Tom Hayden : Becoming Two Countries in 2014

Becoming two countries. Image from Shutterstock / sojourners.

The war for America:
Becoming two countries in 2014

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / October 3, 2013

The logic of voter turnout data all but guarantees right-wing Republican congressional victories in 2014 and a sealing of the divide of America into two countries for the foreseeable future.

White House operatives privately acknowledge that GOP gerrymandering plus low turnout make 2014 a war to keep the Senate Democratic and show gains while losing the House. There are eight battleground Senate seats where Mitt Romney won the popular vote in 2012 and incumbent Democrats are either retiring or vulnerable to defeat.

Even if Hillary Clinton manages to win in 2016, the battle for the House will favor the GOP since the current gerrymandered seats will remain intact until 2020, or even 2022. Assuming continued Democratic control of the White House and Senate in 2014, the opportunity to take back the Roberts Supreme Court may not occur until the next presidential term, as Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are both 77.

President Barack Obama was not wrong when he promised a single "red, white and blue America" in 2008. That is what a majority of registered voters want, but he underestimated the white sea of hate that would be generated from him among Republicans. His electoral advisors concentrated their brilliance on the national electoral map more than the states where Republicans took over in 2010.

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats. Progressives, concentrated in Democratic-majority strongholds, will have to think strategically about how to save constituencies which have being left behind enemy lines for most of their lives.

Thanks to Howard Dean's Democracy for America, campaign resources are being invested in Virginia's legislative election this year, with Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to follow. These potential wins could minimize losses in the long term attempt to salvage the 2010s from a major Republican counterattack on the Thirties, Sixties, and the Obama era. Unfortunately, the failure already has been cemented by the reapportionment process.

The national Democratic strategy, such as it is, is to paint the Republicans as completely irresponsible, even insane, in an effort to encourage defections among moderate white voters and stimulate turnout among worried Democratic voters. While this strategy may be working among moderate voters, it also strengthens the Tea Party in the primaries of Republican districts and states.

The cold facts are these: in presidential election years, voter turnout ranges between 50 and 60 percent, while in mid-term elections it's in the high thirties. In 2010, turnout was 41.6 percent, meaning a disproportionate racial and economic minority took power in the House of Representatives and also gained control of the governors’ post and both legislative houses in 12 additional states. (See Elizabeth Drew's, "The Stranglehold on Our Politics," for a concise summary.)

The behavior of young voters, ages 18 to 29, is a stunning illustration of the pattern. According to the Center of Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, in 2008 youth turnout was 51 percent, which then plummeted to 22.8 percent in 2010, before trending back to 45 percent in 2012.

In 2010, while the Democrats won the popular congressional vote by slightly over 50 percent, GOP candidates were able to win 54 percent of the House seats while losing by 1.4 million votes overall. In Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats won the popular vote by 83,000 but the GOP wrested a 13-5 advantage in House races. In Michigan, Democrats led by 240,000 votes but the GOP took nine of 14 House seats.

Roe v. Wade "may be doomed," writes Drew. The Voting Rights Act already is badly gutted. New state laws are being promulgated in the swing states of Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio to make registration and voting as difficult as possible. It appears that any federal action on immigrant rights will include a delay in the path to voting for longer than a decade, preventing several million Latinos from voting, while a military "surge" is being implemented at the southern border.

Federal marriage equality benefits for LGBT couples may be jeopardized in states where gay marriage is banned. North Carolina, an Obama state in 2008, turned Republican by 2010, and is swiftly implementing new restrictions on abortion and voting rights despite massive protests. Arizona continues to be ground zero for vigilantes in the war against undocumented immigrants, and has succeeded in erasing Chicano Studies from state curriculums.

Since 2010 alone, 178 new anti-abortion measures have been adopted or are in the works. Michigan's gerrymandered legislature has successfully passed a right-to-work law. Twenty-seven states are resisting the expansion of Medicaid, and the majority are refusing to set up the insurance exchanges authorized by Obamacare. Those states are becoming "abortion-free zones," right-to-work states, and bastions of a resurrected "sovereignty" for whites and business interests on the defensive.

Public schools will struggle for resources in one America, while re-segregation and home schooling are completed in the other. As for the overriding crisis of climate change, the crisis of "two Americas" means that progress will occur through federal regulation combined with state action. The rest of the country will remain a Coal Zone filled with droughts, wildfires, and official climate denials.

There happens to be some "good news" in this polarization, since the libertarian Right tends to oppose foreign military interventions and Big Brother spying, while supporting the right to be stoned. A de facto coalition of the libertarian Right with the liberal Left has made progress possible on these important fronts.

The Right’s hatred towards Wall Street equals that of the Left. But the chasm on social justice is widening. Young people attracted to Rand Paul, and Ron before him, are ignoring the fact that libertarians would roll us back to the entire system of lunch counter segregation that was the focal point of the civil rights movement. The white "right to refuse service" prevails in their thinking over civil rights and due process protections.

There is no getting around the deep streaks of male chauvinism, Christian Triumphalism, plain racism, and market fundamentalism that mark so much right-wing rumination. Those divides are being institutionalized. Using the tools at their disposal, the right-wing Republicans are not trying to "take over" the United States as much as carve out a virtual country of their own based on states' rights and resistance to the national governing majority. They want to be able to live in an America where Barack Obama is a bad memory of an illegitimate president.

Can anything be done about this? In the short term, it is imperative that Democrats join Howard Dean in trying to retain their Senate majority and make gains against the gerrymandered legislatures. They should support Attorney General Holder in the courtroom battles against voter suppression. They should help make Obamacare succeed in as many states as possible. They should refuse to employ the deceptive terms "red" and “blue."

2016 will be a historic turning point as an American multi-cultural democracy steadily evolves on the basis of a massive demographic shift. Progressives cannot retreat into enclaves as long as millions of Americans are abused in zones under pro-corporate Republican rule.

Regulations established by the Obama administration must be implemented with the full force of the law in every state, not simply half the states. Progressive models can and should be erected in those states which become, in Justice Brandeis’ expression, "laboratories of reform," with climate change regulations being the clearest example.

Battles will rage over voting rights, women's rights, climate and environmental regulations, and immigration between now and 2016. The 2016 election will become a historic referendum on the future of America affecting the entire lifetimes of the younger generation coming of voting age.

Research by Emma Taylor, Research Assistant at the Peace and Justice Resource Center. This article was also posted to Tom Hayden.com .

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Texas Sen. Donna Campbell's Dishonesty on Abortion

Texas Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, speaks to an anti-abortion group outside the state capitol in Austin, Monday, July 1, 2013. Photo by Eric Gay / AP.

Extremism trumps libertarian views:
Donna Campbell’s dishonesty on abortion

Campbell allows her extremist views opposing the constitutional right of a woman to seek an abortion to interfere with a physician’s normal practice of medicine.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / July 23, 2013

Texas State Senator Donna Campbell has been identified as a Libertarian Republican by LibertarianRepublican.net and as a libertarian by the Austin Chronicle.

She is one of the strangest libertarians I know of. She must have great difficulty reconciling her libertarian views with the demands of her right-wing Republican cohorts and constituents. And when it comes to abortion, she allows her religious views to override her libertarian views, and she allows her allegiance to the Tea Party to override the views of physicians who care primarily for women.

On Campbell’s website, in a brief statement about abortion, she exposes a glaring conflict:

God bestowed the gift of life upon us, and this gift begins at conception. I am 100% Pro-Life and believe one of the greatest privileges I will have as a State Senator will be to fight for the rights of the unborn and protect innocent life. No issue is closer to my heart and I will do everything in my power to make abortion as rare as possible. I support strengthening the family at every level and believe parental rights are key to protecting Texas families.

It hardly strengthens families and parental rights to oppose abortion. If a family has three children and does not want another, Campbell would force that mother to have another if she becomes pregnant. The Pope may be proud of her, but her claim about supporting families is deceitful.

Campbell’s efforts to make abortion rarer also deny funding to Planned Parenthood, making contraception harder to obtain and cancer screening less available for poor and uninsured women, effects that are the exact opposite of supporting Texas families.

In her recent op-ed in The Austin American-Statesman Campbell would appear to argue that the opinions of three Republican physicians in the Legislature are more important and should be given greater weight than the views of the medical community that specializes in women’s health care.

The Texas District of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found that the anti-abortion legislation supported by Campbell is “not based on sound science” and is an “attempt to prescribe how physicians should care for their individual patients.”

The group has concluded: “(The bill) will not enhance patient safety or improve the quality of care that women receive...(and it) does not promote women's health, but erodes it by denying women in Texas the benefits of well-researched, safe, and proven protocols."

Campbell claims that the purpose of the new requirement that abortion clinics be fully-licensed surgical centers is for the safety and well-being of the woman seeking an abortion. The best example of Campbell’s deceit about such safety is her support for requiring abortion-inducing drugs to be administered only at fully licensed surgical centers located within 30 miles of a hospital that allows the prescribing physician to practice there.

Yet the FDA-approved practices allow the administration of abortion-inducing drugs (what is called the “Mifeprex regimen” and often referred to as RU-486) in a physician’s office or clinic.

Campbell allows her extremist views opposing the constitutional right of a woman to seek an abortion to interfere with a physician’s normal practice of medicine and a woman’s right to seek a treatment found safe by the FDA. Further, this new regulation will interfere with the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy within seven weeks of pregnancy -- the period during which the Mifeprex regimen is permitted by the FDA.

Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark, four-decade-old ruling on abortion rights forbids state regulation of abortion during the first 13 weeks after conception. Such disregard for the constitutional rights of women cannot be justified by one’s personal religious views or one’s experience as an emergency room physician -- Campbell’s current occupation.

The Texas Medical Association opposes the legislation Campbell wholeheartedly endorses. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists made this statement about the sort of legislation Campbell advocates:

While we can agree to disagree about abortion on ideological grounds, we must draw a hard line against insidious legislation that threatens women’s health like [the Texas anti-abortion legislation]... That’s why we’re speaking to the false and misleading underlying assumptions of this and other legislation like it: These bills are as much about interfering with the practice of medicine and the relationship a patient has with her physician as they are about restricting women’s access to abortion. The fact is that these bills will not help protect the health of any woman in Texas. Instead, these bills will harm women’s health in very clear ways.

Campbell’s op-ed disingenuously states that “every abortion facility in Texas is within 15 miles of a hospital.” But she provides no evidence that the physicians practicing in those abortion facilities will be granted admission to practice in nearby hospitals.

Many Texas hospitals have moved to a system of using physicians hired directly by the hospital -- hospitalists they are called. My primary care physician, who used to be able to treat me and follow my progress in the hospital nearest to my home, is no longer allowed to do so. And most hospitals affiliated with religious groups do not permit physicians who perform abortions at nearby clinics to practice in their hospitals.

Two years ago, a Catholic bishop in Texas forbade physicians at two Catholic hospitals in Texas from performing procedures to tie the fallopian tubes of women at the hospitals. Other Catholic bishops have interfered in other medical practices at Catholic hospitals within their domains.

In a case in Phoenix, Catholic Diocese officials that owned a hospital preferred forfeiting a mother’s life in order to save her fetus. Religiously-controlled hospitals deny both women and men medical treatments and procedures that violate religious dogma, but Campbell doesn’t discuss these obstacles to supporting women and their families.

A 2012 study by a legal group found that

Medicare and Medicaid provide religiously-affiliated hospitals with one-half of their funding. Religious hospitals also enjoy certain benefits like tax exempt status, low-cost financing through government bond programs, and, in some areas, use of municipal buildings. Thus, while reliant on funds from a diverse population of taxpayers and serving a diverse population of patients, religious hospitals use specific institutional doctrine to dictate patients’ medical options. Such choices can be contrary (to) their patient’s health needs and personal beliefs.

In her op-ed, Campbell once again argues for the shibboleth that abortion is a dangerous procedure, ignoring the facts. Numerous studies have concluded that one in every 10,000 women dies during childbirth, and fewer than one in every 100,000 women die from medical abortion.

The book Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortions reports that “Death occurs in 0.0006% of all legal surgical abortions (one in 160,000 cases). These rare deaths are usually the result of such things as adverse reactions to anesthesia, embolism, infection, or uncontrollable bleeding.”

Medical abortions are safer than childbirth and almost as safe as naturally occurring miscarriages. But Campbell would rather make law on the basis of a few anecdotes from her time as an emergency room physician than on the fact that fewer than 0.3% of patients who have had an abortion experience a complication that requires hospitalization.

Something else that Campbell fails to mention is that abortion facilities are few and far between in Texas, largely due to previous Republican efforts to limit the availability of such services to women, in contravention of their rights. There are at present 47 abortion clinics in the entire state of 254 counties, where 13.1 million women live. A report from Media Matters concludes that the legislation Campbell has strongly supported could reduce these 47 clinics to five.

But Campbell’s illogic seems to know no bounds. During a hearing on the abortion legislation during the regular 2013 session of the Legislature, Campbell said:

After a colonoscopy on a man, he comes in bleeding in the emergency room from the rectum and we’ve got a surgeon on call. But we don’t have somebody on call for a lady who is hemorrhaging in the uterus from a procedure that was done at a facility that was held at less standards. So I applaud this bill. I jumped on this bill as a physician and as a woman.

Campbell did not explain why an emergency room would be able to handle a man’s (and presumably a woman’s) bleeding from a colonoscopy, but not a woman’s bleeding from an abortion procedure. There are no reasons why hospitals in Texas can’t have OB/GYNs available to them.

David Leonhardt, writing in The New York Times, provides a view of abortion that is as close to mine as I have found:

Most Americans are uncomfortable with abortion yet believe there are circumstances -- and not just a narrow few -- when it should be legal. They believe that women should have control over their bodies and also that an abortion is akin to a death. Where they struggle is in deciding when each principle deserves to take priority.

Would that Donna Campbell had as nuanced and thoughtful a view as this. But in the fight over women’s health and reproductive rights, Campbell has shown that her claims to support liberty and freedom are belied by the dominance of her religious views and her distortion of libertarian philosophy, both of which continue to endanger women’s health in support of an extreme agenda.

Generally, libertarians and Republicans claim to want to keep the government out of our private lives, but when it comes to abortion, some libertarians and most Republicans can’t get government involved enough.

[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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Carl Gibson : Grow Up, Ron Paul

Running away from home. Image from goodbuddies inc.
Grow up, Ron Paul

Ron Paul's right-libertarian ideology does espouse a new kind of freedom, just as rebellious children who fantasize about running away from home dream of a new kind of freedom.

By Carl Gibson / Reader Supported News / January 9, 2012

Like most other little kids, all I wanted to do was eat junk food, play video games, and goof around with my friends. I didn't like being made to go to school, going to bed at 9 p.m., eating vegetables, doing homework after school, or taking out the garbage. And like most other little kids who don't like abiding by the rules of their parents, I sometimes fantasized about what it would be like to run away from home.

But when I packed my backpack full of clothes and individually-wrapped packs of peanut butter crackers from the pantry, I could never go through with my plan. I knew if I ran away I'd be hungry, cold, lost, and eventually found by the police and returned home.

Libertarian views of government regulation are very similar to how six-year-olds view the authority exerted by their parents. Ron Paul's every-individual-for-themselves rhetoric appeals to young, radical libertarians with simplistic views of authority and an ignorance about why government exists in the first place.

In Ron Paul's ideal America, safety regulations imposed on employers by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would be a thing of the past. Clean air and water regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would be no more.

Taxpayers would save money, since Ron Paul would abolish the Department of Education and cut the Food and Drug Administration's budget by 40%. Employers would save money by paying workers as little as they wish, since Ron Paul would abolish the Davis-Bacon Act.

Corporate giants would be free to monopolize markets, since Ron Paul opposes federal anti-trust legislation. And employees would no longer be required to pay into Social Security.

So what would this libertarian utopia look like, if Ron Paul were elected and followed through on his campaign promises?

• Families grieving for loved ones lost due to Massey Energy's negligence in the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion would have to accept that their relatives were casualties of the invisible hand of the unfettered free market. And Massey would get off scot-free for polluting Martin County, Kentucky's drinking water supply with 300 million gallons of coal slurry.


• Millions of college students dependent on Pell grants would be forced to move back home and work minimum-wage jobs, no longer financially able to further their education. Oh wait -- what minimum wage?


• Food recalls would be a regular occurrence when tainted meat and vegetables hit supermarket shelves, causing record outbreaks of e-coli. And risky new drugs would avoid FDA tests and hit the express lane to the pharmacy, endangering the health of millions.


• Too-big-to-fail banks like Wells Fargo, Citi, Chas, and Bank of America would be allowed to merge and/or buy out their competitors, as would oil giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and cellphone service-providers like AT&T and Verizon.


• The Social Security trust fund would become insolvent, making retirement that much harder for those who paid into it all their lives.

Ron Paul's right-libertarian ideology does espouse a new kind of freedom, just as rebellious children who fantasize about running away from home dream of a new kind of freedom. But, as much as we may have rebelled against our parents as little kids, we eventually matured and realized that the rules and regulations our parents imposed on us were meant so we'd grow up to be responsible, functioning adults in society.

An unregulated little kid free to eat junk food and play video games all day won't ever learn the responsibilities of adulthood. And an unregulated society where all individuals are out for themselves will quickly collapse.

[Carl Gibson, 24, of Lexington, Kentucky, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Since its founding in February 2011, over 20,000 US Uncut activists have carried out more than 300 actions in over 100 cities nationwide. You may contact Carl at carl@rsnorg.org . This article was published at and distributed by Reader Supported News.]

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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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Ron Paul : My Convention is Bigger Than Your Convention

Joyous Ron Paul supporters lined the street Tuesday in front of the Target Convention Center in Minneapolis. Paul appeared on stage to the roars of fervent followers, most of whom traveled long distances and waited as long as eight hours to see him. Photo by John Tlumacki / Boston Globe.
Ron Paul draws more people and more excitement than John McCain's show across town -- but he also attracts some scary 'old friends.'
By Alex Koppelman / September 3, 2008

MINNEAPOLIS -- If you were in the Twin Cities on Tuesday, you could be forgiven for thinking that Republicans had to come to Minnesota to nominate Ron Paul instead of John McCain. At St. Paul's Xcel Center, where the real Republican convention is being held, a substantial number of seats remained empty. Next door in Minneapolis, however, a wildly enthusiastic crowd came close to filling the Target Center, capacity 10,000, where the Paul-ist faithful had gathered for their own quasi-convention to pay tribute to the Texas congressman, failed GOP presidential candidate and Libertarian hero.

The event, dubbed the "Rally for the Republic," was a daylong affair that marked the formal end of Paul's quixotic presidential run as well as, attendees hoped, the beginning of a Paul-sparked revolution in American government. The crowd defied the easy stereotypes that attached themselves to Paul's supporters during the Paul-mania of winter and spring -- the conspiracy-addled Web dweller, the Libertarian eccentric, the kid who only knows that Paul opposed the war. Sure, there was the occasional coonskin cap (and Daniel Boone-style frontier outfit), one man who appeared to be in Colonial dress and at least a couple of dreadlocked youths. The most striking thing about the people at the Target Center, however, was that they seemed so damn normal. But underneath the normality, and unbeknown to many in attendance, there lurked some of the dark undercurrents that have been present in the Paul movement all along.

Much of the energy that propelled Paul to the spotlight earlier this election cycle came from passionate neophytes. Many of those at the Target Center said they hadn't cared about politics before they first heard the Texas Republican speak. Some had come hundreds of miles just to be there -- like 23-year-old Tim Regnier and 21-year-old Nicole Wagner, who had driven seven hours from the Chicago suburbs. "We just wanted to show that the movement's not going to die," Regnier said. Justin Spyres, 27, said he "flew out from California just to be a part" of the rally. "I'm unemployed, I don't have any income," Spyres said, "but we made it work."

Others at the Target Center, however, have deeper roots in American politics, specifically its far-right fringe, and longer ties with the star of the show. For years, Paul has attracted support from right-wing radicals and even white supremacists, and he hasn't exactly run from that part of his fan base. Newbies like Regnier were on the floor, but some of the radicals were onstage, hidden in plain sight.

There was a furor earlier this year when the New Republic's Jamie Kirchick dug up some old newsletters put out under Paul's name that smacked of racism. (In some, African-Americans were called "animals." One issue, Kirchick noted, "ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after [Martin Luther] King, suggesting that 'Welfaria,' 'Zooville,' 'Rapetown,' 'Dirtburg,' and 'Lazyopolis' were better alternatives.") Onstage at the Paul rally on Tuesday was Lew Rockwell; credible evidence suggests Rockwell may have ghostwritten much of the controversial material in those newsletters. (Rockwell denies this.)

There, also, was Howard Phillips, a self-described "old friend" of Paul's, and one of the founders of, and a former presidential candidate for, the far-right Constitution Party. Phillips has long maintained ties to the Christian reconstructionist movement, and has advocated a "return to Godly, Biblically based constitutional government." His party's platform includes dark mentions of the "New World Order."

And there was a special guest, whose name was kept secret until he hit the stage: John McManus, president of the John Birch Society. The JBS is perhaps best known for having opposed fluoridation of drinking water as a communist plot; it was kicked out of the American political conversation decades ago after -- among other things -- its founder called Dwight Eisenhower "a dedicated conscious agent of the communist conspiracy." But at the Target Center, McManus was one of the stars of the day, and he was clearly enjoying himself, basking in the applause. He got a grateful response when he announced that Paul will headline JBS's 50th anniversary dinner this fall.

A good many of those in attendance had not yet been born when the JBS had its heyday, and a fair number of the people Salon spoke with afterward had never heard of it. A few, however, had become familiar with the group, even joined it, because of their association with the Paul campaign.

The mainstream, however, at least the conservative division, was well represented. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent GOP activist, spoke. MSNBC's Tucker Carlson served as emcee. "I'm not endorsing anybody," Carlson told Salon, adding that there "are things I disagree with" about Paul's philosophy. He was there, he said, because they'd asked him to be and because he admires Paul for sticking up for personal liberties. He also praised the people who'd come to the Target Center. "I admire the fact that they don't get anything out of it -- nobody's going to be ambassador to Belgium for supporting Ron Paul."

"I don't like the thing we do in the media," said Carlson, "this dismissive thing -- 'Oh, they're just crazy.' And I do it too. That's a low impulse. I think if you're going to say that, you should be required to offer some proof."

Another semi-mainstream figure almost stole Paul's show. Former pro wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura was a clear crowd favorite -- a diversion into some 9/11 Truther rhetoric didn't hurt him -- and he got some attention for hinting at a presidential run, promising that if the U.S. "shows me that it's worth it, in 2012, we'll give them a race they'll never forget."

There were plenty of delegates from that other convention in attendance as well, most pledged to Paul but some to McCain. The GOP delegates with whom Salon spoke were universally more excited about Tuesday's event than they were about the rest of the week, and said their fellow GOP delegates had been supportive. "We agree on so much ... we're trying to build bridges," said David Fischer, an alternate Paul delegate from Iowa who described himself as a "lifelong Republican" who hadn't been inspired to become a delegate to the GOP convention until Paul's candidacy. Some of the GOP Paul delegates, like Fischer, said they'd vote for McCain in November, but others weren't sure.

Marc Lucca, a Paul supporter and delegate from Oregon who'd been a field director with Victory 2004, the Republican effort to reelect President Bush, said, "I would likely support McCain if he is the nominee," but added, "I would like to see John McCain not take my vote and the votes of millions of other conservatives for granted."

Thomas Kiene of Oklahoma, a reluctant McCain delegate -- he preferred Paul, he said, but his district went for McCain -- was less generous. He called the GOP convention itself a "railroaded show."

"I was over there yesterday and it made me sick," Kiene said. His vote is pledged to McCain, but he's not happy about it, and says he's considering not voting at all. "I'll be there. Maybe as an observer more than a participant. Whether I let my alternate cast my vote or not, I don't know."

At least one longtime Libertarian was excited to see the turnout, and to see the wide array of people and opinions the movement is now attracting, even if he doesn't agree with the philosophies of some of the groups represented. "It's a wide, weird tent," said Kerry Welsh of Redondo Beach, Calif., who says he's donated more than $100,000 to Paul and other Libertarians over the years. "All I can say is that freedom brings in a wide assortment of people ... Imagine what would happen if someone like Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney held a rally like this now? Nobody would attend, because they don't stand for anything."

Source / salon.com

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