After sending a link to my blog, our unnamed recipient sent me another email as follows:

Of course they aren’t going to admit to having a draft when reelected because that is suicide. And what about your whole Bin Ladan thing, you just said he was in charge of the World Trade attack. Duh! No one is disagreeing about that. But Saddam had nothing to do with that. That was one of the reasons for going to Iraq.
Here are a few for failures from the Bush adminastration. How about no child left behind? He isn’t putting as much money as he should to help education. He is reducing the about of low-interest loans avaiable for college students so it is harder to go to college. Because sorry Jake, there are people out there that don’t get mommy and daddy to pay for everything. What about women’s rights? He is making more difficult to get an abortion for a woman. If reelected he will appoint a concerative to Surgeon General who wants to make it harder for women to get birth control. He has done nothing to decrease the pay different for men and women.
What about gay marriage? Yes, I know you are a religious concerative so you think gays are wrong and sinning and such. But in our consintution it says that church and state are to be kept separate. So you can believe what you want to but that shouldn’t influence what the law is. Are they really hurting you by commiting their lifes together. So they can have the same protect as straight couples. Who seem
to abuse that right but the current divorce rate.

Plenty of first impressions here, but I’m just going to cover each topic one by one and run down the email.

Section 1: Draft
If you are just going to state that what Bush said was a lie, then pursuing this topic further is absolutely worthless. All the facts in the world will obviously not change your mind, so I will not discuss this further. Just know that as I quoted President Bush previously, there will be no draft. Period.

Section 2: Ties to bin Laden
I’m not sure I understand what is going on here… In your previous email you said the following:

Where are the ties to Bin Ladan? There are none.

In this email you are apparently contradicting yourself by saying that the ties with bin Laden are obvious. Did I miss something?

Section 3: Ties to Hussein
The date was September 20, 2001, just days after the attacks against our nation. President Bush made a speech that defined the war in Afganistan, and the war in Iraq. The key note in his speech was the following:

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

In the interest of saving space, feel free to scroll down to yesterday’s post and read through all of the quotes made by Democrats that explained the threat of Hussein. Because Hussein was a terrorist threat to our nation, he was attacked.
We removed Saddam Hussein, an anti-American tyrant & sponsor of terrorism who started two wars of aggression in the region while he simultaneously raped, tortured, and butchered his own people with a zeal matched by few figures in modern history. Once the war began, the performance of our military was incomparable. Saddam’s forces were defeated in less than a month, even as the press, a week into the war, were already pointing out the negative points of the war and how it was a failure, etc.
In summary: Ties to Hussein? Is he a terrorist? Yes. Is he Anti-American? Yes. Did he resists the weapons inspections when we gave him a chance using diplomacy and the UN? Yes. Therefore, did Bush back his word in stating that we would fight this War on Terror until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated? Hell yes.

Section 4: No Child Left Behind
To quote your email,

“He isn’t putting as much money as he should to help education.”

What kind of argument is that? Who’s to say how much money he should put into education. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against funding education. From 2000 to 2003, Federal funding for education increased 59.8% under the No Child Left Behind Act. If that is not enough, how much do you think should be put into the educational system? And it’s not like you can give the No Child Left Behind Act 100% blame for the current educational system. Nor can you blame President Bush for the state it is in. It obviously isn’t the best state it could be, but 4 years is not long enough to make any serious changes to it. A certain Democratic President comes to mind who had 8 years to do something about it, but I don’t recall any major changes…

Section 5: Personal Attack Against Myself Based on Nothing
Again, to quote your email,

Because sorry Jake, there are people out there that don’t get mommy and daddy to pay for everything.

I really hate to break it to you, but I do in fact pay for my own college tuition, and pay just about everything that is mine. I’m not sure where you are coming from on this one, but I’ll just assume that it’s an attempted personal attack against me that was unsuccessful because it’s quite obvious that “mommy and daddy don’t pay for everything.” I guess I was slightly derogatory in my previous posts, so we’ll call it even. Sorry.

Section 6: Abortion

He is making more difficult to get an abortion for a woman.

You have just stepped out of the political world and into the moral world. Here’s an article you may find interesting that runs down the list of why abortion is wrong:

Why Abortion is wrong. As told by a pathologist.

* Take the most obvious type of abortion that can be considered “wrong” or murder. The “partial birth abortion” procedure is taking the life of an infant that would be completely viable if born at that instant. There is absolutely no way to justify that horrific ‘procedure’ that then cuts the back of the head that was partially delivered and the brains were scrambled using stainless steel instruments, and evacuated with a suction. This is clearly murder. This is clearly unlike the usual practice of medicine. Does the baby have a ‘choice’? Even Hillary Clinton talks about ‘children’s rights’. This fully formed baby needs no respirator and could go home shortly after birth.
* What about earlier gestational age fetuses and even embryos? As a pathologist, I have seen many spontaneous abortion, ‘products of conception’. At even less than 12 weeks gestation, the fetus is incredibly complex and human. It is nowhere near our ‘developed’ state but it is clearly different from other types of “tissue”. The DNA is clearly, from the moment of conception, completely unique from everyone else on earth.
* What about the mother’s ‘choice’? The argument that she has the right to choose what happens to her own body is markedly flawed. The same ones who want to give a woman the right for an abortion would condemn women for smoking and fight what was her ‘choice’, clearly affecting her own body. In abortion, the baby is clearly separate in content and being than the mother. It is only riding with the mother for a few months. Why doesn’t anyone expose that the reason for an abortion is simply selfishness? The mother’s ‘choice’ is simply what inconvenience she wants to escape.
* I believe the reason people call for abortion to be legal is, simply put, selfishness. The abortion occurs as the mother (maybe under other’s pressure) does not want the baby. Others do not want to feel the guilt of not picking up the pieces to help an unwanted baby. They selfishly want to spend their money on themselves and their wants rather than to sacrifice some for unwanted or unsupported babies. The mother puts her own wants above the baby’s needs.
* The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

* Currently in medicine, we have advanced our technology and understanding to be able to care for and nourish very early premature infants, even into the second trimester. People easily agree they have rights but across town another, same gestational age infant is snatched from the mother’s body in a horrific manner. Where should we draw the line? The only answer that can be medically supported is before conception.
* It isn’t just another ‘procedure’ in medicine. Having helped and performed many ‘procedures’, there is virtually nothing as disgusting as the suction causing ripping and destruction of formed placental and fetal tissue that occurs with an abortion, not to mention the pain imposed on the fetus being torn apart. This is not meant to be sensational, although it is. This is to make the point that medical ‘procedures’ are to fix a problem and nearly all are neat and clean with this exception. When physicians remove a uterus, for example, they do their best to remove it intact. Not so with an abortion. The goal is simple evacuation. Doctors are sworn to stand up for life and to minimize suffering for all patients. Those who perform abortions have violated the Hippocratic oath. They forget that the fetus is a patient too.

I have nothing further to say on this topic.

Section 7: Pay difference between genders

He has done nothing to decrease the pay different for men and women.

Again, you are blindly pointing the finger at President Bush just for the sake of pointing a finger. Presidents previous to Bush (inlcuding Democratic Presidents) have also done nothing to decrease the pay difference between genders. As a matter of fact, the only thing that has been done for this matter was an act passed in 1963 entitled the “Equal Pay Act.” And despite any conclusions you may jump to, this act did make a difference as the gap was closed considerably between genders. However, nothing has been done since that time, so I consider it quite unfair and just plain desperate to bring up such a topic.

Section 8: Gay Marriage

What about gay marriage?…But in our consintution it says that church and state are to be kept separate. So you can believe what you want to but that shouldn’t influence what the law is.

I am so very glad you brought up this topic and used that argument to back your point. I am quite sure you have other “arguments” to back up your opinion, but I will focus on just this one for now.
Separation of church and state. The ever-famous line that is supposedly found in the first amendment. Anytime religion is mentioned within the confines of government today people cry, “Separation of Church and State”. Many people think this statement appears in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and therefore must be strictly enforced. However, the words: “separation”, “church”, and “state” do not even appear in the first amendment. The first amendment reads,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The statement about a wall of separation between church and state was made in a letter on January 1, 1802, by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The congregation heard a widespread rumor that the Congregationalists, another denomination, were to become the national religion. This was very alarming to people who knew about religious persecution in England by the state established church. Jefferson made it clear in his letter to the Danbury Congregation that the separation was to be that government would not establish a national religion or dictate to men how to worship God. Jefferson’s letter from which the phrase “separation of church and state” was taken affirmed first amendment rights. Jefferson wrote:

I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

The reason Jefferson choose the expression “separation of church and state” was because he was addressing a Baptist congregation; a denomination of which he was not a member. Jefferson wanted to remove all fears that the state would make dictates to the church. He was establishing common ground with the Baptists by borrowing the words of Roger Williams, one of the Baptist’s own prominent preachers. Williams had said:

When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that there fore if He will eer please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world…

The “wall” was understood as one-directional; its purpose was to protect the church from the state. The world was not to corrupt the church, yet the church was free to teach the people Biblical values.

In summary: “separation of church and state” is not a law. It’s a fallacy-believed-to-be-a-law. Which in turn voids your evidence for gay marriage. If you have any further “evidence” for gay marriage, please let me know.

Well, I think I sufficiently explained all of my points compared to your Bush-bashing “points.” It sure seems to me that you have so many things that you apparently hold against Bush, but none of them hold any water. You are holding an over-critical view towards Bush based on incomplete and usually twisted information that makes it seem as though Bush is a terrible person.
All this brings to mind a Theodore Roosevelt quote that’s a favorite of mine,

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.”

The “man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood” is one George W. Bush and waging a war on terrorism in an age when defending America has become a partisan issue must certainly be considered “daring greatly”. We are lucky to have such a man in the White House, because like other great American Presidents of times gone by, he is leading America towards victory in a worthy cause.

~Jaker