Editorial Bear

Not because I'm a democrat. I'm British, remember. I'm neither (at the moment.)



It's just with Congress run by the Republicans and a Republican President in the White House, America has slewed to something of a political stop.

In the House of Representative and the Senate, the Republicans can pass through whichever laws they want. With a Republican President, none of them need to get veto'd. Which means that the Republicans are in an incredibly powerful position and the Democrats - who represent roughly half of the United States - are completely impotent.

Unless at least one of the houses gets back into the hands of the Democrats, America will continue to march forward in a unipartisan direction that will deepen the gap between the United States and the rest of the world.

Democracy thrives on conflict, not unity. It's debate and dialect that powers the engines of change and progress - not a machine that churns out party policy and rubber stamps it.

The Republican party stands for a lot of good things - but it also panders to Christian fundementalists and the far right, whose beliefs are often in conflict with the fundements of the American Nation. Some of the things we've seen a Republican America bring into being - like the Patriot Act - fly in the face of the constitution.

America should not be a nation that suspends Habeus Corpus and the Right to Free Speech. We may be fighting a war on terror, but if we suspend these liberties that the founding fathers fought and died for, we actually take a step closer to becoming one of the regimes we're fighting against.

Whatever your political beliefs, vote Democrat this mid-term and bring something that's sorely missing back to the American Political Arena - a dissenting voice.