Text 20834, 126 rader
Skriven 2006-06-28 21:04:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Howard
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For these clowns it is all about the 60's.  A sight to behold...

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http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200606/PO
L20060628a.html


Dean: 'We're About to Enter the '60s Again'
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
June 28, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - America is about to revisit one of the most turbulent 
decades in its history, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard 
Dean told a religious conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "We're 
about to enter the '60s again," Dean said, but he was not referring to 
the Vietnam War or racial tensions. 

Dean said he is looking for "the age of enlightenment led by religious 
figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision."

"The problem is when we hit that '60s spot again, which I am optimistic 
we're about to hit, we have to make sure that we don't make the same 
mistakes," Dean added. See Video

Anger over the Vietnam War and the country's escalating racial tensions 
made the late 1960s one of the most painful eras in American history. 
Republican Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, following the 
assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, as 
well as the riot-marred Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Later in his speech Tuesday, Dean appeared to backtrack. "I'm not asking 
to go back to the '60s; we made some mistakes in the '60s," he said. "If 
you look at how we did public housing, we essentially created ghettoes 
for poor people" instead of using today's method of mixed-income 
housing.

Another mistake Democrats made in the '60s, Dean acknowledged, was that 
"we did give things away for free, and that's a huge mistake because 
that does create a culture of dependence, and that's not good for 
anybody, either," he noted, a reference to the Great Society welfare 
programs created by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-
1960s.

"Those mistakes were not the downfall of our program," Dean added. "They 
helped a lot more people than they hurt. But we can do better and we 
will do better and our time is coming." See Video

Alternating between references to the "McCarthy era" of the 1950s, which 
he accused the Bush administration of reviving, the decade of the 1960s 
and the current era, Dean explained that he was "looking to go back to 
the same moral principles of the '50s and '60s." 

That was a time that stressed "everybody's in it together," he said. "We 
know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds."

Dean's comments Tuesday came at a religious gathering convened in the 
nation's capital to discuss ways of eliminating poverty. After stating 
that America "is about as divided as it has been probably since the 
Civil War," Dean declared that "we need to come together around moral 
principles, and I'm talking about moral principles like making sure no 
child goes to bed hungry at night."

"I'm talking about moral principles like making sure everybody in 
America has health insurance just like 36 other countries in the world," 
he added. "This is a moral nation, and we want it to be a moral nation 
again."

As one method of accomplishing that goal, the DNC chairman called on 
Congress "to raise the minimum wage until we have a living wage in this 
country." He dismissed criticism of a minimum wage hike as "economists' 
mumbo-jumbo."

"We're simply asking to give the people who are working for minimum wage 
the same raise that Congress has had every year for the last 20 years," 
he said.

Dean also stated that the Democratic Party helped give people "the 
opportunity to become middle class" during the 1960s.

"I do think that empowering people to help themselves is what we should 
be doing in the 21st century," he added, stating that the Democratic 
Party now emphasizes the value of work.

"If you work hard, you ought to be able to support your family," the DNC 
chairman noted, and "in America, you need the opportunity to work hard, 
and that means some level of support from government -- no handouts, but 
some level of support so that you really do have a genuine opportunity 
to contribute to the country."

The DNC chairman pointed to President Bush's tax cuts as a major 
obstacle to what he called "tax fairness." He also criticized the 
Republican Congress for being "the biggest 'big government' government 
we've ever had," though he did make at least one positive comment about 
the GOP.

"How about if I'm a wild-eyed radical liberal who is willing to say the 
conservatives had some good ideas?" Dean told his audience. "But let's 
go back and make what we wanted to work, using some of their ideas to 
make sure that the mistakes don't get made again," he added.

"It's nice to see that Howard Dean's hostility to the religious 
community ends when people of faith vote Democrat," Republican National 
Committee spokesman Josh Holmes told Cybercast News Service.

Holmes added he was not surprised that "Howard Dean's political 
perspective is derived from a 1960s counterculture view of the world. 
What is surprising -- and disturbing -- is that he can urge a massive 
expansion of government and denounce the Democrat mistake of creating a 
'culture of dependence' in the same speech."

"He may want to revisit that mistake to update his talking points and 
the Democrat policy manual," Holmes said.

Before leaving Tuesday's conference, the DNC chairman thanked those in 
attendance for giving him "a big lift."

"I came in the wrong door when I first got here," Dean said. "I came in 
the back, and everybody was talking about praising the Lord, and I 
thought, 'I am home. Finally, a group of people who want to praise the 
Lord and help their fellow man just like Jesus did and just like Jesus 
taught.' Thank you so much for doing that for me."

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