men — will openly back major business interests in places like Wisconsin, where they apparently don’t believe those same working-class men reside.
Like a shameless, cheaply-made daytime preacher, nothing disgusts or repulses me more than the kind of open contempt the Republican party has for its constituents.
One hand pats the back of the downtrodden, blue-collar father unfairly bankrupt by Obamacare, while the other shakes hands with Koch Industry representatives, and thanks them for the fantastic campaign donation (and for those of you keeping score at home, the Citizen United ruling from the Supreme Court allows the donation to be as limitless or as frequent as the billion-dollar company decides! Hooray for free speech!).
Cherry-picking the government’s battles is opportunism as its worst. It shouldn’t be tolerated by either side of the party line; nor by the simple and (occasionally) well-meaning people it exploits.
Perhaps somebody should try to dictate the politicians principles.

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