Socialist Founders

Don’t you love it when the Tea Cult pod people pontificate? They love to go on and on about how the Founders were just like them. They wrap themselves in colonial garb with their tricorn hats and wave their Gadsden flags warning, “Don’t Tread On Me”. Appearance really is everything to them, isn't it?

I’m not sure who they think is treading on them. It’s not like liberals go around stomping conservative heads to the ground. I don’t know of any liberals going into churches and gunning down conservatives because they got all riled up reading Paul Krugman.

I guess they feel oppressed by a government that taxes them less than what they paid under Reagan. Oh, the tyranny! Oh, the oppression! Woe is the Republic! Obama, the Black Muslim Socialist who hates white people, is destroying our country with government “takeover” of health care. Oh, the Socialism!

Yes, only the foulest of socialists would dare insult the Founders by instituting government mandated, and managed, health care. Second Amendment remedies may be our last and only hope to throw off the stranglehold of socialist government healthcare. It’s a clear violation of our Constitution, is it not?

Somebody better lecture John Adams on the Constitution. Apparently he and other Founders were some of those socialists for government mandated health care. Yes, the disturbing news is out. In 1798 the 5th Congress passed, and Adams signed, "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman" into law. Thomas Jefferson was the President of the Senate during the 5th Congress while Jonathan Dayton, the youngest man to sign the United States Constitution, was the Speaker of the House.

The act provided for the Federal Government to build and run hospitals for sick and injured seamen. It was paid for by taxing the sailors. Let this sink in. Adams and other Founders instituted tax funded government run health care.

It survives to this day as the Public Health Service under the Surgeon General.

This shoots down the Right’s argument that government has no business mandating health care. The Founders were very open to the idea of government managed health care after all. Real socialism has been validated from the beginning of our Republic. What would you bet the Tea Cult would call Obama if this was his idea?

It looks like liberals resemble the Founders more than the fantasy filled dress-up Tea Cult buffoons after all. Oh, the irony! It turns out the Founders meant it when they wrote “promote the general welfare” in the Constitution.

I guess it’s time for progressives to start shouting, “We want our country back!”

Fear and Authoritarians

Thanks to Right Wing corporate media we hear it all the time.

Democrats want Death panels and a Death tax. Obama is a Marxist, Muslim racist with a deep seated hatred for white people. Obama’s socialism is destroying America. Obama doesn’t like America. Liberals don’t have family values and they hate personal responsibility. Taxes “punish” the rich, and are “oppressive tyranny”. Obama is another Stalin. Obama is another Hitler. Liberals blame America first. We want our country back! If ballots don’t work, bullets will.

Man, I’m getting more than a little frightened, not to mention quite angry. Hurry! Somebody DO something to save us from this great evil!

All right, let me catch my breath and settle down here.

This is all about fear, you know.

Fear is the most primal emotion. It can alert us to danger and save us from harm, or it can disable us from within. It can cause us to react with violence towards a perceived threat. Sometimes the threat may not even be real, or so minor that fear triggers a destructive over-reaction. We’ve learned there’s no reasoning with it. We’ve seen fear of the hooded prowler used as a tool to manipulate people into spending their money on products like burglar alarms or private security services.

We’ve also learned fear can be nurtured by powerful entities that gain more power through inciting fearfulness in people. Uncertainty, confusion, anger, and ignorance feed fear. Frightened people ask fewer questions and obey authority more quickly. Fear of terrorism and anger at Arabs and Islam for 9-11 are how Right Wing Authoritarians Bush and Cheney led us to war based on their lies. Fear, along with anger and resentment, is an important tool for Right Wing Authoritarian leaders to influence people.

Fear of death and eternal punishment may well be the primary reason Right Wing Authoritarians embrace religion. Perhaps that may be their only foundation for morality and disincentive for violence against fellow humans. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out. Crusades, Inquisitions, Jihad, witch burnings, and maybe the invasion of Iraq seem to happen despite, or perhaps due to religious beliefs of authoritarians. Personally, I still think simple greed and lust for power have more to do with these events.

Anyway, it’s time to bravely face the gaping jaws of fear that are devouring America. It’s time we understood knowledge, information, education, tolerance compassion, experience, and openness go far to mitigate fear. It’s time for rational examination and an open honest study of what fear is and how it works on some people more than others.

For a start, could it be conservatives are more prone to the effects of fear? Last month there was an interesting study mentioned in The Telegraph (UK). It seems conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas, centers of primitive emotions, than are found in the brains of liberals. Check out the article, “Political views 'hard-wired' into your brain”.

Hey, I didn’t invent this science, I’m just reporting it.

For my short take on Authoritarians, see my post from May 2008.

For further reading on Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personalities I recommend John Dean’s book “Conservatives Without Conscience”. His book draws from the work of Robert Altemeyer.

Professor Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba has generously made his book available for free online at The Authoritarians.

For all you anti-science conservatives who may be outraged at such a notion as a “conservative brain”, take comfort. There could also be a “liberal gene”.

Update:
For more on Right Wing resentment, see Mobilization Of Resentments from December 2009.

No Reich Wing Hate Here

A Special Freedom Rants “Endorsement”: *

No sir, there’s no Reich Wing hate at Ye Olde Tea Bagger Shop for “patriots”. Step right up folks and get your tea party supplies. Show the world what “real Americans” believe. Need a license to hunt liberals? Gotcha covered, Bubba.

Does anybody recognize the frightening poster? Didn’t we see something like this on a billboard last summer?

Not only do they inform us that Democrats like Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry are traitors, but their cool poster of Stalin, Hitler and Obama teaches us they are all the same. Well, maybe not exactly the same. Stalin and Hitler shared at least one passion with our “conservative” Right Wing Extremist heroes. They both generously provided hunting licenses for their open seasons on liberals.

Be angry, very angry at these dictators, especially the “liberal” living one. And be afraid, very afraid, of the scary black man. He is destroying the country, you know. Hate is too good a word for this tyrant, so there’s no hate here. No sirree. None whatsoever. In fact this is all about love, a regular Ministry of Love, founded back in 1984 right here in Amerika.

And rest assured our tea-soaked “patriots” have the support of the president of that powerful adversary of democracy, the Heritage Foundation. He tells us the ideologically pure shop for “patriots” has posts that are a “must read” in the marketplace of ideas for “informed conservatives”.

We remember the words of Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Remember folks, democracy is what needed to be overturned in order for Bush and Cheney to seize power and get the country into corporate-friendly permanent war, record debt, and a “National Security” police state. Democracy is what put Obama into office.

The message is clear. Democracy is an anti-Amerikan liberal conspiracy. Yes, we must destroy the liberal Commie traitors and their democratic socialism! If ballots don’t work, bullets will! Hey, that’s another sentiment they share with the two older guys on their poster. That must mean Obama is the worst dictator ever, since Stalin and Hitler shared their “conservative” values.

Long live the Amerikan Fourth Reich! Long live our Konservative Korporatist Kountry!


*I will not name this fascist site by its title nor provide a link. I’m now a little too sickened to continue my “endorsement”. God help us.

Second Amendment Remedies

I had just finished reading the article about Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan (Severed Heads) Brewer and her new death panel induced fatality. Another transplant patient had died after being removed from the waiting list for surgery. The good news, I suppose, for the Republicans, is the rich didn’t have to see any of their tax dollars going towards saving a life.

If that wasn’t enough to further repulse all decent people from that backward state, the news of the latest horror will. As I finished the article of this Arizona tragedy, I heard my wife call from downstairs. She was in the living room watching TV and said, “You need to see this.”

There was the picture of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D) over the crawl about a shooting in Tucson. The representative was having an open meeting with constituents when a gunman shot her point blank in the head. He also shot and killed several others in the parking lot.

“Not again,” I groaned. “Will this right wing violence ever end?”

I knew the answer before the question was spoken. No, it will not end. And in all likelihood it will continue, and get much worse.

We’ve heard the hate from American fascists for some time now. We’ve seen the results of the anger and fear incited by FOX(R) and Beck and Limbaugh. Oh, sure, they promptly disavow violence all right; AFTER someone gets killed. Then they swiftly return to the same lying hateful rhetoric.

In 2008 Jim David Adkisson committed two counts of murder in a church in Tennessee. He also wounded six others at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. Police found books and material in his home by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Bill O’Reilly. He wrote a note urging others to kill liberals.

On April 4, 2009 Richard Poplawski, the sociopathic conservative without a conscience, murdered three cops in Pittsburgh. Poplawski’s racist head was filled with crap like Beck’s poisonous lies about Obama coming to take his guns away from him.

On June 10, 2009 James Von Brunn, another conservative, became the Holocaust Memorial Museum gunman.

Then there was conservative Scott Roeder, the bomb making assassin, who killed Doctor Tiller (“The baby killer”, courtesy of O’Reilly.) in church.

Charles Wilson -- a Washington man sentenced to prison for repeatedly threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) after she voted in favor of health care reform legislation -- said Wilson's "fears were grown and fostered by [Glenn] Beck's persuasive personality.”

We remember Byron Williams on his Glenn Beck inspired mission to gun down Tides Foundation staff. How did Beck react after this? He attacked the Tides Foundation, of course, accusing the progressive institution of subverting churches, turning children against their parents and spreading "anti-human" theories.

Tides Foundation CEO Drummond Pike wrote a pleading letter to FOX(R) advertisers. This is how it concluded:

I respectfully request that you bring this matter of your company's sponsorship of hate speech leading to violence to the attention of your fellow directors as soon as possible. I believe no responsible company should advertise on Fox News due to its recent and on-going deplorable conduct.

While we may agree to disagree about the role our citizens and our government should play in promoting social justice and the common good, there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse - even when allowing for and encouraging contending diverse opinions intelligently argued. This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue. No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City.

The next "assassin" may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours.

The next assassin has succeeded, in yet another act of Reich Wing terrorism. These are the fruits of American fascism. This slaughter is directly influenced by FOX(R) and their long list of fascist Republicans like Sarah (re-load) Palin, Sharon (Second Amendment Remedies) Angle, Glenn (Obama’s a racist) Beck, and Rush (Liberals hate America) Limbaugh.

The list of fascists goes on, and so grows the list of killers who are fed lies and hate fueled propaganda by the American Fourth Reich.

We don’t know yet any details of the assassin/terrorist, but what do you think the chances are he is another toxic tea drunk viewer of “fair and balanced” FOX(R)?

FOX(R) Misinformation

Let's offer our bleeding heartfelt thanks to Media Matters for their month by month round-up of the FOX(R)'s fairly unbalanced and ever-so-dishonest propaganda last year.

Off The Rails: The Year In Fox News Misinformation

This ya gotta see...and share.