Lamar W. Hankins : Ted Cruz Vs. Personal Liberty

Tea Party darling Ted Cruz. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr.
Ted Cruz:
Opponent of personal liberty

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 9, 2012

Ted Cruz, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, presents himself as a champion of personal liberty, but he is far from that. Based on what he writes on his own campaign website, Cruz is a proponent of restricting liberty in vast areas of our lives.

Cruz opposes the right of women to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their physicians. Like many other right-wingers, Cruz does not believe a woman should have control over her reproductive processes. He believes that the government knows best what a woman should do about unwanted pregnancies. To Cruz, a woman’s reproductive system is mainly the purview of the state. Apparently, this extends even to the decision to use birth control.

Cruz’s views on religious liberty revolve entirely around the right of the government to promote religious practices associated with Abrahamic monotheism, though his views on Islam, one of the Abrahamic religions (along with Christianity and Judaism) are not clear. But he does support the government’s promotion of the Abrahamic God to the exclusion of the religious beliefs of more than 65 million Americans, and about 5.5 million Texans.

 It is politically convenient to side with the majority on religious issues, even if that means that the majority’s religious beliefs are, with the help of the government, crammed down the throats of those who believe differently.

Cruz does not seem to see the nexus between the need for access to health care and liberty, but without health care the liberty one has is severely circumscribed. Not only does Cruz oppose access to health care for all, he opposes George W. Bush’s prescription drug benefit for seniors.

I admit that I have a vested interest in the drug benefit, since I receive Medicare benefits, including those for prescription drugs. Cruz would take from me the financial security that Medicare and all of its benefits provide. Without Medicare, my life would be more limited and its length undoubtedly shortened. The evidence shows that many, if not most, seniors are in the same situation I am in.

When Ted Cruz discusses voting, he apparently does not connect it to liberty. Instead, Cruz believes that voter fraud is a serious problem, though he is unable to find evidence for any significant voter fraud -- just like everyone else who has studied the data. That hasn’t stopped him from supporting laws and regulations that make it difficult for seniors and low-income citizens to vote.

No one who claims to believe in democracy can justify regulations that suppress voting, but Cruz is in favor of taking away from thousands of Texans this seminal freedom, without which we will have little, if any, liberty. The voter suppression Cruz favors most seems to be voter ID laws that require a state-issued ID to register and vote. In Texas, 34 counties do not have a state office that issues photo IDs. Four of these counties have Hispanic populations over 75%. Cruz has not protected the liberty interests of these citizens.

In a 2007 report on voter fraud, the Brennan Center concluded: “The type of individual voter fraud supposedly targeted by recent legislative efforts -- especially efforts to require certain forms of voter ID -- simply does not exist.”

For five years during the George W. Bush presidency, the Justice Department conducted a “war on voter fraud,” which resulted in 86 convictions out of more than 196,000,000 votes cast. This result was not unexpected. It is absurd to believe that there is a systematic effort by large numbers of people to cast a vote as another person.

Such projects would be an enormous waste of time, yield few results, be easy to detect, and are adequately controlled by existing criminal laws with harsh penalties. But Ted Cruz cares so little about the liberty of all Texas citizens that he wants to keep them from voting with such voter suppression laws and regulations.

Cruz’s campaign website claims that he has played an important “role in the fight against infringement of private property rights,” including those arising from the use of eminent domain by government or allowed by government.

But where has Cruz been in the fight against the abuse of eminent domain allowed by Texas law for such companies as TransCanada, which is trying to take the land of Texas citizens to build a pipeline to transport tar sands oil to be refined at two Texas refineries and sold overseas to increase their profits? This pipeline will not lower any Texan’s gasoline bill or provide any long-term jobs that will benefit Texans, but Cruz has not stood up for the liberty interests of Texas landowners to protect and preserve their land.

For Cruz and many right-wingers, same-sex marriage is not seen as a matter of personal liberty. Cruz thinks he and the government have the right to tell citizens whom they can love and marry. In fact, he is proud to deny citizens the right to choose the mate of their choice unless that mate is someone of the opposite sex.

No liberty interest is more personal than the right to choose with whom to live, love, and marry, yet Cruz places his personal religious beliefs and preferences over the liberty interests of the entire gay population. To deny anyone such a basic liberty grounded in religious belief means that other liberties can be denied also for religious reasons. Cruz’s position is antithetical to the Constitution and basic morality -- and personal liberty.

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights. To his credit, Cruz opposes “groups that spout hatred and bigotry,” but to Cruz this means that such groups cannot participate in civic projects of benefit to all.

While I have opposed the Ku Klux Klan longer than Cruz has been alive, it violates the constitutional rights of association and free speech to deny that backward group the right to pick up litter along the highways as part of a government-sponsored program, which is an action that Cruz is proud to have pursued.

Cruz may think he supports the liberty interests of all of our citizens, but he is mistaken. He is an extreme right-wing ideologue, selected by the Republican Party of Texas, mainly through the efforts of Tea Party zealots and their rich friends, to go to Washington to destroy the social safety net that protects all our citizens from lives of misery and poverty.

He has spent his brief career in the service of corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans -- the plutocracy that is very near to complete control of our political and economic systems.

Texans have risen up in the past to oppose injustice and fight for liberty. Electing politicians like Ted Cruz is a step in the wrong direction. It is the direction that will ensure that we will all have less liberty and more government control over our lives.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Ayn Rand and the Sophistry of the Libertarians

Art from Salon.
The sophistry of Ayn Rand libertarians

The profiteers, using libertarian justifications, help corporations dominate American life to satisfy their quest for greater profits.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 29, 2011

In 1964, I roomed with Wally. Wally had discovered Ayn Rand and talked frequently about rugged individualism -- his desire to be left alone by the state, by institutions, and by others to follow his own path. Wally thought no one should tell him what to do.

That entire semester, Wally probably missed 90% of his college classes. After all, he wanted his liberty. Needless to say, his grades suffered, but we had some fascinating discussions about philosophy and the socioeconomic condition of the U.S., a subject about which Wally took no responsibility. After all, each person is responsible for his or her own condition, created by his or her own choices.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is echoed in the callousness of the current Republican presidential campaign, where Herman Cain states that if a person doesn’t have a job, it is that person’s fault; where Ron Paul suggests that if a person needs health care but has chosen not to purchase health insurance, then it is perfectly acceptable to let that person die.

Where all undocumented immigrants should be immediately shipped back to their country of origin, and electrified, military-guarded fences should be erected to assure that they cannot return; where the crowd applauds all of Gov. Perry’s executions, even if some of those executed were innocent; where waterboarding is torture that makes Republicans feel good (they like to call it “enhanced interrogation”); where gay servicemen are booed; and where “no work, no food” is an honored value.

It’s chilling: even George W. Bush claimed to have compassion, but Tea-party-leaning, Ayn Rand-spouting Libertarians have none.

Rooming with Wally was my introduction to libertarianism. If that had been the end of my study of libertarianism, I would have a more jaundiced view than I now have of the philosophical underpinnings of that philosophy.

Now, over 45 years later, libertarianism is widely discussed and mentioned in conversation. We have some politicians who claim to be Libertarians. Many freethinkers call themselves libertarians -- comedian Bill Maher, illusionist Penn Jillet, biologist P. Z. Myers, and others. I often agree with some libertarian ideas, but I’ve come to realize that there is a fatal flaw in Ayn Rand libertarian philosophy.

To say that someone is a libertarian is about as useful as saying that a person is religious. There may be as many varieties of libertarianism as there are religions in the U.S. Lately, though, many in the political class identify themselves as Any Rand libertarians, so I will focus on their brand of libertarianism.

After all, it is the kind extolled by Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and most of this year’s crop of Republican presidential hopefuls, though I don’t claim that any of them follow Ayn Rand’s philosophy (Objectivism) in any systematic way.

Ayn Rand extolled the virtues of individualism, sometimes called rugged individualism, as a lynchpin of her beliefs. Individualists are glorified as ambitious, fiercely independent people who succeed spectacularly in life solely because of their own actions, resources, intellects, and willpower.

In Ayn Rand’s world, the masses of people don’t fit this description. They are largely miserable souls who occasionally overcome their misery thanks to the exceptional abilities of a few individualists, who do great things because of their creativity and intellectual acumen.

If this is your view, your reality is not the same as mine. When I look at society in the U.S., I see opportunities for many people made possible by the collective actions of us all -- a system based on an implicit social contract that has created public education, infrastructure, modern utilities, water resources on which all life depends, organized social and economic systems that, however flawed, make possible success for the great masses of our people.

Rand’s idea that those who succeed do so because of their individualist qualities that make them some sort of supermen is a dishonest analysis of how our society works. One has to have blinders not to see the importance of the cooperative spirit that pervades America.

Most of our politicians don’t believe in the American government because they don’t believe in the basic tenets of our democracy; they don’t believe in the Constitution, and they don’t believe in the Declaration of Independence, both of which are imbued with a collective, cooperative spirit.

Based on their actions in the last 30 years, nearly all Republicans (as well as many, sometimes most, Democrats and some independents) don’t believe that government should have the purposes envisioned by our founders. The Declaration, for instance, provides as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

For the most part, libertarians don’t like the fact that governments are created by people to secure for everyone the basic rights of equality and a multitude of other rights -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- which were further explained and expanded in the Bill of Rights.

All of these ideas from the Declaration and Constitution create an implicit bargain -- a social contract -- among the American people. The essence of that social contract is that we will help one another by joining together to form a government that will serve the interests of us all.

But Ayn Rand and her current libertarian followers nowhere acknowledge the truth written by W. E. B DuBois 55 years ago: "We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is ‘legal’ we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal." And that has been the failure of our republic for at least the last 30 years. The profiteers have been allowed to write or re-write the rules under which our political and economic system operates.

Governance, as the Occupy movement is arguing, is all about balancing the interests inherent in the social contract and the rights we have so that one group (the “profiteers”) cannot dominate another, a view anathema to the 1% and their defenders, who spend millions to make sure the rules favor them and not the 99%.

The profiteers, using libertarian justifications, help corporations dominate American life to satisfy their quest for greater profits; to enrich the wealthy further, insisting that people pull themselves up by their bootstraps (ignoring the fact that to do so literally means that you land on your backside when you try); to deny the basic need of all people for adequate food, housing, education, and medical care if they are unable to afford those things because they can’t find a job, are unable because of infirmity to hold a job, or are a child in need of nurture and care.

To pass laws like Medicare Part D in a way that enriches the pharmaceutical and insurance industries at the expense of the people and creates greater deficits; to let half the people and many corporations get away with contributing nothing to fund the federal government; to refuse to stabilize Social Security through two simple methods -- expand the payroll tax to all earned income, and recover through the tax system most Social Security benefits paid to the wealthy; and to fight wars that do little if anything to protect America, but everything to enrich defense contractors, funding these wars with borrowed money.

The signers of the Declaration believed that laws should be adopted that are “most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” This belief is virtual heresy to most Ayn Rand libertarians, who do not want laws that are for the public good. They want laws that benefit the corporations and the wealthy. They ignore the Constitution, which provides that one of the purposes of our form of government is to “promote the general Welfare.”

One of the most succinct statements in opposition to Ayn Rand’s philosophy came recently from Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren at a house party in Massachusetts:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea -- God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Warren’s message is one well-understood by the Occupy movement, whose members are driven by a profound commitment to democratic principles and to an economic system that will assure a decent life for all, rather than just the 1%.

Ayn Rand viewed the misery of many of the world’s people as a failure of their will. She would not acknowledge that our government, through opportunism, the taking of natural resources, militarism, and exploitation of the labor of third world people, made possible much of our prosperity.

Rand’s philosophy is grounded in selfishness and greed disguised as virtue. The needs of others, including those starving and homeless, are not worth her consideration. As far as Rand was concerned, these weak, defective people could just die.

I value individualism, but within certain boundaries. When I look at the world, I recognize that I have whatever success I have had not as some willful lone ranger operating on my own. I had friends, family, teachers, mentors, opponents, leaders, public servants, and countless others long forgotten who helped me become whatever I have become.

I have never seen anyone else whose life has been otherwise. It takes extreme myopia or mendacity not to see that rugged individualism is a figment of Ayn Rand’s imagination. Not only are her novels fictional, but her entire philosophy is based on a fiction, as well.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

Also see:

• "Considering the Philosophy of Ayn Rand" by Bill Meacham / The Rag Blog / August 3, 2011.

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Joshua Brown : Life During Wartime: Slay the Beast

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Political cartoon and verse by Joshua Brown / The Rag Blog / February 20, 2011.The Rag Blog

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Eric W. Dolan : Rick Perry Says Social Security is 'Ponzi Scheme'

Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Photo from AP.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry:
Let states opt out of Social Security

Eric W. Dolan / November 7, 2010

See "Yo, America. It’s Texas. We’ve got another one for ya!" by James Moore, Below.

Appearing on television Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a potential contender for the Republican nomination in 2012, said that he wants states to be able to opt-out of Social Security.

On CNN's Parker/Spitzer, hosted by Democrat and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and political columnist Kathleen Parker, Perry compared Social Security to a ponzi scheme and said that Americans want Washington to stop spending so much money.

"Here's what I think would be a very wise thing," he began. "In 1981, Matagorda, Brazoria, and Galveston Counties all opted out of the Social Security program for their employees. Today, their program is very, very well-funded and there is no question about whether it’s going to be funded in the out years. It’s there. That’s an option out there."

"So, you want to let people opt out?" responded Spitzer.

"I think, let the states decide if that’s what's best for their cities," Perry replied.

"So the states will let people opt out of Social Security?" Spitzer asked

"They should," the recently reelected Texas governor said.

In his forthcoming book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington, Perry is highly critical of federal government policies. Though not on sale until November 15th, excerpts were recently leaked to reporters.

In the book, Perry criticizes government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, but seems to exempt America's largest expenditures on defense, national security, and foreign military aid.

Instead, Perry attacks social welfare programs as "fraudulent systems designed to take in a lot of money at the front and pay out none in the end."

"This unsustainable fiscal insanity is the true legacy of Social Security and the New Deal," he wrote.

The book is also critical of the the 17th Amendment, which established the election of senators by popular vote instead of by state legislatures.

Though posturing himself as a small-government conservative, Perry was behind a scheme to implement a "market-based approach" to the state's highway congestion by dividing Texas into corridors split by massive toll roads financed by foreign investors. Land would have been seized by eminent domain and tolls would have been collected for 50-plus years.

While the so-called "Trans-Texas Corridor" has been effectively scrapped, critics of the plan say it is still largely in play but renamed and broken into dozens of smaller projects.

Perry was also criticized by Republicans for ordering every school-age girl in the state to receive an injection of the Guardasil vaccine, meant to protect against cervical cancer. His executive order, which the GOP-dominated legislature blocked, came after drug maker Merck doubled lobbying efforts in the state.

At the time of Perry's reelection, Texas was running an estimated budget deficit of up to $17 billion, according to the state comptroller's office.

Asked directly if he plans on seeking the presidency, Perry did not offer a concrete answer.

A national survey conducted by the GfK Roper consulting firm found that 90 percent of those ages 18 to 29 considered Social Security "important" and nearly 80 percent of those over 65 considered it "one of the very most important government programs."

In addition, 80 percent of respondents said contributing to Social Security benefited "the common good."

RAW STORY editor Stephen C. Webster contributed to this report.

Source / The RAW STORY

...Perry should learn a little history before he raises up the 1981 experiment as a model for Social Security reform. In that experiment, three Texas counties “decided to opt out of Social Security and instead to provide their public employees with a system of privatized accounts.” But this system left participants worse off than they would have been under Social Security.

Moreover, Perry’s proposal closely resembles Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe “A Noun, a Verb and Unconstitutional” Miller’s economically impossible plan for a state takeover of Social Security and Medicare.

A workable plan to allow states to opt out of Social Security would require draconian provisions, such as a mandate that everyone must retire in the same state that they worked and paid taxes in. Otherwise, workers who are too young to receive Social Security benefits would move to an opt-out state to avoid paying Social Security taxes -- and then promptly move to a state with Social Security benefits the moment they became eligible.

Eventually, the entire system would collapse under the weight of too many Social Security beneficiaries who had not paid into the system.

And this isn’t even the first time this week that Perry released a completely unworkable idea whose only virtue is that it will poll well with the Tea Party. Earlier this week, Perry released excerpts from his forthcoming book that attack the Constitution for allowing a national income tax and for requiring senators to be chosen through a radical process known as an “election.”

-- Ian Millhiser / ThinkProgress / Truthout / November 6, 2010

Dream team? Rick Perry and Sarah Palin during Perry campaign rally February 7, 2010, in Cypress, Texas. Photo by Dave Einsel / Getty Images.
Yo, America. It’s Texas.
We’ve got another one for ya!

By James Moore / November 3, 2010

There are many people hoping the GOP chooses Sarah Palin to run against President Obama and we can finally get a definitive answer to this nagging question of national self-immolation. I do not believe we will be able to make that choice. The electorate tends to dance with radicals and buy them drinks but generally lets them go home alone to have more scary dreams.

Well, here is another frightening notion to all y’all from your friends down here in Texas: President Rick Perry.

Perry painted the state an even brighter red, in part, because his democratic opponent, former Houston Mayor Bill White, suffered from the heartbreak of ineffectuality. Nothing he tried inspired and his strongest messages were, “I’m not Rick Perry,” and “Rick Perry has been governor long enough.”

Coyote-killer Rick, however, was taking credit for the state’s geography and climate, which have been essential to job and business growth. Regardless of what the governor argues, no one is coming here as a result of his or his party’s policies. Property taxes are the worst in the country and the schools that are funded with that money are overwhelmingly mediocre, which has led to a scandalous charter school program.

Roads are falling apart, state parks are suffering decaying infrastructure, our air is the dirtiest in the country, mass transit is resisted by leadership, and we are ranked 48th or 49th in every government consideration other than raising up unqualified presidential candidates.

Perry might be a little light in his Lucchese’s but he has shown a great facility for ignoring standards and even the law without enduring penalty. On the same day his reelection filled the column inches and the web site of the Austin paper, there was also a report that the governor was refusing to release a copy of a $4.5 million contract with the state. The money went to a startup technology company founded by one of Perry’s major donors.

The American Statesman filed a Freedom of Information request but Perry’s office said no and ignored the fact that those millions are tax dollars and the manner in which they are spent is subject to public disclosure.

How money is used and where it comes from makes the kid from Paint Rock a bit nervous, unless, of course, he is the beneficiary. He has become inexplicably wealthy during his term while earning less than $200,000 annually.

Conversely, he has turned down hundreds of millions in education dollars from the federal government that would have provided improvements to Texas schools because he claimed there were “strings attached.” There were: good grades.

The red run of Election Day does more good for Perry’s opaque ambition than it does Sarah Palin’s. As he brags about having the best job in America, the governor begins a national tour for his slim book about being fed up with the feds.

Answers to softball questions will saturate the airwaves from friendly media over the next few weeks and there will be talk of his Texas mandate and it how it compares to the whopping win George W. Bush earned in his race against former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro.

The pretext to begin circulating Perry’s name for a presidential run will be easily established and the Tea Partiers that he energized with his irresponsible talk of secession will slowly turn pragmatic and confront the question of who can win in 2012.

Palin may not have been the personality who sent those Tea Partiers to the polls but she loves them and they have affection for her. That attraction, however, cannot be consummated because there will never be enough Tea Partiers to elect a president. A compromise is inevitable since the GOP cannot field an electable candidate without energizing the party’s Diaspora, which has tipped way right.

What’s a bad speller to do? Palin will do well in several early primary states and if the GOP wants to have any chance against President Obama it will have to engineer a ticket.

No matter what either party suggests, American presidential politics is more about viscera than intellect and issues. Uncertain voters tend to make decisions based upon charisma and aesthetics. Few people trust political ads and when they are busy trying to pay down credit card debt or keep the mortgage banker at bay they do not have time to read party platforms or study issues on candidate web pages. Party activists are the only people paying attention to campaigns until the last few weeks. Which leads us back to Rick Perry.

The GOP is already spending time trying to find a prospect to get Sarah to act a bit more politically demure. Their options are limited. Haley Barbour, the well-wired governor of Mississippi (State motto: Thank god for Texas) has the round face and weary drawl of an old school southern pol. As connected as he is to governors’ mansions and DC insiders, he would have a tough task against Obama if for no other reason than aesthetics.

Mitt Romney is arguably too polished and too Mormon. Whether they will acknowledge it or not there are millions of Christians in the U.S. that still view Mormonism as a cult and it hurts Romney’s chances. (The John Kennedy and first Catholic president analogy is not relevant.)

Jeb Bush will not be able to help himself and will pursue the White House because he wants to prove he is the “smart one” in his family but there are no more than two dozen voters that want to see another Bush or Clinton on a national ticket.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will likely enter the picture as an independent and burn enough money to make E-Bay’s big bucks Meg Whitman look fiscally prudent but he will not travel well in the south; except for Florida.

The compromise ticket will be Perry and Palin. They will make a lovely camera-ready couple from the union’s two biggest states. (The Hair Pair?) Team Tea Party has fondness for both of them and the mainstream party machine can convince donors that Sarah will never get her hands on the nuclear launch codes but that she is necessary to elect the ticket.

The only complication is Karl Rove’s role. He is still ginning up cash and running a big fund-raising operation and he has offended Palin and the Tea Party. Karl, who does not seem to be able to keep friends, led Perry’s campaign when he won his first statewide office in Texas but there has been an alienation of affection. Rove supported Sen. Kay Hutchison in her race for governor against Perry in the Republican primary. Karl will need to be taught to heel but that should not be a problem since he has proven in the past that victory and money are more important than any principle.

So, there you go, America; since you are too busy to get informed we will just turn this into American Idol or maybe Dancing with the Stars. Nothing to read. Just use your cell phone or your remote to vote. Have fun!!!

And we will go ahead and start grooming you another goofball down here in Texas.

[James Moore is an Emmy award-winning former national TV news correspondent and a New York Times best-selling author who now works as a communications strategist, writer, and political analyst.]

Source / MooreThink

Thanks to Steve Russell / The Rag Blog

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Robert Jensen : Glenn Beck's Redemption Song

rial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28. Photo by Alex Brandon / AP / Christian Science Monitor.
'Restoring honor' in DC:
Glenn Beck’s redemption song

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / August 30, 2010

About halfway through Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the DC mall, I realized that I was starting to like Glenn Beck.

Before any friends of mine initiate involuntary commitment proceedings, let me explain. It’s not that I really liked Beck, but more that I experienced his likeability. Whether or not he’s sincere, I came to admire his ability to project sincerity and to create coherence out of his incoherent rambling about religion, race, and redemption.

As a result, I’m more afraid for our political future than ever.

First, to be clear: Beck is the embodiment of everything I dislike about the U.S. politics and contemporary culture. As a left/feminist with anti-capitalist and anti-empire politics, I disagree with most every policy position he takes. As a journalist and professor who values intellectual standards for political discourse, I find his willful ignorance and skillful deceit to be unconscionable.

So, I’m not looking for a charismatic leader to follow and I haven’t been seduced by Beck’s televisual charm, nor have I given up on radical politics. Instead, I’m trying to understand what happened when I sat down at my computer on Saturday morning and plugged into the live stream of the event.

Expecting to see just another right-wing base-building extravaganza that would speak to a narrow audience, I planned to watch for a few minutes before getting onto other projects. I stayed glued to my chair for the three-hour event.

My conclusion: What I saw was the most rhetorically and visually sophisticated political spectacle in recent memory. Beck was able to both connect to a right-wing base while at the same time moving beyond the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, potentially creating a new audience for his politics. It’s foolish to make a prediction based on one rally, but I think Beck’s performance marked his move from blowhard broadcaster to front man for a potentially game-changing political configuration.

My advice: Liberals, progressive, and leftists -- who may be tempted to denounce him as a demagogue and move on -- should take all this seriously and try to understand what he’s doing. Here’s my best attempt to understand it.

Religion

There’s nothing new about mixing Christianity and right-wing politics in the United States, and Beck put forward a familiar framework: America is a Christian nation that honors religious freedom. Christians lead the way in the United States, but the way is open to all who believe in God.

Anyone teaching the “lasting principles” found in all faiths is welcome, despite theological differences. “What they do agree on is God is the answer,” Beck said in his call for a central role for religious institutions, whether they be churches, synagogues, or mosques.

But for all the religious rhetoric, Beck never talked about the hot-button issues that are important to conservative Christians. No mention of abortion or gays and lesbians. Theologically based arguments against evolution and global warming were not on the table. No one bashed Islam as a devilish faith.

Instead, Beck concentrated on basics on which he could easily get consensus. God has given us the pieces -- faith, hope, and charity -- and all we have to do is put them together. Rather than arrogantly assert that God is on our side, he said, we have to be on God’s side.

Beck may eventually have to voice clear opposition to abortion and gay marriage to hold onto conservative Christian supporters, but on Saturday it was his apparent religious sincerity that mattered. I have no way to know how serious Beck’s faith in a traditional conception of God really is, but it doesn’t matter.

He sounds sincere and moves sincere; he creates a feeling of sincerity. He brings an emotional candor to public discussion of religion that is unusual for someone in his line of work. When religious people believe that someone’s profession of faith is real -- that it’s rooted in a basic decency and is deeply felt -- then differences over doctrine become less crucial.

There has been some discussion of whether Beck, a convert to Mormonism, can really connect to Protestants and Catholics, some of whom view the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a cult rather than an authentic Christian denomination. No doubt some evangelical/fundamentalist Christians will reject Beck, but his personal appeal could overcome those objections for many others.

Race

There’s also nothing new in Beck’s analysis of race. Like most conservatives, he argues that America’s racism is mostly a thing of the past, and that racial justice means a level playing field that offers equal opportunity but does not guarantee equal outcomes.

Rather than come to terms with the way white supremacy continues to affect those outcomes through institutionalized racism and unconscious prejudices, folks like Beck prefer a simple story about personal transcendence and the end of racism.

What was different about Beck’s version of this story was the supporting cast. There were a lot of non-white people on the stage, including a significant number of African Americans. The rally went well beyond the tokenism that we are used to seeing, not only in the Republican Party but also in institutions throughout society.

Beck not only gave a featured speaking slot to Alveda King -- one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nieces, no doubt selected to bolster his claim to be speaking in the MLK tradition -- but also paid close attention to race throughout the day. Take a look at the lineup for the presenters of the three civilian badges of merit for faith, hope, and charity: An American Indian presenting to an African-American; a white man presenting to a Dominican; and a Mexican-American presenting to a white man, with a black woman accepting on his behalf.

Is it all cynical and symbolic? For those of us who are white, do we have a right to ask that question in the presence of so much passion from the people of color on stage? These weren’t cardboard cutouts shoved in front of a camera to add color, but an eclectic mix of people, all espousing a fundamental faith that they seemed to share with Beck.

Whether a movement rooted in Beck’s approach can gain wide acceptance in non-white communities is not the only question. For white people who are struggling with how to live (or, at least, appear to live) a commitment to racial justice, this kind of space will be attractive.

Tea Party gatherings are weighed down by an overt racial ideology that limits their appeal; Beck may have a strategy that overcomes that problem, creating a movement that has a significant enough non-white component to make white people feel good about themselves without really challenging white dominance.

Redemption

The key message of the “Restoring Honor” rally was redemption, personal and collective, the personal intertwined with the collective. Unlike some reactionary right-wingers, Beck spoke often about America’s mistakes -- though all of them are set safely in the past. Rather than try to downplay slavery, he highlighted it. It is one of America’s “scars,” a term he repeated over and over, to emphasize that our moral and political failures are from history, not of this moment.

“America has been both terribly good and terribly bad,” leaving us with a choice, he said. “We either let those scars crush us or redeem us.” Just as all individuals sin, so do all nations. Just as in our personal life we seek redemption, so do we as a nation. Framed that way, who would not want to choose the path of redemption?

But while on one level America has sinned, on another level it is beyond reproach. “It’s not just a country, it’s an idea, that man can rule himself,” Beck said. An idea remains pure, which means we don’t have to wonder whether there’s something about our political and economic systems that leads to failures; injustice must be the product of individuals' mistakes, not flaws in the systems in which they operate.

This is all standard conservative ideology as well. The United States is not just a nation struggling to be more democratic, but is the essence of democracy. Our wars are, by definition, wars of liberation. The wealth-concentrating capitalist system is not an impediment to freedom but is the essence of freedom.

How any of this jibes with the egalitarian and anti-imperial spirit of the Gospels is off the table, because the United States is a Christian country and the idea of the United States is beyond reproach.

But, again, the key to Beck’s success is not just the ideology but the way he puts it all together. A nation whose wealth rests on genocide, slavery, and ongoing domination of the Third World is the nation that defines faith, hope, and charity? Beck “proves” it by connecting Moses to George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. All are part of the same tradition, the same striving for freedom.

Beck is the perfect person to sing this redemption song. He talks openly of the alcohol and drug abuse that ruled his life until he discovered his faith in God. Unlike George W. Bush, Beck tells the story with conviction. Perhaps both Bush and Beck tell the truth about their experience, but Beck makes you feel it is the truth in a way Bush could never pull off.

Reactions

Wait a minute, you say, none of this makes a lick of sense. Beck tosses a confused and confusing word salad that rewrites history and ignores reality. Maybe it sounds good, if you throw in enough energetic music and inspirational personal stories from veterans, ministers, philanthropists, and skillful TV personalities. But it’s really nothing but old right-wing ideology, no matter how slick and heartfelt the presentation.

What would Beck’s supporters say? Probably something like this:

So, you are one of those who wants to keep picking at the scars. Why do you lack faith, reject hope, refuse to offer charity? Why do you turn away from the values and principles that made us great? Glenn said it: “We must advance or perish. I choose, advance.” Glenn wants to help us advance, and you want us to perish.

I agree that Beck is wrong about almost everything. I agree that given his record of demagoguery and deception, he is unfit for work in the news media or political leadership. I agree that he may be one of those people incapable of sincerity, someone whose “real” personality is indistinguishable from his stage persona. I agree that he’s a scary guy.

I agree with all that, which is why I don’t really like Glenn Beck. If I ever got close to Beck I would probably like him even less. But after watching his performance on a screen over those three hours, I understand why it’s so easy to like him, at least on a screen. His convoluted mix of arrogance and humility is likable, so long as one doesn’t look too closely at the details.

More than ever, people in the United States don’t want to look at details, because the details are bleak. Beck is on the national stage at a time when we face real collapse. One need not be a Revelation-quoting end-timer to recognize that we are a nation on the way down, living on a planet that is no longer able to supply the endless bounty of our dreams. That’s a difficult reality to face, one that many clamor to deny.

The danger of Beck is not just his appeal to fellow conservatives, but rather his appeal to anyone who wants to deny reality. My fear is not that he will galvanize a conservative base and make a bid for leadership of that part of the political spectrum, but that his message will resonate with moderates, maybe even some liberals, who despair over the future.

Does worrying about Beck’s appeal beyond the far right seem far fetched? The most important rhetorical move Beck made on Saturday was to claim the rally “has nothing to do with politics.” Many people across the ideological spectrum want desperately to escape from contemporary politics, which seems to be a source of endless frustration and heartbreak.

To those people, Glenn Beck’s redemption song will be seductive.

A version of this essay appeared on the Texas Observer website.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing, which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.]

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Conservative Economics : Just Plain Loco

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle / MSNBC.
Still trickling after all these years...
The insanity of conservative economics

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / July 9, 2010

Like a bunch of lemmings following each other over a cliff to disaster, conservative politicians, pundits, and economists refuse to give up their allegiance to Reagan's "trickle down" economics in spite of the fact that the last 30 years have shown it simply does not work.

They cling to the belief that if we just keep making the rich people even richer they will share their good fortune with everyone else. They have obviously overlooked the natural greed of humans (especially after they have amassed a lot of money).

What has this ridiculously simplistic view of economic policy done to this country?

• It has tripled the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1% and the middle and poorest fifths of the country since 1979.
• It has increased the wealth of the top 1% of families from 10% of the country's income to about 25%.
• By de-regulating Wall Street and the financial industry it created the conditions leading to the financial meltdown that kicked off the current recession.

Instead of creating an economic vitality that resulted in increased wealth for everyone, it has just created an ever-growing and enormous gap between the rich and everyone else in this society. Making sure the rich got richer has been a real boon for the rich, but it has been an economic disaster for everyone else.

Now some conservatives would like to take this "make the rich even richer" policy even further. A member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Stephen Moore, appeared on CNBC and said the government shouldn't let Bush's tax cuts for the rich expire next January. He went on to say, "In fact, if I could have my 'druthers, I'd raise the 10 percent tax rate to 15 percent and lower the [top] rates."

Incredible! He wants to raise taxes on those taxpayers who make the least money and lower the taxes on those who make the most. How will this help to end the recession? It won't. It will do nothing but vastly increase the huge gap between the haves and the have-nots and mire those have-nots even deeper into the recession. But he is certainly not the only conservative wanting to "make the rich even richer" as an answer to our economic problems.

Arthur Laffer, a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Board, has an even crazier idea. Laffer said in a Wall Street Journal article that the best way to stimulate the economy is to eliminate all federal taxes. He said:

No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all, which would have reduced federal revenues by $2.4 trillion annually. Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound?

Amazing! How does he think the federal government is going to fund the military (and the two unending wars we are fighting), social security, Medicare, education, small business and housing loans, government salaries, food stamps, and myriad other federal programs. Does he want to do away with the federal government altogether? We tried a version of that under the Articles of Confederation and it didn't work at all. Without the federal government we don't have a country -- regardless of what many right-wingers think.

The truth is that we must have a federal government and it must be able to finance itself -- and the only way to logically do that is through a fair system of taxation. Conservatives in Congress are already complaining about this country's deficit. They have refused to extend unemployment benefits or fund a new stimulus program to create new jobs because they claim it would increase the deficit. But Laffer's idea would increase the nation's debt by many trillions of dollars, instead of the few billion a badly-needed stimulus program would cost.

And it would not create any new jobs. Laffer's idea that eliminating all federal taxes would create an unemployment rate of 2% is laughable at best. Lowering taxes (or eliminating them) does not create jobs. If Laffer had ever run a business he would know that there is only one thing that causes an employer to hire one or more new workers -- need.

An employer will only hire a worker if he needs that worker to either increase production of goods or deliverance of services that the business needs to meet customer demand. Hiring fewer workers than needed will hurt production of goods and delivery of services, and cost the company customers (who will go to a company that can't meet its needs). Hiring more workers than are needed will just needlessly cut into company profits (something no business wants).

A business will hire the number of workers it needs to meet demand, regardless of whether taxes are high or low. If taxes get too high the business will raise prices. If taxes get lowered the business will put the extra profit in the bank. But taxes will not cause the business to hire either more or less workers than needed to meet demand.

Laffer is simply an idiot, especially considering the big deal most other conservatives are making over the federal deficit. Most of them seem to believe that cutting the deficit is the way out of the recession. But cutting government spending in the midst of a serious recession will do nothing but deepen and extend the recession. The deficit is not nearly as important as job creation in the midst of this recession (which has cost the country between 12 and 15 million jobs).

The American people seem to understand this even if the conservatives do not. A new Gallup Poll shows that at least 60% of Americans approve of more government spending to stimulate the economy and create new jobs. They know that the only real way to cut the deficit without hurting the country is to create new jobs. When enough new jobs are created with those new workers paying more in taxes, the deficit will be reduced.

Americans also disagree with other aspects of conservative economic policy. Around 55% would like to see the government expand regulation of major financial institutions (to prevent another financial meltdown that hurts Main Street more than Wall Street). And 56% believe the government should regulate energy output from private companies to reduce global warming (a move that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says would save $19 billion).

Conservatives may believe that the way to a healthier economy is to make rich people richer, but the American people aren't buying it any more. They know from painful experience that money doesn't "trickle down" in our capitalist economy -- it flows upward. When workers are doing well everyone does well. That's just the way it is.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Ruth Rosen : The New Right-Wing Christian Feminism

Women's Christian Temperance Union.In the late nineteenth century, female reformers sought to protect the family from “worldly dangers.”
The Tea Party and the new
Right-wing Christian feminism

By Ruth Rosen /July 6, 2010

Why have American women become so active in the right wing Tea Party movement? Could it be that they are drawn to the new conservative Christian feminism publicized by Sarah Palin? Without its grassroots female supporters, the Tea Party would have far less appeal to voters who are frightened by economic insecurity, threats to moral purity, and the gradual disappearance of a national white Christian culture.

Most Americans are not quite sure what to make of the sprawling right-wing Tea Party, which gradually emerged in 2009 and became a household name after it held nationwide Tea Party rallies on April 15, 2010, to protest paying taxes. Throwing tea overboard, as you may remember, is an important symbolic image of the colonial anger at Britain’s policy of “taxation without representation.”

Many liberals and leftists dismissed the Tea Party as a temporary, knee-jerk response to the recession, high employment, home foreclosures, bankruptcies, and an African American president who had saved American capitalism by expanding the government’s subsidies to the financial, real estate, and automobile industries.

Perhaps it is a temporary political eruption, but as E.J. Dionne, columnist at The Washington Post has argued, the movement also threatens the hard-won unity of the Republicans. “The rise of the tea party movement,” he writes, “is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal as unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with “American values.”

Who are these angry people who express so much resentment against the government, rather than at corporations? Since national polls dramatically contradict each other, I have concluded that the Tea Party movement has energized people across all classes.

One important difference, however, is race. At Tea Party rallies you don’t see faces with dark complexions. Another important distinction is that men and women are drawn to this sprawling movement for a variety of overlapping but possibly different reasons. Both men and women seem to embrace an incoherent “ideology” which calls for freedom from government, no taxes, and an inchoate desire to “take back America,” which means restoring the nation to some moment when the country was white and “safe.”

Men drawn to this movement appear to belong to a broad range of fringe right-wing groups, such as militias, white supremacy groups, pro-gun and confederacy “armies. Some of these groups advocate violence vow to overthrow the government, and have even begun to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread their hatred through social media.

Women also play a decisive role in the Tea Party and now make up 55 percent of its supporters, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Hanna Rosin reports in Slate magazine that “of the eight board members of the Tea Party Patriots who serve as national coordinators for the movement, six are women. Fifteen of the 25 state coordinators are women.”

Why, I’ve wondered, does this chaotic movement appeal to so many women? There are many possible reasons. Some of the women in these groups are certainly women who love men who love guns and who hate the government and taxes.

Professor Kathleen Blee, who has written widely about right-wing women, suggests that there are probably more religious right-wing women than men in general, that tea party rallies may attract more women who are not working and therefore can attend them, and that the Tea Party emphasizes family vulnerability to all kinds of external danger.

Many men and women attracted to the Tea Party also belong to the Christian Identity Movement. They are right-wing Christians who promote fundamentalist views on abortion and homosexuality. But women come to the Tea Party from new and surprising venues, like the Parent-Teacher Association or groups organized specifically to elect women to political office.

As Slate magazine recently noted, “Much of the leadership and the grassroots energy comes from women. One of the three main sponsors of the Tax Day Tea Party that launched the movement is a group called Smart Girl Politics. The site started out as a mommy blog and has turned into a mobilizing campaign that trains future activists and candidates. Despite its explosive growth over the last year, it is still operated like a feminist cooperative, with three stay-at-home moms taking turns raising babies and answering e-mails and phone calls.”

Some of these religious women also have political aspirations and hope to use the Tea Party to gain leadership roles denied by the Republican Party to run for electoral office. To counter Emily’s List, which has supported liberal women for electoral politics, right-wing conservative women created the Susan B. Anthony List, which is successfully supporting right-wing women in their efforts to run for electoral office.

To blunt the impact of liberal feminists, Concerned Women for America, a deeply religious group, supports women’s efforts to seek leadership positions within the Tea Party. The Women’s Independent Forum, a more secular group of right-wing women, seeks to promote traditional values, free markets, limited government, women’s equality, and their ability to run for office.

Some of these women are drawing national attention because they have embraced a religious “conservative feminism.” Among them are evangelical Christians and, according to a recent cover story in Newsweek magazine, they view Sarah Palin -- who ran for the vice presidency in 2009, has five children and a supportive husband, describes herself as a feminist, gave up the governor’s office in Alaska to become a celebrity and millionaire -- as the leader, if not prophet of the Tea Party.

As a result, Palin is mobilizing right-wing religious women across the nation. They like that she wears make up, still looks like a gorgeous beauty queen, and yet is bold and strong minded. They don’t seem to care that she uses “Ms.” instead of Mrs. Nor are they bothered by her crediting Title IX (legislation passed in 1972 that enforced gender equality in education and sports for her athletic opportunities.

On ABC News she told her interviewer, Charles Gibson, “I’m lucky to have been brought up in a family where gender has never been an issue. I’m a product of Title IX, also, where we had equality in schools that was just being ushered in with sports and with equality opportunity for education, all of my life. I’m part of that generation, where that question is kind of irrelevant because it’s accepted. Of course you can be the vice president and you can raise a family."

Palin belongs to a group called Feminists for Life whose slogan is “Refuse to Choose.” When she described herself as a feminist at the start of her vice-presidential campaign, she explained that she was a member of this group, led by Serrin Foster, who has carved out a successful career on the lecture circuit by trying to convince young women that you can be a feminist by making the choice not to have an abortion.

When I interviewed Foster several years ago, I asked her how very poor or teenage girls were supposed to take care of these unwanted children. Since she is against taxes and government subsidies for social services, she evaded my question. She said that women should not be alone, that others should help. In the end, the only concrete solution she offered is that adoption is the best solution for these young women.


Just recently, Palin once again dubbed herself a “feminist” and set off an explosive debate about what constitutes feminism in the United States. She describes religious conservative women as “Mama Grillizies” and urges them to "rise up” and claim the cause of feminism as their own. Palin encourages her followers to launch a "new, conservative feminist movement" that supports only political candidates who uncompromisingly oppose abortion.

The response to Palin’s effort to draw women into the Tea Party varies widely. Her "sisterly speechifying," writes Jessica Valenti in The Washington Post. “is just part of a larger conservative bid for the hearts and minds of women by appropriating feminist language."

Writing in the conservative National Review Kathryn Jean Lopez responds, “Palin isn't co-opting feminism, She's reclaiming a movement that was started by Susan B. Anthony and other women who fought for the right to vote -- and were staunchly pro-life.” This is true; nineteenth century suffragists wanted to protect the status of motherhood and were against abortion.

"The "feminist" label doesn't have to be so polarizing,” argues Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times. “Boiled down, feminism just means viewing men and women as equals, and seeing your gender "as neither an obstacle to success nor an excuse for failure." So if Sarah Palin "has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she's entitled to be accepted as one."

Here is a great irony. Since 1980, when the backlash began attacking the women’s movement, young secular American women have resisted calling themselves feminists because the religious right wing had so successfully created an unattractive image of a feminist as a hairy, man-hating, lesbian who spouted equality, but really wanted to kill babies. Now, Palin is forcing liberal feminists to debate whether these Christian feminists are diluting feminism or legitimizing it by making it possible to say that one is a feminist.

When I read what women write on Christian women’s web sites, I hear an echo from the late nineteenth century when female reformers sought to protect the family from “worldly dangers.” Frances Willard, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, urged millions of women to enter the public sphere in order to protect their families, to address the decadent consequences and casualties of capitalism, to win suffrage, and to fight for prohibition, all in the name of protecting the purity of their homes and families.

For many contemporary evangelical Christian women, their motivations are similar. They want to enter the public sphere or even run for office to eliminate abortion, protect marriage, contain sexual relations, oppose gay marriage, and clean up the mess made by the sexual revolution. All this is part of a long and recognizable female reform tradition in American history.

At Tea Party rallies, you often see women carrying signs that read “Take back America.” Not everyone is sure what that means. At the very least, however, it means taking back America from an expanding government, from taxes, and more symbolically, from the changing racial complexion of American society.

Within a few decades, the non-white population will constitute a majority of the citizens in the U.S. Many white evangelical Christians feel besieged and the women, for their part, feel they must publicly protect their families from such rapid and potentially dangerous changes. They feel that some faceless bureaucrats or immigrants or minorities, described as “they,” have taken over our society and threaten the moral purity of American society. What they don’t fear is that corporations have taken over the American government and have distorted its democratic institutions.

Washington Bureau Chief Adele Stan of AlterNet, who has 15 years of close scrutiny of the extreme right under her belt, has warned that we take the Tea Partiers seriously and dismiss them at our peril.

The Tea Party panders to fear and resentment. But they are hardly a lonely minority. A recent USA Today/Gallup survey found that 37 percent of Americans said they "approved" of the Tea Party movement. It is not a movement that Americans should ignore. History reminds us that the politics of fear and resentment can quickly turn into a dangerous and powerful political force.

But the Tea Party is not only a grassroots movement. Behind the women at the kitchen table, there is money, and plenty of it. Writing in the The New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky reminded readers that "Money is the ultimate lubricant of politics and that the potential money supply for Tea Parties and other... contributions is virtually limitless."

Tomasky also underscores the fact that the Tea Party is not about short-term electoral victories. It’s about the long term project of resurrecting the power to protect free markets, deregulation, and for the religious right to gain political power.

Men and women may not join the Tea Party for the same reasons, but without its grassroots female supporters, the Tea Party would have far less appeal to voters who are frightened by economic insecurity, threats to moral purity, and the gradual disappearance of a national white Christian culture.

For good or ill, Christian women have moved mountains before in the American past. The abolition of slavery and the prohibition of liquor are just two examples. Now they have helped organize the Tea Party and their new conservative feminism may just affect American political culture in unpredictable ways.

Perhaps they will gain a new self-confidence and political influence by straying from the Republican Party. Or, as in the past, they may disappear into their homes and churches and become a footnote in the history of American politics. For now, it is too soon to tell how the Tea Party, let alone its female members, will fare in the future.

[Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, teaches history at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent book is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.]

Source / openDemocracy

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Textbooks in Texas : Rehabilitating Joe McCarthy?

Sen. Joseph McCarthy displays one of his many reports on Communists he found in the woodwork. Photo from Wisconsin History.
What did you learn in school today?
Efforts to vindicate commie-hunting senator

By Justin Elliott / January 15, 2010

See 'Who stays and who goes? Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin,' Below.

When we last checked in on the U.S. history textbooks standards setting process in Texas, the conservative-dominated State Board of Education was mulling one-sided requirements to teach high school students about Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.

Now, in the home stretch of a process that will set the state's nationally influential standards, a liberal watchdog group is worried that the State Board of Education will try to push through changes to claim that communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been vindicated by history, among other right-wing pet issues.

The Republican-dominated board is meeting in Austin to vote on amendments to the current draft standards.

"The social conservative bloc is pressing for the standards to turn Joseph McCarthy into an American hero," says Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that aims to "counter the religious right."

The conservative effort to turn public opinion in McCarthy's favor began way back in 1954 -- while the Wisconsin senator was still in office -- with the publication of William F. Buckley's McCarthy And His Enemies.

If such an amendment is proposed, Quinn expects it to come from outspoken conservative board member Don McLeroy, who has been talking up the idea. In a note to curriculum writers last fall, McLeroy encouraged them to "read the latest on McCarthy -- he was basically vindicated."

We last encountered McLeroy in September when he argued that minority groups should be thankful to the majority for granting them rights. ("For instance, the women's right to vote. ... The men passed it for the women.")

A requirement to teach America's "Christian or Biblical heritage" is one of the other clauses conservatives may try to get into the standards, Quinn says.

What's at stake here is not just what Texas students learn in high school. Because the state represents one of two largest markets in the country, publishers tailor their books to the Texas standards. Those same textbooks are then sold in smaller states around the country.

The current standards draft (.pdf) has lost some of the biased requirements that had raised the ire of liberal groups. Back in October, a curriculum writing team made up of educators jettisoned the requirements that students be able to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals," including the Moral Majority and Gingrich. Schlafly remains on a list (see page 54) of political leaders, but she is alongside figures like Thurgood Marshall and Hillary Clinton.

But at this stage, the curriculum writing team as well as an expert review board are out of the picture. Now, the board members will have to vote on amendments proposed by their colleagues. The final vote will come in March.

It was at this same point in the '08-'09 science textbook standards process that conservative members began to offer technical amendments about purported gaps in the fossil record, and the impossibility of natural selection, Quinn says. Members who were in favor of teaching evolution became confused in some cases about what they were voting on.

While amendments to the history standards may be easier to understand, McLeroy and the rest of the conservative bloc are at least as passionate about leaving their mark this time around.

He told the Washington Monthly (in a lengthy feature very much worth reading):

"The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation. But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan -- he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last 20 years because he lowered taxes."

Source / TPM Muckraker

Former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary: He's out.
Who stays and who goes?
Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin

AUSTIN – Early efforts by social conservatives on the State Board of Education to give more emphasis to religion in the teaching of U.S. history came up short Thursday as a majority of board members opted for a more traditional approach to the subject.

Among the proposals shot down by a majority of board members was a requirement to include "religious revivals" as among the major events leading up to the American Revolution.

That proposal, offered by board member Terri Leo, R-Spring, would have called on fifth-graders to study religious revivals alongside the Boston Tea Party.

Only members of the social conservative bloc -- all Republicans -- supported the idea, while other Republicans and Democrats opted to stay with the recommendation of a writing team of Texas teachers and academics on the topic.

The divided vote came as the board on Thursday considered scores of amendments to proposed curriculum standards for social studies, spelling out what students should be taught in history, government, geography and other social studies classes from elementary grades through high school.

The board worked late into the night, concentrating on curriculum standards for elementary and middle schools, before adjourning. It will take up high school standards -- expected to generate the most debate -- today.

Much of the discussion Thursday night was over which historical figures should be covered in history classes and textbooks, as board members added several new people while deleting others who were recommended by curriculum writing teams last year.

Among those dropped from the elementary school standards were former San Antonio Mayor and Clinton Cabinet member Henry Cisneros and labor leader Delores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. Also deleted was the first female governor of Texas, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson.

Board critics said the three were not worthy of inclusion in the standards. Huerta was cited by one board member for her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.

On the other hand, board members added former Texas Supreme Court Justice Raul Gonzalez, the first Hispanic elected to the high court.
[....]
Social conservatives on the board have called for the new standards to reflect the major role of religion in U.S. history, and they were expected to offer several other amendments to achieve that.

But various groups have cautioned against the board including any requirement that could jeopardize the religious freedom rights of students.

The social studies requirements will remain in place for the next decade, dictating what is taught in government, history and other social studies classes in all elementary and secondary schools.

-- Terrence Stutz / Dallas Morning News / Jan. 15, 2010

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Bart Stupak and the Family : The Power of C Street

Above, the Fellowship's house on C Street in Washington, D.C. Photo by Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / MCT. Below, U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak. Photo by Susan Walsh / AP.
The Fellowship on C Street:
Bart Stupak and the impact of the Family

Expect it to grow in power if economic conditions do not improve dramatically

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / November 21, 2009

See 'C Street House no longer tax exempt,' by Zachary Roth, Below.

Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan led about 40 other Democrats and the Republicans in amending the House Health Care Plan with a proviso that made it impossible to use federal credits in the proposed insurance exchanges to purchase insurance that covered abortion. Stupak says that women could use their own funds to buy abortion riders through the exchanges.

In 17 states, women have the right to buy such riders to accompany their coverage under Medicaid, but few have done so. There is no language in the amendment that prohibits purchasing riders, but the wording is complex and can be read many ways. The Library of Congress says that the riders cannot be purchased.

The houses on C Street

Representative Stupak is a member of the Family or the Fellowship and resides at its house on C Street in Arlington. The Family has another complex in Arlington at “The Cedars,” a former CIA safe house they purchased in 1976. The townhouse at 133 C Street, S.E. is a former convent registered under the ownership of Youth With A Mission to Washington D.C. Five or six other Representatives and Senators live there and pay about $600 a month rent.

Until recently, the building was classified as a church, and was not on the tax rolls. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), perhaps the most conservative man in Washington, is a resident, as are Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Representatives Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA). There are many powerful Washington politicians who are members of the Family and/or come there for religious studies. Among they are Pete Domenici (formerly R-NM), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsay Graham (R-SC)) , Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), Mark Pryor (D-AK) and James Inhofe.

They all champion what they call “family values.” Washington, D.C. authorities recently removed the house’s tax exemption. Zach and other C Streeters have been busy building megachapels on military bases. Most of these “Christian” politicians are Republicans, but some members are conservative Democrats. Prominent people from outside politics are sometimes found there, and it is said that Michael Jackson once spent the night there.

What sexual scandals reveal

Senator John Ensign resided in the C Street house until he found it necessary recently to move because of spotlight his sex scandal brought to the secretive cult. Ensign had been involved with a former member of his staff, and her husband had also worked for the Nevada Senator. The senator’s parents gave her family $96,000, but the husband of his mistress said that Ensign and his C Street friends had discussed far larger payments. Senator Tom Coburn, another member of the cult, said he would not discuss in court any advice he gave because it was a confidential communication. The Oklahoman claimed this privilege because he is a practicing OB-GYN and also an ordained deacon.

Former Rep. Charles “Chuck” Pickering of Mississippi is a former resident of the C Street house, and his former wife claimed that the Congressman carried on there with another female. He is a former Baptist missionary. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford , now famous for his affair with a beautiful Argentine newscaster, is an alumnus of C Street from his Washington days, but he did not live there. He returned to C Street to seek advice about dealing with his love problems.

No one seems to know if Senator David Vitter, now well known for his interest in prostitutes, had any ties to the Family. He has had a great deal to say about Christian family values. Tennessee Republican state Sen. Paul Stanley also had a lot to say about morality and family values. He was caught in an affair with a 22 year old intern. His first wife claimed physical abuse and got a restraining order against him. His second wife was a former intern. When in Washington, he stays at the C Street upscale dorm for right-wing Christian politicians.

Ordinarily the sexual transgressions of politicians are best not discussed, but there is a different situation when politicians who advertize themselves as “Christian” and proponents of “family values” are involved. At the least monumental moral hypocrisy is involved. Former Family leader Doug Coe once said, ”when you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.” He was not referring to sexual conduct, but people who think they are chosen by God to do something important often have a hard time where the rules might apply to them. Some of them have said that morality and ethics are secular concepts.

Sen. John Ensign moved out of C Street after his sex scandal became public.
Harold Bloom, a great scholar at Yale, wrote that the American religion is antinomianism. Two of its elements are claims to special mission and exemption from some norms. Some of the people who came here in the Seventeenth Century thought God expected them to build “A City on a Hill.” But they stressed its nonmaterial dimensions. American exceptionalism reinforced the idea of mission as did Manifest Destiny and its various extensions.

The Family has a strong admixture of antinomianism, but it is clear that it is the American religion. We might recall that some of the antinomians in early Massachusetts Bay claimed to be specially chosen by God and exempted some societal rules, and they were accused of sexual sinfulness.

The Family is about power

As noted in my previous article on this subject, the Family has a record of catering to unsavory dictators abroad who inflicted great harm and burdens upon their peoples. There were also signs of a softness towards fascism in its history. Many of these people chose not to work through churches because they are too democratic and because women have considerable influence in some churches.

With the exception of Senator Pyor, they oppose organized labor, and have a long record of backing big business, Big Pharma, the health insurance companies, and military contractors. They are all hawkish and bent on extending the American empire. They think unfettered capitalism is God’s will.

It is a peculiar form of Christianity they advance. Christ comes across not so much as the friend of the poor and outcasts, but instead seems to be a hard charging executive type and role model for dictators, captains of industry, and people with Type A and authoritarian personalities. The Family’s Christ is no longer the “Prince of Peace.” Rather they repeatedly say he came to bring the sword and division. Somehow, it is hard to imagine their Christ espousing the principles of the Sermon of the Mount or calling other people “brother” unless those people were initiates in a secret cultish organization.

When one first learns what the Family is all about, one is tempted to wonder how such a group became so powerful. While the Fellowship has more power today than before, we should remember that, in the Vietnam era, Family members ran World Vision and the Family was a front for some business and intelligence activities in Southeast Asia.

The Family has long been active in organizing military officers and can take some of the credit for creating right-wing Christian dominance in the military, as observed at the Air Force Academy and in the Marine Corps. It also has some influence in Campus Crusade for Christ. It is impossible to measure the extent of its power, but what we see is indeed impressive.

C Street resident Jim DeMint may be the most conservative man in Washingon.
Dominionism

The Family’s members are clearly dominionists, people who believe that there should be no separation of church and state, and that God’s saints should rule. There are different varieties of dominionism, and it is unclear how the Fellowship is tied to other strands. Dominionism in the United States is growing more rapidly than almost any other movement. The press missed the fact that three of the churches Sarah Palin attended are part of a dominionist movement called the New Apostolic Reformation.

One of our two or three best religious reporters was taken in by Sarah’s talk about ‘a post-denominational Christianity.” He thought she was for broad tolerance and respect. The term refers to a time when the apostles leading the NAR have forced the competition out of business. As a rule, dominionists have ties to white power groups, survivalists, militias, and even secessionist groups like the Alaska Independence Party. These are the sorts of folks who turn up at Tea Bagger rallies. These elements are growing and are ripe to be manipulated by the Family’s politicians.

Good scholars speculate that as the dominionists gain power, they will be less concerned about the second coming of Christ. If they have a shot at gaining power, they will talk less about rapture and end times and more about why they need to rule a good long time to prepare for the Lord’s coming, sometime in the distant future.

Is the Family a cult?

Some might object to calling the family a “cult.” The fact is that it is secretive and relies upon charismatic leadership. In the past, some cults had different levels of membership, and this seems true of the Family. Some cults in history, such as the Manicheans and Albigensians, claimed to have special knowledge. In the case of the Family, they just insist on a unique interpretation of Christianity. Unlike those two cults, the Family seems very materialistic in its concerns -- the focus on cultivating powerful people and gaining power, serving big economic interests, fostering globalism and American imperialism.

The Family is as American as spoiled apple pie

Since the 1970s, the nation has embraced the corpus of economic doctrines associated with what is called market fundamentalism. Even the Social Darwinism of the late 19th Century -- root, hog or die and leave the poor to their fate -- has had an astonishing rebirth. As the middle class has become more anxious about its future and threatened standard of living, people have been more inclined to turn their backs on forms of religion that embrace peace and social justice.

The Social Gospel among protestant denominations seems in headlong retreat, and among Roman Catholics there is a growing core of bishops obsessed with abortion but unwilling to give more than lip service to the church’s teachings on peace, economic justice, the death penalty, and preservation of the environment. Many of them act as though the church has become an arm of the Republican Party.

Of course, all the mainstream churches are hemorrhaging members as people move to right wing Christian denominations that blend promises of prosperity with nationalism, and cultural and economic conservatism. Many of them are openly Republican political clubhouses. These forms of Christianity illustrate how easily religion can be absorbed and transformed by the host culture. Given all of this, The Family should come as no surprise. It may not represent genuine Christianity, but it is a genuine and almost typical outgrowth of American culture, reflecting forces that have long been here.

We lack effective language to discuss the common good

Obama and the Democrats are having a devil of a time selling health care reform in part because there is no compelling way to help people think in terms of the common good.

Decades ago, Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Institute discussed health care reform with several senators, including Jacob Javits and Ted Kennedy. They told him that a major obstacle was that American culture provided no common concepts and language that enabled Americans to discuss the common good. That situation has grown worse. Now we have crowds of old people, some bearing arms, demanding that there be no effort to help the 45,000,000 without health insurance because they fear their benefits might suffer a little.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, whose extramarital affair with an Argentine newscaster hit the news, is a C Street alumnus. Photo by Brett Flashbnick / AP.
Our founders left us with some concepts that could have facilitated an honest discussion of the common good, but over time materialism and selfish individualism made them appear to be suspect. The nation’s founders left an ideology that combined Lockean individualism with the goals of equality and brotherhood.

A minority, inspired by radical British writers like Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestly, and Richard Price was responsible for drawing equality and brotherhood from the thought of the republican tradition. The people who introduced these elements were an important minority, and their support for these ideas was infectious, even influencing some Protestant elements that people today would mistakenly equate with today’s fundamentalists and evangelicals.

Over more than two centuries, the potency of equality and brotherhood in American thought waxed and waned. Of late, they have been in sharp decline. When these ideas were powerful, Americans had periods of reform. Often, these periods of reform came at times when progressive elements in American religion were strong. The last period of significant reform was the when the civil rights movement made headway pursing Martin Luther King’s dream of a beloved community.

The late John Patrick Diggins thought that over the course of American history the idea of individualism gained ground at the expense of equality.. This may have been because Americans were essentially a people of plenty, as David Potter said. Until 1980, real wages and the standard of living increased steadily. We were blessed with an abundance of land and resources that fuelled prosperity, but Americans were inclined to attribute success to their own virtues, most of were thought to have stemmed from rugged individualism.

Another reason why it is so hard to talk about the common good is that the subcultures of our population groups are largely rooted in what Leo Strauss called modern rather than ancient thought. The ancients valued virtue and were accustomed to thinking in terms of the community. According to Strauss, a sharp philosophical decline in virtue began with Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Eventually, man would see himself as freed from the natural order, free to define what a human being should be. Strauss, unlike many of his unwitting followers, thought the state and society better equipped to determine what was acceptable conduct, and he welcomed the decline of Christianity. The dominant cultural stream in the United States is rooted in religions that were founded after ancient community-oriented thought was in decline. We just are not accustomed to thinking in terms of community.

The sad truth might be that the ravings of a Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck resonate strongly with so many Americans because they appeal to elements that have become dominant strains in our culture. They also have the great advantage of appealing to people who want simple answers to complex questions.

At first glance one might think see the secretive and elitist Family as an odd phenomenon. But, like the movements led by Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Caughlin, and Charles Lindbergh in an earlier time, the Family is a typical American movement. Like those other movements, it will grow in strength during tough economic times. The power the Family holds is a natural outgrowth of our history. In the case of the Family or Fellowship, the marriage of religion, “market economics,” Social Darwinism, and aggressive nationalism results in a grotesque form of Christianity that is essentially a shell or Trojan horse for more dominant forces that have done little to advance the good.

C Street House no longer tax exempt

By Zachary Roth / November 17, 2009

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

According to online records, the total taxable assessment is $1,834,500. The building's owner last month paid taxes of $1714.70 on the property.

A commenter using the name Vince Treacy, posting on a blog run by George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley, noted in June that the property enjoyed tax exempt status. In a comment yesterday, he wrote:

Well, at least one complaint just happened to be filed a few months ago, by some anonymous citizen who will remain nameless ""wink, wink," with the taxpayer hotline at the DC tax office.

The C Street house has lately been the subject of unwanted attention thanks to its role in three GOP sex scandals. Ensign, who reportedly recently moved out of the house, was confronted there last year by his fellow C Streeters, including Coburn, about his affair with a top aide's wife. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford revealed this summer that he had received counseling from the house's denizens over his own randy hijinx with his Argentinean mistress. And the wife of former GOP congressman Chip Pickering has alleged in divorce proceedings that the house was the site of "wrongful conduct" between her husband and his girlfriend.

Source / TPM

Please see:

• BOOKS / The Secret Fundamentalism of 'The Family' by Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / Oct. 18, 2009
• Exposé: The 'Christian' Mafia by Wayne Madsen / Insider Magazine

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