The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Madam Speaker and Senator Reid:
First, my congratulations to both of you and to the Democratic Party in having retaken both houses of Congress in the recent elections.
I come to you as one who has never voted for a Democrat, but who has -like so many others - become increasingly frustrated with the failure of the Republicans to take a leadership role in returning the operation of this country to first principles.
The Democrats have the opportunity, at this historic time, to capture a more permanent majority via appealing to the values and principles of classical liberalism. Your party already represents an attractive alternative by virtue of owing no obeisance to the religious right and to the isolationist element so prevalent in mine. On the other hand, however, there are a few areas where people such as me find the Democrats to be seriously lacking. I’m sure you have at your disposal any number of experts who can expand on that point, but I want to offer two major examples:
Stop trying to raise our taxes to the Moon. The moral questions surrounding confiscatory taxation quite aside, it has been shown time and again that limited federal taxation is much healthier both for the larger economy and for the treasury itself. I call on you to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and to expand upon that theme by making further cuts where and when possible.
Start respecting the entire Bill of Rights. Over the past couple of decades, gun "control" measures instituted at the federal level have been rolled back or modified in favor of legitimate firearms ownership, and numerous state measures have been put in place to compel so-called "shall-issue" concealed-handgun licensure. All of these changes have had positive results, with statistically insignificant examples of the kind of violence and lawlessness breathlessly predicted by opponents of the Second Amendment. I call on you to oppose efforts within your party to reinstitute failed measures such as the ban on so-called "assault weapons," and to work to encourage or even compel state-by-state reciprocal-recognition agreements for concealed-handgun licenses.
Thank you for your consideration of these matters. I urge you to take this opportunity seriously - if you do so, you may be surprised to find many first-time Democrat voters in the next and subsequent elections.
Sincerely,
[real name deleted]
CC: internet posting
Update: nine months later, and still no response.
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3 comments:
Sorry.
How can you neglect global security for Americas interests? Clearly the number one issue, and the Democrat party is nowhere near serious.
Second, the Democrat leaders in the house have already, in the first few days, made it possible for only a simple majority to raise taxes instead of a 2/3rds majority is was before (at least last year, not sure how far back that goes...)
Put down hallucinogen.
-W. Holger
Well, first of all, I'm not entirely serious here. I have no expectation whatsoever that either of my major points will be responded-to positively; although Reid is, as far as I can tell, a Second-Amendment supporter. I just kind of want to see what they'll have to say about this.
Secondly, while the prosecution of the War on Terror is certainly important, I don't really think that the Democrats would have actually done anything all that differently than the Republicans have, had they been in power. The reaction to what the GOP has done is mainly an expression of partisan hatred. As it is, of course, they've dug themselves into an isolationist hole, and that won't change unless and until we suffer more domestic attacks.
Which I think we will. It's inevitable; perhaps not anytime soon, but as old-world (and, indeed, new-world, as seen in some Northern cities) demographics shift to favor Islam, a further rise in power held by the radical element - and the ability to project that power - is obviously in the offing. In short, we've suffered a Pearl Harbor, but that was more than five long years ago - and our attention spans are not as long as they used to be.
As to the tangent of "that won't change unless and until we suffer more domestic attacks", by my reckoning it will take two more attacks that are greater or equal to the death toll of 9/11 to make any real change. Not a total body count, but it will take two separate large scale incidents.
-W. Holger
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