Camille Paglia explains why she will be voting for Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, for president
In a recent interview with salon.com, Camille Paglia explained why she will be voting for Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, for president. Paglia said:
The biggest issue for me is the Obama administration’s continuation of endless war, war, war. I denounced the Iraq incursion before it even happened.
In Obama’s defense, he did end the Iraq War. But he did do that Libya thing, which I oppose, just as I opposed it when Reagan did it.
I have been revolted by the silence of the liberal mainstream media about Obama’s expansion of war
Good for her.
And what is the administration’s response to the murder of our ambassador? Nothing. Do we have a presidency or not? The ambassador’s journal was lying on the floor for CNN to find, and it took weeks for the FBI to get there and spend a day — after sensitive documents were stripped long ago.
CNN was the one to find it? Wow! I had not been aware of that. The military must have really goofed on that one.
The media’s pampering and protection of Obama over the years simply led to his weakening — which was on excruciating public display at his first debate with Romney, who landed blow after blow.
That’s exactly what I was thinking after I read about Obama having done so badly in the debate (which I did not watch).
So, the first reason I’m voting Green is the state of endless war. Second is the appalling rise in the military and domestic use of drones. I bought Medea Benjamin’s protest book about drones, and I agree with her. There is reason for great concern about the use of drones for police surveillance in the United States. This Democratic administration has gone very deep into the weeds here in offering incentives to local police departments to acquire drones, which are a serious threat to our civil liberties and right to privacy — which liberals should be defending. We’re on our way toward a Big Brother society.
She’s clearly on the left-libertarian quadrant of the political compass – Obama is not. (I myself am on the right-libertarian quadrant, and will be voting for Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate, for President)
My third reason for going Green is the creeping totalitarianism of Obamacare, which Jill Stein as a physician is rightly skeptical about.
I’m glad she points out that Jill Stein is a doctor – and that she is critical of Obamacare.
I never would have expected anyone on the left to use the word “totalitarian’ to refer to Obamacare.
But the childish naivete of so many supposedly well-educated liberals was shown by their complete failure to notice or remark on the most glaringly obvious deficiency in Obamacare: You cannot possibly expand medical coverage to millions of people without also expanding medical training and funding new clinics and hospitals. The total absence of that in the bill was ludicrous.
Yes! I have thought this exact same thing myself.
The way liberals lay down flat to accept this massive, totalitarian takeover of the American medical system was shocking to me.
There she goes again using that word “totalitarian” to describe Obamacare.
What in the world has happened to the Democratic Party? Its passivity towards this awful takeover of our lives by a know-it-all government, as shown by the way Obama has governed by constantly going around Congress — appointing czars and one new layer of bureaucracy after another. And hardly a peep of protest from liberals. It’s like the movie of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” — Democrats have turned into the Eloi; they’re like sheep. They hear a signal, and it’s like pre-programmed spin in their heads — they just trot like sheep in one direction. I am voting Green in protest against the systemic corruption of my party.
That is awesome!
Listen — a huge point I want to make is that the protest against the surveillance state has, with only a few exceptions, been mainly coming from the Right and not from the Left! Talk radio has been seething with this issue for years. A good example is talk-show host Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny,” which was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller three years ago and yet got very few mainstream reviews. Democrats have got to wake up! This is why the Republican Party has gained and why the Democratic Party is in disarray — because the Democrats have lost one of their key signature issues from 1960s leftism. Why has the GOP become the freedom party? … The Left must retake this issue of personal freedom and civil liberties. Over the last 20 years, freedom has become a conservative watch word, and liberals have lost their claim to it…. As someone who listens to talk radio, I must tell you that the issue of personal freedom and resistance to a swollen totalitarian government has become primary on the Right.
Of course she’s only referring to certain Republicans – there are many other Republicans who do agree with Obama on these particular issues. But she does have a good point – the biggest defenders of freedom in recent years have certainly not been Democrats.
Why is there never a public review of our obscenely costly global presence? I believe in a strong military and in adequate funding for training and armaments, but we are seriously over-extended right now. This is where I completely agree with the Green Party. We are still stuck in a hopelessly outdated Cold War model.
Good for her to point that out!
And all that foreign aid — I’m sick of it! We go on and on throwing money down every corrupt rat hole in the world!
I agree with her on this too.
Why aren’t Democrats in the forefront of proposing budget cuts in unnecessary government expenditures? They’ve sure made it so easy for Republicans to tag Democrats as reckless tax-and-spend liberals. And too many Democrats have fallen for the administration’s canard that we can restart the economy through more government spending.
I would like to know the answer to that question too.
One of my target audiences is home-schooling moms — whose powerful voices I heard calling into conservative talk radio at the dawn of the Tea Party. They are formidable and capable personalities whom feminism has foolishly ignored.
When she says “target audiences” she is referring to potential buyers of her new book on the history of art. The fact that someone on the left supports home schooling is something that really makes her stand out from others on the left.
Here are some other related blog entries that I have written:
Here are 95 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, and cronyism
Obamacare summed up in one sentence
Wow! With Obamacare, Kathleen Sebelius is going to be VERY busy!
Obamacare forces union to drop health insurance for children of more than 30,000 of its members