Posted on 11/10/2002 8:14:49 AM PST by zapiks44
A dark week for democracy
The stranglehold the far Right has now taken on America will make it a more divided, reactionary and illiberal country
Will Hutton Sunday November 10, 2002 The Observer
The election in Georgia said it all. The Democrat governor, Roy Barnes, had dared to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag last year. His Republican challenger wanted to bring it back, to honour, he said, 300,000 Confederate 'veterans'. A Republican has not occupied Georgia's governor's mansion since 1872. After last Tuesday, one does, courtesy of wanting to celebrate a civil war fought to defend slavery.
Europeans do not understand the curious civilisation that the current America is becoming, and the grip that a visceral and idiosyncratic conservatism has on its national discourse. They especially do not understand the undercurrents of an increasingly self-confident and subtle racism that is its own variant of the forces that in Europe gave us Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn. George Bush Jnr is a chip off the old multilateralist, transatlantic establishment, runs the European argument. He may seem hawkishly conservative but, in the end, he seeks UN resolutions like other American Presidents. Even at home, his bark is worse than his bite.
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Anyone who thinks the Tory party is 'nasty' has not encountered contemporary American republicanism. Georgia's Republican Party, for example, is now lead by Ralph Reed, a long-time crusader against abortion, divorce and single parent families. He would regard last week's vote in the House of Lords allowing unmarried and gay couples to adopt as the work of Satan. He is part of US conservatism's ideological hard core.
Reed played every card he could. If the governorship was to be won celebrating the Confederacy, the race for the Senate seat would be no less shameless. The Democrat incumbent had lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam, but was attacked for being unpatriotic - the worst accusation in today's US - because he believed that unions should be able to recruit in the newly established Department of Homeland Security.
And so one of American liberalism's darkest days was repeated across the country. Minnesota and Missouri, long-time Democrat strongholds, fell. Governor Jeb Bush, despite the Democrats insisting that justice now be done for those infamous chads, won in Florida. As if to underscore conservatism's ascendancy, the only Democrat gain was in Arkansas where the Republican senator had suffered a messy divorce and his Democrat challenger was even more pro-gun and pro-Bible than the incumbent.
The result is that the Republicans now control the Senate, House and the presidency for the first time since President Eisenhower. The consolidation of America as an ultra conservative country is going to take place rapidly. Mr Bush may have offered a few tit-bits to show his credentials as a 'compassionate conservative', like his concern to reduce the price of prescription drugs for the elderly, but the core of the Republican programme is anything but. There will be radical tax cuts for the rich and the corporations; a freezing of all efforts to stiffen regulation in the wake of America's corporate scandals; moves to privatise the social security system; and a roll-back of environmental protection.
Abroad, there will be the continued construction of a new international order built around the prejudices of the American Right; unqualified support for Israel, building the National Missile Defence System and tepid support for the framework of international law and treaties.
Nor do the Conservatives' ambitions stop there. Following the ideas of the high priest of ultra conservatism, Leo Strauss, they want to construct a republic of 'moral', god-fearing citizens who adhere to traditional virtues, rewarding the rich who can only have become rich through the virtue of hard work and penalising the poor who are only poor because of their own fecklessness. Above all, by now having the opportunity to pack the judiciary with extreme right-wing judges, they intend to do away with the famous Roe v Wade judgment that legalised abortion. This is the most fiercely reactionary programme to have emerged in any Western democracy since the war, and for which last Tuesday's vote, argue Republicans, is an explicit mandate.
Horseshit. George Bush has al-Qaeda and a low turn-out to thank for his victory. The central message of his five-day tour of 15 key states in the last week of the election was to play on Americans' fears about terrorism, rallying them behind their national leader. When the electorate voted locally, the Democrats had the edge, winning governorships in four of the biggest industrial states - Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Democrats I have spoken to are so traumatised by the overall defeat that they dismiss these gains as irrelevant; I think they are wrong.
America is not a happy place. A generation of increasingly conservative policies has shrunk the American middle and induced not just fantastic inequality but a sharp decline in social mobility and opportunity. The US's social contract, never more than minimalist, is now threadbare. Consumer confidence is low; job insecurity high. American capitalism is viewed with deep scepticism. Nor are the majority of Americans social conservatives and closet racists; they do not want the clock put back over women's rights, the environment and race.
The trouble was that this silent liberal majority was only prepared to voice its preoccupations at state rather than national level, if it bothered to vote at all. The Democrats had to find a way of voicing the concerns of the mass of Americans while not undermining the President during a national emergency, but to do that they had to have a powerful pitch based on a liberal ideology as animating and dynamic as that of the conservatives. They didn't and they lost.
But the game isn't up. America's conservatives, blinded by their ideology and in control of every lever of government, will overreach themselves and the reality of what they plan will become evident to all, stirring the apathetic voter and reminding the best of America what it stands for. Last week represented the highwater mark of American conservatism and, although it looks bleak, the beginnings of the long-awaited liberal revival. Not just the United States, but the world, needs it badly. In the meantime, despite its flaws, give thanks to the European Union for partial shelter from the conservative storm.
To diagnose a liberal or a Rat one must first ascertain whether they are advocating a positive policy approach to a problem. If this is absent, then one looks for ad hominem attacks. If these are present your diagnostic schema is complete. You have either a liberal, a Rat or both.
It never fails to amaze me that people like this author make outrageous character judgments and, then, congragulate themselves on a job well done. It does not take much to call a man a SOB in so many words.
What can one expect from a "SUBJECT"?
Who here, excepting those not yet sober from last night, would call the contemporary Republican Party or President Bush "far right"?
I admire President Bush, and I'm glad he has a majority in Congress to work with -- at least I'm glad for now; we'll have to see what comes of it -- but he's a few millimeters right of center at most. In the realm of domestic policy, his most conservative act to date has been the tax cut. His prosecution of the anti-terror campaign is simple, nonideological patriotism.
The Left has a tactic that it employs repeatedly, and which, with the collusion of the media, never fails to work. It keeps redefining "moderation" to include more and more of the social-welfare-fascist agenda, then denounces any deviation from those positions as "extremist" and "far right." This is in keeping with its "evolving standards" notion. Of course, it's the ideologists on the Left who are the self-anointed keepers of what constitutes "moderation;" no one else is allowed a say.
There are many commentators in Europe that can't stand the ongoing American repudiation of socialism, neosocialism, and welfare fascism. They see it as a slap in their own faces -- and in a sense, it is. They're subconsciously ashamed of their poor economic performance, their timidity in the face of movements and migrations of persons hostile to Western values, and their unwillingness to take up arms in any cause, however obviously right and necessary. They mask their shame with expressions of derision and contempt toward us, as if it were difficult to see through the rhetoric to their envy and self-loathing.
The Old World might have reached its terminus at last. We're watching it implode under dirigiste economics, self-inflicted military irrelevance, and the inability to bar immigrants hostile to its norms. Given our relative positions in the world -- free, powerful, prosperous America vis-a-vis shackled, impotent, threadbare Europe -- there's no reason to take anything their envy-mongers say seriously.
For further thoughts, please see:
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Bzzzzzzzzz wrong (see numbers 1 through 5). I know that little terry, in a futile effort to keep his job, is trying to spin the 4 govnerships as a mandate for their message, but the numbers do NOT back him up. Let's review, shall we?
1) The democrat party doesn't have the White House.(1R-0d)
This isn't news to anyone. With the possible exception of Colin Powell, there aren't any democrats in the whitehouse.
2) The democrat party lacks a majority in the Senate.(53R-47d)
Again, this isn't news to anyone.
3) The democrat party lacks a majority in the House of Representatives.(226R-209d)
Once again, no news here. everyone is aware of this 17 seat margin.
4) The democrat party lacks a majority of Governors seats across the 50 states.(25R-25d)
This part IS news, and it is being ignored by the mainstream press. democrats do not enjoy the majority of Governorships across these 50 states. These seats are very valuable for appointing senators in events of absenteeism, and Gov. Ventura(I) demonstrated this very well after his discust at the 'rally on a dead guy'. The democrat party doesn't have most of these.
5) The democrat party lacks a majority of State Houses across all 50 states. (25R-22d)
This part IS news and is also being ignored by the mainstream press. As demonstrated by the redistricting in 2001, these state houses not only draw lines in house and congressional districts, but also set laws that effect peoples lives in a very local way. The democrat party doesn't have most of these either.
I am in no way dissmissing the partys future, but the larger question is "Is it history?" I would say No, it's not historic.
When was the last GOP tri-fecta ?
When was the last time the people put the GOP in control of the House, Senate and Whitehouse ??
The year was 2000.
"A Dark Day for Democracy."
And thank God that it was.
The founding fathers were terrified of "democracy."
They knew full well, in a democracy, there are no individual rights. Majority rules and that is a recipe for tyranny of the majority and no individual rights.
That is why they created a "republic."
A sampling of their thoughts:
And on June 21, 1788, Alexander Hamilton made a speech in which he stated: "It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
At another time Hamilton said: “We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy.”
And Samuel Adams warned: “Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself! There never was a democracy that ‘did not commit suicide.’”
James Madison, one of, the members of the Convention who was charged with drawing up our Constitution, wrote as follows: “...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Governors and Senators get lots of media attention, and can go against their party, and explain why conservative Oklahoma and Wyoming elected Democrat governors while liberal Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island elected Republicans.
But look at state houses: Republicans almost consistently gained seats. The notable exception is Illinois, where the Republican party was so nuts anyway that they deserve to be in the wilderness for a while. Republicans gained seats in the Pennsylvania state legislature while losing the governor. Republicans gained seats in Wisconsin while losing the Governor as well.
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