November 19, 2002
Corporate Voting Machines Usurp Democracy
Thom Hartmann in Common Dreams wrote a compelling piece on how the new voting machines made since 2000 are controlled by corporations who "apparently told We, The People that we have no right to inspect their machines' innards, no freedom to audit their processes, and no ability to determine why their results are so dramatically at variance with our exit polls that in 2002 our polling companies had to sit down, shut up, and scratch their heads in bewilderment." (Read more in "Goldwater's Ghost in the Voting Machines?".)A very serious turn of events, and one which, Hartmann points out, should concern true conservatives as much as anyone. The words of Barry Goldwater, the patron saint of true conservatives, show how far the modern Republicans are from his principles. "In the beginning we were thirteen colonies perched precariously along the Atlantic seaboard," he wrote in his autobiography, With No Apologies. "We had no army. We had no navy. We had no manufacturing capacity. We had no wealth. What we did have was the belief that God intended men to be free, and on the strength of that belief we challenged the greatest commercial and military power in the world. In times of tribulation we have found among the people leaders - uncommon men whose understanding, whose courage, whose devotion to the Republic lifted us up to meet the challenge. They promised us nothing more than a chance to retain our freedom, to preserve the Republic, to continue this most noble experiment."
Calling all true conservatives! Stand up and oppose this tyranny that is being passed off as conservatism! Barry Goldwater is turning in his grave.