There is a lot of talk these days about the liberal Left and the conservative Right being at odds in heated locked battle. We hear all of these other meaningless rants about how the Christians are rising stars in the US political scene, and how Americans want more God in politics. We even here utter nonsense about how Liberal politics itself may not survive; despite the fact we had one of the nation’s closest (and questionable) elections in history. While such stories sell newspapers and ad revenue, the truth of the matter is the Republican party is facing a deep state of crisis. The statue at the top may be elaborate and intimidating, but it lays on 3 equally important pillars: The Libertarian Pillar, the Religious Right Pillar and the Wealthy Elite Pillar ($319,100 and up tax bracket and wanabees) . If one pillar fails, so does the party. Off in the distance, I can see one of these pillars cracking and breaking, giving way to a new age of politics, the likes of which are comparative to Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy, Reagan and FDR.
It seems that every 30 years the Left or the Right gain control and dominate Washington for a period of around 3 decades. With in this 30 year period, smaller swings happen in between, like the short-lived Liberal backlash in the early 90s. These smaller pendulum swings lead to small change, but it’s the major realignments that really change Washington.
When Johnson blew it by dividing the nation over Vietnam, Nixon rebuilt the party around the Southern Strategy (reaching out to Southern Democrats), and Reagan shattered FDR’s base, by gaining the white working-class. The current politics are still built around the “Reagan coalitionâ€.
This coalition, well over due for a re-alignment, is about to be shattered. The only logical change ends the long separation between Liberals and Libertarians.
America has changed a lot since Reagan took the halls of power by storm. The Christian Evangelical movement has reached it’s apex, and has become political and extreme. There are many radicals like Alabama Judge Roy S. Moore, you know, that guy who put the 10 commandments up in the courthouse a year ago before being forced to take it down by a Republican Supreme Court. He’s actually considering a run for the presidency, because he among others feel that Bush is too moderate on gay marriage and appointing pro-Evangelist Right-Wing judges.
The Right-Wing has become very theocratic, interested in arresting homosexuals for sodomy, ending the freedom of choice in abortion, forcing children to pray in school to the Evangelist flavor of Christianity and putting the word God into everything they can while at the same time, allow the Federal government to gain strength in authority, weakening local governments. Roy Moore even made an outlandish statement that privacy leads to sodomy (hear it from the horses mouth).
I suppose then, they want to eliminate privacy!
To make matters worse, they have no problem with letting corporations which contribute heavily to the Republican Party have complete freedom, allowing them to police themselves, allowing them to crush labor and pension plans, allowing them to take billions in aid from the Federal government while hiding taxes in shelters over seas. Then they make it harder for people like us to file for bankruptcy, the corporations however can do as they please. Oh and don’t confuse small business with corporations. Small business is the greatest victim of all. All you need to know is that Walmart (the King of small business destroyers) is the #2 giver to the Repubs. Gee, I wonder why!
The Republican party has become conflicted, howling for judges that interpret the constitution with restraint, then (as Tom Delay did during the Schiavo case ) give away addresses to those same Republican appointed judges when they don’t go along with Republican radical activist plans. They hate welfare, but condone corporate welfare, billions in dollars of bailout money and defense contracts that keep the marketplace from acting naturally . They want the government off their backs, then look the other way when Bush’s Patriot Act gives the FBI (the same FBI that failed us before 9-11 ) the authority to find out what library books WE read. They cry about how important life is to them, then look the other way, even actively called for, a war which has claimed anywhere between 25,000 to 100,000 civilians, and 1750 American soldiers. They talk of Democracy, and yet they can’t stand it when anyone says something they don’t like.
Do you see a pattern?
Of course you do, and you’ve probably noticed these things for months. The media however has been so brow-beaten by the White House and upper management (which comes from their powerful corporate bosses like Viacom, GE and Disney), that they dare not say anything negative about what is going on. I mean, Newsweek posted a now infamous article about alleged Koran abuse and they were verbally assaulted by the White House, and blamed for a series of violent riots in Afghanistan, to the point of retracting the story. Then a week later it turned out to be true! The White House didn’t apologize though, nor did they ever speak of Newsweek again. They cowered into their little corner looking for somebody else to point the finger at. Unfortunately for the American people, the media remains largely silent on the horrible abuses of power happening at the hands of this Republican administration.
Bush is running out of distractions. The war is raging, the economy is not booming, gas is expensive, orange alerts cost local governments too much money to be used as a political maneuver any more, Congress’ rating is in the toilet, Bush is not far behind. In fact the Republican Congress is polling around the same place as the Democratic Congress did before the Republican takeover. People are angry, and some in the Republican party’s moderate side such as John McCain are outsmarting the Right-Wing leadership, going over their heads the help end the Filibuster fight, a sign of weakening party. Especially this current Congress, which is so obsessed with winning, that it places its own ideals in the trash.
It is important to note however that the Republicans have been taking, and then using the rope to hang themselves. This is only half of what needs to happen in this country. Without a strong opposition, this country will never get back on its feet. Well sadly we have no choice but to look to the Democratic Party. The Greens don’t stand a chance until they start winning seats, and the Reform Party is an opportunistic joke. The only other major third party, the Libertarians, couldn’t even capitalize on the Patriot Act, which stands against everything they believe in.
The Libertarian philosophy however is an important part of the Republican stranglehold. Libertarians believe the government should have a limited role in everything. Hand’s off business, hand’s off the people, you know, it’s a big part of what the founding fathers fought for. If you merge the Libertarians with the modern Liberals, you have Classical Liberalism, which is what Jefferson stood for.
Reagan, when he began making his speeches in 1980, must have studied Thomas Jefferson. In the election of 1800, sometimes lightly referred to as the 2nd U.S. Revolution, Jefferson crushed the authoritarian dictatorial leanings of Adams and Hamilton. Jefferson promised cheap land and to lower taxes. He pledged to remove the Alien and Sedition Acts (which jailed critics of the government) and vowed to let the marketplace become the supreme force in the land, which had the power to crush the Aristocracy. Reagan made many of these same kinds of promises, lower taxes, get the government of your back, etc. Aside from the things they said, the two men were nothing alike. Reagan mostly paid lip service to the things he said. Reagan’s policies actually hurt the working class and created a horrible system of wealth inequality. The rich got richer under Reagan and the middle-class shrunk. If there is one thing the two men did have in common, it was that they were both hypocrites. Jefferson spoke of “All men being created equalâ€, and then owned slaves, even fathering more slaves, which were even sold off into slavery! Reagan spoke of the middle class and stabbed them in the back, helping to destroy organized labor, lowered wages and deregulated industry, which led to billion dollar taxpayer bailouts of savings and loans, airline companies and the energy industry.
None of this mattered to America. Reagan could act like he cared, and that proved good enough for America. White middle class men actually turned against their own interests, abandoning labor, which was painted as corrupt (unlike the corporations of course), and so unwittingly allowed Reagan to lower taxes on the rich dramatically, in exchange for a few extra hundred dollars in their own pockets. The government spending spiraled out of control, thanks to the dramatic loss of taxes on the rich and Reagan’s insistence on wasteful military spending (like Star Wars), and the trend continued through 3 more presidents towards the wealthy being allowed to pay less taxes. The trend is now so out of control that people who make 50,000 a year are paying the same taxes as many millionaires. No matter, just as long as Reagan talked about getting the government off your back and cutting those wacky Leftist social programs, Reagan scored points with the Libertarians.
Then along came Bush. With his Patriot Act and “patriot actâ€, he won them over for a while, till he decided to invade Iraq. Invading other countries is traditionally non-Libertarian. Some Repubs claim to be Libertarian like Dennis Miller, and jumped on the bandwagon to war. Yet true Libertarianism is more isolationist. They don’t believe in foreign wars because they believe in a weak Federal government. In their eyes the government should stay out of their business, and stay out of others business as well. Yet Bush is the complete opposite. He lets the corporations do what they please, yeah, but he wants the government to stick their nose in all of our business. Patriot Act, Abortion, Schiavo (, (which they have been proven completely wrong btw),they will do anything to keep us alive unless we’re soldiers, then they actually could care less about us.
They went to war on a heartbeat, not even checking the evidence. The Downing Street Memo raises serious questions that the Bush administration had it’s mind made up about invading Iraq months before claimed WMDs threatened the U.S. AND COME ON! We all knew they wanted war. If you watched the news you would have known the BBC had exposed much of the lies, including the falsified documents. I read an article in the LA Times Op section that said Bush would go to war because he had to project the “War President†image, and it was written a full year before the war in Iraq.
Don’t get me started on the National ID Card , which issues every citizen a card that can contain as much info about you as the government sees fit. This “deterrent” against illegal immigrants actually punishes the citizens, for it can contain an RFID radio transmitter device, which can inform the government of your wear abouts at any time they wish. Virginia is poised to be the first state to issue these RFID tags. Defending liberty by giving it away is foolish. In the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Where is the Libertarian defense of Liberty? Don’t they see that they’ve been completely had! The nut-job Right is fighting a culture war that exists only in their minds. They wish to push they’re ideology of free business and social authoritarianism on us all. What they talk about sounds a lot like Big Brother. That is NOT Libertarian, in fact it’s everything they should be fighting against. So where are they? Why are they lying down like cowards while the government slowly gains control of our liberty? I for one want the government off my back and out of my house. I don’t mind chipping in to help my fellow citizen, but I don’t want my fellow citizen telling me how to live or what I should do. As long as I’m not hurting anyone, I have every right to live my life as I see fit, worship the God I choose and participate in the democratic process. As long as I don’t incite violence, the Constitution guarantees that my decent is protected speech, and I for one am not going to lie down and let Bush and his neo-con-artists steel it away from me. Give me Liberty or Give me Death!
Libertarians may disagree with arms control (something I myself never agreed with), however, if things continue in this direction, whose to say they won’t come for your guns next? If guys like Roy S. Moore get their way, homosexuality will be illegal, and can homosexuals be permitted to have guns? What about Arabs? Then what about those that don’t agree with them? I know it’s a slippery slope, seriously though, where does it end?
I know Libertarians don’t like Social Liberals but they will put aside their dislike of hippies when the government starts rounding up anyone that checked out a book the White House doesn’t like. They may want unrestricted business, but the recent Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Adelphia, etc. etc. etc. must turn their stomachs. They may dislike tree-hugging hippies, but the destruction of the great outdoors (which Bush is perpetuating) is destroying their nearest and dearest sanctuaries. Animal rights activists and hunters actually have one very important thing in common: they both want to see the great outdoors continue to flourish. There is nothing conservative about rapidly destroying resources.
The truth of the matter is the conservatives are traditionally the restraint in government. They tend to counteract the Liberal activism. When conservatives become active, they become Fascist, Theocratic or Authoritarian. None of these, despite what the Religious Right claim, are American ideals. What Constitution are they reading?
Liberals these days on the other hand, are defending the past, almost like a conservative would. Welfare had good intentions, and isn’t nearly as corrupt as some people would have you think. Yet, it is true that people perform better when challenged. We as Progressives are open minded to change. Let’s move forward! Let’s push ahead to find a system that eliminates poverty. We see a mistake or a miscalculation when we see one, and have the common sense to move forward, and not dwell on the past. This we leave to the Right, who seem to live in a past that never existed.
Conservatives relentlessly hearken back to the days of the 1950’s, where the family was this golden memory that completely forgets about McCarthyism, Cold War fear, Polio, low infant mortality rate, oppression of Women, Blacks, Latinos and anyone that was different, as well as the birth of uncontrollable materialism (all of which gave birth to the 60s, not drug induced teens). In a recent Christian Science Monitor Article “A ‘golden age’ of childhood?” By Steven Mintz (sorry they are charging for the archive on this one), the myth of the “golden age” is just that, a myth.
If we romanticize the past, rather than learn from it, we lose site of the future!
The future? Well no one can predict the future, but we as Progressives can set out to shape the future. A future with a strong education and health-care system (180 degrees from the direction these are both going), a future with good transportation and wise and proper (environmental) use of resources. A future where giving your working life to a corporation is not betrayed by greedy Harvard Business School grads who see a pension plan as a burden rather than a responsibility. A future with a reformed system of organized labor and strongly enforced anti-trust lawsuits, keeping businesses smaller (Business built around constant growth is bound to hit a ceiling). Free enterprise, held in check, to prevent capitalism from destroying itself. A future with less income disparity. Where people are rewarded for their merits, not their connections. Lastly, a future where society does not turn its back on the sick, old, disabled and poor.
I know it sounds too good to be true and it probably is, with in our lifetime. Many fought and died for seemingly more impossible dreams, like democracy, the end of slavery, or women’s suffrage. You’re telling me that we can’t make this ailing system work for the people?
If we are going to make these dreams reality, we need to start a Progressive movement! A movement that is open to all ideologies and will make a call to serious reform. Remember, the champion Progressive was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican. We are sitting on the cusp of a tremendous opportunity, a chance to reach out to the moderate Right and begin a future with the support of a majority of Americans. Let the Extreme Right fight their culture war, meanwhile, we’ll get to work fixing the mess they made. Sending an olive branch to the Libertarian Wing of the Republican Party, making a few ideological sacrifices and forming a new coalition that will open the door wide open to the reforms this country desperately needs.
I think these gimmicky “New Democrat†Clinton ideas should go the way of the past. The New Democrats are now the Old Democrats, and we need to create a party built around the protection of our “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happinessâ€; a party that believes in new ideas and respects the lessons of the past. Let’s merge our new moderate Liberalism with the Libertarian protection of our liberty. Together we will crush this fascist leaning theocratic “un-Democratic†threat.
This is in essence what Thomas Jefferson did in the election of 1800, reach out to the majority of moderate Americans, and create a platform of positive results, built around big ideas. He saw the writing on the wall, and crushed the Federalist party once and for all. The result was so profound, it’s sometimes called the 2nd American Revolution. It became the basis for every major exchange of power in this country. So let’s learn from the past and look to the future!
The ball is in our court.