Defining characteristics of the Tea Party movement

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Defining characteristics of the Tea Party movement

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – The Tea Party tends to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in the Tea Party are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” They tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – They are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military – Even with widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding priority, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism – The organizers of the Tea Party tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under the Tea Party, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and they are represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the Tea Party, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by advertisers, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship of conflicting views, especially regarding war, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the Tea Party over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – The Tea Party tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from Tea Party leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the Tea Party’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy behind the Tea Party often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a Tea Party government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – The Tea Party tends to promote and tolerate open hostility to public education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even fired. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under the Tea Party, the police will be given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forgo civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There may be a national police force with virtually unlimited power in a Tea Party government.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – The Tea Party will be governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It would not be uncommon with the Tea Party for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections – Elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even character assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Tea Party influence also typically uses the judiciary to manipulate or control elections.

 

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. He missed the Tea Party. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

 

 

Libertarian Think Tank Conducts Welfare Study, Publishes Highly Misleading And Illogical Results

 

Libertarian Think Tank Conducts Welfare Study, Publishes Highly Misleading And Illogical Results

 

 

Author: Justin Acuff August 25, 2013 6:26 am

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded as the “Charles Koch Foundation” in 1974 (source: PDF), recently released a study (PDF) that had the internet abuzz, because it seemed to indicate welfare pays better than a minimum wage job, and as such, needs to be cut so that people have incentive to work again. Not only is that extremely misleading, but it’s telling of the anarcho-capitalist lobby within the libertarian community — especially the Koch-funded part. Benefits are intended to keep people housed and from starving. When that’s more than minimum wage does, it’s time to raise the wage, not cut benefits and let them starve.

To start with, the study is a lie. Although the information isn’t completely false, the presentation of it is so misleading that it erases any real use of the data. As Raw Story explains,

Taken at face value, the study is actually a stinging indictment of America’s low-wage economy. Only two of the 33 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)devote a smaller share of their economic output to programs that help poor families make ends meet than the United States – Mexico and South Korea. If those relatively stingy benefits provide more than one can earn working a minimum wage job – the authors say that’s true of 35 states – then the minimum wage is obviously not enough to get by on. (…) 

They also acknowledge the central flaw in their conclusion: in real life the “typical” family in their study doesn’t come close to receiving the maximum benefit from every single program for which they’re eligible. But here the authors’ caveat doesn’t go far enough. Due largely to the fact that eligibility requirements have already become harder to overcome, these programs are helping fewer poor families get by. In 2009, around three out of four poor families with kids weren’t getting any TANF benefits. At the height of the economic crash, about 25 percent of those eligible for food stamps weren’t receiving them; during better times, that number hovers around 40 percent. And as the CATO study concedes, six out of seven poor families aren’t getting housing assistance. 

So a study that claims to tell us about the “typical” poor family is really describing a rarity — the equivalent of a four-leaf clover. But the purpose of these studies isn’t to inform good policymaking. They feed a narrative that the poor are lazy and undeserving, and provide wonky cover for further weakening our social safety net. When studies like this one are picked up by the conservative media, all of the authors’ caveats tend to be stripped away, and they become straightforward claims that poor families sit back enjoying a good life, forcing overburdened tax-payers to pick up the tab.

Also, they admit that most of the poor express a desire to work. In fact, low wage employees are likely to be on assistance as well as working, simply because their employers don’t pay enough for them to pay their bills and eat. Meanwhile, the richest Americans get ever richer. Want to make some bets about where that money is coming from?

What libertarians and Republicans fail to understand is that the free market cannot be left in charge of poverty. Here’s why, explained in several easy-to-understand steps:

• It costs a minimum amount of money to live in the United States, in order to pay for housing, food, etc., at the very least.
• That amount of money can be determined, and is the poverty level.
• The cost-to-live, or money needed to stay above poverty level, can come from one of two sources: private (usually a job), or public (government assistance).
• If working full-time at minimum wage does not pay enough to keep people out of poverty, benefits are necessary to ensure that Americans aren’t dying for lack of money (you know, like those third-world countries we look down on).

And yet, the people opposed to welfare benefits are generally against a minimum wage increase as well, showing that their concern is not for the people, but for the money.


Read the case for an $11 minimum wage (want more? Let’s get this done first) here.

House GOP Didn't Get Pope’s Memo On Poor Before Slashing Food Stamps

           

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld

House GOP Didn't Get Pope’s Memo On Poor Before Slashing Food Stamps

The GOP war on poor can now seen in new and harsher light.

 

 

 

September 20, 2013  |  

 

 

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There’s nothing new about the House GOP’s war on America’s poor. They want people to go hungry. They want to deny people healthcare. Those were the bottom lines in votes on Thursday and Friday.

The first vote cut $40 billion from food stamps over the next decade, which today assist one in seven households. The second vote cut funding for implementing the Affordable Care Act, including outreach to the poor.

Now the GOP’s critics don’t just include progressives and Democrats, they include Pope Francis, who called on people to help the poor after his election in March, and in a just-published interview, decried those with “dogmatic” and “obsessed” views inside the church, especially over human sexuality.

The papel interview, which surfaced within hours of the Republican-led House voting to cut billions from food stamps and then from healthcare, underscored just how extreme the GOP’s obsessions have become. There are 61 Republicans who are Catholic in the House; only 15 Republicans opposed the food stamp cuts; only one opposed cutting Obamacare.

“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” the Pope said, chastizing idealogues. “I often associate sanctity with patience... as a constancy in going forward, day by day.”

There was little that was patient or inclusive in the House Republican’s ongoing tirade against the poor. If anything, their speeches calling for food stamp cuts were notable for their lack of understanding. They ignored the impact on the poor and presuppose that America is filled with people who don’t want to work and are waiting for government handouts. 

“There are workfare programs, there are options under the bill for community service,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, speaking of the bill's language cutting off food stamps after several months until the recipient has a job. “This bill that points to the dignity of a job—to help people when they need it most with what they want most, which is a job.”

Cantor never mentioned the Congressional Budget Office analysis finding that the bill would cause 3 million people to lose benefits while another 850,000 would see their benefits cut. Nor did he mention that millions of Americans remain unemployed after the 2008 recession.

More impersonal, ideological language came from Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-IN, who led the push for bigger food stamp cuts.

“Mr. Speaker, this bill eliminates loopholes, ensures work requirements, and puts us on a fiscally responsible path,” he blared. “In the real world, we measure success by results. It’s time for Washington to measure success by how many families are lifted out of poverty and helped back on their feet, not by how much Washington bureaucrats spend year after year.”   

The democratic process breaks down when politicians love their ideals more than the real world impact of those ideas on people. That distinction was not lost on some Democrats, whose floor speeches noted the bill’s mean-spirited and vindictive nature.
“You say to the states, ‘If you cut more people off your rolls, we’ll let you keep half the money, and you can do with it whatever you want.’ That is immoral,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey. “We’re talking about kids. We are talking about veterans. And we are talking about the disabled.”

Washington’s pundits quickly noted that neither of the House GOP bills—cutting food stamps and defunding Obamacare—were going anywhere. The White House said it would veto the food stamp bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that Democrats would delete the Obamacare cuts, which even Tea Party Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas admitted was all but inevitable.

Americans have been living with the House GOP’s posturing for years. But their pontificating and actions punishing the poor are being cast in a harsh new light that many people did not expect after new statements from the Pope about what it means to serve the public.

“The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” Pope Francis said in his most extensive remarks yet.  

One wonders how many of the 61 Republican House members who are Catholic are paying attention to the Pope, especially after their latest efforts to make life harder for the neediest Americans.

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

The Rich Shall Overwhelm

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

We Shall Overwhelm

David Cay Johnston

 

September 18, 2013

 

A new book explores when and why America’s rich protest. 

 

AP Images/J. Scott Applewhite

Four years ago, the modern Tea Party seemed to emerge from nowhere, leaving journalists bewildered and the public with few reference points to understand seemingly spontaneous rallies by middle-class people seeking lower tax rates. A search for the phrase “tea party” in connection with “politics” in major newspapers yielded fewer than 100 mentions in 2008—and when the words did appear linked together, they suggested studied formality and decorum. The next year, they appeared more than 1,500 times, often connected to “protest demonstration.”

But little was spontaneous about the new party. “Social movements that explicitly defend the interests of the rich and the almost-rich have been a recurring feature of American politics,” Isaac William Martin, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, reminds us in his new book, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent. “Such movements shook the American polity before the Obama era, before the Reagan era, and before Barry Goldwater ran for president—before, even, the New Deal.”

With meticulous research, Martin shows how the modern Tea Party grew from decades of efforts by American oligarchs to de-tax themselves. They relied on cranks, rogues, and a few scholars to polish the most effective ideological marketing pitches. Their goal was selling the notion that if the rich bear less of the burden of government, all of us will somehow end up better off. These pitches have worked best when some newly proposed government initiative—like President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act—arrives to pose the threat of major policy change. They have depended on diverting attention from obvious questions, such as just how does a smaller tax bill for the Koch brothers benefit us?

Spanning decades, the residue of relationships, movement-building skills, and organizations from past enlistments of the affluent many to agitate for the interests of the super-elite few could be seen merely as an example of what Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab called “cultural baggage” in their 1971 book The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970. Instead, Martin says, these movements bequeathed to us “not just a suitcase we drag along behind us” but “a toolkit” to remake American public policy. Martin also concurs with historian Richard Hofstadter, who pointed out a half-century ago how many practitioners of his famous theory—the paranoid style in American politics—found their roots in the arrival, in 1913, of the 16th Amendment. That amendment, ratified on the eve of World War I, resolved disputes over the meaning of the phrase “direct taxes shall be apportioned,” and in doing so ushered in the modern income tax.

By the 1920s, Martin writes, corporate boardrooms were rife with “rich men who were scared of progressive taxation, but did not know how to fight it.” Along came J.A. Arnold, a semi–con man who told them he knew what to do. Arnold grew up in central Illinois, near the birthplace of rabble-rousing William Jennings Bryan and a few years behind him. Populist movements fueled by abuses of railroads and their underwriters surrounded him in his youth. Arnold saw opportunity—not in fighting the railroads but in fighting the progressives. By age 34, he had discovered what Martin calls “a talent for flattering rich and powerful men.” Again and again, Arnold would “seek out a rich patron, turn the conversation to politics, profit.”

Arnold, allied with traditional bankers, fought the Texas land banks that helped small farmers prosper. Then he hit the big time, organizing “tax clubs” that, like the Tea Party, seemed to emerge from nowhere. In just 33 days, as 1924 became 1925, Texas tax clubs held an astonishing 216 gatherings. The clubs “were in the pure image of the Texas Farmers’ Union and the Farmers’ Alliance,” Martin writes. “The participants in the tax clubs, however, were not farmers: They were overwhelmingly bankers.” Indeed, all but 7 percent of conference chairs were bankers, the great majority of them bank presidents. Their pitch was that lowered taxes would encourage productive investments, an idea that resonates with today’s economic and tax debates. (Knowing this kind of backstory makes it less surprising when today’s Heritage Foundation professionals describe their employer as a leading advocate for the poor.)

               

Arnold found his greatest support in the Old South, where he had organized the Southern Tariff Association to promote tariffs over income taxes. Delta plantation owners and their economic peers “worried that federal spending threatened their political power” because broader economic opportunity would “endanger the willingness of the black poor to work for low wages.” Martin notes that Mississippi had been among the first states to ratify the 16th Amendment, because Mississippians had so little income to tax. But by 1940, the legislature voted to repeal it—even though fewer than 300 Mississippi residents owed enough income tax to expect any income tax cut.

Martin also shows how adept tax opponents have been at using sleight-of-hand arguments. Back in the 1920s, for example, the brothers Pierre and Irénée DuPont attacked the federal enforcement of Prohibition—“a particularly sore point to pious rich.” In the elite view, the federal government unfairly made up for its lost revenue with higher income taxes, “thereby letting the sinners off scot-free while shifting the costs of their sins onto the rich.” But one rich people’s organization found that its appeal met greater success after abandoning the narrow argument that legalizing and taxing liquor sales would ease the burden on the teetotaling wealthy. The new idea was that ending Prohibition would “provide additional revenue to state and federal governments in crisis.” Thus it was that in the early days of the Great Depression, ending Prohibition gained early favor with lawmakers “in states that were increasingly stressed to pay for basic public services.” Pennsylvania led the way in stopping the funding of enforcement. This kind of shift in rhetoric remains relevant today as congressional Republicans push a 25 percent cut in the IRS budget just as more states ponder legalizing—and taxing—the sale of marijuana.

In time, J.A. Arnold lost favor, partly because he prospered even as his movements faltered. But others came along eager to pick up the slack. Edward Aloysius Rumely, a onetime Progressive turned right-winger by Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 effort to pack the Supreme Court, and a specialist in direct-mail publicity, “would do the most to transform the movement to untax the rich.” Among Rumely’s successors was Connecticut manufacturer Vivien Kellems—a veteran of the fight for women’s suffrage (the civil--disobedience techniques of which she brought into the anti-tax movement) and a standout in the man’s world of 1930s big business who grew much richer thanks to New Deal and World War II government contracts. Still, she compared IRS agents to Hitler’s enforcers. She insisted that small business was “marked for liquidation,” and in one jeremiad warned that “we are one step removed in this country from the Firing Squad and the Concentration camp.” In a 1948 Los Angeles speech, Kellems announced she would cease withholding income taxes from her employees’ checks. The gesture made her a hero to this day to the virulent, sometimes violent cliques that claim the paying of taxes is voluntary and the federal government is a criminal organization.

Martin also examines more sophisticated anti-tax advocates, like Robert Dresser, a New England textile heir, Harvard-educated lawyer, and union opponent who led the way in what Martin calls “clever policy crafting,” an essential feature of rich people’s movements. Dresser’s work toward a constitutional amendment limiting the federal government’s power to tax helped make the once-fringe cause “increasingly palatable” to mainstream conservatives starting in the 1940s, almost four decades before Californians enacted Proposition 13.

In his dotage, at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Dresser embraced John Bircher conspiracy theories. It’s but one thread in a taut fabric Martin weaves from many connections among Southern racists, anti-communist crazies, corporate welfare queens, and rich people’s de-tax movements. Another thread is the little-known story of the young organizer Grover Norquist’s many trips in the early 1980s to Angola. He went there to learn tactics from the Marxist turned anti-communist revolutionary Jonas Savimbi, who had the support of many of the right-wingers around President Ronald Reagan; Norquist would soon put what he learned into practice as he transformed a new organization, Americans for Tax Reform, from a “short-term lobbying project” into the vehicle for a “war of attrition against the American welfare state.”

A recurring dream of the century-long effort Martin chronicles is getting the top tax rate down to 25 percent or even 15 percent. Reagan got tantalizingly close with the 28 percent top rate in the 1986 Tax Reform Act, enacted with bipartisan support. George W. Bush won the number that matters most—long-term capital gains and dividend rates down to 15 percent—from 2003 to 2012. More than 30 percent of America’s capital gains now flow to the fewer than 8,300 households with annual incomes of $10 million or more, while the nearly two-thirds of U.S. households making less than $50,000 collect just 3 percent.

Martin’s title is an homage to Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward’s seminal 1978 book Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. Piven and Cloward showed that the poor get heard when they stop being docile. Or, as Frederick Douglass put it, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Mass demonstrations, strikes, and even riots scare the oligarchs into paying attention.

The problem with disruption as a strategy is that the wealthy, having smart advisers and plenty of money, co-opt threatening movements. We can see this in the 1971 memo that Lewis Powell, later a Supreme Court justice, wrote for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as it tried to understand and undercut the burgeoning consumer movement. Powell’s proposed strategies included creating subtly anti-consumer institutions modeled superficially on the work of consumer advocates like Ralph Nader, adding a patina of concern for public interest to obscure their agenda.

In the case of the modern Tea Party, we now know that a good chunk of the money to stage events came from the Koch brothers, inheritors of wealth who are no strangers to the benefits of government-granted corporate monopolies as well as to laws that let them avoid, defer, and even escape taxes. That the mainstream news gives so little attention to the Kochs’ behind-the-scenes manipulations is a tragedy. The Tea Party’s very name sows confusion: The original 1773 Tea Party opposed tax favors for the wealthy owners of the British East India Company. Contrast this with modern Tea Party demands that a congress and president—elected by the people—lack legitimacy and must reduce taxes, especially on business and owners of capital.

Rich people’s movements waxed and waned over much of the last century, going dormant only to reappear when roused by a new policy threat. They have yet to achieve many of their goals. But thanks to decades of well-funded organizing, favorable laws in Washington and state capitals that passed while few noticed, and now the dark-money opportunities of Citizens United, they are here to stay. Martin’s book is useful in understanding a forgotten history that preceded the seemingly sudden assaults on consumers, unions, and workers by legislatures and governors in Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and other states where extremists are currently in power. While the actions are indeed abrupt, contemptuous, and cruel, they grow from a neglected but by now lengthy tradition of lessons the rich and their advisers learned from failures past.

The Republican De-Evolution: From Political Party to Cult

Forward Progressives

The Republican De-Evolution: From Political Party to Cult

April 24, 2013 By Allen Clifton

For a while now, I’ve called the Republican Party a cult more often than I have a political party or ideology.  The emergence of the Tea Party only solidified this belief.
Scientific research (not that science means much of anything to many Republicans) distinguishes 5 characteristics of a cult:

1. People are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations
2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized
3. They receive what seems to be unconditional love, acceptance and attention from a charismatic leader or group
4. They get a new identity based on the group
5. They are subject to entrapment and their access to information is severely controlled

I’ll tackle these one by one.

1)  Any rational person who’s subjected themselves to a decent amount of right-wing media (I have, it comes with the job) would find it hard to deny that these individuals often thrive on fear, paranoia and anger.  Anyone who has ever objectively watched Fox News, listened to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, has probably lost count of the references to apocalyptic destruction of our country even in just one broadcast.  Even after the death of Osama Bin Ladin, something that should have been celebrated by every American, Fox News perpetuated the idea that President Obama was someone who proved that he has no issues going into a country without authorization, to kill whoever he wants—whenever he wants.  Really?  You take what should be an apolitical event and turn it into a means at which to paint Obama as some kind of tyrant who will stop at nothing to kill whoever he wants.  It was simply ridiculous.

Even long after the “death panel” myth has been soundly debunked, many Republican still fear “death panels” in the Affordable Care Act.  They’ve been conditioned to believe Obama is some kind of gay rights supporting, foreign-born, radical Muslim socialist set on destroying “traditional American values,” yet can’t pinpoint a time when we had those—for everyone.  Hell, they can’t even comprehend that for someone to be a socialist, a radical Muslim and support homosexuality is nearly an endless line of contradictions that no one person could ever singularly encompass.

They’re told by most of their media sources to be afraid.  These bad men are out to bankrupt your grandchildren, create panels deciding who lives and dies, and turn this country into some socialistic style of governing.  You can’t constantly be bombarded with this kind of intensely negative and hate filled information and not come out emotionally compromised.

2)  I’ve always said Republicans are all about simple thoughts and vanilla ideas, I call it bumper sticker politics.  They create catch phrases like “Obamacare” or “job creators” because it’s easier to peddle to their followers.  Their party is essentially based on 3 main ideas: God, taxes and guns.  It’s simple and easy to repeat.

I always say the liberal strengths and weaknesses are the very same things.  Our ability to be diverse and think differently, while still fundamentally agreeing upon an issue, makes liberals more well-rounded.  On the contrast, that same diverse nature makes us seem weaker and far less organized.  Republicans aren’t this way.  If Fox News or other right-wing media sources push an idea, I’ll almost instantly see Republicans repeating those same exact ideas—practically verbatim.

No matter their argument, be it about taxes, Obama, terrorism, the Constitution—whatever the right-wing media tells them to believe, they will.  Then they’ll repeat them over and over, indoctrinating their audience until it becomes second nature to repeat the exact same response anytime they’re faced with that issue from the opposing side.  Want proof?  Ask a random Republican the real name of “Obamacare.”  Heck, Republicans won’t even say rich or wealthy anymore.  If you are rich or wealthy you’re now a “job creator”—even if you don’t create a single job.
3)  While I wouldn’t call it unconditional love, it is shocking whenever I see Fox, Beck or Rush disagree with anything Republicans are doing.  These outlets make Republicans feel good and justified for their hatred and fear of anything and everything not like them.

They perpetuated the notion that, “While the “liberal media” may bash you, and Democrats may call you ignorant—who cares?.  Those people are the enemy, they tell you what you don’t want to hear.  But if you listen to us, the “fair and balanced” media, we’ll spoon feed you exactly what you do want to hear.  You’re not bad Christians!  Sure you may hate homosexuals, call the poor lazy moochers of our welfare system, then cheer executions—but you’re a devout member of your church!  You volunteer in the choir and tithe 10% of your income each month.  You’re a fantastic Christian American—don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.”

When a gay soldier was booed at a GOP debate, not a single candidate there reprimanded the audience for doing so.  At another debate a hypothetical man without health insurance was presented to Ron Paul in which he concluded let him die, which was cheered by the audience.  This, the party who clings to the Bible and calls themselves the “moral majority.”  But it was alright, because Fox News said it was.  They perpetuate this idea that “While the rest of the world may be against you, we love you and it’s perfectly acceptable to believe the way you do—they are the enemy, we are your friends.”

4)  Republicans are no longer a political party.  Not anymore.  It’s a faith, similar to any religion.  Republicans wear their party as proudly as they do their religion.  Ideology should always be up for adjustment or debate.  Facts should be considered the basis for which you build your political system of beliefs.  For many Republicans, they’re born and bred to be a conservative.  Granted, liberals are this way in a lot of aspects, but liberals are typically more diverse and open to progressive and changing ideas.  Republicans cling to the same talking points they have for decades.

I am a liberal and I think differently, very differently on a lot of occasions, than many of my liberal friends.  Republicans aren’t this way.  In fact, if you’re not essentially 100% committed to their ideas from the top to bottom they have a title for you with a nice little acronym to match.  You’re a R.I.N.O. (Republican In Name Only).  Sure, they’ll accept your vote and support, but do you think gay marriage is acceptable?  Do you think we should raise taxes?  If the answer is yes, then I’m sorry— but you’re not really “one of us.”

Now it’s not just being a Republican, it’s being a “Tea Party Republican”—which means you’re a “true conservative,” not just your average conservative.  You can’t simply have a set of political ideologies, debate them and be diverse.  You have to be the alpha Republican, all or nothing.  Otherwise you’re really not a true Republican.
5) And my favorite.  Access to information is highly controlled.  Currently, the Republican answer to anything is, “If a Fox approved media source didn’t report it, then it is all a part of the liberally bias media, thus a part of the whole conspiracy against the truth.”

I’ve said for a while now, facts have become objective statements.  I can provide links to simple, factual ideas such as Reagan raised taxes 11 times, but most Republicans either don’t care or won’t believe it.  Tell them Reagan (the messiah of “conservatism”) quadrupled our deficit and they aren’t even phased.  Many Republicans, especially Tea Party Republicans, cling to Reagan’s legend as the epitome of Republican values, despite the fact Reagan is closer to being a Democrat than a Tea Party Republican in today’s right-wing world.

It’s the classic case of trying to argue with a conspiracy theorist.  Essentially you can never win the argument as it’s almost an impossible task.  To someone who buys into a conspiracy, all evidence opposed to that conspiracy is just part of the conspiracy.  That’s how Republicans are right now.  Any economic or political evidence showing the obvious hypocritical and contradicting beliefs they currently value is simply the liberal media trying to push their agenda.

Suddenly global warming is a hoax, homosexuality is a choice, green energy is bad because it requires about 1/1000th the fossil fuels we use today (it still needs oil for lubrication—that one always makes me laugh), Reagan never raised taxes, etc..
Honestly, I could go on and on about the ridiculous statements I’ve heard Republicans make, simply because Fox News and their buddies decided to push that particular agenda.

Now I know this doesn’t include “all Republicans”.  Nor am I saying Republicans are bad people.  But to say it’s a simple political ideology now days is simply not true.  The dogma of “Republican” has turned into a full-fledged cult following.

The next time you talk politics with a Republican ask them to provide you with an example of a strong economic country where the government is weak, taxes are low, and the welfare of the country’s economic future is put into the hands of the rich and powerful—just one historical example.  I already know their answer because there isn’t one.  In fact, the closest resemblance to any nation that has a weak government,  little or no taxes and the powerful are left to do what they wish are Third World countries like Somalia.  That still doesn’t change the fact they believe in the ideology that supports this style of governing.

Or just simply ask them not to tell you what they believe, but provide examples of where it’s worked.  Republicans have mastered the art of repeating their talking points and political rhetoric, but when you ask them to provide actual information on where their ideology has worked, they typically come up lacking any evidence to support their argument.

Ask them not to tell you why you’re wrong, but to prove to you why they’re right.  It can’t be done.

Ryan, Rand, and the Political Cult of the Right

DAILY KOS 

Mon Aug 13, 2012 at 02:16 AM PDT

Ryan, Rand, and the Political Cult of the Right

by ignatzmouse

       
  

Randism is a cult, the political equal of Marxism. Cults and ideologies always begin from a naming of the primary center of reality. This center then becomes the prescription for every ill, every wrong, every modern failing, every Utopian hope, and structures every sphere surrounding its heartbeat from the walk of one's own life to the will of government. Religious ideologies name this center as God (as proxy for the Church hierarchy), Clan ideologies name the center as one's heredity and are closely related to Nationalist ideologies who name the center as the state and its dictatorial head, Marxist and communist ideologies name the center as the collective organism, and Rand simply took Marx's center of the collective organism and shifted it to the singular (self-centered) organism.

This cult-like prescription of the renamed center is present in the spread of Randism, but there is something yet more troublesome in the context of its 'populist' rise on the Right. Paul Ryan's version of Rand's ideology emerges in the context of America's transition to a multi-ethnic society. This is important to note for it lays bare the confounding problem how a populist movement could proliferate whose end result is seemingly counter to the interests of the commoners. A good portion of White America fears the change brought about to their familiar way by the new multi-ethnic community. They fear this just as they feared integration in the 60's and school desegregation in the 70's and the ongoing influx of minorities into their suburbs.

Some of us see pluralism as the fulfillment of America's promise. Others, however, see it as its demise. Pluralism threatens their perceived structure and invades their comfort zone. Randism to them is a way to 'stick it' to the rising pluralism -- to those whom they deem as inferior, as slackers living off government programs, those who are now taking over their neighborhoods and the reins of politics, changing America. Randism offers a way to pull out the ladder from their upward mobility. It comes in a time that 'minority' babies in the United States outnumbered white babies for the first time. That's the context, the racial fear that provides the identity for this Tea Party brand of 'Objectivists.' And, it is happening at the same time that these very same 'patriots' are destroying the anathema of affirmative action and erecting electrified border fences.

The gutting of all meaningful social programs is the New Right's way of making their stand, drawing the line, joining the border patrol, and taking on 'the others.' It reminds me of the last, reactionary years of Apartheid as the power structure tried desperately to cling to the final remnants of their power. 'If we're on the way out, we're going to tear it down for you.' It does not matter that these same people depend upon so many of the programs they seek to abolish to maintain their middle class standard of living. It does not matter that their parents depend upon Medicare and Social Security to survive just above poverty level. There is a cognitive disconnect born out of underlying racial fear to which they have hitched their wagons and assimilated as a group identity. The cult of Randism has wedded the cult of the clan and the prescription has been handed down.

This is why you hear the right wing pundits on talk radio and Fox News and in editorial pieces laud the virtues of Rand on one hand and slip into racial slurs and stereotyping on the other. The two are part of the same meme. It would not surprise me at all if this were an actual strategy formed within the Right Wing think tanks to cultivate the dumb white masses to provide what their backing plutocracy could never expect, populist allegiance. The infamous "wedge" has been employed to such great effect on these same saps in order to corral them toward the hidden causes behind the front causes they thought they owned.

This populist Randism, however, is even more subtle, more insidious, because it is touted as "values" and "work ethic" and "patriotism" even though it is nothing more than the unstated throttle of base racism. The clue that this is indeed a political manipulation rather than ideological or even philosophical organic chemistry is that Rand's individualism, the naming of the self as 'the' center, runs absolutely counter to the idea of a 'populist' movement, a movement of the masses.

Ayn Rand herself despised these movements and these easily led people referring to Libertarians as "monstrous," "disgusting," and "scum." In Rand's own words, “All kinds of people today call themselves ‘libertarians,’ especially something calling itself the New Right... I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect.”

        Ayn Rand, The Moratorium on Brains, 1971

Don't tell this to any Tea Partier or vague Libertarian caught in the clutches. They won't hear it because they are something else, some new brew drunk on precepts kept just beyond their wits end, guided by racial resentment that they dare not name in mixed company or social media, and set out to burn down the community of America in a race riot orchestrated by those who want to divvy up the ruins. If I am right, Mitt Romney's seeming gaffe in introducing Paul Ryan as "the next president of the United States" is not so much a gaffe as it is a Freudian slip. It says that the shackles put on the recovery by Republicans during Obama's first four years are to pale to the unabashed arson they intend during Obama's next four years -- for it is the very notion of pluralism to which they are setting fire and from whose ashes they will have positioned a prescription.

Originally posted to ignatzmouse on Mon Aug 13, 2012 at 02:16 AM PDT.

Also republished by Community Spotlight.

Tags

• Ayn Rand
• Libertarians
• Mitt Romney
• Paul Ryan
• Plutocracy
• Populism
• Racism
• Rescued

Libertarian Writings that Read Like Comic Books

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By Paul Buchheit

Libertarian Writings that Read Like Comic Books

Robert Reich recently noted that people without arguments often resort to personal attacks. They also resort to pleasant-sounding nonsense.

 

 

Photo Credit: Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com

September 15, 2013  |  

 

Free-market libertarians go to outrageous exremes to convince themselves and others of the infallibility of the market. Even when opposing evidence smacks them in the face, they conjure up sound bites that seem vaguely convincing but are in reality meaningless. Here are some examples.

1. A Free Market is Good for Everyone.

Milton Friedman was a magician with words, making reality disappear: "There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people [than] the free-enterprise system...The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people."

The Cato Institute added their own banality: "Free markets create a future promoting integrity and trust."

2. The Market Works. It Just Doesn't Feel Like It.

The Wall Street Journal,the Heritage Foundation, and The Economist have teamed up to try to convince us all is well. The Wall Street Journal exclaims, "Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before." Perhaps the Journal staff should compare notes. Their own writer tells us that "the middle class...has shrunk considerably over the past few decades."

The Heritage Foundation contends that "In reality, the living conditions of poor Americans have shown significant improvement over time." Heritage may equate living conditions with TV sets and window air conditioners, but for the rest of us many studies show the relationship between poverty and ill health -- chronic diseases, depression, and a slew of other physical and emotional maladies.

Finally, The Economist states: Before the 1960s...most blacks were poor, few served in public office and almost none were to be found flourishing at the nation's top universities, corporations, law firms and banks. None of that is true today. But much of that IS true today. According to Pew Research, median wealth for black families in 2009 was $5,677, compared to $113,149 for white families. Meanwhile, Blacks and Hispanics, with 29% of the population, are severely under-represented in both the corporate boardroom and higher education.

3. Why Can't You Be a Successful Individual Like Me?

The Wall Street Journal published a remarkably self-congratulatory article that is, once again, short on facts and high on emotion. "The American dream," trumpets the author, "has traditionally been one of individual success that is rewarded and admired." Perhaps he's not aware of the recent Executive Excess study that found "Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were eventually 'bailed out, booted, or busted.'" And how about that "individual success" part? The fact is that the richest 10% own almost 90 percent of stocks excluding pensions, and the stock market has historically risen three times faster than the GDP itself. Success comes easy when you can make money just by going to bed at night.

The author goes on to announce, "In Silicon Valley, the rich commonly reinvest their wealth close to home...I have reinvested most of my net worth in 8.5% of the shares of my own company." Good for him. But Over 90% of the assetsowned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1% of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011.

Perhaps, instead, they're building businesses on their own? No. Only 3 percent of the CEOs, upper management, and financial professionals were entrepreneurs in 2005, even though they made up about 60 percent of the richest .1% of Americans. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.

4. If You're Not a Successful Individual, You Must Be Lazy.

The Cato Institute claimed that "Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour."

Both the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities discredit the claim, noting that, contrary to Cato's implications, hardly any families receive multiple benefits at the same time. Furthermore, the benefits do not replace work. Many employed families are simply not making enough to survive. Over 83 percent of all benefits going to low-income people are for the elderly, the disabled, or working households.

5. If I Accomplish Everything on My Own, Why Should I Pay Taxes?

Using their pet buzzwords 'capital' and 'mobility,' the Wall Street Journal came to the roundabout conclusion that a lower capital gains tax rate would end up causing higher-income taxpayers to pay more taxes. The logic is too elusive to explain here.

The Journal also attacks the Financial Transaction Tax, calling it a "sin tax" that will "punish sinners" to raise revenue for the U.S. Treasury. Never mind that the current sales tax on financial transactions is ZERO.

Robert Reich recently noted that people without arguments often resort to personal attacks. They also resort to pleasant-sounding nonsense.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, a writer for progressive publications, and the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org).