Mr. Gingrich

Mr. Gingrich's article in the "War" Street Journal, Sept 7, 2006, is an excellent campaign speech. Of course campaign speeches are for getting votes. Once in power the special interest groups take control and those in power do anything they can to stay in power. Remember how the Republican Contract With America in 1994 was supposed to eliminate the Department of Education? Since that victorious election by the Republicans the Department of Education's budget has increased from 29 billion in 1998 to around 60 billion in 2006! So much for campaign promises.

Mr. Gingrich seems to have an admiration for President Lincoln's abuses of power. Anthony Gregory wrote on another web site, "Many have pointed out that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus to jail war protesters, shut down hundreds of newspapers that disagreed with his war, established a draft for the first time in American history (except in the seceded South, which had adraft a year earlier), instituted restrictions on firearms, and sent troops to violently suppress the New York draft riot. He also used the war to push through the "American System," a program of de facto nationalization of the transportation industry via massive subsidies to corporations that would agree to build "internal improvements" - railroads, waterways, and canals. The victory of the Union in 1865 not only established that, contrary to popular political theory in the antebellum era, the federal government was completely supreme over the states; it also established that a president could do literally anything he could get away with, no matter how many liberties were suspended, innocents jailed, and people killed in the process."

I believe Mr. Gingrich would like to conquer the world. He should heed the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:24-28, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul." Mr. Gingrich seems to want to destroy those who hate America. Actions he prescribes will instead destroy America for them. Mr. Gingrich said "they" wish to destroy us. That is more fear mongering. He does not say who or how many 'they' are. The sheep who love authority will see visions of the Muslims hordes approaching our shores in their dhows.

"They" also love us, which is why so many of "them" wish to come here. Their women wish to have rights, the birth control pill, and go shopping. Mr. Gingrich fails to say why "they" wish to destroy us. He wants it to be only about dogma. It is much more. It is our foreign policy. Our foreign policies will create more of "they" who hate us, as India, Russia, China, Venezuela, Europe and any other nation we cannot buy off, sees our desire to conquer the world as a threat to them.

Poverty is another problem in the Arab world. It is a seed for envy and hatred. We should have been dropping Dollars and Euros on the poor villagers instead of dropping bombs. It would have been a lot cheaper and would have created more who love us. Bombs create more of those who want to destroy us. As it stands now our oil revenue goes to the leaders in the Muslim world, which use the money against us.

Plato had it right when he described leaders like Mr. Gingrich; "Quick intelligence, memory, sagacity, cleverness, and similar qualities do not often grow together. People who are high-spirited and generous are not built by nature to live in an orderly, peaceful, settled manner. Instead, they are driven every which way by their impulses and all firm principles leave them. On the other hand, those stable and steadfast and, it seems, more trustworthy natures, which in a battle are impregnable to fear and immovable, are equally immovable when there is anything to be learned. They are always in a torpid state and are apt to yawn and go to sleep over any intellectual toil." The Republic, Book 6 503c Benjamin Jowett 4th Ed.

Charles Tolleson