Do Republicans know where does the buck stops?

Remember when our primary reason for invading Iraq was to root out the Saddam Hussain's WMD stash?

No one in the Bush Administration seems to remember. A report by a presidential commission on the WMD debacle has turned up what most anti-war protestors in this country and around the world have been screaming for the last 2 years. The intelligence on WMDs in Iraq was "dead wrong", and suggests that the Bush administration was not to blame for sounding the gongs of war, rather it was the faulty intelligence. In statistics, we learn that a conservative estimate of significance requires a larger test statistic. In other words, the conservative estimate requires more sources of evidence to refute the null hypothesis (i.e. no WMDs in Iraq) vs. the alternative hypothesis (i.e. there are WMDs in Iraq). Isn't Bush a "compassionate conservative"?

This brings up a very important question that most so-called conservatives don't take time to contemplate, "What makes this current set of Republicans conservative?"

This current set of Republicans are not statistically conservative in intelligence estimates, otherwise they would have consulted many other international intelligence agencies to get a complete picture of the WMD situation (or lack therof) in Iraq.

Modern day Republicans are not ecologically conservative in perserving our natural resources.

Today's Republicans are not fiscally conservative as evidenced by the tremedous debt that continues to accumulate for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to pay.

Even on the areas were they appear to be the most conservative, the intellectual and social realms, the Republican conservative rhetoric machine breaks down. Republican lawmakers continue to claim to be members of a "culture of life", yet deny all Americans a living wage, send our young people to die in foreign theatres created by the oligarchy of large multi-national corporations, and deny quality health care for all citizens, not just those that are fortunate enough to have enough funds to buy into privitized health insurance which can range from superior to mediocre depending on how much money one is willing to invest. Are not all of these issues central to a "culture of life"? What about pollution of our air and water? After all, promotion of a "culture of life" should also include access to the most basic of requirements for sustaining life: clean air and water. Where are these moral high grounders when it comes to exploiting the people of other countries so that we have the freedom to ride our giant vehicles into swamps and mudholes for pleasure? Most likely, they are behind the wheel.

Intellectual conservativism has always been the bane of humanity's advancement. Intellectual conservatism has brought us such gems as the Spanish Inquisition, The Geo-Centric Universe, The Flat Earth Theory, and all sorts of despotic regimes including Nazi Germany. While intellectual conservatism doesn't eliminate all questions from the public discourse, it does seem to eliminate the most important question: Why? Without the ability to understand why something is happening in the world, it becomes virtually impossible to get a full picture of the situation. Earlier this week, intellectual conservatism was brought to the table when 3 people were removed from one of President Bush's town hall meetings about privitizing social security because they rode to the meeting in a car that had a bumper sticker condemning the actions of our government in Iraq. Open dialogue considering all viewpoints is necessary to break the strangle hold intellectual conservatism has on the mind of this country. Unfortunately, until we come to a dialogue with ideas instead of ideologies, the United States' intellectual promise will continue to be marginalized.