Just in time for Halloween. For some really scary reading, check out these sites for extensive information about the American neoconservative gang, who now control U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

Eurolegal Services, a London-based site providing information about the European Union, at www.eurolegal.org/index.shtml. The index page has several links that will take you to different subjects of interest. You can’t miss the neocon link.

The Christian Science Monitor Special Projects site has a comprehensive compilation of materials on our neocons, and even an interactive quiz you can take to learn if you are a neocon. I took it, and I’m not. The site is at www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/index.html

The Columbia Journalism Review cyber-archives has a good 5-part series (published in 1981) on the right-wing multi-millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife at http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/81/4/scaife.asp . Scaife is the most generous bankroller of the neoconservative movement, which has successfully rendered the moderate/liberal wing of the Republican Party completely powerless. Scaife played a major role in the attempt to drive President Clinton from office.

Search also on Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism. Several sites with his writings on the origin and “real” meaning of neoconservatism will be included among the hits.

The subject is complex and detailed, and I will try to address the issue in more depth in future posts. Don’t wait for me, though; check the sites out yourself. We are talking fascism here, folks.

From the Eurolegal site:

“The primary objectives of the corporate funders are, of course, economic: they want to achieve lower taxation and lower costs for their businesses which in turn means rolling back government regulation.

“Benito Mussolini - ‘Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism, because it is a merger of State and corporate power.’

“The essence of fascism is not men strutting around in black or brown shirts. It is the transformation of the primary purpose of the state from the promotion and protection of individual liberties to the promotion and protection of the ‘corporate interest’ where ‘the corporations’ are not just the business entities, but also all other forms of collective - unions and professional bodies are treated as corporations, the churches are corporations. The state becomes the protector and promoter of the corporate interest and the arbiter between competing interests. The liberty of the individual is subordinated to the corporate interest as perceived by the state.

“As an example of the ‘corporate alliance’ with government, a reader of this page (HMcM) has pointed to the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council ("ALEC")”

Check the connections and methods of the corporations at the American Legislative Exchange Council at http://www.alec.org/

Then go to ALEC-Watch: http://www.alecwatch.org/

ALEC-Watch monitors and reports on ALEC activity.  Certainly the  Halliburton corporation, which was granted a no-bid contract to “rebuild” Iraq – and whose former CEO was Vice President Dick Cheney – has a nice  “corporate alliance” with the Bush administration.  It is unlikely, though, that the neocons vision of the future includes unions.

Since the Bush administration launched the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan; through the invasion of Iraq; and up to the present, patriotism has been much on my mind. After 9/11, and the location of al Queda in Afghanistan, the invasion of that remote and rugged country was as inevitable as the tide. Thus, I limited my emotional investment to speculation that the Bush administration would probably mess it up somehow, but hoping for the best even so. I was absolutely against the invasion of Iraq, being convinced that it was nothing more than the indulgence of a president who learned foreign policy by watching old John Wayne films. Thus, for millions of Americans who supported both wars, I was not, and am still not, a patriot.

Not long ago, in response to yet another of my familiar rants against U.S. foreign policy, a dear friend asked if there was anything about America that I did like. I answered yes – in the main, there were two: first, I was grateful that I had been allowed to protest my country’s foreign interventions without being disappeared in the night. Second, I was profoundly grateful for the respectable number of former military personnel, who, after deep and agonizing soul-searching, came out vigorously against the overwhelmingly violent U.S. policy toward the Third World. They provided inspiration for me. Most of these men, and a few women, were Vietnam veterans, and they were a major force in the effort to stop the Reagan/Bush administrations’ hypocritical support of the Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran governments – brutal right-wing dictatorships in all but name -- and to stop their purely criminal 10-year attack on the leftist, but purely benign, Sandinista government of Nicaragua. I said that I doubted if former military personnel of other imperialist nations, in the midst of their imperialist phases, had protested so strongly against their government’s policies, if at all. I suggested that to a large degree, America’s greatness lies in the moral courage shown by these incontestable patriots. (I neglected to mention not only freedom of the press, but also the fact that a respectable number of reporters, investigators, and even former government officials actually take advantage of that freedom, and write books critical of U.S. foreign policy. One of those books, Rogue Nation, is reviewed on the Recommended Reading page of this website.)

I of course had always considered myself a patriot, but in part on the basis of a mistake. For years I believed that the full quote by early U.S. Naval commander Stephen Decatur was "My country right or wrong. When right, to keep it right; when wrong, to set it right."

I thrilled to the idea that an early American patriot would actually consider a proactive effort to prevent America from doing another country dirt. Naturally, I saw myself and my compatriot peaceniks as carrying on that tradition. Sadly, it appears that this version of the quote is most likely mere wishful thinking; perhaps the product of a fevered liberal imagination. Decatur’s actual quote, delivered as a toast at a dinner given in his honor in April, 1816, is: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

Disappointing, but understandable. As a military man, Decatur is obligated to obey his commander-in-chief’s orders, ethically sound or not. We can assume that he had some sense of what might be considered "wrong" intercourse with other nations in those days, and we might even hope that in those more intimate times, had his president considered such "wrong" intercourse, Decatur might have argued vigorously against it.

But, Decatur’s patriotism did not serve the purposes of at least one of his contemporaries, the proprietor of a Virginia newspaper, who quoted him as saying: "Our country – In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong." (Respectfully Quoted, Barnes & Noble, 1993, p. 70. Emphasis in original.)

It is virtually certain that this version of Decatur’s toast earned the newspaper owner 19^th century "high fives" from his fellow entrepreneurs. Being economic realists, they of course knew that sticking to moral principle would not bring America the power, territory, and booty that enriched them. So, a subtle tweaking of the quote, from the most powerful sector of the American polity – the business class – would provide comforting pre-approval for whatever foreign enterprise the president might choose. As long as it was successful.

And, of course, that is just how our country’s "intercourse with other nations" played out over the years.  The Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars were strictly imperialist adventures. (Had the French not sold the Louisiana Purchase to President Jefferson, we can bet that within a few years an excuse would have been found to win it by military conquest, in spite of France’s solidarity and assistance during the Revolution.)  In 1917 the Russians went communist, and provided the U.S. with a perfect excuse for further "successful," and mostly wrong, "intercourse with other nations." After the Soviet Union fell, traditional U.S. foreign policy was called into question by those who expected a "peace dividend." In response to this dilemma, a group of right-wing neoconservatives created the Project for the New American Century, whereby, through expanded military might, the U.S. would become the law-maker and law-enforcer for the entire world. There was of course some resistance at home to this vision of American empire. Then came 9/11, and the U.S. military-industrial-foreign policy establishment is back to its imperialist agenda with a vengeance. Too bad for other nations and too bad for us. (PNAC founders are the godfathers and policy makers of the present Bush administration.)

I find it hard to justify the deaths and maiming of so many thousands of America’s decent citizens in unnecessary foreign wars – deaths and maimings that continue as I write – only so that the United States can become a modern-day Rome. I do not want to see America fall as Rome fell. I want America’s policy-makers to be patient; to recognize the legitimate interests of other nations; and to realize that only by investing our considerable moral capital in building a global community can America survive in any desirable form. Does that make me unpatriotic?

The death penalty is still with us.  Check out tonight's post on the Essays page.

I. Times, they are a’changin’

The last page of each issue of the liberal/progressive magazine The American Prospect carries a column written by Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and a Prospect founder. In the September issue’s Last Word, Reich opens with the observation

“One of the things that distinguishes advanced democracies from banana republics is that the winners and losers accept the results of elections. Losing candidates and parties don’t initiate coups. Winners don’t kill of the losers and their supporters. ... winners take office, losers take other jobs, and wait until the next election to do battle again.”

Several decades ago, Reich notes, American politicians moved away from this model toward the permanent campaign, wherein fund raising for the next election, and discouragement of potential rivals, begins as the last polling place closes. Reich continues: “We are now, it seems, witnessing the next stage in our shift toward a banana republic form of government. Permanent campaigns are morphing into permanent elections. In the permanent election, rivals seek to reverse the decision of the majority of voters, and unseat the victor as soon as they can.”

The first effort toward the permanent election was the impeachment of president Bill Clinton. The charges were either trumped up: Troopergate, Whitewater; or irrelevant to Clinton’s ability to govern: Clinton’s zipper problem, the word finally made flesh in the person of White House intern/sex toy/blabbermouth Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment failed, but the President was damaged, and the presidential campaign of Vice President Al Gore was damaged as well – guilt by association.

The next strike was the well-documented, and successful effort by Florida Republicans to “re-engineer” the 2000 presidential election. Among other tactics designed to disenfranchise the Democratic opposition, thousands of eligible black voters who would certainly have voted for Vice President Al Gore were purged from the rolls. The result of the rigged Florida election – a victory for George W. Bush by a few hundred votes – was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, some of whose members would be quite comfortable as banana republic jurists.

We are now in the midst of the third tactic in this grand strategy: the California recall election. Revived from near-death by the wealthy Republican Congressman from California’s 49^th district, Darrell Issa, the recall seeks to oust Democratic Governor Gray Davis, who was re-elected just last November. Davis was in the wrong place at the wrong time: presiding over the efforts to keep the lights on during California’s Enron-inspired energy crisis; and dealing with a budget that went bust when the dot.com bubble popped. These events, coinciding with the electorate’s nasty anti-tax mood, which hinders recovery from the dot.com bust, provided just the excuse the Republican right needed to attempt an overturning of the last election.

Reich is a model of objectivity, refusing to suggest that the Republican right, as opposed to the center-left of either party, say, is the political sector most likely to wage permanent electoral war. I have no qualms on that score. Everything about the Republican right points to a love of oligarchy, the form of government enjoyed by the citizens of any banana republic worthy of the name.

First, let the private sector run the economy without hindrance – the captains of industry, commerce, and finance know what’s best for all of us, and can be trusted to do the right thing by even the poorest widow and orphan. Just what you would hear from the oligarchs of Guatemala or El Salvador.

Second, eliminate taxes; they interfere with the creation of new jobs. Just what we might hear from the oligarchs of the banana republics, where few, if any taxes are actually paid, even if they are on the books. Of course, there are no inconvenient laws protecting the worker, either, because such laws also interfere with the creation of new jobs.

Third, eliminate even moderate opposition within the oligarchical class itself. Presently, moderate Republicans have no voice whatever in the Republican party – they are virtually invisible, in spite of being good soldiers. This is a milder version of what happened to the wealthy landowner who was elected to office in El Salvador years ago. His fellow oligarchs were aghast when he actually proposed legislation to benefit El Salvador’s hard-working, and grossly exploited poor. His bullet-riddled body was soon found in a ditch.

At bottom, I suggest, the Republican right hopes to effectively destroy elective representation of the American liberal and progressive. On the other hand, if America suffers another terrorist attack during a George W. Bush presidency – a highly plausible scenario – we won’t have to worry about elections at all; there will be no need for them under permanent marshal law.

II.       Are the Democrats smart enough to run a government        effectively?

Perhaps I’m being overly picky here, but I believe that the kind of stupidity described below weakens the liberal/progressive cause. (The Politician From the Barrio, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, September 8-14.)

Before it became clear that the California recall was a go – and even after – state and national Democratic Party officials, as well as California’s labor leaders, put the word out that no prominent Democrat was to run as a replacement candidate for governor. In other words, those who oppose the recall get to vote against removing Governor Gray Davis, but they don’t get to vote for an experienced liberal if he is in fact ousted. Real smart.

Luckily, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante – son of farm workers, himself once a toiler in California’s vineyards – didn’t listen. He decided to run on a strategy of urging voters to vote against the recall, but to vote for him in case the recall succeeds.

How simple. How intelligent. “After a month of stiff resistance," says the Post, "elected Democrats and the state’s powerful unions have come around to supporting [Bustamante’s] 'no on recall, yes on Bustamante' campaign. The state Democratic Party will likely endorse him soon.”

“Early on,” says Bustamante of his childhood, “I realized that I wasn’t going to be the smartest kid in the class.” But, compared to the leadership of the Democratic Party, Bustamante is a genius. How come there aren’t more like him?

 

I'm not a particular fan of Califirnia Governor Gray Davis, but I will not validate this insane and purely cynical effort to subvert our electoral process by voting to recall him. I will vote NO on the recall, and YES for Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte to replace Davis if he is in fact recalled.

As the California recall approaches, let us reflect on these words by George Bernard Shaw:

"We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives.  Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives?  Where are such voters to be found today?  Nowhere."

To Arthur Bingham Walkley, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman

(With apologies to those who can recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others — you know who you are.   See also Deborah Tannen in preceding post, Language & Politics.  B.B.)

Hate groups

The following is derived from the Summer, 2003 issue of Intelligence Report, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center. (www.splcenter.org)   SPLC monitors hate groups, and sometimes sues them -- usually successfully -- on behalf of their victims. It’s a gutsy outfit.

Unreconstructed Southerners have created a "neo-Confederate" movement, promoted by a variety of "Southern heritage" organizations. Their goal is to make sure that the wound suffered by the South in its Civil War defeat never heals. They are usually aligned with white supremacist hate groups, which promote virulent anti-Semitic, xenophobic, pro-Nazi propaganda and commercial products.

The demonization of Abraham Lincoln is a major project, toward which end a protest was launched early this year against placement of a life-sized statue of Lincoln and his son Tod in the city of Richmond, Virginia. Created by sculptor David Frech, the statue commemorated Lincoln’s "healing visit" to Richmond over April 4-5, 1865. (Richmond had not yet been completely secured, so there was some risk to Lincoln and his son.) The base of the statue carries a fragment of Lincoln’s second inaugural address: "to bind up the nation’s wounds." (Along with other Confederate luminaries, a 61' bronze statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, sitting as if in triumph on his horse, dominates Richmond’s Monument Avenue.)

Letters to the local papers likened Lincoln to Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden. "Just say NO to America’s greatest WAR CRIMINAL – the murderer of 600,000!!" "Why not put up a statue of Osama Bin Laden at Ground Zero? It’s the equivalent, to Southerners, of what’s proposed for Richmond," were comments from signers of an on-line petition protesting the statue. "Lincoln killed 5 of my ancestors," read a poster held by a demonstrator.

In profound irony, these Southern heritage sentiments are in direct contrast to the statement by General Lee, who said "I surrendered as much to Lincoln’s goodness as I did to Grant’s armies." Were Lee here today, what would he say to the young petition signer who added "I’m only 10, but I feel like I’ve hated Lincoln for 110 years"? If this isn’t tragedy, the word is meaningless.

Southern heritage/white supremacist ideas are finding their way into the mainstream, adding to the momentum of the rightward drift of American political debate that was set in motion by Ronald Reagan in 1980, and accelerated by right-wing talk radio through the 90s. Incidentally, Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

 

Language & Politics

First, a few words on some of the terminology used below. Neocon (for "neoconservative") is the generally accepted term for former Democrats who, as one neocon put it, were "mugged by reality." In true reactionary fashion, they converted to Republicans. Neoliberal, as I understand it so far, refers to liberals who decided that liberal theory as embodied in Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society is not only impractical, but intellectually passe’. It’s my understanding that the Democratic Leadership Council, of which Bill Clinton is a member, represents the neoliberal viewpoint. Neoliberals seem to have retained a residue of compassion for the poor and downtrodden -- Clinton did try to minimize Republican damage to the poor after all -- but in practice, neocons appear to have opted for a pure social Darwinism.

I also use the term "selfish, greedy rich." Here, I’m trying to be fair to the non-selfish, non-greedy rich. The selfish, greedy rich are those who hate government, hate taxes, and hate people who want government to help them provide school lunches for poor children. In contrast, the non-selfish, non-greedy rich are willing to pay taxes to help the poor, protect the environment, and create a healthy, non-feudal society. The selfish, greedy rich now dominate the Republican Party, and control the national agenda. In Second and Third World countries, they are called "oligarchs."

The following is derived from the September, 2003 issue of The American Prospect, a liberal/progressive monthly. (www.prospect.org)

The issue has some good articles on how the Republicans have used language to put the Democrats on the defensive, and "as Peter Viereck put it 40 years ago, ... to make people ashamed of generous social impulses."

Deborah Tannen explains how Republican propagandist/strategist Frank Luntz advises the Republicans on everything from phraseology to disciplined coordination and repetition of basic themes – how he molds Republican politicians into good little soldiers in the political war of words. The estate tax was renamed the "death tax," and millions of Americans decided that they were against it, even though it applied to only the largest 2 percent of estates. Indeed, Luntz has good reason to be confident of his methods. Prior to the 2000 election, Tannen was a guest on a radio talk show asking for women voters’ views of the issues. One woman called to say "I’m for education and I’m for the environment. Bush is for education, and Gore is for the environment, so I don’t know who to vote for." Whoa!   Luntz makes it clear that his over-riding goal is to woo even more working-class white men (the "Reagan Democrats") into the Republican party, and to that end he "advises Republicans on how to win votes by changing what they say, not what they do." Thus President Bush’s demonstrably empty phrase "No Child Left Behind."

Referring to the largest deficit in American history, Tannen advises Democrats to turn the tables. "We need simply to state: ‘We must not mortgage our children’s future to pay for the mistakes of today.’ We need simply to ask: ‘What does this do to the children.’" [Italics in original.]

Deborah Tannen is professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. Her books include The Argument Culture, and I Only Say This Because I Love You.

George Lakoff shows how the Republicans have successfully ‘framed" the political debate, to the disadvantage of the progressive cause, by using such terms as "tax relief." "Relief" implies a victim (the afflicted); a crime (the affliction); a hero (the reliever); and a villain (the afflictor). Since most voters pay taxes, "tax relief," for the less analytic among us, is just naturally internalized as a heaven-sent blessing. Lakoff notes that even Democratic officials undermine progressive values by using the term in their press releases. "The Republicans understand framing," says Lakoff. "The Democrats don’t."

Lakoff goes on to give a rationale for progressive taxation that verges on the poetic.

"Taxes look very different when framed from a progressive point of view. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price of civilization. They are what you pay to live in America – your dues – to have democracy, opportunity and access to all the infrastructure that previous taxpayers have built up and made available to you: highways, the Internet, weather reports, parks, the stock market, scientific research, Social security, rural electrification, communications satellites, and on and on. If you belong to America, you pay a membership fee and you get all the infrastructure plus government services: flood control, air-traffic control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and so on.

"Interestingly, the wealthy benefit disproportionately from the American infrastructure. The Securities and Exchange Commission creates honest stock markets. Most of the judicial system is used for corporate law. Drugs developed with National Institutes of Health funding can be patented for private profit. Chemical companies hire scientists trained under National Science Foundation grants. Airlines hire pilots trained by the Air Force. The beef industry grazes its cattle cheaply on public lands. The more wealth you accumulate using what the dues payers have provided, the greater the debt you owe to those who have made your wealth possible. That is the logic of progressive taxation.

"No entrepreneur makes it on his own in America. The American infrastructure makes entrepreneurship possible, and others have put it in place. If you’ve made a bundle, you owe a bundle. The least painful way to repay your debt to the nation is posthumously, through the inheritance tax."

Lakoff closes with the observation that American corporations are deserting the country, registering abroad so as not to pay the $70 billion in "dues and service payments" needed for our schools, and for state and local governments.

From Framing the Dems, The American Prospect, September 2003, p.32.  Quoted with permission.  George Lakoff is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.

Lakoff’s comments, I suggest, put to shame the neocon/neoliberal arguments in favor of the "market" we hear so often these days – which arguments are really intended to con the average, tax-averse voter into believing that the big players really believe in the market, and abide by its rules. First, in stark contrast to the neocons/neoliberals; the self-styled Adam Smithians; and the apostles of Ayn Rand, Lakoff’s point is bullet-proof. (The kindly and compassionate Adam Smith would turn over in his grave if he knew how American capitalists have twisted his message.)

As Lakoff says, "no entrepreneur makes it on his [or her] own in America," and I suggest that it is either dumb or dishonest to assert that they do. Yet this is precisely the argument always given by the enduring tribe of market worshipers -- of whom, those in the upper economic brackets are decidedly not dumb. Whether poor, middle class, or selfish, greedy rich, they all talk as if the economically successful did it all on their own. They talk as if, were there no government and the infrastructure it has created, they -- or the selfish, greedy rich, whom conserative poor and middle class market worshipers revere, and whom they defend fervently against the apostate liberal -- would still have created vast manufacturing empires; created jobs for tens of thousands; extracted the necessary raw materials from the earth for everyone’s benefit; put astronauts on the moon. They would have invented Tang and the computer chip without vast Defense Department funding, and of course they would always have paid living wages, even to the lowliest worker, out of the goodness of their hearts. Moreover, the market worshiper talks as if these entrepreneurs, without government oversight, would just naturally, out of pure self-interest, recognize the limits of our natural resources, and take far-sighted measures for their most efficient use. Left to themselves, would our captains of industry reduce the earth to a barren slag heap, or our rivers to foul channels of chemical waste or metal-ridden runoff from strip-mined mountain tops? Nah!! If by accident there were a chemical spill that polluted the drinking water of entire townships, would they clean it up and restore the water to its previous purity. Of course they would.

In fact, American history itself gives the lie to every argument promoted by the government-hating market worshiper. To see the result of weak and ineffective government, visit any Second or Third World country. The selfish, greedy rich of these nations -- the oligarchs -- pay few, if any taxes, and they literally run their countries for their own benefit. The explicit purpose of their security forces is to protect them from the poor. Their middle classes are profoundly grateful for the patronization of the oligarchy, and probably hate their own poor more than do their patrons. (Indeed, in Brazil, middle-class shopkeepers once paid off-duty police to kill nimble-fingered street urchins. Maybe they still do.)  It is not unreasonable to suggest that the real purpose of America’s "not-so-dumb," selfish, greedy rich is to make such a feudal political economy in the U.S. acceptable to the average American.  President George W. Bush and his handlers are quite efficiently moving America in that direction.