The Party of Truman

The Bush lovers who are So Very Concerned That We Have a Healthy Two-Party System are always lamenting that Democrats are no longer the party of Harry Truman, a real patriot who was "serious" about defending America even though he wasn't even a Republican.

Here's what Truman had to say (via Dover Bitch) about dealing with the threat posed by domestic communism (a threat at least as real and "existential" as Islamic terrorism is even pursuant to the most exaggerated fears):

"Now I am going to tell you how we are not going to fight communism. We are not going to transform our fine FBI into a Gestapo secret police. That is what some people would like to do. We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think. We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat."

Our country has faced a long and diverse series of threats, and we have defeated them while preserving our founding Constitutional principals and basic liberties, and without bestowing the President with monarchic powers, even in times of war. Leaders who are truly strong and resolute find ways to combat those threats while still preserving the defining attributes of America which have always made it so worth fighting for.