This post has already been read 4034 times!
Republican’s believe in small government, right? Republican presidential candidates usually want to eliminate three or more cabinet departments and sometimes they can even remember the names of the three they want eliminated. Both at the federal and the state level they want to rid us of what is described as onerous regulations, usually those that protect our food, water and air quality, and the safety of consumer products.
The zeal to promote smaller government by cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting programs for the poor, and slashing regulations is only secondary to their mission of promoting liberty, which is usually defined similarly as cutting taxes for the wealthy and services for the poor. In a conservative Utopia, the poor may lack the basic requirements of shelter, food, and clothing but at least they can carry a concealed firearm.
However, less government is of secondary concern to conservatives when it comes to legislating morality or winning elections. Hundreds of thousands were kept from voting in Wisconsin during the recent primary there and countless others in urban Democratic districts were left standing in lines for hours all because of a new law requiring a government issued photo ID to vote. The law, a maneuver by Republican legislators to suppress the Democratic vote, was enacted for the ostensible reason of diminishing voter fraud, although conservatives could cite only one such instance of such fraud in the state’s history.
Such legislation has metastasized across the country as Republicans have taken control of state governments. The calculus is literally mind-boggling. Hundreds of thousands disenfranchised to stop perhaps one or two instances of voter fraud from occurring, if that.
In another act of governmental overreach, many states with staunch conservative governors have vowed to drug test those who are on public assistance, although studies reveal that public assistance recipients don’t do drugs at much higher rates than anyone else. What other reason for such testing and the imposition of such bureaucratic, intrusive measures than to punish public aid recipients and further stigmatize them as lazy and drug addled?
Not to be outdone, conservatives in Missouri have demanded of Planned Parenthood a list of women who have had abortions in the state and are using the threat of jail to get it. They are taking the catch phrase of Missouri, the “Show Me” state, very literally!
According to Amanda Marcotte writing in Salon magazine:
“State legislators there are threatening to arrest Mary Kogut, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, because she won’t turn over a list of names of women who got abortions to them. Kogut’s lawyers are citing federal law protecting patient privacy to keep this list out of the hands of Republican legislators.”
As the article points out, Donald Trump was vilified for stating women who get abortions should be punished and, of course, the conservative chorus then chimed in: “No, it is not women, but the doctors themselves who should be punished!” In this case, their real punitive intentions are revealed.
Again, according to Salon:
“To be more specific, a list of consent forms signed by abortion patients has been subpoenaed by the interim Missouri State Senate Committee on the Sanctity of Life. (Yes, that is their name. I preferred the original name, the State Senate Committee of People Who Are Definitely More Moral Than You Sluts.)”
Of course, once the courts get the list of names they could easily be leaked to such Fox News personalities as Bill O’Reilly who would not doubt make them public as he did with a similar list of names of women who had abortions in a case against Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, whom O’Reilly had labelled “Tiller the baby killer” before Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life fanatic.
Of course, private medical records should remain private and kept out of the hands of leering conservative politicians who believe the right to life abruptly halts at birth. Is Missouri so much of an economic juggernaut that legislators have nothing better to do than to vicariously snoop into women’s lives at their most vulnerable moment? What is next putting a woman in stocks in the town square or making her wear a scarlet letter “A” for abortion on her chest?
Again, the phrase which finally ended the demagoguery of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy’s comes to mind: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.