TPJ 238 (Mag. 36): What’s in a Name: Naming the Right the Right Way

Especially now that Mitt Romney has named the “Destroy Social Security, Medicare and every other Federal program the Right Doesn’t Like for One Reason of Another (but don’t mention, the military, the prisons, the “Drug War,” or domestic spying)” Congressman as his Vice-Presidential running mate, central to the Presidential election are the issues of the role of the Federal government in our society. Central also is what the role of the Federal government should be in the regulation of personal behavior, especially in the realm of sex and sexual relations.

Closely related to the latter is the matter of the place of organized religion in public life, and the matter of whether or not particular religious views on such matters should be embedded in the law, both civil and criminal. In the matter of Words Matter, Romney loves to quote the one time the word “God” appears in the Declaration of Independence, which was essentially the Declaration of War on Great Britain by the 13 Colonies.  What he never notes is that the word doesn’t appear at all in our governing document, the Constitution. That is because Romney is a big proponent of ending the separation of church and state. Central also are the economic issues of the concentration of wealth, what is taxation for, and given the unsustainable Federal budgetary deficit, the role of government in dealing with these problems. As well as others, such as whether being fed dog meat as a child in a country where such a practice is common equilibrates with transporting your dog in a dog carrier strapped to the top of your car.

In the political battles that occur over these issues, words matter. As it happens, many of the words presently used in the mainstream media and political culture are mis-leading and do not reflect reality. These terms are usually those that have been created/established by the Right Wing and their paramount wordsmiths such as Frank Luntz. (He is a very clever fellow [1]. Would that we had one like him on our side.) They are used not only by the Right but also by the media and often by what qualifies as the "Left" in the United States. This practice automatically gives the Right a leg up in any debate on any of the above issues as well as many others. This is a situation that has to change if any of the battles with the Right are going to be won. Consider the following.

Let's start with the term "conservative." The GOP candidates are all vying with each other to see who can out-"conservative" the other. But none of them are out to conserve anything. They all want to go backwards, and indeed spend a lot of time telling us that they want to go back to "America the way it used to be" (you know, no unions, no civil rights, no legal abortions, no Medicare or even Social Security, no environmental or financial markets regulation, and etc.). This is actually REACTIONARY politics and that's what our side should begin calling their side.

"Entitlements." When referring to the benefits provided by certain government programs for which people have paid for many years, like, for example, Social Security and Medicare, many politicians, of both major parties, use the term "entitlement." The (strong) implication is that someone is getting something for nothing, or is getting something only because of who they are (often "poor" or otherwise somehow "undeserving"). But no, they are getting it because they have paid for it. On the other hand, if a hedge fund manager gets $4 billion in a year (and one did in 2011), feeling that he is entitled to such a payout because he is such a smart and grand fellow, even though he "earned" it just by trading pieces of paper in an unregulated market, that's called "fair compensation." And so, the term "entitlements" should be replaced on our side by something like "earned benefits."

The term "Social Issues" refers to abortion rights, gay civil rights, end-of-life options, stem cell research, treatment and disease management, and in particular the interest of the Radical Religious Right to control personal sexual behavior through the use of the criminal and civil law (as mentioned above), thus imposing, through the use of the law, a particular religious ideology on the population as a whole. "Social issues" is a nice neutral term that emotionally defuses the whole thing for the Right, making it appear that there is some kind of balance to what they want to achieve. However, all of the issues that come under the rubric are based in the religious positions of a particular minority of the population. When Karl Rove got anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments on the ballot in the 2004 Presidential election in order to get right-wing Christians to the polls to vote for GW Bush, he was not doing it because it was any old "social issue." It was a right-wing religious issue. Therefore, our side should stop calling these matters "social issues" and begin calling them what they really are, "RELIGIOUS ISSUES" or better yet "RIGHT-WING RELIGIOUS ISSUES."

While I'm on this subject, let's consider the term "evangelical." On the one hand, many right-wing Christians are evangelical in the way they promote their religious beliefs. But there are many evangelicals who are not right-wing. They just get lost on the shuffle. We should stop using the term "evangelical" and call the right-wing religious types, Christian and other (and there are Jews and Muslims who fit right in with them politically), what they really are: the RADICAL RELIGIOUS RIGHT or some variation thereof.

On the matter of abortion rights in particular, we should not use the term "pro-life." Given the Religious Right's policies towards people in general after they are born, they are actually not "pro-life" but only "anti-abortion," and then only in a very narrow sense. They are not broadly anti-abortion in terms of prevention because then they would be strong supporters of sex education and birth control. Thus indeed they are they are: ANTI-ABORTION RIGHTISTS, and that's what our side should call them.

Finally, consider the term "big government." From the Right, government is terrible if it does things like regulate the financial markets that when they were allowed to run wild put the country into the current economic mess from which it is recovering very slowly (and they are champing at the bit to destroy the mild re-regulation put in place to try to prevent the collapse from happening again). But "big government" is absolutely at the top of their list when it comes to such matters as criminalizing the religious belief that life begins at the time of viability and for some, the use of contraceptives. Presently, our side gives the Right a virtual monopoly on the use of the term, the way they want to use it. In the fight against them that is a monopoly that needs to be broken.

After the Fall of France at the beginning of the Second World War, when Great Britain stood alone, Winston Churchill spoke of mobilizing the English language and taking it into war. The other side has done this and done it very effectively. It is way past time for our side to begin doing the same thing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Politicus USA, October 30, 2011, "The Secret List of 14 Words Republicans are Never Supposed to Use," http://www.politicususa.com/14-secret-gop-words.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An earlier version of this column was published on BuzzFlash@Truthout on 05.04.2012

Mitt Romney’s Issues (that He Doesn’t Want Discussed)

In the upcoming Presidential election, Mitt Romney faces a serious problem: there are three major issues that relate directly to him --- and he wants to discuss none of them. First is his record in the one elective office he has held, Governor of Massachusetts. He does not want to discuss that because his major achievement was --- ohmygosh - creating the template for the Affordable Care Act. Ooops! He likely also doesn't want to discuss it because by the end of his first term his popularity in the state had fallen so low that he decided not to seek re-election. (See also: Romney Economics: It didn’t work in Massachusetts, and it won’t work now.)

Second is of course the matter of Bain Capital (1). Actually, as is becoming ever more apparent, Romney is bi-modal on this one. He likes to talk about his experience as a businessman as qualifying him to deal the economic problems facing the nation.  But he doesn't want any details of what Bain actually did to be the subject of discussion. In fact, when the Obama Campaign does just that, Romney characterizes it as a "personal attack" (and some good old-fashioned DLC "Democrats" like Cory Booker, Ed Rendell, and Harold Ford, Jr. oh-so-delightfully have backed up the GOP on that). Nevertheless, the Obama people do want to make Bain the bane of Romney's existence --- and for good reason.

The major problems of US industry since the advent of Reaganism have to with "downsizing" (firing workers), "outsourcing" (otherwise known as exporting capital and jobs), and organized bankruptcy. And what did Bain do? It "downsized," "outsourced," and organized bankruptcies, all in such a way as to maximize its own profits. When the President actually points this out, the Romney campaign and its media echo-chambers go nuts. "He's attacking the basis of capitalism." Too bad he wasn't, but he wasn't.  He was only pointing out what Bain in particular is in business to do: make as much money as it can for itself and its stakeholders, like (still) Governor Romney, following the business plan outlined above. Even The New York Times characterizes this kind of fact-based political advertising as “negative attacks” (1a).

But it is the third issue that Romney doesn't want discussed that is perhaps the most critical one in this election: that he is a Mormon. Is this a matter for legitimate concern? Well, for those of us concerned with the central political issue of the separation of church and state and the ever-expanding intrusion of religious doctrine into the law and politics, in a word: yes. According to Frank Rich (as far back as last January), late of the New York Times and now of New York Magazine, "[Romney's] great passion [his Mormonism] is something he is determined to keep secret" (2). It is well-known that many Right-wing Christians (usually referred to by the polite name "evangelicals" even though there are many evangelicals who are not right-wing) refer to Mormonism as a cult, and the evidence contained in the Book of Mormon (3) (see also [4]) to the contrary notwithstanding, "not Christian." But such complaints generally don't make it to the national stage.

Then came The New York Times article about Romney, Mormonism and his personal Mormonism (5). The information contained in it, drawn from friends, colleagues and fellow Mormon activists (and he is, or at least has been, a Mormon activist), raise some serious concerns. The claims of the Radical Religious Right to the contrary notwithstanding, the US Constitution clearly established the separation of church and State and one doesn't need to delve into the correspondence of the Constitution's chief author, James Madison, to determine that. It's right there in the plain language of the "no religious test for office" clause of Article Six and the "no establishment" clause of the First Amendment. Further, neither the word "God" nor the word "Christian" appear anywhere in the document.

In historical Mormonism, the church and state were fully integrated in the person of Brigham Young. Of course, it has not been, on paper at least, since 1890 when Utah made its deal to join the Union. But the important point now is, where does Romney stand on this question? To my knowledge, he has not answered it directly. But what he has said in the vicinity of the question must give pause for thought to those of us concerned with maintaining that separation. (Some would say, given, for example, the Hyde Amendment on abortion rights for the poor and its progeny, and the homosexual discrimination laws on the books in about 30 states and Federal statue as well, see DOMA, that we need to be concerned with re-establishing it). Consider the following.

1. Romney's Liberty University Commencement Address (6) contains such phrases as: "Marriage is the relationship between one man and one woman," a definition that is derived from religious texts (and of course one to which the Mormon Church did not adhere until 1890 [but that's another story]). And "But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man." (Tell that one to Tom Paine, whose Reasonist pamphlet Common Sense sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies back then [!] and fueled the Revolution, Mitt.) And "there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action."

2. Ms. Kantor tells us (5) that "Every Presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romney's is backed by the Mormon (emphasis added) belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired" (which last would have come as a shock, I am sure, to the Deists who wrote it). According to a friend, quoted by name, "He is an unabashed, unapologetic believer the America is the Promised Land" (which must come as a shock to both Christian and Jewish Zionists).

3. Finally, again according to friends and colleagues quoted by name in Ms. Kantor's article, Romney prays frequently, feels that he has a direct connection to "God," and indeed engages in conversations with "God," asking for guidance in making decisions, even about matters of investment. Now, one would have no objection to Tevye talking with "God" in "Fiddler on the Roof." But for someone who would be President of the United States the questions do arise: what is the nature of these conversations; how often do they occur; what influence do "God's" answers have on his decision-making, does "God" accept the principle of the separation of church and state and if so, how does Romney find that his conversations with "God" are consistent with the principle.

Oh dear. From what we have heard, the Obama Campaign has decided not to put the "Mormon" issue on its political agenda. But it has now become apparent that with Mitt Romney, we have much more than a Mormon issue. We have a church/state separation, power of religion and which one, issue. These are issues that Romney himself has put on the agenda with is Liberty University speech. And that, my friends, should be on everyone's political agenda, including that of President Obama, should get onto the national political agenda somehow, before it's too late and our beloved country is on its way to becoming a theocracy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

1. ThinkProgress War Room, "Why Mitt Romney's Time at Bain Capital Matters."

The Progress Report (http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/), May 23, 2012.

1a. Jeff Zeleny, “Obama Strikes Back with Negative Advertisement,” The New York Times, July 28, 2012.

2. Rich, Frank, "Who in God's Name is Mitt Romney?" New York Magazine, Jan. 29, 2012.

3. The Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

4. Tarisco, V., "Former Mormon: What American Need to Know About Mormonism," Alternet.org, March 26, 2012.

5. Kantor, J., "Romney's Faith: Silent but Deep." The New York Times, May 19, 2012.

6. Mitt Romney Press, May 12, 2012

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

An earlier version of this column was published on BuzzFlash@Truthout on 05/24/2012.

It's Time to "Whig" It

Following the initial Federal Period and then until less than ten years before the first Civil War there were two major political parties in the United States: the Democratic Party and the Whig Party.  While it was a national party, the base of the Democratic Party lay in the slave states of the South and its policies generally reflected the interests of the Slave Power.  As the matter of the further expansion of slavery into the Western Territories became more acute, a major split began to develop in the opposition party, the Whigs.  Northern Whigs were generally opposed, not to slavery so much but to its further Westward expansion.  The Southern Whigs tended to favor, or at least tolerate, both the institution and its expansion.  And so, as the two wings gradually drifted apart in the early 1850s, a new party was formed, the Republican Party.  As a national force the Whig Party disappeared quickly.  Its "Free Soil" Northern elements formed the base of the new party, while its pro-slavery (at one level or another) elements moved over to the Democrats. 

The nascent Republican Party presented as an amalgam of interests.  Central was the prevention the further expansion of the institution of slavery westward, for a variety of reasons.  Some northern Democrats also joined it for they too were concerned with preventing the westward expansion of slavery.  Anti-slavery elements of the nativist American Party, which ran the former Whig President Millard Fillmore for President in 1856, after Fillmore's disastrous defeat also gravitated to the Republicans.  Related to nativism was the Temperance Movement, originally aimed at the Germans (beer) and the Irish (whiskey).  Some of them were drawn to the Republicans because of their position on the principle of slavery. 

The abolitionists actually came to the Republican Party fairly late because abolition of slavery in the states in which it existed, ensconced as it was in the Constitution, was not part of the Republican platform and did not become so until well into the first Civil War.  In fact in the late 1850s it was the radical abolitionists, led by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who were advocating secession - of at least the New England states, if not more.  But seeing the conflict over the issue coming to a head in the election of 1860, many abolitionists fell in with the Republicans too.   Lincoln in fact was able to win election in that year, in a four-way race, with just 40% of the popular vote, only because of the disparate coalition which was united around one theme: opposition to the dominance of national policy on the matter of the westward expansion of slavery by the Slave Power. 

And so, what do we face now?  The dominance of national policy, not just on one issue but all of the major ones, by the modern equivalent of the Slave Power, which is the Corporate Power.  The Slave Power was dominated by a tiny oligarchy of very wealthy men, the slave owners.   Among other things, they wanted to continue the westward expansion of slavery both to increase their profits and to increase their political dominance of the national government and national policy.  The Corporate Power is similarly a (relatively) tiny oligarchy of very wealthy men (and now, women) who want to maintain the domination of national policy that they have put together over the past 35 years, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, in order to maintain and expand both their profits and their wealth. 

The major elements of that policy are well-known: the continuation and where possible the expansion of American imperialism around the world; the major exportation of American capital, seeking higher profits abroad; the furtherance of the dependence of the US economy on highly profitable fossil fuels, with the concomitant necessity of the maintenance of foreign military bases to, among other things, protect the oil supply and its routes of transport to the US; the ever-shrinking rates of taxation, primarily benefitting the ruling oligarchy; the continuing attack on the US labor movement; supporting the ever-increasing attacks on personal liberty in such matters as the religious belief as to when life begins and the civil rights of homosexuals so as to make sure that the Religious Right stays firmly with their party; and so on and so forth. 

The response to this agenda on the part of the Democratic Party has been increasingly limp. It was clear from the beginning of the campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2008 that Barack Obama was part of the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council's own coalition (see my column of late 2007, http://tpjmagazine.us/jonas172).  However, his rhetoric during the campaign did fool some of us for a time before the election into thinking that once in office he would behave differently (and I include myself in that group).  Obviously he hasn't.  It is true that the Democratic Leadership Council itself has recently met its demise, but that doesn't mean that its policies have lost their total sway over this administration.  As one wag put it, the DLC doesn't need to live on independently anymore; it has just moved into the White House. 

And so, using the excuse of the losses in the 2010 election, which his total lack of leadership and forthright opposition to GOP policies certainly contributed to, Pres. Obama has continued to attempt to reach "compromise" with the GOP.  That the Congressional leadership of the latter doesn't seem to be interested in much else than assuring his loss in the upcoming Presidential election (Senate Minority Leader, but controller of the Senate through the use of the filibuster, Mitch McConnell) and the repeal of his signature piece of legislation, the "health care reform" act. Even though Obama is finally seeming to get the point, it may well be that his response will too little and too late, especially given how tied he is to many of the same Corporate interests that the Republicans are.  Nevertheless, reaching the consciousness of an increasing number of rank-and-file US citizens is what GOP/DLC/Obama policy is leading us toward. 

That future includes: the continuing export of US capital and with it US jobs (Obama appoints the biggest job exporter of all-time, former GE CEO Jeff Immelt, as his "jobs czar"); the destruction of the only three income redistribution programs left, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the further concentration of both wealth and income in the hands of a smaller and smaller segment of the population; continuing war for the benefit of the military-industrial complex and US imperialism with its drain not only on the US treasury but also the ability of the US to positively influence the actions of other countries; the perpetuation, indeed the acceleration, of global warming and climate change and the ongoing mass extinctions that accompany it; the increasingly likely full destruction of the trade union movement in the US (see what has happened in Wisconsin with the assault on the public employee unions, with virtually no involvement by either the present or the DNC in recall attempt); the ever-burgeoning Federal deficit and national debt because of the abandonment of rational tax policy, that leads to the further dominance of Federal spending by the military and debt service; the maintenance of a Permanent Army of the Unemployed, created so neatly by the recent excesses of Finance Capitalism and the resulting "Great Recession;" and so on and so forth. 

Desperately needed now, if Constitutional Democracy, as defined by the Preamble to that great document (see my Commentary of almost a year ago, "The Preamblers" http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/185) and the Bill of Rights, is to be maintained, indeed restored in the United States, and if a Second Civil War is to be prevented, is a new party.  I am not talking here about a traditional US "third party" which could make a lot of us feel good but which would go nowhere politically.  What we need is for the Democratic Party to split.  We need the formation of the Progressive Democratic Party.  Its platform would be fairly obvious and I need not detail it here.  But what I will deal with here, briefly, is what it would need in order to be effective. 

A Progressive Democratic Party with a chance of winning elections, and in 2012 in a three-way battle the possibility of even winning the Presidency, needs three things.  It needs a significant cadre of elected officials at the Federal, state and local levels to split from Obama and the Corporate Power Democrats and join it, people like John Conyers, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, and Peter Shumlin (the new, pro-single payer, Governor of Vermont).  It needs very significant amount of money from National Interest Capitalists (http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/214) like George Soros and his new group.  It needs strong support from at least part of what's left of the US trade union movement (which would obviously not include that sector of it that is trying to make nice with the US Chamber of Commerce); and it needs dynamic leadership and potential Presidential candidates, like Alan Grayson (yes, Abraham Lincoln was also a one-term Congressman defeated for re-election, in his case because he had opposed the Mexican War) and Dennis Kucinich.

A tall order?  Yes indeed.  But the Republican Party is driving the nation to bankruptcy, both fiscally and in terms of policy.  They are also beginning to sanction the use of deadly force to settle political differences: a committee of the Republican-controlled legislature of South Dakota actually voted out a bill which would make murder of abortion providers legal (The Progress Report, Feb. 15, 2011).  It didn’t become law, but hey, you never know.  Non-closeted gays in public office, for example?  (Going after closeted gays in public office would significantly reduce the numbers of the GOP’s public office holders, so one could not have that done across the board.)  Providers of contraceptives? And with the targeting of progressives for "dirty tricks" by three private security companies, possibly in the employ of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (The Progress Report, Feb. 14, 2011, the Chamber denies it), following up on the proposed South Dakota law, do unofficial death squads taking off from where the dirty tricksters finished up come next?  See Rep. Giffords.  Then there was the obscure liberal Tides Foundation in San Francisco that was singled out by Glen Beck and was on the hit list of a man who was fortunately pulled over for minor a traffic violation (and then engaged in a gun battle with police) before he could get there (http://www.marinatimes.com/aug10/news_presidiotides.html). Think that I'm hallucinating about a Second Civil War?  Think again. The other side is increasingly turning to thoughts of violence to achieve its political aims.  We desperately need a new national party in order to deal with all of these issues.  So let’s “Whig it” for the new Progressive Democratic Party, now!

An earlier version of this column was published on BuzzFlash at Truthout on Wed, 02/16/2011

Pres. Obama is Wrong on Gay Marriage (It’s a Trick Title)

President Obama has announced that he supports gay marriage.  As he said (1): “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married. . . . I had hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient. . . . I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.” 

Wow!  How about that (as the famous old-time New York Yankees radio broadcaster Mel Allen used to say)?  The President has shared with us his personal view on the subject, which he presumably “evolved” to.  Well that’s nice to know, but as our highest elected official he takes no postion on the law.  In fact he has made it clear that as far as the law is concerned, the matter should be left to the states.  And indeed about 30 of them have out-lawed the institution, at one level of another.  So, how is the President, as the President, not just as some observer whose views have “evolved,” wrong on the issue?  Let us count the ways.

1.         In all 50 states marriage (and its dis-solution) is the subject of civil law. To deny same-sex couples access to that part of the civil law clearly violates Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment.  It among other things provides that the states may not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  Thus under the Constitution the states are not free to discriminate in the civil law against a particular sub-group of the population based on their sexual orientation.

2.         He has acknowledged at the same time he is telling us of his personal view that he is sensitive to the views religiously-based opponents of the institution.  Golly gee, Mr. President.  You know that there are some folks who find white supremacy in the Bible, and the justification for slavery and polygamy can be found in it too.  Polygamy was also part of original Mormon doctrine, and is still practiced by some “fundamentalist” Mormons living in far-rural parts of Utah and several neighboring states (with the local law enforcement authorities, for the most part, saying boo to a goose about it, for the most part.  Gov. Romney certainly leaves this one alone when he talks about “marriage traditionally being between one man and one woman.)  The objections to allowing access to that part of the civil law by same-sex couples are always based on religious dicta, most often in this country drawn from Biblical texts (Old and New Testaments and now, the Book of Mormon).  To do so clearly violates the first provision of the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro­hibiting the free exercise thereof.” 

The 14^th Amendment, cited above, also applies the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the States.  Since the banning of same-sex marriage is always “justified” on religious grounds, it clearly “establishes religion” in the law and thus violates the Constitution.  At the same time, under the “free exercise” provision, if a church doesn’t want to perform same-sex marriages it doesn’t have to.  But under the Constitution that does not give state governments the power to ban same-sex marriage in the civil law, for everyone, on religious grounds.

3.         “Anti-gay marriage” laws and initiatives are nothing more or less than dog whistles, more polite indicators, for homophobia.  Can’t be openly against the gays, now can we?  But let’s deny them their civil rights, because they are gay and we don’t like them.  It is well past time that there has to be an attack on this issue.  Homophobia is a deep-seated expression of hatred for folks who are “different,” who are “not like us.”  It is then easy to label gays as second class citizens, and then to make them into second-class citizens by denying them equal rights under the law. 

Many people do not know that the first identity group the German Nazis went after, before they went after the Jews, was the gays.  The mandatory wearing of the Pink Triangle by homosexuals in Nazi Germany came before the mandatory wearing of the yellow Star of David by Jews.  It is fascinating that despite the discrimination, in Nazi Germany there were (presumably closeted) gay members of the Nazi Party.  In fact, Ernst Roehm, the commander of the private Right-Wing militia, the “Sturmabteilung,” the SA, the Brown Shirts, which did so much to push Hitler to power, was gay.  How do we know this?  Well, on what was called “The Night of the Long Knives,” September 30, 1934, when he was assassinated, not because he was gay but because the Prussian Army wanted him and the SA out of the way as part of their price for supporting Hitler, he was murdered in bed alongside a blond 19 year old male.

4.         Finally, politically the most important point to make here is the use to which the Republican Party puts this issue.  Its candidates run on it.  In the 2004 election, Karl Rove arranged to have anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendments put on 11 state ballots, to draw Religious Right voters to the polls so that they could also vote for George Bush.  None other than Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, a liberal/progressive (but surely no radical leftist) has characterized the contemporary GOP as the “American Faith Party” (2).  (Interestingly enough, that post has been taken down from the site.) 

In fact, all of the leading planks in the Republican Party platform (for years) on the so-called “social issues” (correctly termed “religious issues”) are based in a particular religious doctrine: defining life as beginning at the moment of conception, the practicing of legal discrimination against homosexuals, the banning of the use of stem cells for either research or treatment, for some GOPers, the banning of the use of contraceptives, the prohibition of personal decision-making at the end of life.  And Republicans never lose their enthusiasm for telling us that we are a “Christian Nation under God,” despite the fact that neither the word “Christian” nor the word “God" appears anywhere in the Constitution.

These are the issues that need to be joined politically before it is too late.  But where are the President, and indeed all of the leadership of the Democratic Party on them?  Well, I guess that they are all still “evolving.”

1.         Calmes, J. and Baker, P., “Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should be Legal.” New York Times, May 19, 2012.

2.         http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/republican-party-religion-first-religious-party_n_1322132.html

Note: Earlier versions of this column have appeared on OpEdNews and The Planetary Movement.

Dr. J.’s BF Commentary No. 181: The Lesser of the Evils: Hindsight is 20/20, but McCain Shudda Won

The Great Debate on the Left about whether to support President Obama for re-election had been building already, even before the debt limit debacle of this past summer, which led directly to the “failure” of the Special Committee of the Congress. When Chris Christie says that Obama has failed as a leader, he is absolutely correct (although Christie’s reasons for saying so and mine are rather different.)   As exemplified by his poll numbers showing increasing dis-satisfaction among leftists and liberals too, now it is on in full force and will be with us right up until Election Day, 2012.   You can tell from the title of this commentary which side I am on. Except for the election of 1980, when I supported and actually did some work for John Anderson (until for reasons to this day entirely unknown to me he finked out right after Labor Day), I have been a “lesser of the evils” guy. But not this time around. 

The arguments on both sides are pretty well-known and I am not going to retell them here. Neither am I going to go into the details about why I think that the debt limit debacle was a debacle for our side, except to say that if Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan view it as a victory, if Mitch McConnell has the biggest smile on his face I have ever seen, if John Boehner says “I got 98% of what I wanted,” if Nancy Pelosi makes it very clear that she would have voted against it if she were not Minority Leader, if 95 House Democrats did vote against it, if respected moderate left-wing commentators like Bob Scheer and Paul Krugman say that it’s bad stuff, that’s enough for me. 

In previous Commentaries on BuzzFlash@Truthout and elsewhere, I have made it clear that I understood that Obama was a DLCer from the git-go. I have also revealed that on a few occasions, early on, I was taken in by the rhetoric.   And he is good at it. But, I am convinced that one has to take the long view of what is happening to our nation. We might, if we are very, very fortunate, before the true GOP night descends, squeeze our way out of it. But not with Obama in the White House. Thus I do have to tell you that: A) I will not be voting for Obama in 2012 regardless of who the GOP candidate is; B) admittedly with 20/20 hindsight I now fully believe that over the long haul our nation would have been better off had McCain won in 2008, yes, even with that nit-wit of a running mate who was forced upon him.

Why? Well briefly, as James K. Galbraith has laid out very clearly (1), on issue after issue Obama has either been following GOP or GOP-lite policies or he has not been getting into contentious issues, like doing something real about climate change, by just letting them drop. Why, according to the Richard Mellon Scaife Right-Wing Rag NewsMax (2) the economist Austen Goolsbee, formerly of the Obama White House and still consulted by them, recently entertained the author of the infamous “Laffer Curve,” the basis of the even more infamous “Reaganomics,” otherwise known as “voodoo economics” (George HW Bush’s term for it before he was offered the Vice-Presidency by Reagan). The economic fantasies that this man is still peddling 30 years later, that are fully responsible for total economic mess we find ourselves in, were given a respectful listen.   And so we have the outcomes of the GOP policies they have spread all over us since the Reagan Presidency. At the same time the GOP is able to blame all the ills of the nation on Obama, as if the policies were his and/or Democratic ones, not those of the GOP.

But suppose the barons of the Fed and Wall Street had been able to do just a bit more of their behind-the-scenes legerdemain (which, we continue to find out, goes on all the time) and had postponed the September 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers meltdown until, let’s say, November 7, 2008. That would have been a couple of days after the 2008 election and, funnily enough, on the Gregorian calendar the 91^st anniversary of the Russian Revolution. As it happened, McCain had overtaken Obama in the polls by mid-September 2008, when the bankruptcy did occur, with the subsequent collapse of the real estate bubble, the subsequent collapse of the economy, the Paulson/Bush first bank bailout, and so forth and so on. 

But if the collapse had not occurred then, if it had somehow been postponed until after the election, if McCain had maintained the momentum that he had had in mid-September, Obama’s best rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding the aging cancer survivor might actually have become President. (And yes, so-and-so would have been Vice-President.) And so, let’s look at a list of what might have happened in that alternate reality of a McCain Presidency, comparing it to what has really happened under the Obama Presidency. Has to be a big difference, no? After all, the (remaining) Obama supporters and the (supposedly defunct) Democratic Leadership Council (3) tell us so. 

Consider, then, if McCain had been elected President: The war on Afghanistan would have been expanded, with no firm withdrawal date; the bank bailout would have happened, but with even fewer requirements set for the banks; the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior would have been allowed to go on its love-the-oil-industry-let’s-not-do-anything-to-upset-it way and a huge BP gusher disaster would have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico; Guantanamo would have stayed open; “Don’t ask/don’t tell” would remain on the books until now; there would be no real progress on settling the Israel/Palestine problem; plus, plus, and most importantly plus, given that there would not have even been the Obama weak-at-the-knees so-called “stimulus package” the economy would be mired in an even worse massive unemployment/continued export of jobs/no-growth mess.  True, General Motors and Chrysler would have been allowed to go bankrupt and there would have been no "health care reform" legislation (otherwise known as the private “health care” insurance industry subsidy act). But the main features of the Obama Presidency would have been very much in place, with one big exception: The Republicans would have been getting the blame for them, as they should, right into the 2010 elections.  

Guess who would not now be speaker of the House. Guess which GOP Front organization you would have never even heard of. Guess which Minority Leader of which House of Congress might not even have the 40 votes he would need to continue governing-by-just-saying-no. Guess which wing of which party would be preparing to take it over for the 2012 elections. And it ain’t the blue dogs. Guess how many state governments wouldn’t be under total GOP control (starting with Wisconsin and Michigan). Of course, hind-sight is 20/20 and if McCain had won we would be bemoaning what-might-have-been, given the Obama rhetoric. But what we need to do now is face the Obama reality.

If the GOP and the Corporate Power it represents are not stopped soon, our nation is headed for fascism and civil war (4, 5, 6). Obama is only helping to pave the way, both by his actions and by his inactions. The only way to stop this mad dash to hell is for a truly organized, mass-based party to be formed by splitting the Democratic Party, just as the Whig Party was split in the 1850s (7). Yes, it is very unlikely that anything like this will happen in time for next year’s elections. But if Obama is re-elected, the GOP/Corporate Power will continue to have their target-of-blame for the negative outcomes, one after the other, of their very own policies. They and their propaganda pets like the Fox”News”Channel and “News”Max will continue to use that target just as they do now, every day in every way. And then they will roar into the Presidency in 2016, and good night, USA.

Our only hope is for a truly progressive Democratic party, with a significant number of elected officials and liberal moneyed interests being part of it, to rise for the elections of 2014 and 2016, with a true chance of winning, which it would have. But the only way that can happen is if Obama and the right-wing Democrats he represents are out of the picture and do not continue to give the political cover to the Republicans that they just love having. Yes indeed, taking the long historical view, the lesser of the evils for 2012 is anyone-but-Obama.

An earlier version of this was published on The Planetary Movement, The Greanville Post and OpEdNews.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Links:

1.            http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/08-4

2.            http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/laffer-obama-reaganomics-gop/2011/08/10/id/406893?s=al&promo_code=CCF5-1

3.            http://www.dlc.org/

4.            http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/202

5.            http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/208

6.            http://blog.buzzflash.com/print/12913

7.            http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12362