Bigotry

“Have you no sense of decency... at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?“ Those who read this may or may not remember that these were the words spoken by the Special Counsel for the Army, Joseph N. Welch, in addressing Republican Senator, Joseph McCarthy. It led to his censure by the Senate and ultimately to the end of his career. The same words apply to the whole Republican Party today.

Only three months have passed since I wrote my “Swan Song.” I did not expect to return to the fray so soon, if ever.

But the latest outrage of the Republicans rankles so much, and tells us so much about that party, that I feel I am compelled to speak.

I know that in our society, it is the custom, to pretend that there is good and bad in both parties and that must be true. But increasingly, while I can find some warts in the Democratic Party, I have increasing difficulty in finding any redeeming qualities in that other party. In vain, I look for any voices of reason, any voices taking exception to the torrent of intolerance, hate, and lies that emanates from that flock of people. It just isn’t there.

Their constant modus operandi, and I have to admit it is good politics, is to appeal to fear, intolerance, and xenophobia. If there are any decent people left in that party, why don’t they speak out, why do they jump on the bandwagon and join the chorus.

Ever since 9/11 their surrogates, in the guise of the Heritage foundation, and others, have been trying to whip up hatred of Muslims. But until now the Republican Party has not joined in. In fact G.W. Bush urged that Muslims as a group or as a religion should not be blamed for the events of 9/11. But increasingly we have been hearing and reading, the question, “If Muslims are so opposed to terrorism, why don’t they speak out.”

But in fact, they have been speaking out, only our media doesn’t report it. According to Fareed Zakaria writing in Newsweek:

“In 2007 one of bin Laden's most prominent Saudi mentors, the preacher and scholar Salman al-Odah, wrote an open letter criticizing him for "fostering a culture of suicide bombings that has caused bloodshed and suffering, and brought ruin to entire Muslim communities and families." That same year Abdulaziz al ash-Sheikh, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudis from engaging in jihad abroad and accused both bin Laden and Arab regimes of "transforming our youth into walking bombs to accomplish their own political and military aims." One of Al Qaeda's own top theorists, Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, renounced its extremism, including the killing of civilians and the choosing of targets based on religion and nationality. Sherif—a longtime associate of Zawahiri who crafted what became known as Al Qaeda's guide to jihad—has called on militants to desist from terrorism, and authored a rebuttal of his former cohorts.

"Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest and most prestigious school of Islamic learning, now routinely condemns jihadism. The Darul Uloom Deoband movement in India, home to the original radicalism that influenced Al Qaeda, has inveighed against suicide bombing since 2008. None of these groups or people have become pro-American or liberal, but they have become anti-jihadist.

“This might seem like an esoteric debate. But consider: the most important moderates to denounce militants have been the families of radicals. In the case of both the five young American Muslims from Virginia arrested in Pakistan last year and Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, parents were the ones to report their worries about their own children to the U.S. government—an act so stunning that it requires far more examination, and praise, than it has gotten."

But with every year that passes the Republicans use fear, xenophobia, and intolerance as weapons in pursuing their political and electoral objectives.

Now along comes an Imam who has spoken out again and again against terrorism and has sought dialogue with Christians and Jews. He has found an old building in lower Manhattan that is suitable for conversion and can be purchased at reasonable cost. And he wants to create a venue modeled after the YMCA, or the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association also known as the 92nd Street Y, which would be open to people of all faith. He aught to be applauded. But it is an opportunity to exploit the latent prejudice against all Muslims. And so the former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingridge, and a likely candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, said, it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust museum." Thus he equates all Muslims with the Nazis. Richard Cohen writing in the Washington Post, points out, “ Nineteen so-called ’jihadists’ crashed four airplanes that day in 2001. This is 19 out of about 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, an infinitesimally tiny percentage indeed. And Gingrich goes on to say, “ there are no churches or synogogues (sic) in Saudi Arabia“ as though that is in any way relevant and rather ironic, since the Imam is extremely critical of Saudi Arabia and its form of Islam, Wahhabism.

But it doesn’t stop there. First they ranted about the proposed Center being two blocks from “Ground Zero“ then it became in the “Shadow of Ground Zero“ and finally Rick Lazio the Republican candidate for Governor of NY referred to it as “Ground Zero is the wrong place for a mosque”. See the transcript of PBS’ Newshour. It seems to have mysteriously moved. And then he goes on to imply that the center is being financed by terrorist groups and calls for an investigation as to where the financing is coming from. Would Mr. Lazio ask for an investigation of where the financing is coming from for a synagogue or a church? It is smear by innuendo. Then Mr. Lazio resorts to the fear factor. “The question here is really whether or not we should feel -- feel safe” Does he truly believe that the center is going to attack us?

And along comes Charles Krauthammer, that voice of the Right and the GOP who compares the Muslim Cultural Center to putting a Japanese Cultural Center at Pearl Harbor." To which Richard Cohen correctly points out, “But all of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States. It was not a rogue act, committed by 20 or so crazed samurai, but an attack by a nation.“

But it gets worse! Krauthammer now goes on to smear the Imam. “This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11. Talk about taking a quote out of context. What Imam Faisal Abdur Rauf was talking about was that “after the Soviets pulled out, the Saudis, our best friends in the Arab world, our staunchest ally during the Gulf War, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the newly-formed Taleban regime, and then felt that bin Laden and the Taliban were out of control. Bin Laden's faith is a strict, puritanical form of Islam called Washbasin, (sic) which was founded in the 18th century in Saudi Arabia, and is now that country's predominant ideology.“

He is critical of our close alliance with Saudi Arabia, which exports Wahhabism and feels that this is the form of Islam that creates terrorism and the US should not condone it.

I would suggest that many Americans of all faiths would agree with this and it hardly shows either that he is anti-American or that he holds sympathy to terrorists. Just the opposite.

But any distortion – any lie, in the cause of the smear and the feeding of a frenzy of intolerance.

And then along comes Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, and he gives cover to bigots and hate mongers with, "In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain - unnecessarily - and that is not right." First of all no one knows how many “victims“ (presumably they mean the relatives of the victims) object to the Cultural Center (it may be a minority); and secondly, and most important, bigotry is not the right of anyone, whether victim or oppressor.

And what about the Muslim victims of 9/11 and beyond. The Daily Kos observes:

“According to one count over 60 Muslims died as a result of the 9/11 attack. But, evidently, in the RW mind those deaths do not count. Their death does not make Ground Zero hallowed ground, because, if they did, what would be the grounds for the uproar over the Islamic Center? Would anyone give it a second thought if a Jewish or Catholic community center was built where the Islamic center is planned?

“So...I am led to the conviction that this issue has nothing to do with real estate -- who builds what where -- but with the value of a human life and it seems that the right wing, the former party of family values, has decided that the life of an AMERICAN MUSLIMS and, by extension Muslim families, have no value.

“ If that is not sedition, will someone please explain it to me.“

Jannah.org estimates the number of Muslim victims at 500 to a 1000 and gives names not only of those victims but of Muslim victims of hate crimes.
And about.com tells the story of Salman Hamdani and other Muslims of which I quote only one:

“Imagine being the family of Salman Hamdani. The 23-year-old New York City police cadet was a part-time ambulance driver, incoming medical student, and devout Muslim. When he disappeared on September 11, law enforcement officials came to his family, seeking him for questioning in relation to the terrorist attacks. They allegedly believed he was somehow involved. His whereabouts were undetermined for over six months, until his remains were finally identified. He was found near the North Tower, with his EMT medical bag beside him, presumably doing everything he could to help those in need. His family could finally rest, knowing that he died the hero they always knew him to be.“

Why do we dishonor them?

In the words of Mayor Bloomberg:

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

"On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, 'What God do you pray to?' (Bloomberg's voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) 'What beliefs do you hold?'

Republicans have clearly decided that fanning the public's fears of rampant jihadism and prejudice against Muslims continues to be a winning strategy.

My Swan Song

After long and painful introspection I have decided to cease writing political commentary, something I have been doing for about fifty years.

I do this with a great deal of pain and disappointment, but I have concluded that it is time to stop deceiving myself into thinking that I am making a difference. Theoretically, I am distributing to over 500 people, but how many of those actual read my analysis is anybody’s guess. I suspect not many.

We live in an age when very few are interested in hearing anything that does not fit their predilections and worse their prejudices. An increasing number of people in the age of Obama find themselves most satisfied with the rantings of Fox, or to a lesser extent are happy to listen MSNBC, because it fits their particular predisposition. Fewer and fewer are interested in a balanced view or in the facts, as can be seen from the constant drop in the ratings in the less ideological CNN. I was dismayed a while ago, when a good friend said he no longer listens to the Newshour because he finds it “boring” and other friends who used to read the New York Times from cover to cover are now content to glance over the headlines and move on.

Nor was I encouraged when a number of readers removed themselves from my subscription and/or distribution lists, because I expressed views on the policies of the government of Israel at variance with their own. Rather than take the opportunity to make their own views heard across my megaphone, such as it is, they choose to cover their ears and run away from views that are not in keeping with their own.

I have also become painfully aware that many of the people who used to contribute their insight years, or even months ago, have disappeared from my radar screen, and some claiming to read my commentary have expressed agreement with my views, only to express, in their next breath, contrary views.

Nor was I encouraged when a friend, and a long time contributor, wrote a comment on my commentary entitled, Texas & Identity Politics that seemed to assume that my commentary related to the Texas school board curriculum, when it spoke strictly to the issue of identity politics.

Even people who assure me that they read my commentaries faithfully and wholeheartedly agree with my views, are not encouraging me, for as I said in commenting on an exchange with a Right wing ideologue, in the The Politics of the Big Lie:

“Let me say to my readers that I write these commentaries not so much to express opinions, though that is certainly one purpose, but more important to set the record straight as to facts, which I spend a great deal of time and effort documenting. I often get comments from readers that they agree with my opinions. I hope that they don't just get views they can agree with, for if that is all I accomplish, then my efforts are in vain. It is the underlying facts that are important and there are too many myths, too many misconceptions out there that need to be corrected. I aim to do that.

“During the Bush Administration there seemed to be a tendency to start with an ideological conclusion, and if the facts didn't fit, to change them. Whatever opinions people have the facts should come first. If I can contribute to destroying myths, to set the record straight, then I believe I will have made a valuable contribution.”

And yet I look in vain for comments that indicate that I have provided a fact that they had not known and they find helpful, or even someone adding facts I had overlooked, or had misstated one.

But strangely, in this overly ideological purity I find no passion on my side. We have neglected our problems for half a century, and have the first President during that span of time who is actually is trying to address them, who has saved the country from the looming chasm of a ’29 depression, who has successfully, if not fully, addressed our health care crisis, who has partially alleviated the pain of our gay community, while recognizing that one must move within the framework of what is politically possible, and who has brought this nation back into the world esteem it once enjoyed, to mention only a few of his achievements, but who faces vicious criticism not only from those who are his and my ideological enemies, but from those who supposedly are his and my political soul mates, who instead of directing their fire against those who tell countless lies, are the architects of the economic dilemma that the President has already prevented, direct their fire against the President and his party because they have not achieved all that one might wish in a little over a year.

I said I find no passion on my side. Contrast that with the passion of the Tea Party movement. Where are the angry voices in opposition to them? They are mostly silent, except maybe against the President because there are still many unemployed.

When I published an excerpt from The ”Best and the Brightest” to show how even then people expected miracles from a new President which could not be delivered, I expected many to find that striking and enlightening. Only one person expressed this as being interesting, and that was in an oral conversation, though it was appreciated.

In bidding adieu, I must say that there were a few bright spots recently that I must acknowledge. Patricia Burns of Edgewater, NJ gave me a great deal of encouragement when she let me know how much she appreciated my efforts. Someone on the Right agreed that he wanted to hear contrary views and appreciated my wanting to share a platform with him.

But most have fallen silent, and I find their silence and their self-absorption deafening. I cannot make my voice heard over that deafening silence and I am no longer willing to try.

Letters to the Editor (Continued 2)

On April 29th I posted a commentary: Letters to the Editor (Continued) which I expected would exhaust this subject.

Since then, however, events have prompted me to write another letter to the New York Times, which I think I should share with you. It was written in response to an article on the front page of the May 2 Week in Review entitled: "The Spill vs. a Need to Drill."

My letter is set forth below:

"I am deeply disappointed at the lack of balance in the article “The Spill vs. a Need to Drill." The conclusion that we must drill is supported by, of all places, a quote from the Right wing “American Enterprise Institute” and in the graph by the figure that off shore drilling amounts to 30% of total domestic oil production. It somehow neglects to tell us that this is less than 7% of total consumption, a sum that could be made up by conservation."

While I did not mention the lies that have already entered the discussion on off shore drilling, I was rather shocked to hear Lamar Alexander R-TN and Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, talk on Meet the Press about $14 a gallon gasoline if we don't do off shore drilling . While a reduction of 7% in oil supply might push the price of gasoline up by 25¢, a suggestion of $14 is so ridiculous as to be ludicrous, yet neither the moderator nor anyone else on the panel so fit to point that out.

While doing letters to the editor allow me to also share with you a letter written by one of my subscribers,  Patricia Burns of Edgewater, NJ to the New York Times and was written in response to David Brooks column entitled "The Geezers’ Crusade."

She wrote:

"As an octogenarian, I obviously qualify as a member of the Geezer Generation described in David Brooks' column.

From the Greatest Generation to the Geezers Who Take from the Young? I don't think so! Rather, I would place the blame for this sorry situation noted by Mr. Brooks on the manipulation and dishonest distortion of facts by politicians and ratings driven media. Geezers may be faring far better in their later years than ever before - but they, and everyone, need access to honest, factual proposals, clearly presented and free of super hyped scare tactics, to come to sane, honorable and, yes, unselfish responses to pressing problems of today and the future. This we have always done through the tough years of Depression, World War, Civil Rights and Antiwar stands. The Geezers of today are the same people. They have not all become by choice the "reverse generativity" culprits, nor can they alone straighten out the deliberate, dishonest attempt to paralyze thought and government by those who put money, greed and self-serving politics ahead of integrity, statesmanship and social priorities.

"Geezers Unite, yes! Unselfish leadership is necessary. But start in the present, with demanding that truth and honest facts prevail in the battle for the future. Those have always been the ground rules. They don't change and I would think neither do we."

And finally one of my subscribers Barbara Valentino of Port St. Lucie, Florida has been inspired to create her own blog entitled Welcome To Barbara’s World where she writes:

"Even before the 2008 crisis, the four biggest banks were "too big to fail." Since then, Wells Fargo has grown 43% bigger; JP Morgan Chase has grown 51% bigger; and Bank of America is now 138% bigger than before crisis. America's four largest banks - Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells-Fargo - have assets of $7.4 trillion, equal to 52% of our entire GDP.

The collapse of any one would endanger the American economy, even the world economy. They are truly "too big to fail." They also have too much economic and political power because of their enormous size.

As one would "think," banks are not the victims losing money because of the foreclosure nightmare. NO, they have turned it into BIG BUSINESS (some even argue that it was all a set up), making huge profits from the foreclosure crisis, hoarding immense wealth....they are the "honestiores," the honored; those suffering from the millions of foreclosures, are the humiliores, literally the humble.

According to the New York Times, "The [SAFE Banking Act] would reinforce a 1994 law that bars any single bank from holding more than 10% of the nation’s total deposits, or about $750 billion. In the years since then, large firms have obtained waivers or used loopholes in the law to exceed that ceiling." It would also limit total bank borrowing to 2% of GDP.

The bill has broad progressive support, including Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Chris Hayes of The Nation, Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Heather Booth of Americans for Financial Reform, Adam Quinn of Credo, David Arkush of Public Citizen, and Jan Frel of Alternet. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) plan to file an amendment they say will end banks that become “too big to fail” and prevent future bailouts.

The language, titled the SAFE Banking Act, would limit the size of big financial firms and would ensure that banks have adequate resources to cover losses they incur.

This bill would not only prevent bailouts and protect against economic collapse, it will help boost lending to small businesses. 

Due to the length of the post of I am not reproducing all of it. but those who want to read the rest can go directly to the blog Welcome To Barbara’s World. 

Letters to the Editor (Continued)

On April 26, 2010 I posted a commnentary to my blog entitled Letters to the Editor in which I set forth a number of letters which I wrote. I concluded that post with the comment:

"In order to keep this post within a reasonable length, I will not set forth any more Letters to the Editor now, but instead will publish additional letters, in a future post.

This will serve to set forth the remaining Letters to the Editors which I have written this year. I very much hope that readers will let me have their views on any or as many as they care to. 

On January 3, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times in response to an editorial entitled: "Super Bowl Censorship ."

"I find your editorial, “Super Bowl Censorship” (Editorial, January 30) puzzling to say the least. You make it appear that critics of the ad by 'Focus on the Family' (which is anti- choice) are seeking censorship, when what they are seeking is the opposite. The Superbowl has consistently refused ads advocating Choice. All that is wanted, nay demanded, is an even playing field. Either ads on both sides of the issue should be run or on neither side. One would think that the Times would support this as well."

It was not published.

On March 19, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Fort Lee Suburbanite in response to an editorial entitled: "Christie’s Cuts Just Keep Coming."

"As You Sow So Shall You Reap (your view “Christie’s cuts just keep coming”). The voters of NJ in their wisdom elected Christie governor and now they are reaping the consequences.

"As your editorial points out Christie is following his party’s dogma, of no new taxes, no matter what. That is all fine and good if there were no consequences. But as you point out, it is a deceptive bargain, because localities have bills to pay and services to provide, and cuts in state aid to localities proposed by Christie means that property taxes in localities will have to increase, or garbage collections will have to be reduced, or services to seniors will have to be cut, or food banks will have to shut down, or libraries will have to close, or schools will end up with larger classes, or other services will be cut, or a combination of the above.

"None of us like paying taxes, but unlike Christie we understand our obligations to our kids, to our seniors and to our poor, particularly during these hard times.

"Yes, the state has a budget deficit to close, which has been growing ever since Republican Governor Christie Whitman cut taxes on the wealthy by 30%, and those who expect this can now be dealt with without serious cuts in expenditures are unrealistic, but to balance the budget at the expense of localities, our educational system, and our most vulnerable citizens, without asking for any sacrifice from our wealthiest, is not only callous, it is a disservice to the future of our state and nation."

It was published the following Friday.

On March 27, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Fort Lee Suburbanite in response to an editorial entitled: "Don’t Lower The Cap So Sharply Yet.” as follows:

"Last week I praised your editorial criticizing Governor Christie’s cuts of aid to localities, but I was surprised and appalled at your editorial of March 26 entitled 'Don’t lower the cap so sharply yet.' This totally contradicts your editorial of the previous week, where you expressed concern about cuts in services including police, fire, garbage collection, schools, and libraries. Such cuts are to some extent mandated by the Governor’s proposed cuts in aid, but at least it would have left each locality the option of increasing taxes on its own citizens, if it wanted to maintain services at current levels.

"The idea that the state mandates how much each locality may tax its own citizens flies in the face of the principle of home rule, and it is the very antithesis of Democracy. I am sure that there may be many towns that would prefer to cut services rather than increase taxes, but that is a choice that should be for them to make, not for the state to mandate. Lowering the cap on how much taxes may be increased to make up for cuts in state aid does not make any sense, and your editorial’s plea not to 'lower the cap so sharply yet' ignores that it should not be lowered at all. As a matter of fact, caps should be abolished. Every community should have the right to determine for itself the level of services it wants, and the how much it is willing to pay for those services.

"The state’s function is to help the communities with aid, not to dictate how they should govern themselves.

"There is one positive thing the governor could do, and that is to impose a 25¢ tax on all plastic bags dispensed by stores. This would raise much needed revenue toward closing the deficit, and at the same time reduce the number of plastic bags that now pollute our landscape, overwhelm our garbage dumps, and kill untold numbers of marine animals."

It was published the following Friday.

On April 8, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Fort Lee Suburbanite reading as follows:

"Governor Christie’s state budget proposes the elimination of state funding for family planning services. Last year’s, budget allocated
over $7 million for reproductive health care services including routine gynecological exams; basic contraception; screening for high blood pressure, anemia and diabetes; breast and cervical cancer screening and education; screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs); HIV testing and counseling; pre-pregnancy counseling and education; pregnancy testing and confirmation; and prenatal care and/or referral. State dollars are not used for abortion services.

"Gov. Christie’s budget cuts hurt women and costs the state money, Investing in women’s health is not only good policy, it saves money. Each dollar spent to provide family planning services saves an estimated $4 that would otherwise be spent in Medicaid-related costs. So, for the money saved by eliminating state funding for women’s health care, the state will pay at least $28 million more in Medicaid expenses.

"The best way to prevent unintended pregnancies and promote healthy families is to invest in family planning, and ensure that women and families have access to affordable, quality reproductive health care. Instead, Governor Christie wants to completely eliminate critical funds that reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. New Jersey already ranks 36th in public support for reproductive health care.

"Last year, New Jersey's family planning health centers provided:

* Reproductive and preventive health care to 126,903 women and 9461 men;

* Breast examinations to 70,506 women with 4039 referrals for further evaluation;

* Pap tests to 65,252 women;

* HIV tests to 27,386 women and men;

* 57,027 tests for Gonorrhea, 7727 tests for Syphilis and 66,035 tests for Chlamydia;

* Services to 97,129 women and men without health insurance.

"In 2009, New Jersey family planning health centers helped prevent: 39,782 unintended pregnancies, and 18,896 abortions. As a result, New Jersey saved well over $150,000,000 in one year."

It was published the following Friday.

On April 17, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Fort Lee Suburbanite reading as follows:

"Last Tuesday some of us went to the polls to vote for a school board and to approve or disapprove the school budget. This is supposed to be Democracy at work, but in fact it is a farce, and just another example of the bad way we govern ourselves in New Jersey.

"What percentage actually voted is not known at this point. But if the past is any guide, it is usually around 14 percent according to the Herald News of December 14, 2009. That hardly makes the result representative.

"And it is no wonder, since we know next to nothing about the candidates or the school budget we are supposed to approve or disapprove. In this years Fort Lee election we had four candidates for three slots, hardly what I would call a hotly contested election, and one of them isn’t even out of high school yet. Don’t we even have minimum qualifications for candidates? Do we even know whether members of the Board are paid or are volunteers?

"When we have elections on the federal or state level, the media gives us information on the candidates. We have editorial endorsements, have  debates, have party affiliations etc. We have at least a modicum of information to help us make our choices. But when it comes to local elections the paucity of information on the candidates and the issues makes intelligent voting all but impossible, and worse makes it possible for a small  determined group, often with a radical agenda, to seize control.

"It is time we stopped this farce and made the Board of Education responsible to the mayor, who we know at least a little about when we vote. More elections do not make for more responsible or more responsive governance. It does just the opposite."

On April 23, 2010 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Fort Lee Suburbanite reading as follows:

"In previous Letters to the Editor I pointed out that Governor Christie is following his party’s dogma, of no new state taxes, no matter what, but ignores the consequences of that policy. It of course means cuts in aid to localities. I pointed out, as in fact your own editorial did, that property taxes in localities would have to increase and vital services would have to be cut. Now some of the data becomes available. The state cut to Fort Lee schools will be 88%. As a result Fort Lee Public Schools have announced a 4.9% increase in our property tax and a cut in the school budget of 8.6%, and that does not include the increase in taxes by the town or the cut in town services.

"But figures are cold. What does it mean in jobs and services? The school system will phase out

*teaching French and Greek

*deferring purchase of textbooks and instructional technology

*Eliminating subsidies for band camp *Charging students for sports, clubs, plays, and music.

"It forces the layoff of much needed staff in our schools to the tune of 55 teaching and 27 custodial positions.

"They talk about generational theft. This is the worst kind of generational theft.

"While there is no room here for figures as they apply to Leonia and Edgewater they are equally dire, as is the impact on localities throughout the state.

"Property tax rebates are disappearing, which amounts to another tax hike, town taxes will go up, and we haven’t yet seen the cuts in services in police, health and other town services, which we rely on.

"But Christie couldn’t care less. As long as he protects the income running in the millions, and even in the billions of the fat cats who are his friends and enabler, he has accomplished his objectives."

It was published today.

Letters to the Editor

Since I do not confine myself to writing for my blog, but write Letters to the Editor as well, I think it worthwhile to share these letters with you from time to time, whether or not they are published. Thus on January 5, 2010 I wrote to the New York Times in response to an editorial entitled: "Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal" as follows:

I am appalled at your Editorial, "Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal" (New York Times, January 10) not because there is any question in my mind that torture is abhorrent and illegal, but because your editorial is deliberately misleading. It would be nice if the Times would inform its readers what case they have reference to. Failing that, however, it is inexcusable for the Times to misrepresent the rationale of that case, Nowhere does the decision, handed down in April of 2009 (nine months ago), hold that, "it was not 'clearly established' that torture was illegal". What the decision holds, is that, "at the time of their detention, neither the Supreme Court nor this court had ever held that aliens captured on foreign soil and detained beyond sovereign U.S. territory had any constitutional rights."

You have every right to differ with the conclusion of the court, but you do a disservice to journalism and to your readers when you choose to misrepresent. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts".

The letter was not published.

On January 23, 2010 I wrote a letter to my local newspaper the Fort Lee Suburbanite as follows:

“It is ironic that during the same week that the Supreme Court decided that there may be no limits on the manner or amount that corporations can spend on American elections, I find that my voice in the Suburbanite is substantially stilled by a new requirement that letters be limited to 450 words.

“While I understand that this comes about by the space and cost pressures that all newspapers are facing, it nevertheless, shows the lack of balance between the speech of those endowed with control of great wealth, and those like me.

“Unions and corporations will now be spending money that does not belong to those who decide how to spend it, since in the case of unions, leaders, and in the case of corporations, Boards of Directors, make that decision. In anticipation of the court’s decision I wrote a letter to your paper, which was published on October 9, 2009 under the heading, “The Best Government Money Can Buy.” It appears on my blog as 'Money and Politics'

“I must say that with this Supreme Court decision we have come full circle. The Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, decided on who our next President should be, that President then chose members of the court, who in turn stacked the deck in favor of Bush’s party. While the ruling also applies to unions there is no comparison between the amount of money available to unions and to corporations.

"But the worst part is not even the partisan aspects; it is the ability, already great for corporations, to reward or intimidate lawmakers, for an Exxon, for example, can say to any lawmaker, ‘let us pollute, and we shall reward you with heaps of cash in support of your next election’, or the reverse, ‘oppose us and we shall spare no money in bringing about your defeat.’ Unions can bring similar rewards or threats. The people lose! Money reigns! “Let us not forget the truism spoken by the campaign manager for William McKinley, during the 1906 election where McKinley’s campaign was financed primarily by corporations, ‘There are two things that are important in politics. 'The first is money and I can't remember the second.’

"It was that election which prompted passage of the Tillman Act in 1907 that first put limitations on corporate spending in elections.”

The letter was published, but subsequently the limit on Letters to the Editor was reduced to 300 words. When I first started publishing in the Suburbanite there was no limit on length.

On January 25, 2010 I again wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to an editorial entitled "Avoiding a Japanese Decade."

I wrote:

“I congratulate the New York Times for endorsing the Administration’s effort to regulate banks. (New York Times January 2, 2010 editorial). Hopefully, Republicans will not block it in the Senate, as they have blocked almost every other initiative by invoking the filibuster.

“I suggest, however, that until we have a cap on usurious interest, no regulations will be adequate to stop their reckless behavior, or stop their rip-off of the American public. Banks now borrow from consumers at below 2%, and charge them for loans via credit cards at 20% or more. They then extrapolate a one-day loan into a month interest (which is what happens when a payment is late by one day) and add late and other fees, causing the actual interest to be well over 100%. In addition
because of the huge profits resulting, the banks are encouraged to lend recklessly. No regulation short of this will be effective.”

It was not published.

On January  31, 2010 I again wrote to the New York Times in response to an Op-Ed piece by Charles M. Blow entitled: "Lost in Translation."

I wrote:

"I find Mr. Blow’s Op-Ed piece “Lost in Translation” (New York Times, January 30) shocking.

"The ignorance of the American electorate is appalling.

"But what is even more appalling is that he blames this ignorance on our President, who it has been popular, lately, to blame for everything.

"Let Mr. Blow and his fellow journalists, pundits and the media in general look to themselves for the failure. Reading their many thousands of words, whether in print or by word of mouth, one would be hard put to find any attempt to educate the public on the most vital facts relating to the political landscape. The 'liberal' organizations with their innumerable e-mails have been no more informative.

In order to keep this post within a reasonable length, I will not set forth any more Letters to the Editor now, but instead will publish additional letters, in a future post.

The More Things Change; The More They Are The Same

I urge you to read the following:

No, it is not about President Obama, but it easily could be.

"His nomination, his campaign, his election had meant many things to many people; now they waited, and many would find themselves disappointed in that first year. He was the first of a new kind of media candidate flashed daily into our consciousness by television during the campaign, and as such he had managed to stir the aspirations and excited millions of people. It had all been deliberately done; he had understood television and used it well, knowing that it was his medium, but it was done at a price. Millions of people watching this driving, handsome young man believed that he could change things, move. things, that their personal problems would somehow be different, lighter, easier with his election. As the President was faced with that great gap of any modern politician, but perhaps greatest in contemporary America: the gap between the new unbelievable velocity of modern life which can send information and images hurtling through the air onto the television screen, exciting desires and appetites, changing mores almost overnight, and the slowness of traditional governmental institutions produced by ideas and laws of another era, bound in normal bureaucratic red tape and traditional seniority. After all, although he had said in his campaign that he wanted to get America moving again, he had not mentioned that the people must allow for the conservatism of the Senate; he had implied that he could do it, it would move. In many ways he was as modern and contemporary as an American politician can be, more practiced at the new means of campaigning than any other major figure (he was frankly bored by the traditional power struggles of the Senate; it was not where the action was, or at least the action he sought). So, elected, he was charged with action against a bureaucracy and a Congress which regarded him and his programs with suspicion, the suspicion varying in direct proportion to the freshness and progressiveness of his ideas. In his first major struggle, a classic conflict of the two forces, the President finally won. But his victory was more Pyrrhic than anything else; it exposed the essential weakness of his legislative position, the divisions in his party, and as such, enemies on the Hill would feel encouraged in their opposition. The lesson, not immediately discernible in the early part of the decade but increasingly important as Americans came to terms with the complexity of their society, was that it was easier to stir the new America by media than it was to tackle institutions which reflected vested interests and existing compromises of the old order. In a new, modern, industrial, demographically young society, this was symbolized by nothing so much as congressional control by very old men from small Southern towns, many of them already deeply committed, personally and financially, to existing interests; to a large degree they were the enemies of the very people who had elected him. He was caught in that particular bind.

…that the most' surprising thing about coming to office was that everything was just as bad as they had said in the campaign."

The above quotation, and I have taken the liberty of making some very few deletions, and even fewer revisions, to keep it from being obviously about John Kennedy, is excerpted from Chapter V of "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam written in 1969 and it refers to the first year of the Kennedy Administration, or the year 1961 half a century ago.

For those who would like to read the unchanged version, though with some verbiage deleted, can find it here.

Those who want to read it unexpurgated will find the quote here.

The Politics of the Big Lie

Leaders of the Republican Party are bragging that more Americans are against the Health Reform legislation than are for it and while this is true they cannot resist exaggerating even when polls are in their favor.

Thus Senator Jim DeMint appearing on Face the Nation on March 28 says “Over sixty percent of Americans still want Republicans to fight to repeal this.” Bob Schiefer to his credit immediately corrects this saying, “a new poll…does not suggest that a majority of Americans are against this…It says forty-six percent support this, fifty percent oppose it.”

But before the program is over so many out-and-out lies are told that with all good intentions Schiefer cannot keep correcting the falsehoods.

It isn’t 50% who are against this bill. It is 50% who are against a bill (now a law) characterized by endless and baseless lies. If I believed the lies, as many Americans apparently do, I would be against the law as well. But most people assume that their leaders would not tell out and out lies. They assume that there must be at least some truth to what they say. Unfortunately, that is not the case. What is being circulated are baseless lies, without a shred of truth to most of them. I have spend a great deal of time and effort documenting many of these lies and rather than try to repeat myself refer the reader to earlier writings on this subject - Health Insurance Reform, Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies, Health Reform - Reality, Health Care Reform – Facts and Fiction, Republican Talking Points on Health Care, Continuing the Health Care debate and Lying pays off!!!!! Smears succeed!!!! Obstructionism is rewarded!!!!.

But I return to this subject because I keep running into ever greater whoppers. I thought I had heard the worst of them when Sarah Palin claimed “Death Panels” without any basis whatsoever, and hoped that there were some Republicans who were responsible enough to repudiate it. But to my great disappointment not one Republican denounced it or distanced him/herself from it, and most even tried to justify it. What kind of a Party is it that would be so irresponsible?

Last Sunday I listened to the Sunday interviews and if anything the lies have gotten bigger, the claims more hysterical. The claim by Sen. DeMint mentioned above was minor compared to what followed in the form of wild claims of Rep. Michele Bachmann.

I reproduce part of the transcript from that interview with my comments in bold letters:

“Congresswoman--and we used a little clip of what you said in the beginning of this--you said last week that health care reform was dangerous, and-- and you equated it with tyranny. Do you really mean that?"

REPRESENTATIVE MICHELE BACHMANN (R-Minnesota): "I do, because now we have the federal government, Bob, taking over ownership or control of fifty-one percent of the American economy. This is stunning. Prior to September of 2008, one hundred percent of the private economy was private."

            I will return to the claim that the government has taken over 51% of the economy. At this point let me address the claim that prior to “September 2008 one hundred percent of the private economy was private.” Has she forgotten that the government ran & runs the military, the US Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare, etc. etc. But then I realize that she is right. She is playing three cards Monte. It was 100% of the “private economy was private.” But 100% of the “private” economy will always be private by definition.

So we have to look at the reference to 51% of the American economy which the government has taken control of since 9/08. But allow me to expand on this.

           "Today, the federal government has taken either direct ownership or control of banks, the largest insurance company in the United States, AIG, Freddie and Fannie."

            The only part of this that is true is that the government has taken control of Freddie and Fannie, which are relatively small companies. They loaned money to the other entities mentioned to keep them from going under and took Preferred, non-voting stock as surety, but have neither ownership nor control. This is a barefaced lie!

           "The federal government now owns, Bob, over fifty percent of all home mortgages..."

Since Freddie and Fannie own many mortgages, the government owns those mortgages, but it is nowhere near 50%. This is a barefaced lie!

"Now, the direct student loan industry..."

            The government didn’t take it over. It was always the government that was making the loans since the banks wouldn’t. Under the old system the banks acted as a middleman and took a large cut. The middleman has been eliminated with a substantial saving to the US taxpayer. This is a barefaced lie!

           "...Chrysler, GM. And with the health care industry that’s an additional eighteen percent of the private economy…"

            The government didn’t take any of these over. Chrysler and GM were both given loans and are not owned by the government and the health insurance reform did not take over the health care industry. The health insurance companies remain private but are now subject to certain regulations just as we regulate and have always regulated numerous industries. The rest of the health care industry i.e. doctors and hospitals are not even regulated. This is a barefaced lie!

"Remember, when President Obama told Congress you have to pass my trillion-dollar bailout or we could get unemployment as high as eight percent..."

            Again not true! What most economists and the Obama Administration said was that we faced a potential repeat of 1929 when unemployment went above 37% and that with the measures taken they hoped to keep unemployment under 8%. They were a little too optimistic, because they only succeeded in keeping it from going substantially above 10%, though it has now dropped below 10%.

"President Obama’s own numbers, his own economic advisor, Christina Romer, said that Obamacare..."

(it isn’t Obamacare - Congress drafted the legislation much to the chagrin of many Democrats who felt the President should have drafted it for them.) 

 "...could cost the economy five and a half million jobs lost. "

Christina Romer did not say anything of the sort & health care reform could create millions of jobs over the next ten years, another barefaced lie without the slightest basis for it!

BOB SCHIEFFER: "… Sarah Palin famously said last week that it is not time for Republicans to retreat. It is time to reload. Now, she has since modified that and said she wasn’t talking about guns. She was talking about getting out there and using the vote. Do you think Sarah Palin has overstated it here?"

            The fact is that Palin not only talked about reloading she published a map with gun sights “one for each of the Democrats targeted this year by her political action committee SarahPAC. Three of the gun sights, those where incumbent Democrats have already announced their retirement, are colored red.” 

While I am sure Bachman wouldn’t agree, I urge the Attorney General to impanel a grand jury and seek an indictment against Palin for incitement to commit murder.            

   Bachman continued:

“And again, the New England Journal of Medicine released a survey the week that President Obama signed Obamacare stating that the-- ov--over thirty percent of American physicians--would leave the profession if the government took over health care. That’s very serious going forward."

            It would indeed be serious, if true, but it is a lie! And this one is worse than all the others if that were possible, for this one is the result of a plan to give the appearance of truth to this lie. The story originated with CNS News, which Source Watch describes as “a subsidiary of the conservative news monitoring group the Media Research Center (MRC). Originally calling itself the "Conservative News Service," CNS changed its name to Cybercast in 2000. CNS posted an article on their website under the headline: “Nearly One-Third of Doctors Could Leave Medicine if Health-Care Reform Bill Passes, According to Survey Reported in New England Journal of Medicine” and then gave details of a purported article in the New England Journal of Medicine. This was given further credence by Fox & Friends where co-host Brian Kilmeade said: "The New England Journal of Medicine has published a report and did a survey, and they said the impact of reform on primary care physicians, 46 percent, they say, feel reform will force them out or make them want to leave medicine." But the New England Journal in a statement said that it neither conducted nor published the "survey." On their website they posted the following:

“Recruiting Physicians Today is a free advertiser newsletter published by the Worldwide Advertising Sales and Marketing Department in the publishing division of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Each issue of the newsletter features research and content produced by physician recruiting firms and other independent groups involved in physician employment."

“On December 17, 2009 The Medicus Firm, a national physician search firm based in Dallas and Atlanta, published the results of a survey they conducted with 1,000 physicians regarding their attitudes toward health reform. To read their survey results at The Medicus Firm website, click here."

“The opinions expressed in the article linked to above represent those of The Medicus Firm only. That article does not represent the opinions of the New England Journal of Medicine or the Massachusetts Medical Society.”

(Emphasis added)

Any legislation has a downside to it. Any legislation can be opposed or criticized on legitimate and valid grounds. Why don’t Republicans make such arguments? One can only surmise that they are not interested in legitimate debate. They want to incite, and reasoned debate does not provoke the kind of emotional demonstrations, which they rely on to advance their agenda.

We all have an obligation to set the record straight. These lies are not to be tolerated. They are to be denounced. Where are the great newscasters of yore, like Ed Morrow, to take on the liars and the provocateurs?

But what is even worse is that the media encourages such outrageous and inflammatory behavior, for why is Bachman getting all this publicity? Why is she on "Face the Nation"? She has no leadership position in the Congress. She is just one of 435 members of Congress, representing one small district in Minnesota. She get all this exposure because she makes outrageous statements. The media rewards this. Thus the media becomes an accomplice and a promoter of the lies and the outrageous. It is the way to get the media to make them into celebrities.

Texas & Identity Politics

On March 19, 2010, The New York Times published an article entitled: “In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right,” a reproduction of which was sent to me by Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia. I sent it back with my comments interjected in bold text. I set forth below the article with my interjections, but urge you to read the full article first.

  Frankly, my reaction to the article was that it was a presentation cheering for the Right, thinly disguised as neutral, and my comments reflect that. However, in preparing this for posting on my blog I belatedly decided to find out more about the author, Sam Tanenhaus. It turns out that he is “the editor of The New York Times Book Review and the paper's ‘Week in Review’ section.” I refer you to Newsweek here for more on the author, who it appears recently wrote “a new, short book, entitled “The Death of Conservatism." In any case I reproduce the article below with my interjections and would welcome the readers reactions.

------

The social studies curriculum recently approved by the Texas Board of Education, which will put a conservative stamp on textbooks, was received less as a pedagogical document than as the latest provocation in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.

“Why Is Texas Afraid of Thomas Jefferson?” the History News Network asked, referring to the board’s recommendation that Jefferson, who coined the expression “separation of church and state,” be struck from the list of world thinkers who inspired 18th- and 19th-century revolutions.

Other critics were more direct: “Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History,” was the headline of an online column for The San Francisco Chronicle.

This reaction wasn’t altogether surprising. The board’s wrangling over the curriculum had been a spectacle for months, not least because its disputes mirrored those taking place across the nation. In mid-September, citizens showed up with firearms at tumultuous town hall meetings on health care reform, and the Tea Party movement emerged as the vehicle of conservative insurgents. While this appears to be a national phenomenon, I believe it is primarily inspired by what is generally referred to as "rednecks" and is driven by such unreconstructed Southerners.

The majority on the Texas board, who are also conservatives, seemed to be filtering these protests into their deliberations — in the proposal, for instance, that students be instructed in “the individual right to keep and bear arms; and an individual’s protection of private property from government takings.”

Liberals — on the Texas board and beyond — detected an attempt to force-feed children conservative dogma, whether it was the putative religiosity of the nation’s founders, the historic contribution of the Moral Majority and Rush Limbaugh, or the elevation of John Wayne into the pantheon of patriotic heroes.

In reality, this controversy is the latest version of a debate that reaches back many decades and is perhaps essential in a heterogeneous democracy whose identity has long been in flux.

More than many decades and is most definitely not essential. I think it finds its roots in the pre-civil war South and reflects the views of the unreconstructed South, or as this group is sometimes referred to "rednecks". It was certainly empowered in the 60s as a result of the Civil Rights era, which embittered these groups and promoted them to hate the federal government, which was destroying their beloved feudal society - their essentially continuing slave society of sharecroppers.

It was very evident a while ago when the controversy over honoring pre-civil war symbols erupted. I find it outrageous that this would be permitted. They claim it is part of their heritage and indeed it is. To me it is like the heritage of the Nazis in Germany. Can anybody envision Germany allowing honoring the Nazis because it is part of their heritage?

In the 18th century, the American writer Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, himself an immigrant from France, catalogued the continent’s bewildering mix of “English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes.” He wondered, “What then is the American, this new man?”

He concluded that in America, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.”

This of course is the mythical melting pot which Moynihan & Glazer debunked in their book "Beyond the Melting Pot" published in 1963 and again debunked by the Washington Post in a series of articles in 1998.

That idea was later fortified by Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of American exceptionalism, which suggested that the country was exempt from the bitter conflicts — class, religion, imperial ambition — that had convulsed Europe. This was wishful thinking and a misreading. De Tocqueville died on the eve of the Civil War. To be sure the US was for most of its existence less class stratified than Europe but in recent years the US has moved to a more class society with income being re-distributed upward, while Europe has moved in the opposite direction.

Long afterward, amid America’s own convulsions in the 1960s and ’70s, the concept of a single “race of men” looked outmoded. Didn’t race mean “white race”? And didn’t “men” exclude women? American exceptionalism might really be a form of cultural insularity. Of course this is true!!!

So, universities and colleges devised new programs that prompted objections as fierce as those now being made to the Texas curriculum. These objections were a movement to preserve the status quo and the Texas case is a movement to achieve the status quo-ante.

In 1968, when Harvard students demanded a black studies program, “Faculty hawks warned of the fall of Harvard, and even civilization, as they knew it,” as Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller note in “Making Harvard Modern.”

Soon an ever widening range of subjects, from gay studies to feminist legal theory and anthropology, were added, in keeping with the dictates of identity politics. Some of this thinking eventually filtered to grade schools, with children now celebrating Kwanzaa and composing essays, year after year, on the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Many of the changes were liberating, but some were narrowing and erroneous — for instance the theories espoused by Leonard Jeffries Jr., who, as head of City College’s black studies department in the 1980s, lectured on the differences between African “sun people” and European “ice people.” It is unfortunate but every movement will breed its own excesses, and even reverse racism, as was the case with Jeffries.

Meanwhile, conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney defended syllabuses limited to the Western classics, and the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that attacks on the “Eurocentric curriculum,” as some called it, were giving rise to “the notion that history and literature should be taught not as disciplines but as therapies whose function is to raise minority self-esteem.” With all due respect to Schlesinger it was time to recognize that there was history and culture in other parts of the world besides the West. Of course in some respects the balance went too far in the other direction, but that is inevitable in any new movement.

In fact, Mr. Schlesinger maintained, these new courses of study might actually disserve minority students. “If a Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to use the schools to disable and handicap black Americans, he could hardly come up with anything more effective than the ‘Afrocentric’ curriculum,” Mr. Schlesinger wrote. I don't understand the logic!

Though its authors say the Texas curriculum reinforces American traditions, It does - the unreconstructed South!! it may instead reflect the conservative variant of identity politics, and this could invite a similar backlash.

To be fair, some of the board’s recommendations aren’t controversial. Most scholars of the cold war, left and right, think that the Venona documents — communications that record the activities of Americans who secretly spied for the Soviet Union — illuminate the anti-Communist investigations of the McCarthy period. This is a very disturbing comment!! The Venoma documents have been used primarily to defend and justify the outrages of McCarthy and the House UN-AMERICAN committee, which not only ruined countless American lives, but did untold damage to American security. See "The Best and the Brightest" pp. 115-120 of 1992 edition.  And historians of the conservative movement will agree that Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly are worth learning about, as are the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association. That depends on the grade and how it is taught. If they are held up as role models it is right wing propaganda. If they are denounced, it is liberal propaganda. If they are discussed as a phenomenon, it may be all right, but it is very difficult to do this in an unbiased way, and not likely too succeed.

Even the Texas curriculum’s most disputed item — its assertion that the Founders envisioned America as a divinely inspired Christian nation — is not as radical as it sounds. I don't know whether it is radical, but it is not accurate. Most of the founders did not consider themselves Christians. They thought of themselves as deists and rejected revealed truths. In the Declaration of Independence, the reference is to "Nature's God.” That is definitely not a Christian God, and the Constitution makes no reference to God.

In 1964, in a series of lectures on America’s founding documents, starting with the Mayflower Compact, the political scientist Willmoore Kendall theorized that “the nascent society that interprets itself in the Compact is in some sense a religious, more specifically a Christian, society, which calls God in as witness to its act of founding.” If you go back to 1620, the date of the Compact, that is undoubtedly true. The early settlers were mostly devout Christians and very intolerant of deviation. They wanted religious liberty for themselves but not for others. But by the late 18th century the thinking in vogue was the enlightenment, and that inspired the founding fathers.

Mr. Kendall teased out the implications through close readings of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. But his analysis stressed the “symbolic” aspects of those texts, and his nuanced discussion drew on counterarguments by other scholars. I don't understand what this means.

In contrast, the Texas board’s description of America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation treats ideas and events that have been under continual reinterpretation and revision for decades as literal and settled truth. I don't understand what this means.

It is telling, too, that it is secondary-school children — not, as in the past, college students — whose minds are being fought over today on such a scale. This suggests that after so many years of increasingly bitter polarization, Americans stand on the brink of a collective identity crisis and no longer share a set of common ideas about the true character of the country and the true meaning of democracy. No longer? We haven't since the founding of the Republic. That is why the Civil War was fought and it wasn't just about secession. In fact secession showed the deep division. As did all that followed and the progressive eras of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Johnson did not put things to rest.

In “The American Political Tradition,” published in 1948, the historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that the fad for popular history at the time was evidence of “national nostalgia” — an effort not to understand the past, but rather to evade the present. “This quest for the American past is carried on in a spirit of sentimental appreciation rather than of critical analysis,” he surmised. This I can agree with.

As it happens, a good deal of contemporary popular history is more critical than in Mr. Hofstadter’s day. But it is presented through an ever-narrowing aperture.

The late Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” depicts the United States as an epic of oppression in which the privileged abuse the downtrodden. Conversely, “A Patriot’s History of the United States,” by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, describes the New Deal as a calamity that wreaked havoc on the American economy. Both views are exaggerations, but to me the first is closer to the truth than the second.

The two books seem to have captured the spirit of the moment; both are on The New York Times best-seller list. Both are also, in effect, counternarratives. They seek not to revise but to displace more familiar histories and are utterly different in tone from older popular histories like the Daniel Boorstin trilogy “The Americans,” and William Manchester’s two-volume work, “The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America.” Yes, it shows that extremes are ascendant, but they have been ascendant over and over again throughout history. On the Right stands the whole Republican Party with Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Palin and the Tea-Partiers - on the left we have had the large following of Naom Chomsky. Clearly, the extreme Right is larger and more powerful than the extreme left.

For all their dissimilarities, Mr. Boorstin and Mr. Manchester convey the impression that America, despite its diversity, is a nation whose citizens share the same essential values, at once democratic and aspirational. But to read these newer books is to inhabit two utterly different Americas that have almost nothing to say to each other. Both are conceived in a spirit of protest, and this explains their appeal at a time when protest seems the most dynamic force in politics. Just as in the 50's with McCarthy & the Dixiecrats, and the 60’s, which upset the status quo, the clash becomes inevitable.

Half a century ago, in his essay, “The Search for Southern Identity,” the historian C. Vann Woodward explored a parallel phenomenon, the confusion that overtook the South after the Supreme Court had invalidated segregation and the region become more urban and industrial, losing its distinctive agrarian flavor. This is where the unrest is the greatest and where the Republican party draws its greatest strength. It is interesting to note that Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. True, but were they wrong to do it? Besides it doesn't follow- they are very different issues. But the country is changing as the right wing columnist George Will recognized, saying, "Almost half of House and Senate Republicans are from those 13 states, a higher proportion than ever before. Ronald Brownstein of National Journal notes that it was in 1992 that GOP fortunes in the South and the rest of the nation began to diverge. Since then, those 13 states have provided from 59 to 69 percent of all Republican electoral votes. Obama beat McCain by 14 points in the other 37 states, the third-largest margin ever, after LBJ's and FDR's victories in 1964 and 1936, respectively. McCain actually got more Southern votes than Bush did—but Obama got 2.3 million more votes than Kerry did in states McCain carried."

Republican problems outside the South are compounded by and related to the increasing proportion of minorities in the electorate.

What Southerners should do, Mr. Woodward urged, is subordinate their regional attachment to the country’s “national myths,” for instance the American “success story” that had inspired so many others, like the European immigrants who had “sought and found identity in them.”

Southerners might do this, too, if they gave up “the romantic dreams of the South’s past.” Yes, indeed!!

Today it is not regional or ethnic identity, but ideological commitment that threatens to submerge larger “national myths.” But one thing remains unchanged from 50 or 60 years ago. As Americans struggle to see where they are going, they continue to gaze fondly at the past — and to see in it what they like. Yes, but fortunately, not all!!

The Vanishing Middle in America

I am increasingly disturbed by what I perceive as the vanishing middle in America. Of course, many will differ as to what constitutes the middle. The media, that institution so vital to our Democracy, increasingly caters to popular opinion, and too often fails in its responsibility to inform. Too often they seek to reinforce what might be called “the conventional wisdom” without questioning its validity or even its basis in fact.

Thus the conventional wisdom on the “middle” might be those many, who proudly claim to be independents, affiliate with no party and claim they vote on the merits of individual candidates, but when we examine their philosophical orientation we find they have none, and that too often they vote on the basis of the candidates charisma, charm, or whether they once met him and found him a “fellow well met”. It was this kind of thinking that brought many voters into the camp of George W. Bush because as was said at the time of his first election, by Chris Mathews of MSNBC among others, that he was a person one would feel more comfortable drinking beer with. Is this a sound criterion for choosing our President?

As can be seen from the positions of the political parties in the Congress they are now so far apart that the filibuster has become a matter of Republican Party policy and compromise has become a dirty word. The “conventional wisdom” is that the filibuster has always been used and that it protects the rights of the minority. But like so many concepts falling into the category of conventional wisdom it is a myth. To be sure the filibuster was at one time used by devoted segregationists and defenders of the right of states to in effect legalize lynching, but it was never used by any political party as a tool of party policy. Thus in 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond, at that time a segregationist Southern Democrat (later the candidate for President on the Dixiecrat slate and finally a Republican) conducted a one man filibuster, talking against a 1957 civil rights bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

But while that was dramatic it was also unusual, and Thurmond was unsuccessful. It was so unusual that there was only an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. But when the Republicans lost control of the Senate in the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, and even though they still had a Republican President who could veto legislation, they used a record 112 filibusters, and so far in this Congress they have already used this tactic over 40 times and we still have eight months to go.

See also this article in US News & World Report.

Republican voters are so unforgiving of compromise that George H.W. Bush was defeated for agreeing to a compromise with Democrats in order to reduce a looming budget deficit which called for both spending cuts and tax increases, thus violating the party’s commitment to never increasing taxes.

Thus with no middle ground between the parties those who claim to straddle between two irreconcilable philosophies can only be compared to a person with one foot on land and the other in a boat well away from the shore and moving further away. They can only drown. They may swing elections, but they will never bring about a positive legislative agenda for they lack a political philosophy.

There is a great misunderstanding about how much things have changed. I keep hearing about how President Lyndon Johnson was able to get Medicare passed with 68 votes, but bills that have the votes to pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. That is still true today as can be seen from the passage of the jobs bill where only five Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster but eleven voted for the bill on final passage, the idea being to stop the bill if possible, but record a positive vote for a popular bill if it is going to pass anyway.

The fact is that Johnson only had 55 votes for Medicare that he could count on or to quote from a letter written at the time “Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.”

At that time it would have taken 67 votes to stop a filibuster, but the Republican Party never contemplated using that unsavory device. How times have changed!

And how has the media and this so called middle greeted this outrage. They have accepted Republican claims that it is the intent of the founders that it should take 60 votes to pass anything, or even to confirm a Presidential appointment, and that attempts to circumvent such obstructionism, whether by reconciliation, or any other means is in some way unsavory.

And some are even trying to pass of the Tea Partiers as a grass roots movement. Thus Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader, who more than anyone else founded and is leading the movement tries to pass them off as, “These are folks who don't care about politics and don't like politics and don't like politicians. They're skeptical and cynical about all of them…” but ignores that these are the same people, or at least the political heirs to the John Birch Society or as one article described them, they are “white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious…”.

But even now the movement is already the subject of a power struggle between Armey, who resists its nativists impulses as led by Tom Tancredo, or in Armey’s words, “… bungling the issue in a way that would alienate much of the electorate, by failing to keep a lid on such anti-immigrant crusaders as Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman.” And Armey has good reason to be concerned about this for as George Will, one of the so-called intellectual spokesmen of the Right has pointed out, “Demography often is political destiny, and 47 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority.”

So where do we find the true middle?

It may or may not surprise the reader to hear that I put a claim on that designation. For if the middle is to be found somewhere between FOX and MSNBC, I fit that description. But in order not to burden the reader with too much verbiage in one post, I will defer an exposition on this claim for a few days. In the meantime I hope the readers will take the time to read at least some of my source material.

Potpourri

I have entitled this commentary potpourri from the musical term for medley because there are so many things I want to touch upon that I decided that I would, on this occasion, cover many subjects, rather than covering one in depth.

First of all at the risk of once again touching on that third rail of American politics the Middle East, and doing something I have never done before, I want to recommend a play to my readers. The play is Palestine. It is playing at The Fourth Street Theater until April 3rd.

It is a one person play, written and acted by Najla Said, who the New York Times described as a Palestinian-Lebanese-American Christian, and the daughter of Edward Said, the Columbia Professor, who along with Daniel Barenboim, the renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, founded the “the award-winning West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of children from Israel, Palestine, and surrounding Arab nations.

The play in my view is non-political, (some may differ) but it gives an insight into the tragedy of the Middle East in a human dimension. I believe that all, regardless of their view on the complex issues of that area can benefit from these insights.

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Those of you who have been following my commentary must be aware that while I have been denouncing in angry terms the lies, distortions and calumnies of The Right in general and Republicans in particular, I have also increasingly been critical of the Left for their doctrinaire approach, which allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. See, e.g. “Doesn't Anybody Really Care?” and I have continued to take exception to some of the positions of organizations that I have long supported. Thus on March 9th I sent an e-mail to the ACLU, which I quote below:

“I am increasingly disappointed in the ACLU. I have been a member for many decades and have always been proud of that fact. I supported the ACLU when it was under attack for defending the right of Nazis to march and during other controversial decisions. Lately, however I have become ashamed and have considered resigning. The Unions decision to support corporation as having almost unlimited 1st amendment rights is repugnant to me. I do not believe that corporations should have any rights under the first amendment and that designating them as "persons,” even though long enshrined in the law, is fundamentally wrong. They are not like associations or partnerships and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.

“But while I agree with you on trying the 9/11 suspects in Civil Courts, I resent the inflammatory ads depicting the President as morphing into George Bush.

“I am reluctant to resign because much of what you do is needed. But I can not for long continue to support an organization that I believe is increasingly departing from my values.”

I also continue to take exception to the writings of Bob Herbert of the New York Times who, e.g. on March 8th wrote a column entitled: “The Source of Obama’s Trouble,” where Herbert continues to berate the President for pushing Health Care Reform when so many people are unemployed, as though reform in that area had no bearing on the needs of the underprivileged and unemployed. If Herbert at least offered some constructive suggestions that were economically and politically viable, he might be forgiven, but he offers nothing of the kind. Only negativity. Now when Herbert tackles specific problems such as in his “Cops vs. Kids” or in "Watching Certain People," where he pinpoints problems and offers solutions, I applaud him, but his carping and negativism does neither him nor his causes credit.

On the other hand Paul Krugman, who I have criticized in the past for unfair criticism, finally gets it right in “Senator Bunning’s Universe” when he writes: “What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.”

           Finally when WQXR was sold by the NY Times to NPR and continued to air the Lutheran Hour, I dispatched letters to both the ACLU and WQXR pointing out that since WQXR now receives public financing they have no right to air religious programs, since it violated the separation of church and state doctrine of the Constitution. It took many months before either responded but finally I received an answer from both assuring me that the practice had ceased as of the 1st of the year. They didn’t explain why the Constitution only worked by the calendar year.

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In the latest issue of Newsweek, John Meecham, one of its editors, and under consideration for a position as a host on a new PBS program, wrote an article entitled: “Democracy Is a Pesky Thing” in which he equated Fox News with the New York Times as examples of a Right leaning and Left leaning news source. I find such inappropriate comparisons deeply offensive. Fox News is a propaganda organ worthy of the communist newspaper Pravda, while the NY Times is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. In fact I find it hard to find a Left leaning publication that lies and distorts the way Fox does. Certainly, MSNBC, which might be considered the counter to Fox, has never indulged in the kind of demagoguery that Fox indulges in, and even such leftist publications as Mother Jones do not indulge in this practice.

To be sure the Times has a liberal editorial policy, periodically has articles that point to liberal solutions, and has more liberal columnists than conservative ones, but that is not the same as the use of lies and inflammatory messages that Fox indulges in. In fact in so far as the Times has been caught in falsehoods it has been in slandering liberals, see e.g. "The Media! (Watergate/Clinton)", "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore" and "The Media III - Falsehoods about Kerry" and Judith Miller writing for the NY Times has become notorious for giving support to the fabrications that the Bush Whitehouse fed her about Iraq’s WMDs.

David Brooks in the NY Times tries to do something similar to Meecham, equating Left and Right. See: The Wal-Mart Hippies.

The frequent media attempt to show even handedness by equating outright lies with minor misstatements, instead of serving the greater end of truth, wherever it might lead, serves neither the media nor the American public.

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On the bright side the minions of the Right and the Republican Party in general, who very recently showed their lack of principle or even patriotism, when they turned the fight against terrorists into a political football, see: “Liberals Charged As Condescending!” have finally shown a commitment to principle and the rule of law for the first time in years when they criticized a video released by Lyn Cheney that questioned the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked in the past on behalf of detained terrorism suspects. According to the New York Times, “many conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society, the quarter-century-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have vehemently criticized Ms. Cheney’s video, and say it violates the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.”

Hurray, its been along time coming to see a principled position from that notorious quarter. Let’s hope we see it more often.

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         And the Washington Post reports that: “House Democrats ban earmarks for private contractors”. This is still another item of good news.

Liberals Charged As Condescending!

In an article that appeared in the Washington Post entitled: “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?” Gerard Alexander sets forth a long list of images that he claims Liberals have of the Right. The article can be found here and I urge readers to read it, because not only do I plead guilty to having those views, but I assert that they are all true and much more besides. I think it is a perfect description of the Right (Republicans). I couldn't have described them better. It is not condescension. It is fact!

On economics they have only one prescription for everything--cut taxes.

Under Bush they turned the biggest surplus in history into the biggest deficit in history and gave us what could have been a depression to rival that of 1929, and while we have avoided the worst, we are still suffering from its after effects.

In well-researched writing on my blog entitled Lying Pays Off!!!!! Smears Succeed!!!! Obstructionism Is Rewarded!!!! I document the behavior of Republicans in the Congress and out.

In the face of this Mr. Alexander says:

"A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck." Well, I don't remember it being phrased as "liberals are always wrong" that would be far too mild for the minions of the Right. No they accuse liberals of far worse things and it clearly is not limited to "marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Thus we see such reputed moderate Republicans as Susan Collins engaging in fear mongering and lying when she says:

“The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism. . . . There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal. This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it.”

 

The new "moderate" Senator from Massachusetts said similar things. It  is a charade indeed, but the charade goes the other way.

The New Yorker sums it up succinctly saying:

"According to Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, in Washington, the military can’t simply grab suspects inside the U.S. and hold them without charge or a hearing. 'It violates the Constitution, which extends to everyone inside the U.S.,' she said. 'You can’t be seized without probable cause. You have the right to due process, and to a trial by a jury of your peers—which a military commission is not.' Confusion on this point may derive from the Bush Administration’s controversial handling of two suspected terrorists, José Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Both men were arrested in the U.S. by law-enforcement officials, and indicted on criminal charges. But Bush declared Padilla and Marri to be 'enemy combatants,' which, he argued, meant that they could be transferred to military custody, for interrogation and detention without trial. (Neither suspect provided useful intelligence.) The cases provoked legal challenges, and in both instances appeals courts ruled that Bush had overstepped his power. The Administration, not willing to risk a Supreme Court defeat, returned the suspects to the civilian system."

John Brennan who is  a career CIA officer and has served in numerous Administrations in ever higher positions and was the  Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush said on Meet the Press that he is "tiring of politicians using national security issues as a political football" 

But this kind of libel is not new to the Republican Party. Richard Nixon accused his Democratic rival Helen Gahaghan Douglas of "being soft on Communism". Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason" which Ann Coulter decided to top this with “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” Indeed, “in my next book, [I’m] going through 50 years of treason by Democrats.”

When Clinton aide Vincent Foster committed suicide Rush Limbaugh "claim(ed) that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."

Alexander writes with derision of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," charged by Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration as showing essentially a paranoid view. But was it? "Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder" and he certainly didn't work alone. They took a land deal the Clintons were involved in, that they had in fact lost money in, known as Whitewater, and made it look like the biggest fraud of a century. They pushed it until Clinton felt compelled to ask for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the affair. Now in all previous cases the court which was to choose the prosecutor under the then existing law, had always chosen one of the party of the person being investigated, so as to make sure that there would be no hint of partisanship. But here that tradition was violated when a partisan Republican panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who already had a reputation for a high level of partisanship. They then financed a suit by one, Paula Jones, thereby keeping the Clinton Administration off balance and unable to fully function. They eventually succeeded in catching the President in a lie in the Lewinsky affair, leading to Clinton's impeachment on a straight party line vote. It was obvious from day one that they, and it wasn't just Scaife, were determined to get Clinton by fair means or foul.

Let us move forward to the Health Care debate and the falsehoods told there. They have never engaged on the merits. they have used lie after lie, the claim of Death Panels being the most outrageous, but not alone. See: Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies.

Well Mr. Alexander might say that was just Sarah Palin, but aside from the fact that Palin is a leading Republican light, not a single Republican disavowed these lies. But see also: Health Insurance Reform.

How can one have a serious policy discussion with a group that relies on so many falsehoods.

Whether it is the fault of the media, or the fault of the Administration, the lack of knowledge on the part of the public is appalling. According to the Pew Research Center's News just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the Health Care legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill. 

If we look back on the build up to the Iraq war and beyond we find again the total lack of accurate information that the American Public has. In 2005 a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that had long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay. 

Alexander talks about "The Republican War on Science" as though it were some kind of fiction. But the record of Bush Administration agencies ignoring the evidence of their own scientific staff, has been documented too often to require further discussion. Their refusal to acknowledge global warming in the face of an almost unanimous scientific consensus, speaks for itself.

He argues that evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda. That is simply not true. Of course there are costs to cap and trade. Nobody denies that. This is an example of their favorite tactic of setting up of a straw man. The point is not that there would be no costs, but that the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Not only does CO2 present a mortal threat from global warming, but it is causing untold health problems which are a burden on the economy and the Health Care system. But Alexander here illustrates exactly why it is so hard to have a real discussion. That straw man is a favorite tactic substituting for honest discussion.

Alexander says: "But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. I wouldn't say stupid, but as I have illustrated, the public is so ill informed and so consistently lied to, that the ability of Democracy to function becomes a sham. Voting does not Democracy make. An informed public is necessary to the process, and when we have a whole party that consistently misrepresents, fear-mongers, and appeals to prejudice, we as a society and as a democracy are in trouble.

Let us remember that the Nazis came to power by the vote of the people.

Says Alexander that "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." But that is absolutely true. What else is behind the birther movement against Obama. Why is his birth more in doubt than say McCain's (who in fact was not born in any of the 50 states) or any previous President.

It was not so long ago that then Republican majority leader Trent Lott said in praise of Strom Thurmond  that the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.

In addition, while it is not widely known, since the Johnson civil rights legislation era, no Democrat for President ever achieved a majority of the white vote in the US. Obama got 43 percent of the white electorate which was more than any previous Democratic candidate got, but it hardly shows that the race issue is dead. 

As for anti-immigrant,  a few weeks ago I received an e-mail being widely circulated of a 1929 song that went something like, "If you don't like things here, go home, go home". Unfortunately the link is no longer active and so I can't reproduce it.

According to the Washington Post of February 11, 2010 "Former House member Tom Tancredo, famed for his attacks on illegal immigration, gave backers of the racial explanation all the ammunition they needed."

"In an astonishingly offensive speech, cheered by the Tea Party crowd, Tancredo declared that 'people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama....Even worse, if that's possible, Tancredo harkened back to the Jim Crow South that denied the right to vote to African Americans on the basis of  'literacy tests' that called for potential black registrants to answer questions that would have stumped PhDs. in political science...The reason we elected "Barack Hussein Obama," according to Tancredo, is "mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country."

As for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was no neo-conservative. He was a liberal, and a Democrat, if ever there was one. Yes, it is not to the credit of other liberals that they discounted his concerns, but what does that prove? That liberals are not always right. Conceded gladly!!!

As for the Supreme Court Decision of Free Speech for corporations I addressed that at length here.

Mr Alexander suggests that we need to listen to the Tea partiers, but their message is incomprehensible. "Don't touch my Medicare - I am against government programs." and it tells us something about them as they cheer Tancredo and Palin and their hate-mongering.

All I can say is that Alexander indicts the movement by describing its character. The liberal impression is not one to apologize for, for it is accurate in describing the Republican Party. It was a vicious party during McCarthy and Nixon, it did great damage under Reagan, but nothing that went before, compares to what it has now become.

Liberals aren't always right, and I have severely criticized them on my blog, under the heading: Doesn't Anybody Really Care? where I also further documented the viciousness of the Republican party, but to read the Right even among its so called intellectuals like Krauthammer or Wills is not particularly elucidating.

I sincerely believe that what the Republicans and the Right in general seeks is a country of aristocrats, giving out of the goodness of their hearts and with condescension, a handout here or a job there. The old Russian model of serfdom seems to appeal to them. They have said that they believe that the only function of government is defense against external and internal foes. That means no public school system, no SS, no Medicare, etc., etc. Can no one hear them.