8.13.09
To the Editor,
I read with despair John-Eric Koslosky’s PE-article about the Socrates’ Café discussion over whether “socialism” is a “dirty word.” It has become so—despite the fact that much of what’s essential to our republic is socialized. How many of us could make intelligent election-decisions without public education? Where would many elderly, ill, intellectually disabled, or poor families be without Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security? What about public libraries, roads, parks, CHIP? Would we enjoy even some protection against corporate greed, pollution, and labor-exploitation without government regulation?
Would Thomas Jefferson’s claim that “though the will of the majority in all cases is to prevail…the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression” be realizable without the equal representation that defines socialism’s inherently democratic character?
The answer’s “no.”
Yet we’re apparently so comfortable taking for granted the benefits of socialism that we pretend that they’re gifts from God or features of nature. However loudly Patriot’s Voice members insist that it’s an “excuse ideology,” or that the founders would have rejected these essential institutions, that the PV had a town park for their party is a benefit of “a political system in which the means of production are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles,” AKA: SOCIALISM (Encarta). Could they have hosted the party at a privately owned park? Only if its owner were a Confederate Flag vendor or Cleon Skousen, “one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fanaticist…about secret conspiracies…to impose a one world government” (www.salon.com, 3.17.09)—and writer of “The 5000 Year Leap,” Runyon’s gift to Mayor Knorr.
So what drives the fanatical-right to call Obama’s health care plan “socialist”? NONE of their claims are true, and many are crazy fear-mongering nonsense. FALSE: that the plan includes euthanasia, “death panels,” rationing, diminished access for veterans, disadvantage for small businesses, forcing people to forfeit insurance, or that the HNN1 vaccine’s an extermination conspiracy.
It’s FALSE that “medical research…would become political.” Indeed, it’s refreshing to have an administration that finally takes science seriously and understands that the foundation of a democracy is its PEOPLE, not the profits of its Blackwater, etc. cronies.
Health care isn’t a commodity like a car or a house because health is not merely something desirable; it’s a necessary condition for the exercise of our human rights, hence health care must be accounted among the most basic of these.
The far right’s opposition to health care reform isn’t, in fact, about health care. It’s about Obama and the willingness to resort to ANY strategy to weaken him.
Why?
Obama’s black.
Substitute “black” for “socialist” and you’ve the truth about the Tea Parties, the “Birthers,” the corporate-sponsored town hall harangues, Palin’s psychotic “tweets,” and Glenn Beck’s Neo-Birchers. This isn’t to say you can’t disagree with Obama without being a racist.
I do.
I think we should go single-payer and get the insurance/pharmaceutical vultures out of health care entirely. The least we can do is provide a public option, and a little competition for those 46 million uninsured Americans.
The current “controversy” isn’t for a minute about “free” markets, Constitutions—or the dangers of “socialism.” It’s about FOX-and-friends “real” American: White, far-right, and nationalistic; it’s about how desperate Republicans are to regain power.
The Neo-Birchean tea-baggers would rather let people suffer from lack of access to a doctor than have a black president in the Whitehouse. But they wouldn’t for a second give up their own health insurance or Social Security.
Hypocrites all.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
595 words.
Showing posts with label Far Christian Right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Far Christian Right. Show all posts
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Rural Pennsylvania Hate Group Sponsors Tea-Party
5.19.09
To the Editor,
Joining the chorus of Fox-sponsored Tea-parties are voices belonging to none other than members of our homegrown hate group, the Patriot’s Voice. In his 5.19 Op-Ed, “CEO” Robert Runyon announces a July 4th Tea Party scheduled for Bloomsburg Town Park. He invites American citizens who are “mad as hell.” Apparently citizens of other nations aren’t welcome at the park on July 4th.
Stay home you Canadians!
No Mexican citizens allowed!
You French folks stay away!
Runyon does, however, insist that the event is non-partisan, and that no political signage will be permitted—though I wonder on what authority he could actually keep me from holding up such a sign (perhaps one that reads: “Just say NO to Torture”)—in a public space—where my first amendment rights are fully protected—but let’s not quibble about silly things like rights. He wants a Tea Party. Fine. Now let’s see what he really means.
To discover this, you have to go to the “Obama Nation” page of the Patriot's Voice website where you’ll find a number of unsubstantiated claims directed at the Obama administration.
So much for non-partisan!
In fact, here you’ll find the full measure of the far right’s shrill, nationalistic, and patently racist Anti-Obama propaganda. No criticism of the Bush administration graces the website (although these are the same folks who posted their “Yeah for Joseph McCarthy!” page until it threatened to upset their runs for school board seats).
They claim that under Obama Americans will see the end of marriage, the imposition of Communism, the end of capitalism, the dictatorship of environmentalists, and global domination via the United Nations. According to the Patriot’s Voice, Obama will take away your guns, tax you into the grave, release terrorists onto U.S. soil, and make decisions about your healthcare that used to be your doctor’s.
They consistently refer to the Democrats as Democrat-Socialists. Makes you feel welcome to their party, doesn’t it? They go on to applaud Fox’s Glenn Beck who routinely compares the Obama government to the Nazis, and insists that you cannot be an American without being a Christian. I can only wonder where Runyon got the 76% of Americans who think we’re going in the wrong direction—since Obama’s approval ratings are sky-high.
But I suppose citing sources might distract from the fear mongering.
And a vacuous fear-mongering it is, since the 5.19 Op-Ed itself says virtually nothing about what we’re to be “mad as hell,” what “insanity” they oppose, what job-saving alternatives there are to the bailouts, which inalienable rights the government is threatening to reppress, what “empty promises” we’ve been sold, or what they mean by “social engineering.”
Nope.
They simply parrot the scary—but utterly vacant—platitudes fed to them by the likes of Beck. If this is your idea of patriotism, by all means head out on Independence Day for the PV-Tea Party. But if you think that being a citizen means becoming engaged not merely at the level of hate-mongering propaganda, but rather in the critical evaluation of what Obama really says, what his proposals and policies really stipulate, what his appointments really represent, and what direction your country is really taking, skip the Tea Party.
It’s an easy thing to allow ourselves to be manipulated by patriotic-sounding slogans like “We’re mad as hell!” The challenge, however, is to be a citizen who can think for themselves. Nothing less than our democracy hinges on this thinking. The tea parties are, simply, a cynical attempt by a flailing far right to fire-up a mob in hopes of saving an ideologically waterlogged Republican Party.
That Patriot’s Voice members would be readily suckered by such a strategy is hardly surprising—but YOU don’t have to be.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
615 words.
To the Editor,
Joining the chorus of Fox-sponsored Tea-parties are voices belonging to none other than members of our homegrown hate group, the Patriot’s Voice. In his 5.19 Op-Ed, “CEO” Robert Runyon announces a July 4th Tea Party scheduled for Bloomsburg Town Park. He invites American citizens who are “mad as hell.” Apparently citizens of other nations aren’t welcome at the park on July 4th.
Stay home you Canadians!
No Mexican citizens allowed!
You French folks stay away!
Runyon does, however, insist that the event is non-partisan, and that no political signage will be permitted—though I wonder on what authority he could actually keep me from holding up such a sign (perhaps one that reads: “Just say NO to Torture”)—in a public space—where my first amendment rights are fully protected—but let’s not quibble about silly things like rights. He wants a Tea Party. Fine. Now let’s see what he really means.
To discover this, you have to go to the “Obama Nation” page of the Patriot's Voice website where you’ll find a number of unsubstantiated claims directed at the Obama administration.
So much for non-partisan!
In fact, here you’ll find the full measure of the far right’s shrill, nationalistic, and patently racist Anti-Obama propaganda. No criticism of the Bush administration graces the website (although these are the same folks who posted their “Yeah for Joseph McCarthy!” page until it threatened to upset their runs for school board seats).
They claim that under Obama Americans will see the end of marriage, the imposition of Communism, the end of capitalism, the dictatorship of environmentalists, and global domination via the United Nations. According to the Patriot’s Voice, Obama will take away your guns, tax you into the grave, release terrorists onto U.S. soil, and make decisions about your healthcare that used to be your doctor’s.
They consistently refer to the Democrats as Democrat-Socialists. Makes you feel welcome to their party, doesn’t it? They go on to applaud Fox’s Glenn Beck who routinely compares the Obama government to the Nazis, and insists that you cannot be an American without being a Christian. I can only wonder where Runyon got the 76% of Americans who think we’re going in the wrong direction—since Obama’s approval ratings are sky-high.
But I suppose citing sources might distract from the fear mongering.
And a vacuous fear-mongering it is, since the 5.19 Op-Ed itself says virtually nothing about what we’re to be “mad as hell,” what “insanity” they oppose, what job-saving alternatives there are to the bailouts, which inalienable rights the government is threatening to reppress, what “empty promises” we’ve been sold, or what they mean by “social engineering.”
Nope.
They simply parrot the scary—but utterly vacant—platitudes fed to them by the likes of Beck. If this is your idea of patriotism, by all means head out on Independence Day for the PV-Tea Party. But if you think that being a citizen means becoming engaged not merely at the level of hate-mongering propaganda, but rather in the critical evaluation of what Obama really says, what his proposals and policies really stipulate, what his appointments really represent, and what direction your country is really taking, skip the Tea Party.
It’s an easy thing to allow ourselves to be manipulated by patriotic-sounding slogans like “We’re mad as hell!” The challenge, however, is to be a citizen who can think for themselves. Nothing less than our democracy hinges on this thinking. The tea parties are, simply, a cynical attempt by a flailing far right to fire-up a mob in hopes of saving an ideologically waterlogged Republican Party.
That Patriot’s Voice members would be readily suckered by such a strategy is hardly surprising—but YOU don’t have to be.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
615 words.
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