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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 1/11/11

Fear, Smear and Political Violence for Profit and Power

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Message Stephen Crockett

I never thought our limited welfare programs were a threat to our free enterprise system and regarded those "conservatives" who thought that way as extremists. As a working class man from a union family, I thought those "conservatives" who hated unions were both extremists and willing tools of international corporations.

 

Over the past ten years, these extremist positions have so taken over the conservative movement that I can no longer call myself or them "conservative." The reasonable conservatism of the 1960-1980's has largely died.

 

I call their successors "rightists", "The Right Wing", "corporate clowns" or "neo-fascists." I do not like using labels to define my diverse policy positions but most others would consider me to be either a "realist" (because I believe in fact based policy where results matter), "a traditionalist (because my ideological views are largely based on the Founding Fathers, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Christianity) or a "progressive" (because I believe in our American tradition of growing social progress, democracy and equality).

 

Unfortunately, as the Far Right captured the conservative movement with corporate financial help, the tactics the extremists used to con the ignorant, fearful, angry and greedy among our citizenry into supporting political and economic policies that really only favored the powerful elite became typical standard operating procedures of the Right.

 

The Right in American politics does not have any specific policies will improve the lives of most Americans. In fact, they stand in harsh opposition to any policies that would help the majority of Americans. They preach that our government is our enemy when the very core of the American idea of government is that we are the government.

 

We need a strong government run by us to hold international corporate power in check and to protect our standard of living from these international predators. The Right wants a weak national government when it comes to restraining corporate power but a strong one under corporate control when it comes to citizens' demands for better wages, more jobs, decent healthcare, quality and affordable education and real economic mobility. They do not want a government that pursues energy, military or trade policies that protect our national interests instead of the interests of international corporations.

 

The Right has nothing to offer voters, in order to achieve political power, except fear and smears. It is little wonder that voter suppression is such a key element is their campaign tactics. The economic elite and corporate forces will dump tons of money into the bank accounts of people like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh because they use the kind of extremist language, violent rhetoric and demonizing tactics that serve to promote the "corporatist" economic and political agenda.

 

These same "corporatist" forces are funding the Republican Party. They are buying up the media and rigging the rules of the economy against the vast majority of Americans.

 

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Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio and author of the Democratic Voices opinion column.
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