Left & Right

How the West was Lost

There is a sense of doom leading up to the 2012 elections.  A sense that America is doomed.  Ever more voices arise declaring they shall not live under socialism or communism.  Regardless what next year’s elections outcome will be.

Political historian Larry Schweikart asserts that America is more divided now than it was during the Civil War.  Yet even such dire words cannot express the real severity of the division.  For even while America’s economy fails, the division cannot be understood merely in terms of failing economics.  Nor is it only America so divided.  Like a crack of doom, the rupture runs unabated through all Western culture.  All Western discourse and public spheres are collapsing beneath an astonishing and crushing stupidity.  An utter ideological corruption destroying us economically, dividing us socio-politically and disintegrating our very identities as Western people.

From America’s credit crisis and Europe’s defaulting economies to Norway’s home-grown terrorist murders, one way or another, a surging wave of calamity attests the West’s clashing ideological antagonisms.  Less flagrant yet more fatal, half the people in Western societies revile rather than speak to the other half.  And while coming to blows through violence in the streets, through mass unrest and murders and civil wars runs counter to our tolerant and democratic traditions – nevertheless there appears no logical possibility remaining to compromise or resolve our most fundamental divisions.

Just imagine two neighbours.  Any neighbours living next door.  Next door to you, most likely.

There are routine greetings.  Climate is mentioned daily, sometimes twice or thrice when there’s weather to speak of.  But when it comes to values, beliefs, who we are, what we stand for or against?  Silence.  Rather than declaring who we are, it’s more as if we have nothing whatever to declare.

Yet the appearance of terminal shallowness is deceiving.  In covert fact, all too many neighbours seethe internally.  Grow more outraged from one day to the next.  From one hour to the next.  But silently.  Knowing how easily genuine self-expression could hurl us at each other’s throats.  We have no option but struggling to maintain placidly shallow appearances.  No peaceful option.

We agree something is terribly wrong.  But because we so fundamentally disagree what is wrong, we cannot really talk about it.  We can’t even mention what’s really wrong without exposing how fundamentally we disagree.  How violently.  And while it isn’t just neighbours so fundamentally divided – our media and governments are equally divided – it is the utter division between neighbours tearing Western social fabric from its once vibrant richness to today’s ragged shreds.

It isn’t just Democrats and Republicans gone too ideologically far to compromise as the future crashes and burns in the balance.  It’s all of us in the Western street.  In every Western neighbourhood.

Between two neighbours, one fundamentally believes, beyond any shadow or capacity for doubt, that Western society is being decimated by unscrupulous, unrestricted, unregulated, laissez-faire neoliberal piracy.  That the corporatist state not only disenfranchises and victimizes – but viciously assails and vilifies precisely those most disenfranchised and victimized by it.   That the essential language of our shared responsibilities has been undermined by a reactionary rhetoric of purely personal responsibility designed to deny voice, extinguish breath and exact every recourse from the trammeled.  A reactionary rhetoric designed to inculcate and to inseminate even the poorest and hungriest with the venomous ideology of purely personal responsibility for their own hunger and poverty.  Designed to contradict the very existence of circumstances and social forces beyond all personal responsibility or control.  Forces that can and too often are contrived to crush, savage and vitiate particularly the vulnerable.

Between two neighbours, the other believes no less fundamentally that Western society is being decimated.  Not by failing social responsibility, though.  To the contrary.  By the failure of personal responsibility.  By the rabid and virulent assault, across Western welfare states, not only against our core Western values and the means of honest production – but against the very meaning of productivity.  Against any sane production of meaning.  Thus, the worst failure is due not just to entrenchment of individual irresponsibility and generational dependence on government.  It is not just how big government runs amok.  Western societies used to be sufficiently productive to propagate, to lift and to carry entire classes of not-workers.  Worst is the prevailing cult of personal irresponsibility that has come about in the permanent shadow of false entitlement.  The performance of victimhood.  The condemnation of achievement as illegitimate privilege.  Because no society can survive so radical an inversion of its scruples and fundamental values.  An inversion that makes individual life a ward of the state, enshrines human parasites over the bodies of honest workers and elevates narratives of victimhood to tramp the tale of human achievement into meaningless corruption.  That’s what’s worst.  Tramping what is most valiant and meaningful in sewage of shame.

Extreme views?  Most individuals do not subscribe to views that extreme?  Perhaps not yet.  Not knowingly.  But certainly this contradictory, divided understanding of the function of responsibility in fairness and social justice sunders us individually no less than it ruptures our economics, media and politics.  There is no conspiracy sufficient to divide us.  No left or right wing conspiracy in Western media.  No left or right wing conspiracy in western politics.  There’s only our fundamentally divided understanding of responsibility in fairness and social justice.  Our views growing ever more extremely divided, cleaving and embittering us as neighbours, inexorably yet routinely reflecting in our institutions.

We know it, too.  Though we don’t much like thinking about it, this is all terribly familiar.  Like a seeping sore, festering in, and due, to ignorance.  Beyond vague allusions to far left and right, even adequate terminology is lacking from our language.  Despite how, in everyday reality, Western society is staved by ideological clashing between neo-liberalism – no hale liberalism could have suggested the abnegation of all collective responsibility – and neo-Marxism – no sane interpretation of Marxism could have imagined the abnegation of all individual responsibility.

The everyday reality is that Western culture is torn by ideologies no less extreme than either the communisms or fascisms of the 20th century.  Alas, it is precisely because we so stolidly strive to ignore the gaping rupture in Western culture that we fail to not only address it – but even to recognize its most crucial, critical character.  How totally Western our ideologies are.  How they afflict all Western culture.  How they afflict only Western culture.

Principles of fairness, equality and social justice have long been fundamental Western values.   They have been our brightest ideals, illuminating and making it possible to live, to work, to dispute and to decide together – without coming to blows – in myriad pluralistic, marvelous, historically unprecedented ways.  We can and do agree we have to be fair in the West.  In large part, fairness defines what it means to be Western.  Fairness, the ideal, unites us.

But, simultaneously, we cannot agree what fairness really means.  We clash always more zealously over questions of fairness in practice.  And while ideal fairness unites us – false, absurd and harmful ideologies of fairness divide us utterly.

Today, one of two neighbours  can no longer conceive personal responsibility.  Every material disparity provokes railing against the unfairness, the inequality and the social injustice of it.  The other neighbour has no concept of social responsibility.   The typical response to disparity, regardless how extreme, is: “Get a real job.  You bum.”  On the left, ideological oblivion to personal responsibility corrupts ideal fairness into wanton addictions and depraved dependence on unsustainable entitlement.  On the right, ideological oblivion to collective responsibility mangles fairness to suit some false meritocracy where citizens might as well die in the streets through no fault of their own.  No fault other than having been overwhelmed by circumstances outside their control.

The West is divided beyond rupture.  Crumbling institutionally, fragmenting constituently.  There’s no hope bonding together again.  Not unless we first recognize and genuinely appreciate how united we stand for ideal fairness.  And second, not unless we cease discounting both individual and collective irresponsibility when questioning fairness in practice.  The left must realize that personal irresponsibility multiplies disparities beyond any scope of social redress.  The right must comprehend that collective irresponsibility aggravates disparity beyond all possible individual remedies.

It is past time to appreciate fairness as our common ideal – and get over our ideologies of it.  Otherwise it’s too late for Western culture and societies.  Altogether.

If only it were possible to recognize fairness as our ideal.  In actuality, there is bound to be more skepticism – even more-so as we cling to our patently divisive ideologies.  How and why has fairness become so fundamental in Western culture?

The correct answer is deceptively simple.  Western culture is rooted in fairness because it is no longer rooted in faith.  But there is bound to be incredulity that Western culture is no longer rooted in faith.  Nor can simple answers explain how and why faith gave way to fairness.  In order to explain, the tale must be told.  The tale of faith grudgingly, bitterly, haltingly – unavoidably – giving way to fairness.  The story of the origin of fairness as the Western ideal.

It began, like so many stories, somewhat arbitrarily long since.  Certainly church and faith ruled one thousand years back.  Absolutely and unequivocally.  Increasingly during the past millennium, though, Western culture broke trust with church and faith-based knowing.  As a culture, we abandoned absolute, god-given truths – and replaced our trust in provisionally evident, fallible truths.  Truths that hinge on available evidence.  Truths that change from one day to the next.  That alter as new evidence continues arriving.  Which it does.  Continually arrive.  Every single day.

We do recall past prophets leading to our present materialism.  Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin.  Yet even as we remember those most instrumental transforming Western culture, we fail to appreciate the scope of our cultural transformation.  How the epistemic shift from faith-based to evidence-based knowing spanned a millennium, how tectonic it persists as we speak – how thoroughly it implicates the totality of our ways of knowing.  More so than anything else, how it defines Western culture.

However unrecognized, the implications of the shift in our ways of knowing are astounding.  It was not just burgeoning science and technology entailed by hobbling faith with evidence.  Freedom, democracy, tolerance, fairness and social justice were no less entailed.  Today’s cultural principles and core Western values could not have existed while faith-based knowing prevailed.  Could not exist in the context of cultures where fundamentalist faith in absolute god-given truths triumphs.  Cannot survive in societies ruled largely by temple, church or mosque.

Whatever biblical violence was originally required making god’s truths manifest to the people – there could be no questioning, no debate once god’s own truths had been revealed.  There could only be yet greater violence – reflecting some presumably greater god’s truths – or obedience and submission to god’s social orders.  One’s proper assigned place in society was necessarily ordained as anything in god’s divine creation and the ordering of nature.  Questioning could signify only confusion to god’s will.  Debating could only mean resistance to god’s plan.  Diabolical enmity to god himself.

But after Copernicus, Galileo and Newton?  After Darwin drove that last spike through god’s coffin while making such complete monkeys out of us?  Nietzche confirmed god dead and, as a culture, we lost every faith in the truths god gave.  It was alright, though.  It was better that way.  That novel new way of knowing.  Because our faith alone had once been blind.  Whereas, by hobbling faith with evidence, the West could begin to see.  Western people could begin to understand.

Absent definitive, pre-ordained, indisputable truths to sanctify every social injustice, questioning and debating became not only possible and meaningful – but absolutely necessary.  The tectonic transformation in our way of knowing gave rise to everything we now take as granted.  Pluralism and constitutionally lawful dissent, human rights and tolerance, freedom and democracy, fairness, equality and social justice.  Indeed, when it came to questions of politics, public morality, the individual’s place in society, it was humanitarian fairness, equality and social justice we turned to for answers.  When questioning public morality in the West, in a very real sense, fairness replaced god.

Now we’ve come to terminal disagreements about what fairness really means.  And because ideal fairness has displaced divinity, our disagreements are as terminal and fundamental as the divisions over divine revelations in faith based cultures.  Consequently, we can have either cultural breakdowns, paralysis, fragmentation, reformations and ultimately sectarian violence.  Or we can begin to recognize and appreciate the common commitment to ideal fairness.  Appreciate what is so positively unique to Western cultural identity.  Begin realizing our division is not so much over ideal fairness – as it is about the ideological perversions of that admirable principle.

That’s the imperative message to launch out there.  Fairness demands both personal and social, individual and collective responsibility.  Neither may be removed.  The idolatry of irresponsibility – be it personal or social irresponsibility – must cease.  The perversion of fairness must desist.  Let’s stop desecrating our highest, most fundamental Western ideal with such perverse ideologies.  Stop before it’s too late.  Before the self-destruction gets all biblical.

Last modified on 2011-09-04 15:29:19 GMT. 8 comments

Claiming the King’s Legacy

After the competing rallies organized by Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton earlier today, one friend publicly asked: Was Martin Luther King a conservative? And personally? No, I don’t think he was. Then again? I also don’t think he was a progressive radical, either.  This is a partisan fight to claim the legacy. And, damn it, both sides are wrong to do that.

Martin Luther King was more into personal responsibility than most anybody today. And, yes, he was surrounded by radical elements — but he also sought to resist more divisive polemics. His brand of social justice was firmly grounded in principles of equality under the law — not special entitlements under the law.

Appearing on CNN, Al Sharpton was asked to comment on Glenn Beck’s rally.  And Mr. Sharpton sought to dismiss the competing rally by saying Glenn Beck gave a good motivational speech — that had nothing to do with civil rights. Ok, Mr. Sharpton, fair enough. But, look, that shoe fits your feet just as well.

What’s Sharpton’s first premise literally every time he alleges civil rights inequities? That’s right — income distribution disparity. How African American and Latino American incomes lag behind pink European American incomes. Which, to Sharpton, has got to mean the discrimination conspiracy is alive and well.

But wait just a sec. Asian Americans actually make more money than pink European Americans. So, by Sharpton’s logic? There must be discrimination against pink Americans relative to Asian Americans. Asian Americans are the most privileged. Everything is their fault.

See where this goes? It’s nothing Bill Cosby hasn’t said. Concluding discrimination from income disparities alone isn’t a civil rights argument. It’s just more whining.

So, yeah. Sharpton’s right that Beck’s just giving motivational speeches and failing to address civil rights. But what Sharpton isn’t telling is that he himself just keeps on whining — the opposite of motivational speaking — and equally fails to address civil rights issues.

Neither Beck nor Sharpton together can fill the King’s shoes.  Neither can walk one mile in those shoes.  And it’s no wonder both try — and fail — to claim the King’s legacy. Because nobody today has his courage, his character, his moral fibre. They try to claim his legacy for their own partisan profit — but, thank god almighty, they cannot. Because Martin Luther King was one of a kind. Because Martin Luther King stood far above the ideological divisions hobbling smaller men like Al Sharpton and Glenn Beck.

Last modified on 2010-09-28 02:27:29 GMT. 8 comments

Left & Right-Wing Brains: Ideology 101

Several weeks ago a friend challenged me to explain the difference between left and right-wing ideologies.

“Can you do it?” challenged friend.  “Moreso, can you do it fairly and without the usual right and left stereotypes and with the history of where these ideological groupings come from?”

Sure.  Why not.  There’s no resolving the esoteric spectra of political ideology – Marxism, communism, socialism, liberalism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, conservatism, neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism and fascism, to name just a few – if we can’t even tell left from right.  If we can’t say why we keep leaning either way.

Let’s put aside the history of our political divisions, though.  History can’t explain why people keep slanting left or angling right – while knowing next to nothing about history.  In fact?  It almost seems like people can’t really help their own political inclinations.

That’s what research has shown.  When it comes to left or right political leaning, people don’t just forget their history.  They disdain plain facts and otherwise common sense.  Both those leaning left and those leaning right will consistently rely on the identical facts when justifying how they lean.  Which can only suggest complete disregard for facts.  For how consistency gets sacrificed when it comes to political leaning.

Yet more astonishing has been research showing significant, detectable brain differences between people leaning politically left and right.  Research so remarkable that mainstream media headlines blared: “Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain”.

Could significant brain-differences mean that political inclination is inborn?  Genetically hard-wired?

Better not get carried away with that joke.  Finding brain differences doesn’t mean that political inclination is hard-wired.  That it isn’t learned.  Since learning too, just as well, may account for brain differences.  Since we know that learning can and does correspond with presumably structuring events in the brain.  Since learning is precisely not inborn or hard-wired.  Learning is everything we acquire – albeit not only – by experience.

For the most simplistic analogy, it may be possible to significantly distinguish computers by their operating systems.  Would we then conclude operating systems are hard-wired?  Of course not.  Operating systems are precisely not hard-wired.

What surprises is not that learning or knowing can correspond with variance in people’s brains.  Rather, it is how deeply fundamental our political leanings must therefore be.  How persistent, reliable and robust a division political leaning must constitute.  In order to correspond with real, significant brain differences, leaning left or right politically must divide us – how we learn, how we know — fundamentally.

It would not be surprising to find significant brain differences between, for instance, people who distinguish right from wrong – and people who do not.  But we would not expect significant brain differences between people who think it’s right to vote for Barak Obama – and people who think it’s wrong to vote for Obama.  That’s what’s surprising.  How much deeper than just voting choices our political inclinations must go.  How political inclination now seems more like being able to tell right from wrong.  In terms of the prior analogy, political leaning isn’t just elective software.  How we lean seems more like a module of our operating system.

Taking a minute to think about it, though?  There should be no surprise.  Because, in Western societies, political inclination is predicated on our understanding of fairness – and because fairness has replaced god when it comes to telling political right from wrong.

Right and wrong used to be functions of god-given truths.  But at least since the American and French revolutions – if not since yet earlier during Western Enlightenment – we have lost every faith in the truths god gave.  And absent definitive, pre-ordained, absolute truths to sanctify each social injustice? The alternative has become culturally ingrained in Western societies that humanitarian fairness must decide public morality.

Now, in the West, fairness is the needle in our public morality compass.  Fairness has become the vane of political legitimacy.  On this much, in the West, we can agree.  We have got to be fair.

But fundamental and imperative as fairness has become?  We totally can’t agree on what it means.  When it comes to our understanding of fairness we are utterly divided.

On one hand, there is the belief that fairness must mean relative parity.  Such that, whenever observing material non-parity, we have to conclude non-fairness.  Any inequality, in itself, must therefore constitute evidence of discrimination, of oppression, of exploitation – of prevailing social injustice.

On the other hand, there is the belief that fairness must mean not only relative parity – but must also reflect relative merit and virtue.  Such that we cannot conclude non-fairness from material non-parity alone.  Since inequalities could always stem from differences in relative merit – rather than any social injustice prevailing.

The more we believe material non-parity entails injustice – the farther left we have to lean politically.  The more we believe material non-parity does not entail injustice – the farther right we have to lean politically.

And when we lean too far – either way?  That’s when our ideals of fairness turn ideological.  Because it is false, absurd and harmful to believe merit has either nothing or absolutely everything to do with people’s material circumstances. Sometimes people can shape their material circumstances – whereas, at other times, circumstances can overwhelm anyone.

It comes down to this.  Western ideals of fairness are most admirable.  Absent such ideals – had we kept faith with god-given truths or just relied on might determining our relative rights – there could never have evolved even partly free and democratic Western societies.  But Western ideologies of fairness are turning uniquely absurd – and damaging.

Right-wing brains believing only merit can truly determine what’s fair ought to remember that no society can thrive which turns its back on those most overwhelmed by circumstance through no fault of their own.  Whereas left-wing brains believing merit has no bearing whatever on fairness had better remember that societies collapse and fall when turning blind eyes to how enduringly only human self-determination and free-enterprise can improve, enhance, augment and ultimately transcend every possible circumstance.  That’s right – ultimately transcend.  Because circumstance and human conditions hinge not only on potentially alienable means of production – but yet more so on potentially inalienable productions of meaning.  Because absent comprehensive appreciation for human production of meaning – there can be no real conception of human productivity.

Ideologies of fairness are absurd artifacts produced by genuine cultural ideals of fairness.  Ideals of fairness but for which there could never have emerged even partly free and democratic Western societies.  And our most extreme ideologies of fairness are just as uniquely Western.

Could left and right-wing brains have preceded our ideals and expectations of public fairness?  Could there have been left and right-wing brains prior to left and right political alternatives even existing?  Even now, can there be left and right-wing brains in the totalitarian Middle East or North Korea?  Of course not.   There can be no meaningful left or right political alternatives in totalitarian societies.  No political alternative can have coherent totalitarian meaning.  Since the meaning of totalitarian is to deny all alternatives.

Our ideals of fairness are at the cultural roots of relatively free and democratic Western societies.  Yet our ideologies of fairness – ideologies at the expense of real fairness – like rot, are beginning to erode Western societies from inside out.  Can Western societies recover – or will left and right political ideologies continue dividing us until we can no longer work and live together?

That’s the real question the survey was meant to address.  Not whether Bush or Obama hatred has been worst – responses to which, either way, likely reflect only prevailing ideological devotions.  Rather, whether any significant proportion of respondents might indicate some rejection of ideology by choosing the third option:  “Ideologues left and right are all a pestilence on democracy.” Unfortunately, to date, the third option accounted for merely 8% of responses.  Meanwhile, the first two – ideologically divisive – options accounted for over 85% of responses.

By way of bad news, these numbers shout for themselves.

Last modified on 2011-08-16 07:26:00 GMT. 283 comments

Greatest Peacemaker Ever: Obama, Carter — or Reagan?

Nice try.  Really.  Great effort to revise the memory of Ronald Reagan.  To get people believing Ronald Reagan Was A Peacenik Like Obama.  And it isn’t completely unfounded – since Reagan did indeed propose reducing U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuclear stockpiles.

But why even try?  What point making Reagan out to have been Obama-like?  No great mystery.  Mostly because there’s been  too much criticism.  Too much concern how weak Obama is perceived to be.  Even now, securing Senate votes to ratify START is no sure thing.  And uncertainties only multiplied since Medvedev linked Russian compliance with nuclear arsenal reductions to America not defending too well against incoming nuclear missiles:

.. the agreement is being considered in effect as long as the circumstances in which it was born remain. If they change, that would be the reason for a review of the agreement. That’s for any agreement. Such circumstances in this case are related to the development of the anti missile defense system.

Too much uncertainty.  Too much critical concern when it comes to Obama.  On the other hand?  Reagan gets remembered with nothing but praise.  Thus, why not defuse Obama criticism with Reagan praise – by making Reagan and Obama seem much the same?

Like, how can there be so much criticism at Barak Obama efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiling?  Obama’s doing just what Reagan always wanted to do.  There can’t be such criticism when Obama succeeds what Reagan could only try.  Not while Reagan gets remembered with nothing but praise.

Makes tactical sense.  If Obama ambitions are powerfully Reagan-like – instead of haplessly Carter-like – then perhaps there’s nothing to fear.

There’s even a sense this is true.  Not just about Reagan, Obama and Carter.  Any sane person hopes, prays and fervently wishes nuclear stockpiling reduced.  Entirely eliminated.  But.  However fervently sane people might wish – they are no less sane to fear tinkering with mutually assured destruction formulae.  Especially if MAD formulae really do account for global survival.

It is only sensible fearing mad tinkering could spark something nuclear.  Which is precisely why Reagan used to get so endlessly and bitterly criticized for mad tinkering after his StarWars speech.

Only after collapsing the Soviet Empire has there been every American praise for Reagan.  Since no single other thing can be blamed more for the Soviet Empire collapsing than Reagan’s madly unrealistic StarWars tinkering.  The Soviets just couldn’t keep up with Reagan’s mad lack of realism.

Now it’s Obama’s turn to get endlessly bitterly criticized for mad tinkering.  Except in Obama’s case?  His tinkering appears to completely contradict Reagan’s.  For while Reagan was guided by an ideal or ideology of peace through American strength – Obama seems guided by an ideal or ideology of peace through American weakness.

Perceptions of Barack Obama cannot be reconciled with memories of Ronald Reagan.  It’s absurd to even try comparing.  For while there’s no doubting Obama gets results – no less than Reagan used to – there’s no comparing how their results get obtained.  Obama gets by conciliating concessions. Whereas Reagan got results by playing tougher.  By negotiating from greater strength.

Reagan proved peace through strength worked fine.  Obama, hopefully, will go on to prove what Carter never could — that peace through weakness can work as well.  Or, to be fair — that peace through trust can work.  And who knows?  Maybe we really can trust the Russians nowadays.  Why not?  If Obama can succeed turning the U.S. into a more ideal and ideological Marxist worker’s paradise – why shouldn’t there be best friendship with Russia?

But no, that’s cheap.  Let’s just hope there can be partnership with Russia.  Otherwise?  If the Russians don’t honour treaties better than they used to?  If they see this treaty as the best opportunity yet to inflate their sphere of influence?  If they feel too threatened by U.S. missile defending?  Then the new Start treaty amounts to counting nuclear silos before they’re hatched.

The crux remains whether there can be trust.  If there really is a new level of trust between Moscow and Washington.  Whether there can be enough trust when Russia threatens to quit new nuclear treaty before the deal is signed.

There has to be enough trust – and too many feel there isn’t any trust at all.  One commenter, for instance, wrote,

I know for a fact that we cannot trust the russians. My girlfriends father was part of a group of military personell sent to russia to watch them destroy their nukes. He even said that the russians were putting on a big show.

However.  Even if so.  It isn’t the Russians we most need to fear.  Not any more.  Not since Reagan changed the world – by making America the world’s sole superpower.

Even if the entire strategic world views Obama as a weak fool.  Even if most world leaders are happily giving Obama all the rope he needs to tie American hands.  Even if Obama changes the world – by making America another state among regular nations.  Regardless.  The worst nightmare scenarios are no longer entailed by tensions between the U.S. and Russia.

The worst nightmare now is that Islamist societies will go nuclear ballistic.  And while nobody has come anywhere near bringing peace to the Middle East?  Should Obama prove himself the weak, conciliatory, concessionary fool so many believe?  Then there will be nuclear hell to pay either on or solely due to Obama’s watch.

Last modified on 2012-02-01 00:24:05 GMT. 34 comments

Banana Republicans

It really is ridiculous. The divisive, ideological rage. Last week, I thought it was too much and potentially hazardous to everything democratic. That’s why I posted it’s Not Worth Another Civil War. But now? It has just become ridiculous.

Not only is there too much anger.  There are too many enemies of democracy posing as patriots in the bastion of democracy.  Posing as American patriots.  And while some enemies of democracy are hard-core Marxists getting their marching orders from China, Venezuela or North Korea.  While others are Islamists getting their marching orders from Iran, Saudi-Arabia or Hamas.  The enemies of democracy posing as the greatest patriots couldn’t follow marching orders if Sarah Palin drew them personal maps.

No disrespect whatsoever to Sarah Palin — whom I do admire.  But since sanity requires anyone to admire democracy most — it follows for everyone to hold enemies of democracy in greatest contempt.

Not only is there too much anger.  There is too much absurdity from the enemies of democracy thinking themselves patriots.  Here are only some examples how ridiculous they sound.

I’m totally ready for a Civil War. And I think that alot of other American Patriots are too.  And Obama can kiss my ass.  Cause we will take this Country back.

and,

Actually the attack the Progressives, led by obama, are engaging in, is going to start another Civil War, and yes protecting our Constitution against the progressives is worth another war.

and,

We no longer have any rights… or constitution… we are ruled now by an iron fisted fascist…

and,

I agree we should be constructive in our efforts to take our country back from the socialists that are destroying it! The construction should be prisons for the treason against the constitution they have committed! LOL!

and,

Then again, it may be easier just to leave the USA.

None of these examples are to suggest that struggle against what can be too far left Marxist ideological agenda from the Obama Administration is unwarranted.  Only that opposition and struggle must be lawful — fully acknowledging Barak H. Obama as the legitimately elected President of the U.S.  Because doing otherwise could do irretrievable damage to democracy itself.

Just as Iran’s Republic of Fear is best undermined by the voices of citizens rising for democracy — so the bastion of democracy in the U.S. can be worst undermined by seemingly patriotic voices clamoring against democracy, legitimacy and the rule of law.

When there is respect for democracy?  That’s when resistance becomes not just powerfully legitimate — but invaluable.  One self-identified member of the Tea Party movement commented thus:

Extremism in the cause of liberty is no vice, moderation in the face tyranny is no virtue, and I do believe that our Constitution is worth defending by what ever means necessary.

How principled.  Everyone raved.  But I was very suspicious.  How necessary can it be to violate democratic principles in order to defend the Constitution?  Is it too long — waiting the next elections without taking up arms?  And was this just another ideologue posturing as if ideally principled — only when legitimate democratic leadership failed to conform with his or her ideological striping?  Like, would this commenter have said or done the same to defend the Constitution from Richard Nixon or  George Bush?

That’s why I had to ask,

… Were you as extremely out to fight against Bush in the cause of liberty as you are to fight against Obama?

And the commenter replied:

I have been protesting the growth of government my entire adult life.  I was marching against the expansion of government and the erosion of our liberties during the Reagan administration.  Me and a handful of other pitiful protesters…  It is nice to see so many joining the fight, and better late than never, I just hope it isn’t too late.  This administration is moving faster and further towards the collectivist nightmare than any in my lifetime.

Wow.  If that’s how thoughtful and principled Tea Partiers are — just wow.

There were other commenters came across relatively thoughtful.  Sounding not necessarily absurd but principled and all out to defend the Constitution.  But not really.  They only sounded not absurd.  They gave themselves away as more mere ideologues.  Since even their Constitutional defense arguments were too obviously devised to dispense with democratic principles and the rules of law.  For instance:

… you name me one president ever who has NOT shown all his credentials? Or name me one president who has taken the oath of office and then set about to destroy the Constitution right before your very eyes? name me one! name me one president who has ever spent (wasted) as much money in office on NOTHING as this one has? Name me one!!  Name me one president who has bribed and coerced congress to pass a bill that 86% of the public DID NOT WANT!  Name me one president who has forced a bill through that NO ONE – not even the signers have read? Name me one! Name me one president ever who has sneaked into the bill his own standng army? NAME ME ONE!!! YOU THINK IT ISN’T THERE??? Read it – listen to it…  This is open tyranny – so now you tell me – what does this quote by Benjamin Franklin mean to you??? ” Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God.”

Alright.  There was some good, important information.  Potentially justifying every lawful resistance.  But rebellion?  That’s why, by and by, I had to respond,

You have got me thinking twice more. But. The evidence is nowhere near conclusive. And now I’d like to tell you something.

Unless the Obama Administration does away with elections? There is no irreparable harm done. The U.S. will have become more socialist — but not in any way totalitarian. Liberty and freedom will remain safe as long as democratic elections continue. And the moment the people decide they’ve had too much socialism? They can elect to shut it down accordingly.

On the other hand. The ideological bitterness between left and right? If it gets to the point where people don’t acknowledge elected Presidents as legitimate — unless Presidents conform to people’s own ideologies? That’s the point no democracy can survive. That’s the point at which everything will turn totalitarian. Irretrievably.

And it went downhill from there.

One man does not ride rough shod over an entire country unless he is a dictator – and that is all that has been done since he took the oath of office…  In the words of Benjamin Franklin, Cupe Doll, “Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God.” Guess who my master is!!!  It isn’t Obama!

What can I say?  Eventually anyone can run out of patience.  And while I had no clue whether this commenter was Republican? Just the likelihood was enough after all the patience I’d lost.

You.. are a Banana Republican. Because if enough people thought like you? There could be no democratic country. Only a banana republic.

Last modified on 2011-08-16 07:37:25 GMT. 14 comments

Not Worth Another Civil War

There is tremendous anger in the United States. Outside the U.S. it is difficult to appreciate how much anger there is inside.

Last week, Larry Elder expressed sentiments to both represent and fan greater populist appeal. He concluded thus:

.. the Constitution must be changed. It must be amended to make what was once clear absolutely, positively, unavoidably clear. Two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention, where an amendment can be proposed to prohibit the forced purchase of health insurance. Three-fourths of the states could then ratify it.

Implausible? So was ObamaCare.

Sobering words. But the anger and the fury have gone far beyond sobering. Viscerality from the right against Obama is beginning to exceed even the worst rage of the left against Bush. And there has got to be alarm if any country can withstand such escalating ideological oscillating intact. For when fundamental values heave too much, there could be no remaining common ground to stand.

Ideally, following legitimately democratic elections, Americans should pull together. Unite behind whichever Presidents Americans chose to elect. Ideologically, though? Americans keep pulling yet farther apart. And while raging against Bush from the left was utterly divisive, the guttural response to Obama from the right now crosses the lines of mere division. It may go too far into dangerous territories. Too far beyond every way back to common ground.

It’s hard to even describe how much anger there is. And how isolated this anger is not.

For example.  The following comment erupted in the midst of what had seemed mostly reasonable discussion with American friends concerning ObamaCare:

.. from the first day he entered public office as a member of the Democratic Socialist Party of America under the umbrella of the democratic party, [Obama's agenda] has been to bring this nation to its knees to create the crisis that will let communism take over…

Well.  How classically McCarthyist.  My reply was admittedly dismissive.

If guilt by association were enough to indict or impeach anyone then Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore would be running legal systems — not just their mouths.

And that was that, I thought.  Wrongly.  Because that was only the beginning.  Suddenly, as if by some virtual consensus only I could not perceive, everyone was explaining how well founded that comment had been.  Apparently?  Obama was mentored by Frank Marshall Davis, “a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) at a time when the CPUSA took its marching orders from Moscow.”  And Obama’s father was “a self-avowed Marxist who proposed taxes in Kenya on the rich at a rate of up to 100%!”  And Obama was trained in “tactics advocated by the late radical socialist Saul Alinsky“.  And Obama was injected into American politics by communist Alice Palmer, from the home of radical Bill Ayers, endorsed with the blessings of the Chicago Socialists.  And for twenty years, Obama was a fixture at the knees of Marxist-influenced, Black Liberation Theologian Pastor Jeremiah Wright.  And Obama has expressed unhappiness with the U.S. Constitution for not being sufficiently Marxist in terms of redistributive justice.   And, even though his followers initially failed to understand, there simply can’t be any more doubting that Obama’s promise to fundamentally transform America must be taken as seriously threatening to do precisely as the original commenter had said.  Bring America to it’s knees.  Bring about that old-time communist takeover.

But how can anyone know what motivates President Obama?  What is in his mind — if, whether and when his mind may change?  And when evaluating his actions as President — how does he seem so radically socialist?  What has he done that Hillary Clinton would not also have done?

Apparently?  President Obama is not to be trusted.  There’s only one reason people still don’t realize what a radical he is.  Because he’s hoodwinking everyone to believing he’s a centrist.  But it’s all just an act he puts on.  And also?  Hillary Clinton can’t be trusted either.  She’s just as radical.  There was this thesis she once wrote.  “The Alinsky Way”.

So now I was pretty much stumped, wasn’t I?  Since the Alinsky name had popped up twice — in connection to both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.  Which could not be mere coincidence.  No way.  Writing a thesis — that’s a very serious undertaking.  Clearly, something very nefarious had to be going on.

Nevertheless.  Regardless how radically Marxist Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may or may not be.  There’s bigger trouble to worry:

Because the kind of hatred the left had for Bush and even more-so the kind of hatred I’m seeing from the right for Obama? That can lead to worse consequences than anything the Bush or Obama administrations could have accomplished on their own. It can lead to democracy itself breaking down. And the world can’t afford American democracy breaking down.

Obama got elected democratically. And I hope the right harnesses its disgust to ensure better leadership next elections. It’s just not worth secession or another civil war.

And, just like that, there was agreement.  Consensus, even.  That while there’s lots of anger — people ought to direct their anger constructively.  Thus, only one thing remains to be said.

Too much ideology can never be constructive.  To the contrary.  Whether ideology be Marxist or reactionary McCarthyist — ideological clashing can sunder even the greatest nation.  And that, unfortunately, is becoming clearer by the day.

Last modified on 2011-08-16 06:35:51 GMT. 108 comments