Restitutor Orbis

I may be remembering incorrectly, but I cast my vote last November for Barack Obama, not Joe Liebermann. So why is it this not-really-a-Democrat senator is calling the shots? Why is it that the President - the man I did vote for - is kow-towing to a man who really isn't even a Democrat - not even nominally, whatever he may claim?

It's an interesting development. At the time Mr. Obama took office, you'll remember, there was a lot of talk about Liebermann and his role and his potential usefulness, given that he often voted in rank with the Democrats.

All that looks like speculative fiction today, as likely as finding a dragon in the Rose Garden.

Reuters is reporting that Obama faces healthcare insurrection from left flank

That should come as no surprise. Some of us are pretty upset about what looks more and more like a betrayal of one of his central campaign promises, to give us quality healthcare.

Leading the grousing from the left has been Howard Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who ran unsuccessfully for his party's presidential nomination in 2004.

Dean, a medical doctor and former governor of Vermont, in recent days has said a Senate healthcare bill that Obama supports and which is lurching toward a possible vote in coming days should be killed.

"If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current healthcare bill," Dean wrote in a Washington Post opinion article on Thursday, his latest broadside on the matter.

The White House - and presumably Obama himself - is seeming more and more out of touch with the American people. Is it possible that Mr. Obama has forgotten his promise?

Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on Thursday to fire back at Dean, saying his argument is "predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions" and that the legislation does meet most Democratic goals.

Axelrod found himself challenged on the program by Ed Schultz, a liberal anchor on MSNBC's evening programing.

"They key is, people in this country right now don't believe that the White House has stood up to the insurance industry," Schultz said.

It's also looking more and more like it's time for a progressive revolution to put the Democratic Party back on track, if not replace it altogether. We have clearly been betrayed by some of our representatives in Washington, D.C., and our President, whom we elected on a ticket for Change, has apparently decided that the status quo is more comfortable.

Progressives need to realize that we won't get what we want, we won't get what we were promised, we won't get what this country needs, by being better informed and more cognizant of the facts than our conservative opponents. We need some passion as well, and we need to turn this passion - and our command of the facts - on our representatives in Washington, D.C., and on our President.

This whole story reads like a Monty Python sketch. If you don't laugh and shake your head for an hour afterward, I don't know what's wrong with you:

Tea Partiers to Dem: Change offices so we can protest you

Sarah Palin actually praised President Obama on Thursday. She apparently liked his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo.

But she also said she'd like to see Obama act more like George W. Bush. Yes, she wants our President to act like a complete buffoon, not to say moron.

"I liked what he said," Palin told USAToday in an interview after the speech.

Then Palin seemed to imply that Obama had cribbed her book: "I thumbed through my book quickly this morning to say 'Wow! That really sounded familiar.' because I talked in book too about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times."

Incredible. How intellectually destitute would a man have to be to steal words from the likes of Sarah Palin? She's barely more coherent than Bush.

Speaking of which, she suggested Obama could learn a few things from former President Bush.

Like how to be a moron, apparently.

(Note: This post has been put up as a mirror by the author to the site where the original article is hosted due to server problems)

Part I: Storm Troopers and Tea Partiers

Interestingly, while the Republicans invoke Godwin’s Law at every opportunity, engaging in cries of “Hitler! Nazism!” (also, “Stalin! Communism!”) when referring to liberals, Democrats, and Obama, it is the Republicans, and not the liberals, who have adopted and embraced the language and street-fighting tactics of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism.

It is my intent here to show here where the rhetoric and the tactics overlap. What is important to note, first off, is that for purposes of this discourse, there is no essential difference between “communism” and “socialism.” For the Right-wing’s worst ideological babblers (and there are too many to list here) there is also no difference between communism, socialism, and Nazism – it is perhaps no surprise that in the party opposed to science that political science would not be one of their top subjects.

But as in National Socialist discourse, the idea is not to mount arguments that make sense, or that address the issues on a point-by-point basis, but to use arguments that appeal emotionally and which generate fear, xenophobia, outrage, and hate. The central tactic of National Socialist discourse was to fix blame on another group, to absolve the outraged from personal responsibility through creation of an “Other.” For the National Socialists, this was the Jews/communists; for the Republicans, liberals/communists. I will return to this point presently.

The National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP) – or Nazi Party for short – was, or those who don’t know, a Right-wing organization - an extreme Right-wing organization. The Republican Party is, not coincidentally, also a Right-wing organization and it has grown more extreme over the past two decades, particularly as the so-called Religious Right has become the dominant force behind the GOP.[1] This extremism was especially evident during the presidency of George W. Bush and again following the election of 2008, which put Barack Obama into the White House. The increasing polarization of American politics is too well documented to require a repeated examination here.

In fact, fears of Right-wing violence have become so pervasive that a Homeland Security report dated 7 April 2009[2] warned of an increased likelihood of terror attacks by these groups. The reaction of these groups – and of the extreme Right-wing in general – was to cry foul and declare that they would kill anyone who tried to take their guns. This reaction seems to reinforce the original warning, as does growing secessionist rhetoric - and racism.

This report makes for interesting reading. It notes that “the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes are proving to be a driving force for rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization.” Hitler disparaged not only Jews but Blacks, for example (in a quote we will revisit below) criticizing the possibility that a “negro can sit as president in the sessions of the League of Nations.”[3] This racism is all-too evidence in Right-wing rhetoric. One might protest that the Republican leadership is not responsible for this but the rhetoric of its leading ideologues suggests otherwise. Rush Limbaugh, for example, has referred to President Obama as a "halfrican American" and playing the parody song "Barack the Magic Negro" repeatedly and that is not all:

On his October 27 radio show, Rush Limbaugh referred to President Obama as "this little boy, this little man-child president." Limbaugh has repeatedly referred to Obama as a "boy" and as a "man-child", including calling him "the little boy president" and claiming that Democrats and the media criticize "so-called 'ferocious attacks' " on Obama because "you can't criticize the little black man-child."[4]

It will be made quite obvious even from the small collection of examples provided here, that there is very little to choose between National Socialist and Republican racism.

America was treated to the spectacle of National Socialist-style rabble-rousing during the 2008 presidential elections. Again and again the Republican candidates rallied the troops, not by attacking Democratic policies with cogent arguments but with ad hominem attacks and childish insults, by appealing not to the issues but to the fears of voters. In the first year of President Obama’s administration, this has escalated to fantasies, prayers, and hopes of death, not just for ordinary liberals, but for the President himself, and even calls for revolt.[5]

It will be seen below that groups like the Family Research Council (FRC), a radical conservative Christian group, which hosts a yearly hate-fest called the “Value Voters Summit” also supports the so-called “Tea Party Movement” which itself seems to be an embodiment of this warning that policy changes are “driving rightwing recruitment and radicalization.”

The Tea Party Movement, it should be stressed, is an Astroturf movement masquerading as a grass roots populist rebellion. In reality, it is “the action arm” of the Republican Party, much like the Brown Shirts were the action arm of the NSDAP. As Paul Krugman, economist and columnist of the New York Times writes, the Tea Party movement was “manufactured by the usual suspects.” And he names names: “In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. [6] And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News” and “Fox News contributors are listed as "Tea Party Sponsor[s]" on TaxDayTeaParty.com.”[7]

This is not the first time the GOP has resorted to strong-arm tactics by Astroturf mobs:

But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.[8]

On June 12 2009 the New York Times published a column by economist Paul Krugman who wrote that "right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment." He observed also that "the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. ... have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House."

So the Tea Party Movement in some respects bears a resemblance to the NSDAP’s Brown Shirts, the SA (Sturmabteilung) – better known as Storm Troopers (i.e. thugs). Like the Brown Shirts, the Tea Partiers can be mobilized at a moment’s notice (just as FreedomWorks says) to intimidate opponents and to shout down opposing view, as we saw in Krugman’s example above. As Media Matters for America points out,

Fox News has adopted the Tax Day "tea parties" as its own, urging its audience to organize and attend what it characterizes as protests of Obama administration tax and economic policies; the network's promotions of these tea-party protests have been largely devoid of meaningful and truthful discussion of the actual merits and flaws in the administration's proposals for reform.[9]

Is there an association between the Homeland Security warning and the tea partiers? Yes. And yes, the people and Right-wing militias targeted by this report are Republicans, and Glenn Beck even brags about these associations in speaking of his 9/12 Project, "912project.com”: You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide.”[10] Those in doubt might consult the Tea Party widget from TaxDayTeaParty endorsing revolution.



The GOP’s ideological standard bearers celebrate the Tea Party in the same way that the NSDAP celebrated the SA. These are heroes, we are told, average, everyday folks who have risen up to combat the enemy and preserve our Nation and our values.[11] If it not unreasonable to suppose that we might someday, under a Right-wing administration, see postage stamps dedicated to the Tea Party Movement just as the National Socialist era saw stamps dedicated to the SA, but the GOP use of NSDAP propaganda is another article altogether.

Similarly, the NSDAP showed little regard for the actual merits and flaws in the arguments, positions, platforms, organizations and programs they opposed. Like the Republican Party, the Nazis answered with insults, jibes, threats of violence – but seldom with a comprehensive or cogent rebuttal of opposing positions. Bullying was the order of the day, as we have seen it to be here.

The National Socialist Party was a party of fear and hate. It inculcated fear and hate among those who listened to its message. Fear of conspiracies to destroy Germany, to destroy all that is good in Germany, to destroy German values, the German nation. Fear of the same. The result: demonization of all who stand against this idealized Germany, and I say “idealized” because Hitler wasn’t representing a real Germany at all, but a Germany that existed only in nationalist fantasies, much like the mythical America appealed to by Republican demagogues today. Hate and fear: a potent combination, and wielded with great skill. This same hate and fear has reared its head again in politics. In the United States this brew is found in Republican rhetoric.

The Brownshirts (Storm Troopers) were infamous for their own rhetoric – violence against their opponents – intimidation, threats of physical violence, etc. Extremist rhetoric at Tea Parties is commonplace. Again, we have seen this in Krugman’s example above. But there are other, more recent examples of these tactics being used:

Tea Party Insanity: "Burn The Books!" (VIDEO) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/12/tea-party-insanity-burn-a_n_185991.html

Treatment of a counter protester who is advocating a public health insurance option for health care http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tZtEqYGT18

Teabaggers Try To Shout Down Health Care Reform At Town Halls http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/teabaggers-try-to-shout-down-health-care-reform-at-town-halls.php

Those were the thugs – the mob tactics used in the streets today, copied from the Brown Shirt playbook. It is hardly surprising to read a report that “The White Supremacist group StormFront is encouraging its members to join the tea party.” Yes, real Nazis feel right at home with this Republican Party-endorsed movement.
As the Homeland Security report informs us in relation to the killing of three Pittsburg police officers on April 4, 2009: “The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled “one world government.”

Yes, the killer was a fan of the Glenn Beck/We Surround Them project and the StormFront movements. Glenn Beck’s National Socialist-friendly rhetoric helped kill those three police officers.

Significantly, the alleged “liberal media elite” avoids reporting on these fringe groups and their connections to the Republican Party.

Notes:

[1] William A. Galston & Pietro S. Nivola, “The Great Divide: Polarization in American Politics,” The American Interest (2006): “All else equal, the more often individuals attend church, the more likely they are to regard themselves as conservatives and vote Republican.”

[2] Prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division. Coordinated with the FBI.

[3] Adolf Hitler, January 27, 1932, Speech to the Industry Club, Dusseldorf.

[4] http://mediamatters.org/research/200910270044

[5] Most recently Rush Limbaugh’s November 25, 2009 remarks on the Rush Limbaugh Show, expressing homes that the military will detain Obama while he is at West Point giving a speech. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911250024

[6] New York Times, April 12, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html According to FreedomWorks: “FreedomWorks recruits, educates, trains and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of volunteer activists to fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom.” (emphasis mine) http://www.freedomworks.org/about/about-freedomworks

[7] Media Matters for America, April 8, 2009, http://mediamatters.org/reports/200904080025

[8] Paul Krugman, “Tea Parties Forever,” New York Times, April 12, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html

[9] “REPORT: Emerging Culture of Paranoia: Obama Derangement Syndrome epidemic on conservative airwaves Media Matters for America, April 13, 2009 http://mediamatters.org/research/200904130024

[10] The Glenn Beck Program, March 20, 2009. See http://mediamatters.org/reports/200904080025

[11] Former Rep. John Kasich (R-OH) on FOX News, March 12, 2009.

We’ve heard it all said a hundred times – that America is a Christian nation, that it was founded as a Christian nation, that the Founding Fathers were Bible-believing, God-fearing Christian men, that there is no Wall of Separation between Church and State.

The only problem is, none of it is true.

And the 18th century’s own Evangelicals signed off on the system of government those very secular-minded Founding Fathers established.

Back in the 18th century, you see, people were a lot closer to the events that shaped the new nation. They had close personal experience with the dangers of Church and State meddling in each other’s business. They knew what it was to be persecuted, not by a secular government but by a government under the control of another denomination.

They wanted protection. From each other.

And our new system of government, promised by the Declaration of Independence and come to fruition in the Constitution, gave them what they asked for.

Of course, none of these facts have stopped our own century’s Evangelicals from telling an entirely different story, one founded not in fact, not in history, but in wishful thinking, in history as it should have been – but wasn’t.

And they have big money backing them up. They have glossy websites, glossy publications, book clubs, brochures, even entire series’ of books, including the “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” series, which would be better named, “Factually Inaccurate Guide” or “Historically Inaccurate Guide.”

These books play to the base. Like any works of apologia – and that is what they are – they comfort believers, convincing them, reassuring them, that all is well, that the lies they’ve been told are safe to believe – and to go on believing.

But this mythical Christian America has no more solid a foundation than Creation Science – both are contradictions in terms.

It is true that most of the citizens of the new United States were Christians of one kind or another, many of them, especially following the successful conclusion of the War for Independence, refugees from oppressive religious environments in the Old World. They came here precisely because there WAS separation between church and state, precisely because here, they could be free of government-sponsored religion.
The problem for today’s Evangelicals is that the government itself was secular in nature, founded by men grounded in science and reason and disciples – and products – of the Age of European Enlightenment.

These men had the opportunity to form any sort of government they wished. ANY. They could have made a monarchy of our new nation – it was considered and the idea dismissed. They could have established a theocracy – but no one gave that idea any thought at all. It was never even a possibility. The motto of the new nation was, significantly, “E Pluribus Unum” – Out of Many, One. It was not, equally significantly, “In God We Trust.”

Instead, they gave us a nation founded on ancient principles of democracy, a product of ancient polytheistic Greece, and freedom of speech and thought – also products of the ancient polytheistic world – and human rights, a product of the European Enlightenment so heartily condemned by the Church. Nothing in the new nation was based on biblical principles. The Founding Fathers took more from the Iroquois Federation than they did Old Testament Israel.

There too, facts have not stopped today’s Evangelicals, who ardently insist that our nation was founded on Biblical principles. I would like to inquire where in ancient Israel there existed ideas of Democracy and Free Speech and thought. In ancient Israel, free thought and free speech got you stoned. Nor was there Democracy; there was monarchy and theocracy. There were no human rights. Exercising human rights would get you stoned. It was a society built on exclusion and enforced behavior. There was no liberty anywhere in sight.

So what we have today as the heart and soul of the Republican Base is a Mythical America, an American history of the imagination, one of wishful thinking but not of fact. Just as is much of the Bible, this Mythical America is pious history.

Look at some of the assertions made by the Mythicists:

• The American “revolutionaries” were actually conservatives


• The Puritans didn’t steal Indian lands


• The Bible promotes human freedom


• The enemies of the Bible are enemies of true reason and tolerance


• The Bible made modern science possible (which is why it started in the Middle Ages)


• The Middle Ages were the real “Age of Reason”


• The “Enlightenment” yielded tyranny and war.

It is no surprise that these “talking points” are aped on social networking sites, on FOX News and anywhere else conservatives gather. They’re said as if they’re true. The specious reasoning that goes behind them is repeated as if it even made sense (which it doesn’t).

• The revolutionaries were liberals. They founded our nation on the liberal principles of the European Enlightenment – not upon the conservative principles of the Old World.


• The Puritans did steal Indian lands. Shamelessly.


• The Bible nowhere promotes human freedom. Evangelicals can repeat the myth of Christian egalitarianism and slavery all they want but the truth is, Christianity did not promote egalitarianism and it did not free the slaves.
  
• The statement that enemies of the Bible are enemies of reason and tolerance proves itself wrong.


• Science did not start in the Middle Ages. It started in the ancient polytheistic world – and, significantly, not in Biblical Israel but in Greece, which promoted freedom of thought and speech. When science saw the light of day again, it was not because of Christianity, but despite it, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.


• The Middle Ages were not the Age of Reason. One has only to look at the rampant superstition, the crusades, the wars against heretics, the inquisition, the witch-burnings, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the forced conversion of Pagan peoples in Northern and Eastern Europe…no, not much Reason but a whole lot of slaughter in God’s name.


• The Enlightenment did not stop war, but it did not yield war as a consequence. It did, however, put a stop to crusades, wars against heretics, the inquisition, witch-burnings, and rampant anti-Jewish pogroms. It was not quite able to stop forced conversion of Pagan peoples but at least we stopped slaughtering them in “God’s” name.

Our society is diverse and free to a degree that has never been possible before in history. Diversity and plurality are a blessing. But to the Evangelicals, it is a threat. It threatens the status quo. It threatens them with loss of power and loss of influence. The more diverse our society becomes, the more resistant they become. The more reactionary they become. They become more intolerant, more hateful, and more inclined to use fear as a weapon to browbeat others into servitude to “their” Bible.

And the more inclined they are to embrace an imaginary, Mythical America. As a result, we are introduced to ideas that have no basis in historical fact, like the points discussed briefly above. We have conservative Christians making blind, unsupported assertions about this Mythical America as though it really existed, without a thought being given to the facts.

And why bother with the facts when talking points are so handy - when apologetic works abound, demonstrating these myths to be fact and denouncing fact as myth? It’s all very comforting to them, and all very damaging, not only for them, but for all of us. They want to impose on the United States a return to the 13th century, to that imaginary “Age of Reason” they talk about, when they – and they alone – were free to do what they wanted – to everyone else. And let not a word be raised in protest.

Because as you all by now know, they can damn and condemn and it’s their God-given right, but should anyone raise a word in protest, it’s a “war against Christianity” or “hate” or “intolerance.” Because it isn’t freedom they really want. It’s the privileging of their myth, of their own beliefs, at the expense of everyone else. It’s the freedom to persecute, without apology or thought, everyone different from them, and like their 13th century brethren, justify it in their god’s name.

But America didn’t exist in the 13th century. It could not have existed in the 13th century. It took a genuine Age of Reason to make America possible, and going back to the 13th century would skip right over it. It’s pretty obvious to anyone living in an evidence-based world, but as the Politically Incorrect guide series of books make clear, their interest isn’t in evidence – it’s in wishful thinking.

(Author's Note: I have granted permission for this essay to be cross-posted on God's Own Party http://godsownparty.com/blog/ and thanks go to Leah for reviewing it before publication)