A Denunciation of the National Democratic Party Apparat
The Democratic Party national "apparat" lacks the guts and sense to stand up for what our country was founded for. They have forgotten who we are.
I recognize that there are Democratic Congresspeople who have bucked the apparat, at least on occasion. And I understand that working in Congress is working in a cesspool, that to get anything passed may require swallowing something vile. People willing to fight on regardless, and to hang on as much as possible to principle, certainly deserve respect.
But I'm not talking about legislative tactics; I'm talking about how a free people can govern themselves, about whether our country can continue to be, however flawed, the home of a free people.
I'm glad to support the real Democrats, in Congress and nationwide, who work to win the battles in the EDs and state capitals and who work to change the national party.
But I will not support the apparat in any way whatsoever. And I will work to get others to also denounce them!
The apparat occupies itself with haggling over earmarks for bridges in Alaska while the neocons occupy themselves with shredding the Constitution. They intend to restructure the United States as a dictatorship. They dream of the United States as an empire, dominating the world. They intend to roll back the Enlightenment, to see a return to the Dark Ages of ruthless tyrannies engaged in endless war.
I do not exaggerate.
We face nothing less than a fascist assault on the Constitution. [fas] The Leo Strauss/Grover Norquist philosophical/strategic view codified the neocon's vision and laid out their planning.
A summary of Strauss' view: # Perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical # they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them # those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality # there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior # separating church and state was the biggest mistake made by the founders # secular society... worst possible thing ...encourages dissent, which in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with opposition, # a political order can be stable only if united by an external threat, ..,if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured... [dru]
Consider: the current government is dominated by men who studied under Strauss or have acknowledged his influence on their thinking: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz; former Defense Policy Board chairman Perle; Shulsky of the infamous Pentagon Office of Special Plans; Abrams of the National Security Council;...
So the Strauss view exactly blueprinted what has come about.
Bill Moyers, interviewing Norquist: "You're on record as saying, my goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bath tub." Norquist concurred; and he has said "... we intend to bankrupt the government to the point where they can basically only have the function of collecting taxes to run a national defense system." [moy]
This means that your access to a job, healthcare, sustenance is totally dependent on your standing with a corporate employer, a position from which you can be fired on a moment's notice - without any means of redress - at the whim of any manager [terrified eg an upcoming performance rating and the prospect of losing his/her job]. Working for small firms is no better; they are at the mercy of the WalMarts or are in desperate competition with one another...And getting "disappeared," at first rare, will become more and more commonplace.
Lawrence Britt, a scholar of fascistic regimes: "analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads ..." 1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. 3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. 4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. 5. Rampant sexism. 6. A controlled mass media. 7. Obsession with national security. 8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. 9. Power of corporations protected 10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. 11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. 12. Obsession with crime and punishment. 13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. 14. Fraudulent elections." [bri]
An alarmingly precise characterization of events, no?
Graduate of MIT and Stevens; 50 years as systems engineer on cutting edge projects, civilian and military; Fifth Air Force, WWII; sworn defender of the Constitution
Well, Yes and No. You're certainly on the right track, but
not quite there, yet, IMHO. (Most of what you say is rock-solid & true; I'll just explain what I see as the weaknesses.)
When people begin to perceive that the Democrats are really a major part of the problem, there's a great tendency to speak in tones of justified outrage, & to express this by saying (for example) that the Dems have failed "to stand up for what our country was founded for," or that the current Dems are not "real Democrats."
I think though that a careful review of US history casts doubt on the idea that the founding principles were really all that they're cracked up to be. The country was set up to make sure that a certain small ruling class would continue to dominate society, & would be able to pass their control of it on to their descendants. Reviewing US history via a class-based perspective (authors such as Michael Parenti or Howard Zinn, among others) helps to remove the pseudo-populist gloss from the real story.
As for the Democrats: there was one time in history, & one time only, that they really seemed to be "the party of the common man." This was during the New Deal, & that was a special case, because capitalism had almost succeeded in destroying itself through its own greed & excess. FDR was farsighted enough to recognize that the great issue of that era was a matter of the ruling class making significant concessions, in order to head off the possibility of class war and a real revolution.
Aside from that one exceptional case (which was after all an effort to save capitalism from itself), the Democrats have never done a single thing that was the slightest bit admirable from the viewpoint of 99% of the domestic population. They were the party of the Southern slaveocracy. Their record of collusion with wealthy interests is every bit as bad as Republicans, as is their history of support for unjust US wars.
Though the Dems posture as the "people's party," they are just the good cop part of the "good cop, bad cop" act of American capitalism. The 2 parts work together, as an instrument of the ruling class, against the interests of the population as a whole. // There's never really been any such thing as what people call "real Democrats." As with the supposed wonderfulness of US founding principles, there's a lot less there than meets the eye.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1058 comments)
on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 11:28:20 AM
RichM - Tnx for chiming in. We're clearly on similar tracks.
Your note gives me a chance to touch on an important aspect I didn't cover above.
The founders drew on the Enlightenment, the proposition that the only way people could live free of tyrannical rulers and priests was to govern themselves. This idea is what our country was about, was founded for.
And this was not just coffeehouse chatter. They took up arms against the superpower of the age and at the cost of terrible suffering and privation, at home and in battle, won the chance to establish us as home of a free people. And they established the Constitution so we could work together for the common good while protecting the rights of each.
It is this idea that led people everywhere to look to our country as a model. It certainly was not the repeated and appalling behavior of the United States in so many instances that was admired. But nothing testifies to the power of the idea more than the good regard in which people hold the country in spite of its failings.
I denounce the Democratic apparat specifically because it is the political party of the moment which asserts a populist flavor. This is, of course, overall, a misrepresentation. However, there are members of the party who show some understanding and who, occasionally, can be found standing up for fundamental idea.
Zinn and the others, in their complaints about the founders, miss one really essential point. Maybe they think it's too obvious to need mentioning. John Nichols put this in its proper context.
"Today, there are those who attempt to remake Jefferson and the other founders as religious zealots, as essentially conservative men who happened to have a slight squabble with King George III, or, worst of all, as imperialists who would want the United States to dominate the affairs of other lands.
"The founders were imperfect men, to be sure. Few were so radical, or so far ahead of their times, as Tom Paine, the wisest of their number. But they were, proudly and unquestionably, revolutionaries against the old order of inherited monarchy, state churches, empires and the authority of the few over the fate of the many."
One final point: the closing lines of the Declaration of Independence:
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
This was high treason.
I have enormous respect for Zinn; and I think he might well have signed it too. But how many of the other commentators who disparage the founders [however much they may deserve it] would formally commit an act of treason against the present administration? And put themselves in line for arrest and trial under the Military Commissions Act? How many of us, of OpEdNews?
PS: as to the Dems never having "done a single thing that was the slightest bit admirable from the viewpoint of 99% of the domestic population," maybe we should acknowledge that there were exceptions -eg, the Johnson 'Great Society' and the Kennedy Civil Rights Act [however appallingly wrong they were about Vietnam].
by
abacus (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 53 comments)
on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 3:56:36 PM
