Posted by Stephen Wilson on October 26, 19102 at 10:56:58:
Paul Wellstone was no friend of conservatives but he did stand his ground on what he believed and, for that, he deserves some respect.
He once said on the floor of the Senate .......
" .... Senator Barry Goldwater told it like it is. I went to Senator Goldwater's funeral service in Arizona, not because I was necessarily in agreement with him on all the issues. As a matter of fact, some of my good friends, Republican colleagues, who were on the plane with me kept giving me Barry Goldwater's book "Conscience of a Conservative" and kept telling me if I had read that book when I was 15, I would be going down the right path. I told them I did read the book when I was 15 but I just reached different conclusions...." LOL
Senator Goldwater about a decade ago said:
The fact that liberty depended on honest elections was of the utmost importance to the patriots who founded our nation and wrote the Constitution. They knew that corruption destroyed the prime requisite of constitutional liberty, an independent legislature free from any influence other than that of the people.
Applying these principles to modern times, we can make the following conclusions:
To be successful, representative government umes that elections will be controlled by the citizenry at large, not by those who give the most money. Electors must believe their vote counts. Elected officials must owe their allegiance to the people, not to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups who speak only for the selfish fringes of the whole community.
Yes, Wellstone was slightly to the left of Mao Tse Tung, and I do agree that his brand of left-wing anti-defense policy has done damage to the Republic. Nevertheless, my hat is off to him for doing what he believed in - even if he was a lefty wacko. Today's conscience-seared politicians are an abomination. I'll take an old-fashioned bleeding-heart liberal over a heartless consensus-r-us any day. Deal in the currency of principle and you have my ear; deal only with self-centered intent, and you're toast. Wellstone will not be missed (by me) but he is one liberal whose funeral I could attend without getting sick.
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