The World According to Oatney

Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Bredesen

King Phillip Bredesen, who occasionally plays a semi-conservative on radio, television, and in the papers, now says he is "sympathetic" to a bill which would dramatically increase the number of signitures that it would take to get on the ballot as a write-in candidate. House Minority Leader Bill Dunn has rightly called this legislation the "incumbent protection act," and I believe he is absolutely correct, this is precisely what it is. Even though I personally do not believe in term limits, the ability to challenge incumbents through general ease of access to the ballot is the way that we can defeat incumbents in the proper manner. If we are deprived of access to the ballot, government becomes the perview of the wealthy and well-born alone.

Government also becomes, under such a situation, a place where the chosen few have a place in the decision-making process over the many, who then must pay through their taxes for the foul and often inconsiderate decisions that those in the elite elected club might choose to make.

I have long thought that Bredesen was a wolf in sheep's clothing, that the appearance that he gives the people of fiscally responsible government is a facade to hide rampant corruption within the State executive branch. The truth of the matter is that while the Governor is made to look like a saint in the press, his entourage is composed largely of wild swine who wallow in the mud of public tax money and executive incompetence. Bredesen himself is a vulture who looks like a beautiful bird from a distance, but a closer look shows him to be a flesh-eating beast who preys upon the politically weak and vulnerable.

If he signs this Act of Wickedness, it will at least expose him as a tyrant, not because he supports a measure that by itself thwarts the popular will, but because he supports it in spite of the fact that it was "passed" in a way that is at best immoral and at worst illegal.

Leaders who behave in such a way are pompous jackasses. Leaders who endorse such behavior as a way to further the power of government, as Mr. Bredesen is apparently inclined to do, are authoritarian brutes who are disposed to think that tyranny is not tyrannical. Such a mentality is reminiscent of George III in colonial times, or worse-of some third-world despot in our own day.

Such a person is unfit to hold a public office of any trust over a free and sovereign people. Informed voters should pay close attention: This is what your Governor thinks of the ability of ordinary people to participate in government-he thinks we are all totally uncapable.

Is a man who would limit the ability of an ordinary citizen-a political novice-to involve themselves in government really worthy to serve in public office in a free State?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:27 AM