A couple weeks ago, I attended my first Republican district convention. I missed 2008’s, having been deployed to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province on my third combat tour with the Army.<\/p>\n
I’d hoped to speak in favor of a friend’s amendment to the party platform, which would have tempered its implicit support for American militarism.<\/p>\n
Neither Iraq, nor Afghanistan, are mentioned in the platform. Instead, there is support for “the proliferation of democratic principles around the world,” and praise for military technology and our troops. As is usually the case, the misguided motives of empire hide behind a fawning over its servants.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the opportunity to speak was denied when two-thirds of delegates (exactly enough, we were told) voted to suspend the rules and adopt the existing platform without discussion. I suspect they were motivated by exhaustion rather than censorship. Hours of slogans about limited government, the philosophy of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution had taken their toll. So I make my point here:<\/p>\n
(Original link<\/a> at desmoinesregister.com seems broken, so click here<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple weeks ago, I attended my first Republican district convention. I missed 2008’s, having been deployed to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province on my third combat tour with the Army. I’d hoped to speak in favor of a friend’s amendment to the party platform, which would have tempered its implicit support for American militarism. Neither Iraq, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[40],"tags":[47],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}