Hoyer Finally Admits the Obvious: Health Care Bill Killed the Dems in 2010 - FDL

[Lydia Leftcoast]

86. I guess it means to defend people with D's after their name

no matter what they do.

You know, I once went through the selection process for the U.S. Foreign Service. I passed the written test, the interview, the simulation tests, and the language aptitude test. I got all the way to the point where they said that all that was left was the physical.

But then I talked to some people whose parents had been in the Foreign Service and had left it. The reason? A Foreign Service officer has to defend the foreign policy of the U.S., whether s/he agrees with it or not. If you disagree with something the U.S. government is doing, you have to keep it to yourself, except in correspondence with higher ups, and even such disagreements can damage your career. If asked by anyone, foreign diplomat or anybody else, you have to defend the policy.

I couldn't do that. By that time, the U.S. was already using the Central American countries as part of its chess game with the Soviet Union, without regard for the fact that the governments it was defending (El Salvador, Guatemala) were downright evil and that the government that it was trying to overthrow (Nicaragua) was the first one ever to try to improve the lot of the peasants.

So when the letter about the physical came, I withdrew my application.

Similarly, I can't defend bad policies just because Democrats think them up. We hated it when the Republicans did that with whatever Bush thought up, and now many DUers have become mirror images of the Republicans: "My party, right or wrong."