Lets not get too bent out of shape over a sacred DFL icon being held accountable.
True, the criminal justice sstem treated her infraction as a misdemeanor and properly
so. It was nothing comparable to accepting a bribe.
Still, fair elections depend on the voters receiving every candidate's literature.
If one candidate intercepts another candidate's literature before it reaches the
voters, the effect is the same as if that candidate had been censored. True, she took
only a few pieces of the nonDFL candidate's literature -- before she was caught. If
she had taken one piece of literature, it could be explained as due to her wanting to
know about more about the opposing candidate's position and a desire to take that
candidate's literature home to study at greater leisure. But to take pieces of a
candidate's literature one after the other, even if she was caught before she had
taken more than a few?
The explanation for her behavior that seems most plausible to me is that it is a
manifestation of Democrats, and DFL'ers in Minnesota, to treat each successive
election as THE CRUCIAL ELECTION that will determine the direcion of the country's
movement for a generation, as an election in which their candidate is pitted against
the GREATER EVIL Republican. More sophisticated Democratic Party voters conceed that
their candidate is the LESSER evil. We are stampeded with the claim every four years
that this is the crucial election that determines whether the country goes fascist or
not. 2000 A.D. was THE CRUCIAL ELECTION AND NOW IT IS 2004. I can remember reading
all the hysteria in the CHICAGO DEFENDER during the 1964 election and it was as if
some people thought that the ovens would be opening to receive African Americans if
Goldwater got elected. In 1976, I remember the lesser evil argument being used
against even such an innocuous Republican candidate as Gerald Ford du
ring his run against Jimmy Carter!
The Minneapolis Issues list is currently full of postings about attempts by City
politicians to take power away from Minneapolis neighborhoods by dismantling the NRP.
These are DFL politicians who are attempting to gut the NRP. This desperation to make
each successive election THE CRUCIAL election, whether local or national, by the
Democrats might explain Kahn's unethical behavior. Particularly since, as the local
example of the NRP illustrates, people are becoming less and less inclined to buy the
Democrats, and the DFL's locally, greater evil hysteria in the light of the Democrat's
and the DFL's successively greater evil.
But in Kahn's mind I can see how it might look. The Republicans have been blown up
to represent such evil that they MUST be defeated. What matter the little ethical
lapse of stealing an opponent's literature when faced with the MONSTROUS and LOOMING
threat of this GREATER EVIL and the DESPERATE URGENCY to defeat it?
Although this explanation touches on national as well as local issues, it explains
the local example of Kahn's unethical behavior by putting it in this larger context.
Robert Halfhill Loring Park
http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com
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