Our Favorite Pro-Gun Democrats
U.S. Senator Jim Webb (Virginia)
{UPDATE - November 2015: After a lackluster performance in the first Democratic Presidential debate, Senator Webb suspended his Presidential campaign and then followed up that announcement by floating the idea of running for President as an independent. We were disappointed in both of these decisions.
An engaged Senator Webb in the Democratic debates would have provided an opportunity to showcase a Southern-style populism that is missing from political discourse today. Running as an independent has never been a winning formula; working within the two-party structure is the proven path to success.}
The first time you may have heard of Vietnam veteran Jim Webb was when he served as Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. The Senator has a concealed carry permit and has said that he feels safer because of it, but when he ran for the Senate in 2006, Jim ran as a Democrat, primarily for economic reasons.
Perhaps he had heard enough of the voodoo economics being espoused in the Reagan administration and subsequently carried to extremes by the Tea Party wing of the GOP?
During Webb's first year in the Senate, he was chosen to give the Democratic response to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union speech. The following passages from the Senator's speech show why the Democrats were Webb's party of choice and why he's one of our favorite pro-gun Democrats: it's all about putting middle class families first, not the rich, or the well-connected or the powerful. It's about making the right choices on foreign policy, especially when it comes to decisions of war and peace.
If you'd like to hear the entire speech, it's easy to find on the internet, but for an abbreviated version, here are excerpts from Senator Webb on the economy and the middle class:
"When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better.
The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.
Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world…. Good American jobs are being sent {overseas}.
In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table."
"In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy - that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today."
"Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.
Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves 'as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.' And he did something about it."
Senator Webb nailed it in this speech. But, unfortunately, the exporting of our jobs to Red China and the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots will not be addressed as long as the Tea Party Republicans are holding the Republican Party, and the country, hostage.
Senator Webb also discussed military service and how we got into Iraq:
"…. I was proud to follow in {my father's} footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.
We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it."
"The President {George W. Bush} took us into this war {in Iraq} recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs."
There are many stories about why we really went into Iraq. But Senator Webb was correct in saying that our leaders owe us sound judgment and clear thinking when taking us into war. We're pretty sure that did not happen in the case of Iraq.
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