FAR-RIGHT INSANITY: THEN AND NOW

It is easy to think that lying, irresponsible, egomanaical far-right extremist formentors of fiction like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are a relatively new phenomenon in American culture and politics. But that supposition is not at all true.

Our penchant for free speech and the free exchange of ideas has made the United States unique in the history of the world. We have produced profound, noble, hopeful, unifying, and forward-looking thinkers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, to name but a few, whose ideas and principles have inspired millions and are quoted and held in high esteem all across the globe to this day. Theirs has been a language of universality, optimism, equal opportunity, and inclusiveness. It has provided great and lasting food for thought for the whole world.

But we have also produced shallow preachers of hatred, fear, mistrust, division, and backward-looking thinking. Modern far-right conservatives and Republicans like Beck, Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mivchelle Malkin, Dick and Ann Cheney, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Pete Hoekstra, and Michele Bachmann fit into this category. They wallow in humankind's baser instincts of narcissim, nervousness, and self-promotion. Such shallowness does little to inspire others and, as such, these people will have little wide or lasting impact on humanity. Theirs has been the language of individuality, pessimism, skepticism, dishonesty, and exclusivity. Having little to offer others, it will be deservedly forgotten in the long run.

We are currently being bombarded by non-stop barrages of anti-Obama and anti-progressive thought from far-right extremists, many of whom have already been mentioned above. There is a common thread of underlying racism, hatred, fear, mistrust, and outright falsehood in their pronouncements. From the Cheney duo's accusations of the President's "dithering" on Afghanistan (thereby allegedly placing the country in dire jeopardy), to Sarah Palin's ridiculous claims that he "pals around with domestic terrorists" and his health care reform agenda will establish "death panels", to Glenn Beck's patently absurd charge that he is a "racist" and "hates white culture", to teabaggers' fears that our taxes will skyrocket, to Birthers' assertions that he wasn't born here and is not a citizen (or he is actually an America-hating Muslim), to Charles Grassley's statement that health care reform will "throw grandma under the bus", to Rush Limbaugh's (and many others')litanies that Obama's stimulus plan and health care initiatives are "socialistic" - all of these claims and insinuations are preposterous.

It has long been a trait of the far-right to exaggerate, distort, lie, and attack. Fr. Coughlin warned that FDR's New Deal would destroy capitalism. Didn't happen; in fact, his measures SAVED capitalism. Joie McCarthy had people believing that communists were everywhere and that Democrats were aiding and abetting them. Communists WEREN'T everywhere, and we ended up defeating them. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush told us regulation of business was bad and that "government isn't the solution, it's the problem." Yet when government regulation was lifted on energy speculators and mortgage bankers, gasoline shot up to $4 per gallon and the economy nearly went into another Great Depression.

The far-right has nothing to offer this country or the world by preaching fear, laissez-faire economics, ultra-conservative religion, and outright lies.

If you look at the illustration below, which I obtained from a recent post on the superb blog Down With Tyranny, you'll see it is a hate sheet circulated about President Kennedy just before his assassination in 1963. He, just like President Obama, was also the target of unfounded, lying, hateful rumors. There was no internet in those days, and no cable or satellite TV, so there was a far more miniscule venue for the far-right to preach its lies and hatred. Substitute the words "terrorists" or "Muslims" for the word "communist", and you'll see this is a perfect proof of the existence of far-right insanity: then AND now. The language used is eerily similar to what we see today, as is the method of presenting unsubstantiated accusations designed to alarm people. A look at some of the many far-fetched and inaccurate claims against Kennedy which have been thoroughly disproven by history show how far removed from reality those attacks were, as are the attacks against Obama now. The writers of this pamphlet were the teabaggers of their day, and were equally as unbalanced and insane as our current far-right extremists. (CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO ENLARGE FOR EASIER READING).



The far-right has nothing to offer this country or the world by preaching fear, laissez-faire economics, ultra-conservative religion, and outright lies.

GRIEVOUS GOP MISTAKES: A CHRONOLOGY

"Four fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still."
- Calvin Coolidge -

"The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests."
- Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles -

"The press is the enemy."
- Richard M. Nixon -

With the exception of its very earliest days, just before and during Abraham Lincoln's administration, and for a brief time at the turn of the 20th Century during Teddy Roosevelt's terms in office, the Republican Party has acted mainly in the interests of big business and social conservatives. It has advocated a minimal role for government, preferring to let business and industry (particularly their owners) determine much of the course of the nation's affairs. As such, the party has not generally supported the needs of the majority of the country who were workers and small farmers. This minimalist approach to government and the support for a small minority of the wealthier, upper elites has led to an undeniable pattern of the Republican Party being consistently on the wrong sides of many, many issues and/or mismanaging the country's affairs. Below, in chronological order, is a listing of numerous grievous mistakes the Grand Old Party has made since the end of the Civil War in 1865.

1867 - Radical Republicans take over the party. They immediately turn their backs on assassinated President Lincoln's desire to mercifully reassimilate the Old South back into the Union. They enact harsh policies against ex-Confederates (many of whom had been southern Democrats before the war). These penalties included stripping them of voting rights and the ability to hold public office. They instead set up unqualified newly-freed blacks and corrupt northern businessmen to govern the South under the banner of the Republican Party. While they did free poor blacks from slavery, they provided no education or training for them to enable a seamless merge into white cultural society. Now free, buth with their former masters bankrupt and powerless, most blacks migrated to urban centers and settled into slums, barely being able to eke out a substandard living doing unskilled and often backbreaking labor at very low wages.

1869 - Republicans begin to become increasingly allied with and dominated by big business and banks. Bribes and extortion run rampant, culminating in the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872.

1870s-present - Republicans and conservatives begin to side with big business against the formation of labor unions, and, once unions are established in 1935, actively try to suppress them.

1880s - Huge corrupt trusts are set up by big banks, big business and industry, and are supported and aided by Republicans.

1919 - GOP Senators play a heavy hand in preventing the US from joining the League of Nations, leaving that body weak and ineffective. Its eventual failure helps lead to World War II. Social conservatives in the party push through Prohibition, one of the worst and most impractical laws ever passed in the history of the human race.

1920s - Republican pro business, laissez-faire, anti regulatory policies (especially concerning the stock market) lead to terrible rural poverty and lay the seeds for 1929's Great Depression.

1935-1937 - Republicans oppose the adoption of government programs like Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Welfare, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the National Recovery Act (NRA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) - basically, any government-sponsored program designed to provide federal aid or employment to needy individual citizens. The GOP took the standpoint that government had no jurisdiction in those areas and that only private enterprise did. The problem was, of course, that businesses were too broke to provide those opportunities and SOMETHING had to be done for millions of hungry citizens. Thank God the GOP's numbers in Congress were too weak to prevent passage of all this beneficial legislation!

1947 - The GOP passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakened and restricted labor unions.

1950 - Republicans strongly support Sen. Joe McCarthy's infamous anti-communist witvh hunts, painting many Americans (especially Democrats) as soft on combatting communism. They use these accusations as a political tool to unseat Democrats and get themselves elected. These witch hunts wrongly accused many innocent people, ruining their lives and destroying their careers.

1953 - Ultra-conservative Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directs the CIA to help overthrow the democratically-elected pro-Islamic Mossadegh government in Iran, replacing it with the brutally repressive, pro-western Shah of Iran. This turns many Iranians against the US, the negative effects of which will become repeatedly evident years later.

1954 - John Foster Dulles again engineers the overthrow of a democratically-elected government, this time a leftist government in Guatemala, replacing it with a right-wing government more to his liking. Coincidentally (?), his brother, Allen Dulles, just happens to be on the board of directors of American Fruit Company, which had large holings in Guatemala and felt threatened by the leftist government. Dulles also prevents Vietnam from holding a national election, fearing that leftist nationalist Ho Chi Minh would win. So Dulles maneuvers to get Vietnam split into two countries, with Ho Chi Minh ruling the north and US-installed pro-western playboy Bao Di controlling the south. This lays the seeds for America's future bloody 15 year involvement in Vietnam.

1954-1965 - Many Republicans ally themselves with conservative southern Democrats to oppose and filibuster against major civil rights legislation.

1965 - Republicans oppose LBJ's Medicare and Medicaid programs and the entire War on Poverty program in general. These programs have benifitted millions of needy citizens since their inception.

1970- present - Republican Presidents, beginning with Richard Nixon and his Supreme Cort appointments Warren Burger and then William Rehnquist, begin their long attempt to pack the Supreme Court with conservative, pro-Republican justices. The Republicans call these types of justices "strict constructionists", who interpret the law strictly on precedent and Constitutional principle. But what justices like these have really done is strengthened the Executive Branch of Congress, effectively weakening the power of both the Legislative Branch (Congress) and the Judicial Branch. This has resulted in an erosion of civil liberties. It has also enabled corporations and special interest groups to exert more control over government and the population as well. The Nixon-Kissinger CIA overthrows the neutral Cambodian government of Norodom Sihanouk in favor of a pro-US military junta headed by Gen. Lon Nol. The US also begins illegal bombing and military incursions in Cambodia in an effort to choke off North Vietnam's military supply lines to the south.

1971 - Nixon orders a break-in at the Brookings Institute and attempts to steal files of anti-war critic Daniel Ellsberg. Nixon also approves illegal secret wiretapping of political opponents.

1972 - The Watergate era begins when Nixon operatives are caught breaking into Democratic Party national headquarters during this election year. Nixon is implicated in a massive deliberate cover-up, but is strongly supported by a hardcore group of conservatives and Republicans all the way up to his resignation in 1974.

1981 - Republicans, led by Ronald Reagan, break the power of labor unions by firing all striking air traffic controllers and by engaging in numerous union-busting activities. They also begin passing tax cuts for the rich.

Early 1990s-present - Republicans launch support for various unrestricred "free trade" initiatives, resulting in millions of high-paying American jobs being shipped to Mexico and Asia. This lowers our wage levels, increases pollution levels in foreign countries, and produces massive and record trade deficits. In effect, we become slowly poorer and the other countries become richer.

1993-1994 - Republicans spread disinformation about the Clinton national health care plan, effectively killing it.

1995 - A new breed of radical Republicans, the ultra-conservative neo-conservative (Neocon) faction, gains control of the Republican Party and both houses of Congress.

Late 1990s-2005 - Republicans begin a push to privatize Social Security and force through rollbacks on regulation of banks, mortgage companies, energy speculators, and many other businesses.

2001-2009 - Republican President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney unconstitutionally expand the powers of their respective offices in a deliberate effort to make them barely accountable to Congress. Congressional Republicans act as their rubber stamp and do little to stop them. They appoint business leaders as the heads of agencies designed to regulate their businesses, ensuring that government regulation will be for the benefit of businesses rather than for the public as a whole. Bush awards unqualified Texas loyalists and old buddies important administrative jobs. Cheney meets secretly with energy industry representatives and fuel prices skyrocket. Bush politicizes the Justice Department by stocking it with right-wing ideologues. Both Bush and Cheney refuse to comply with legal Congressional attempts at oversight. Republican congresspersons do nothing.

2002-2005 - Bush and Congressional Republicans pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations (including oil companies), and very little for the rest of the country. Torture, and rendition (kidnapping and transferring to secret locations in other countries) of Afghan and other prisoners of war begins. US military outpost in Guantanamo, Cuba, is set up as a holding and torture center for captured enemy combatants, in clear violation of the 1954 Geneva Convention. Republicans pass the so-called Patriot Act, enabling the government to illegally wiretap and obtain personal information on private citizens. Habeas Corpus rights are suspended. Opponents are branded as unpatriotic or aiding terrorism.

2003-2005 - Bush, Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld push for pre-emptive war with Iraq, wildly supported by congressional Republicans as well as a number of coerced Democrats. They greatly increase the number of private contractors supplying military services, awarding non-bid contracts to friendly contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater, who have previously been large campaign donors. Bush, again with overwhelming congressional Republican support, begins intercepting cheaper Canadian pharmaceutical drugs at the border, a move which hurts the elderly on fixed incomes but benefits giant US pharmaceutical companies selling their goods at a price double that of foreign countries.

2004 - Republicans, courtesy of political strategist Karl Rove, utilize a wide variety of divisive wedge issues to isolate and defeat their opponents in the general election. They also employ the use of deliberate disinformation about their opponents, deliberate LIES, a process repeated with less success in 2006 and 2008.

2008 - In the final months of his presidency, Bush grants leases to permit drilling for oil in previously protected wildlife areas and weakens government regulations over a number of industries, resulting in relaxed pollution standards. He also implants a number of right-wing key employees in regulatory agencies, making it difficult for future Presidents to gain effective control over rechanneling of these agencies once he leaves office. At their convention, Republicans jubilantly chant "Drill, baby, drill!", in support of more oil consumption rather than endorsing conservation, higher gas mileage requirements, and development of alternate energy sources.

From nearly day one, the history of Republican rule has meant favoritism for concentrated capital and less-than-desirable results for many ordinary citizens. This chronic favoritism and pattern of devastating mistakes and mismanaged governance have not spoken well for the Republican Party. They have demonstrated a repeated pattern of inability to effectively govern. They should therefore never again gain power without first undergoing a massive transformation in their philosophy and method of governing!

WHY I CAN'T BE A REPUBLICAN (III)

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
- Nazi Marshal Hermann Goering -

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, the people will eventually come to believe it."
- Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels -

"REPITITION DOES NOT TRANSFORM A LIE INTO THE TRUTH."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt -

Intentional or not, the Republican Party all too often follows the practices of the above quoted Nazis: It lies. Blatantly. Over and over, it has resorted to huge distortions, smears, and misstatements rather than face and discuss issues head on. Recent examples have included false insinuations that three-time Purple Heart recipient John Kerry didn't deserve his awards (and was therefore unfit to be President), that former Senator Max Cleland was soft on terrorism and of questionable patriotism, therefore stealing his Georgia Senate seat for Saxby Chambliss (even though Cleland had left 3 limbs on a Vietnam battlefield for his country), and that Barack Obama was first, a Muslim, then one who "pals with terrorists," and then a "socialist." Each of these examples was a deliberate lie told ruthlessly and repeatedly as a tactic used to win elections. This modern-day style of dirty campaigning was begun by Republican strategist Lee Atwater in the late 1980s and has been carried on by his protege Karl Rove in 2000 and 2004, and his protege Steve Schmidt in 2008. Naturally, all the right wing water carriers like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Bill O'Reilly are always quick to jump in and parrot the latest Republican allegation. Even the religious right gets involved with these lies. Just the other day, I saw a pre-election video put out by far-right preacher Dr. Hilton Sulton. This conservative zealot said, in effect, that GOD CREATED AMERICA on Christian principles; that God is perfect and good; that those clamoring for "change" are therefore violating God's will. The inference here, of course, was that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote against God. How utterly preposterous!!! First, there is NO mention of America ANYWHERE in ANY Bible! Second, it was the Founding Fathers who specifically founded this country, NOT God, and they set up elections and three branches of government for the very purpose of EFFECTING change and in anticipation of FUTURE change! I had to laugh at how wacked-out and blatantly partisan (and dishonest) this supposedly holy Dr. Sulton was! His and his party's lack of honesty, and the Machavellian "end justifies the means" mentality they display, add to the long and growing list of reasons why I can't accept Republicanism.

I have already amply illustrated how the Republicans do not truly represent the economic or moral values and interests of the majority of the country. This explains why they must so often resort to deceit and even character assassination to get their candidates elected. Just recently, right-wing liar and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh began referring to the current economic downturn as "the Obama recession." In fact, Obama has had nothing to do with it. He is not yet President, and it was caused by, and worsened by, the application of neocon deregulatory economic principles and practices begun under Bill Clinton and greatly expanded under George W. Bush! However, truth and facts mean little to Limbaugh or many of his hardcore Republican followers. They believe what they want to, period. And all they want to believe is that which they make up.

Republican folly was personnified in the selection of Sarah Palin as their VP choice last time, and their phony manufacture of Joe the (fake) Plumber as a sort of everyday citizen folk hero being victimized by Democrats. The GOP transparently grabbed Palin for VP, thinking that disaffected Hillary Clinton voters would flock to the ticket simply because she was a woman. It didn't matter to these illogical Republicans that Palin was woefully underqualified to hold national office, or that her political views and Clinton's are 180 degrees apart. They tried to sell Palin as a likeable, down-home, average hockey mom just trying to make ends meet like everybody else (even though the Palins' family income was well above average). With Joe the (fake) plumber, they tried to use him as an example of a hardworking everyday American worker who would suffer loss under an incorrectly presented Obama tax plan. They and their phony character said that Joe was a plumber, wanted to buy his boss's business worth $250,000, but wouldn't be able to under Obama's tax plan because he would be taxed too heavily. It didn't matter that this Joe WASN'T a plumber, nor was he currently employed, nor was he trying to buy a business, that he would do BETTER under Obama's tax plan than under Republican McCain's, and that he was actually a TAX CHEAT with a $1,200 tax lien against him. In both cases, the Republican Party actively and deceitfully tried to sell voters an IMAGE rather than provide real SUBSTANCE for the campaign. Naturally, these fraudulent attempts to sway the election in their favor failed, as VOTERS DO NOT APPRECIATE BLATANT DECEIT NOR DO THEY APPRECIATE HAVING THEIR INTELLIGENCE SO THOROUGHLY INSULTED!

Republicans also love to employ overly simplistic, half-truth, "polar opposites" as a means of attacking their opponents. People and candidates who are pro-choice (meaning they believe it is a woman's personal choice, rather than the state's as to whether or not to have an abortion) are inaccurately and unfairly labeled "pro-abortion" by Republicans. Those who oppose abortion under any circumstance (even though many of these same people support pre-emptive war and the dealth penalty) are errantly and paradoxically referred to as "pro-life" by the Republicans. Those who believe trade with other countries should be mutually beneficial and subject to specific common sense terms and conditions, are labeled as "protectionists" by Republicans (even in cases where these people have not advocated protective tariffs or heavy restrictions). But - those favoring completely unrestricted trade with other countries, no matter how one-sided or foolhardy the arrangement struck may be, are called "free traders" by conservatives and Republicans. These, of course, are deliberate distortions and overly simplistic misrepresentations designed to make voters select preferred Republican candidates.

The Republicans also have a penchant for anti-intellectualism. This is because the intellectual approach of careful examination, analysis, and discussion runs contrary to their preference for simplistic slogans, half-truths, and snap-judgments. Republicans generally shun the best and the brightest and derisively call them "elitists." They apparently prefer morons who can't spell (e.g. Dan Quayle - "potatoe"), can't properly pronounce words (e.g. George W. Bush and Sarah Palin - "nukeyulur" and "Eye-rack"), or those who are addicted to undignified and unsophisticated "you betcha", "darn tootin'", "by golly", and chop-the-g-off-every-ing-word stupid colloquialisms like Sarah Palin. Utterly pathetic. Embarrassing, too.

All parties and political campaigns are guilty of misrepresentation and exaggeration. But the Republicans have a knack for going way over the top with theirs. Their vicious smears and lies are inexcusable. Their favoritism of the wealthy and big business over ordinary citizens is shameful. Their intolerance, rigidiy, lack of diversity, militarism, and refusal to recognize government as a good and necessary force to protect average citizens afrom the excesses of concentrated capital are all fatal flaws. All that plus their use of fear and mean-spiritedness are clear-cut reasons why this is not the same party which once put Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt into office, and is therefore undeserving of support.

You can judge a group, just like a person, by the company they keep. In the case of the Republican Party, their notable members have included the likes of red-baiting Joe McCarthy, Richard M. ("I am not a crook") Nixon, Spiro (I WAS a crook, so I resigned) Agnew, Dick (I'll do whatever I damn well please, Constitution or no Constitution, and to hell with YOU) Cheney, Dan (DUH!) Quayle, Lee Atwater, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Alberto ("I'm afraid I don't recall") Gonzales, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Michele (the media should expose every member of Congress who may be anti-American) Bachmann, the hateful, vicious, venomous, ever-lying Ann Coulter, Mary Matalin, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and Bill O'Reilly. That's quite a rogues list. These members, together with all of the reasons I have spelled out over these past 3 blogs, are perfect examples of why I can't, and will never be, a Republican.

NEXT WEEK - GRIEVOUS GOP MISTAKES: A CHRONOLOGY