I have reread yesterday’s post (December 13th, 2011).

Let me summarize it.  I wrote

• that an Obama-Clinton ticket might prove a good combination.  But I also wrote that
• no one could know whether or not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been a better President than President Obama.  And I said that
• members of the Tea Party and hardline Republicans systematically oppose proposals brought before by President Obama, which is unacceptable.

In other words, anti-tax extremism being at the centre of the current debate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would also have had difficulty ensuring the debt is paid without making substantial cuts in essential areas such as social programmes.

Yet, I think an Obama-Clinton ticket is a very good idea.

However, I may not have seemed very kind to the electorate.  Those Republican members of Congress who say ‘no’ systematically to proposals put before them by President Obama were elected by the people.

But it would be my opinion these voters were probably blinded by the candidates who needed their votes.  As soon as President Obama was elected into office, Sarah Palin was telling Americans that if the health-care reforms the President wanted to put into place were signed into law, grandmothers would be killed.  Grandmothers were not about to be killed, but panic-mongering is very effective.

In other words, I hope I didn’t offend anyone.  And if I did, I apologize.

I want to make very sure my readers know why I oppose anti-tax extremism.  The answer is simple.  I do not think the poor and the middle-class should foot the entire bill, i.e. repay the debt incurred by a previous Republican administration.  It would not be just.

* * *

But, let me add that, if united by a common purpose, Americans do what needs to be done.  When Europeans were fighting a demented dictator: Hitler, Americans and Canadians gave their lives to liberate Europe.  During the year I lived in Normandy, I saw the vast fields of little white crosses and marvelled at the courage Americans had shown.  Not to mention that having liberated Europe, they went on to rebuild it.  Remember the Marshall Plan.

There are so many dimensions to reality and so many shades to every colour, that it is dangerous to allow oneself to be dogmatically one-sided.

December 14, 2011