Equal Time
Published December 9th, 2008Anyone who knows me or reads this blog or is a facebook friend of mine should figure out pretty quickly that my political views lean strongly into liberal territory. But the reason for that is that I have a fundamental belief in fairness and equality. Do not mistake it for a belief in partisanship - which I am strongly against. Anyone who is very familiar with my beliefs knows that I don’t even like political parties. I believe in running as a representative of your ideas and being elected based on that - not on your party. And I believe an elected official should be free to follow his own rational beliefs to represent his constituency - representatives should be elected for their judgement as well as their positions.
But that’s all a bit away from what I’m going to mention here. Back to equality and non-partisanship - if you are a corrupt elected official, I believe you have betrayed the trust of your constituency and betrayed the spirit of this nation. And if found guilty, you should be punished accordingly. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat or a Martian. I currently believe that the Rs are more corrupt and dishonest than the Ds, as a whole - but the Ds aren’t spotless in this. Case in point - today’s arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. A Democrat governor of a blue state. He has been taken into custody to face corruption charges - bribery, for the most part. I don’t know much about the guy, I don’t know much about his stated politics - and I don’t need to. I don’t care if he’s a D or an R. Give him his trial and let’s see. If he’s guilty - he gets the punishment.
I’ve seen in some places people - partisans - saying, “If GWB and his corrupt regime walk off scot free, then Blagojevich should be let go too.” Are you kidding me? If we accept that - sometimes, hopefully rarely - murderers go free, that does not mean that some other murderer that we like better should go free too. There’s no “balancing it out” here - if you’re a criminal, you’re a criminal. The successful or unsuccessful prosecution of others who have committed similar crimes has no direct bearing on your own guilt. It is that mentality that I see suddenly popping up - hopefully it won’t spread - that I just can’t understand. Because I’m a liberal, I’m registered as a Democrat - but I’m not a partisan.
Equality under the law - regardless of your party affiliation, regardless of whether I agree with your stated politics or not. I’m not happy that a prominent Democrat has been accused of corruption - but if he’s guilty, I definitely don’t want him on my side of the fence anymore. I won’t defend it.
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