Think about it. Terrorists are an absolute necessity for furthering the Bush regime’s plans. Without terrorists, they could not justify Afghanistan, Iraq, torture, illegal spying on US citizens, stripping away habeus corpus rights, Guantanamo, outing Valerie Plame, or any of the other debacles they have foisted upon America and the world.
There is only one thing standing it their way, preventing them from doing whatever they think will bring them more power and wealth.
Liberals.
In the absence of a functioning media to inform the public, liberals and progressives are the only thing standing in the way of a complete power grab by the neo-cons. This makes them far more dangerous than terrorists.
Indeed, the terrorists are a necessary part of their plans, so terrorists must not be brought to justice (think Osama Bin Forgotten).
Further, liberals threaten to bring back fiscal responsibility, including higher taxes on the wealthy, which is akin to a “war on wealth”, according to Kudlow the Crackpot on CNBC.
Liberals threaten their plans to dismantle government, deregulate business, wage endless and highly profitable wars, and control the strings of power in perpetuity. Terrorists aren’t a threat, they are a critical tool… a prop… a crutch.
Liberals, on the other hand, are the most dangerous thing in the world.
Dr. John Moffett is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area, who has published over 45 scientific articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett is also the author and webmaster of the political opinion website www.Factinista.org, and is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com.
To the contrary - liberals are the Right's unwitting allies.
They fancy themselves the valiant opposition, but in actuality, invent justifications for capitulating to virtually every rightwing initiative. You claim "Liberals threaten (neocon) plans to dismantle government, deregulate business, wage endless and highly profitable wars, and control the strings of power in perpetuity."
One has to wonder who you have in mind that's fighting these noble battles. Surely not the flaccid worms of the Democratic Party, who have supported the growth of the military-industrial complex & national security state every bit as much as conservatives. The MIC & CIA were both born during the Truman administration, & liberals endorsed Cold War anticommunist orthodoxy every bit as much as conservatives.
Deregulation started during the Carter administration, & has proceded apace ever since. Democrats, owned by the same corporate sponsors as Republicans, don't oppose it.
Did you notice any "liberals" opposing (or exposing) Reagan's crimes in Central America during the '80's? What public "liberals" have ever told the real truth about the Vietnam War to the American public? Which ones have made serious efforts to draw the public's attention to the obscene levels of Pentagon spending?
Today, there's hardly such a thing as "liberals" any more. The cowards of the Dem Party (think Kerry) run away from the label, while posturing as "patriots" for their military service in unjust imperialist wars.
You seem a bit confused between "liberals" and "leftists." The former group is a watered-down version of the latter. It attempts to justify itself by borrowing & diluting some of the best ideas of the latter, but is so anxious to avoid conflict with anyone, & to be loved by everyone (especially the rich & powerful), that it eagerly abandons all principle in a desperate attempt to please & appease rightwing tyrants.
A liberal accepts 99% of society's prevailing framework. He objects to some of the unpleasant outcomes of that framework (war, poverty, pollution, etc), but is too timid to acknowledge the cause-and-effect relationship between the structure of that framework, and the unpleasant symptoms he objects to.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1168 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 11:12:13 AM
You are right that the Democratic Party neither contains many liberals nor represents liberals. I am a progressive liberal. I am not a Democrat, and I only voted for them in the hope that they would defend us from the Republicans. They haven’t. Why? They’re conservatives. There are a few liberals in Congress – Kucinich, Feingold – but they don’t have any impact and they can’t effectively represent liberalism in such small numbers.
You are also right that liberalism offers no threat to the neocons. They will continue to prevail in America until they implode or a foreign military subdues them, and neither of those is imminent. The left offers no threat because first, it is disempowered and disorganized. We’re decades from real liberals finding one another, organizing, and being elected in large enough numbers to promote liberal ideology. Plus, even if liberals were organized, it’s too late for them to be elected into power. There is no democracy here. It’s time to stop saying that figuratively. It doesn’t matter what the American population wants, even at election time.
We had hoped that the Democrats would function as an opposition party, but they didn’t, and it is unrealistic to look at them as opposition to the neocons. Obviously, the Republicans knew this, and therefore, it's likely that they let the Democrats win Congress to produce this illusion of change. That wasn't obvious then - it was only our worst fear before the 2006 elections. But it is now. There was no change in power if there was no change is law or policy
If you want power from these conservatives that own both parties, that have packed the federal courts and that control the electronic voting machines - if liberals want power back, they’re going to have to take it. And I don’t see revolution succeeding even if there was an opposition organized to fight. This is no longer musket and cannon to musket and cannon. They’ve got smart bombs and nuclear missiles in silos and submarines. They’ve got anthrax and smallpox. Don’t even think about liberalism in America for a very, very, long time – when the American left, the Europeans or the Asians can and do impose it. Democracy in America is very dead
The Bush regime may implode, and its entire cast discredited by history, but liberals will not replace them. The actual eminence grise, which is global and not elected, is going nowhere. They will send in another group of identical people who will call themselves something other than neocon, decry the neocons as flawed and distance themselves from them, and then continue with exactly the same policies.
You write about not confusing liberal and leftist. I say, don’t conflate liberal with Democrat. That has been a specific goal of the right’s linguistic manipulation effort: the phrase liberal-Democrat is routinely spoken as a single word, as are extreme-liberal, liberal-media, tax-and-spend-liberal or radical-liberal. Liberal is almost never spoken alone.
Leftist is slang for someone on the left, and both are synonymous with liberal. All of these refer to the entire spectrum left of center, from moderate liberals through extreme liberals. They’re all leftists. You’re just feeling the effects of the derogation of the word leftist, previously conflated with terms like Communist, anarchist, Bolshevik and pinko. So, to you, it is a derogatory term.
Americans are being very slow to recognize and acknowledge the changes that have been completed. Americans say, "if we dont [ ] soon, we'll lose our democracy". Americans still write their Congressmen, and look the next batch of candidates and hope that they'll get a good one. Those things work in democracies (republics *are* democracies, just not direct democracies). In my opinion, there is no reason to expect those activities to produce any change in the government's arc.
by
Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 9:21:30 PM
I feel for you such anger such hoplessness. You need to chill a little. Labels are neat but people aren't. The issue isn't the activist rhetoric of a bygone era I heard this in the 60's. What is needed, that my generation failed to deliver, is the how and how it will motivate the ' Indifertude' (the mass indifference. )
by
Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 531 comments)
on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 9:47:12 PM
I am talking about liberals on the internet, and throughout the country (like you) who are making a very big stink over what is happening.
Yes, I and many other liberals yelled like crazy when Reagan was in office, and as I recall, Ollie and Casper got in lots of trouble during that time.
If you think that it isn’t making a difference, listen to how Bill O’Reilly went nuts over the Daily KOS yesterday. He thinks liberals are the most vile things on earth. If liberals weren’t doing anything, then Bill wouldn’t need to blast them.
by
John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 610 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 11:39:25 AM
The reason I objected to your offering the word "liberals"
as an accurate label for those seriously opposed to the political Right, is that there's an immense difference between liberals and leftists. The distinction between these orientations makes all the difference in the world, and should not be casually blurred or ignored.
Liberals are content with the prevailing framework of society; leftists are not. Liberals feel that society is basically acceptable & needs only a bit of fine-tuning; leftists feel that the current society is fundamentally unacceptable, and needs to be re-organized from the ground up.
It's true, as Blue Pilgrim notes, that the word "leftist" is also too broad & requires further clarification. Maoists, as he notes, are not the same as Trotskyists, & so on. And there certainly have been some very misguided projects & movements that considered themselves part of the Left.
But the basic distinction between liberal & Left is a very big deal. Demonizing & misrepresenting the Left is so much a part of US culture that most Americans have a poor understanding of what it really is. On closer examination, I think that much of what liberals retrospectively pat themselves on the back for (civil rights, labor unions, social security, & much else) originated on the genuine political Left -- and that the role of "liberals" has most often been to make such extensive concessions to the Right, that they in effect are partners with it, & give it a respectability that it doesn't deserve.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1168 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 3:16:35 PM
I am a liberal, and I am completely against the extant socioeconomic/governmental system. I think that capitalism brings out the worst in people, not the best. I think we need public financed elections, public education, public health care, and strict regulation of business.
I think that when the constitution says that the job of the government is to promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, it is talking about people, not corporations.
I think you have accepted a definition of liberal that means DLC Democrat.
That’s nuts.
I am a liberal, and if I were president, I’d come along with The New Deal 2.0, and it would be a big upgrade.
by
John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 610 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 3:28:45 PM
Your self-summary there is very good & I agree with all the
positions you outline there. But that perspective is not really "liberal." In the years after WWII, liberalism came to be identified with attempting a limited redress of social inequality via government-implemented social spending programs. You're outlining a perspective way to the left of that.
You also write "I think you have accepted a definition of liberal that means DLC Democrat...That’s nuts." No, I accepted no such definition. "Liberal" is an umbrella term. In American politics, it encompasses all Democratic administrations since the New Deal, with roots in "Wilsonian idealism." It encompasses the worldview projected by such bastions of American liberalism as the NYT & The Nation. Basically this view asserts that American power is uniquely good, moral, & benign. This view permits only very limited criticism of how American power is deployed in the world; it does not however tolerate the idea that the US ever commits horrific crimes on the world stage. Rather than allowing people to see that most US interventions overseas have really been blatant imperialism & morally unjustifiable, liberalism has collaborated with conservatives in claiming that whatever we were doing (in Indonesia, SE Asia, Congo, Iran, Central America, etc), we were only doing it to "do good" and bring the poor little savages the fruits of our superior way of life.
The massed political heritage of US liberalism has certainly deteriorated, so that today, there's virtually nothing left of it but a rotting corpse -- the DLC Democrats. But even during America's Golden Years after WWII, US liberals were zealously anticommunist, intensely nationalist, & contributed mightily to the growth of the military-industrial complex. They supported every single US intervention overseas, & helped keep the American population in the dark about what the US was really doing in the world. JFK & LBJ were liberals, and they led us into Vietnam -- a barbaric crime whose true nature is still not understood by most Americans. It's no accident that many of the most dangerous lunatics in the Bush regime, like Perle & Wolfowitz, were strongly influenced by Scoop Jackson, the archetype of Cold War anticommunist liberals.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1168 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 7:40:54 PM
I call myself a progressive rather than a liberal. Look up 'liberal' on wikipedia and you get a plethora of meanings -- some not so nice which run into the neo-liberal, and then neocons -- the free trade groupies. On the other hand you have some leftists like Maoists -- so 'leftist' doesn't mean just one thing either (excpet those who sit on the benches on the left side in the French parliament -- (was the French?).
I'm more inclined -- if limited to a one-dimensional characterization -- to think of people on a sliding scale between 'human beings' and -- ummmm -- well -- "anal sphincters". The former and the latter are dangerous to each other -- although if the former wins out the latter would do much better than if the reverse occurs. In fact all people do better if the 'human beings' predominate. It's called 'civilization'. Maybe we should talk about the civilized and uncivilized -- civil, of course, referring to citizens, in well a functioning society (something completely alien to Bush and the fascists).
by
Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 1:29:17 PM
Yeah, humans vs. sphincters. That about sums it up.
The reason that liberal is a dirty word nowadays is because of right-wing radio, and the corporate media. Thomas Jefferson was a liberal, and I’d be proud if I could be lumped in with him and his ilk.
John
by
John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 610 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 1:45:30 PM
While I agree with your article, I think that perhaps you limit the scope too much. It's not liberals that are more dangerous than terrorists. It's people with brains that are unencumbered with the vomitous ooze that is the output of the great neo-con propaganda machine.
That encompasses a lot more than liberals. Although there are some who would classify me as a liberal for the time I spend here writing until the keyboard I am using gets ready for the scrap heap, I am really not a liberal. To be sure, I have some liberal, or at least left-leaning ideas. That is obvious when one reads the stuff I have written for this site, both articles and commentary. However, you of all people should know I also have some fairly conservative ideas...like balancing the federal budget, not wasting money we don't have on a war we don't need...you know, things of that nature.
Be that as it may, I am still as dangerous to the status quo here in the USA as the biggest card-carrying, "bleeding heart" liberal that ever drew a breath.
Why? Because I am smart, and I know when someone is pissing on my foot and telling me that it's a warm summer rain. Pretty much from the time of 9/11, I have been feeling this wet stuff dripping on me, and I have spoken to it. While that speaking happened at places other than here (too bad I didn't find this site LOOOONG ago), I have been a Bush basher since pretty much day one.
I am with this fight against DUBYA, his minions, and all the destruction they have rained down on the country, the people, and the constitution. I will remain with this fight as long as I can get to the computer to write.
Blessed be! Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 860 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 2:30:41 PM
You're right. I was really using the term "liberals" the way Bill O'Reilly uses it, as an oversimplification to make a point.
Many intelligent, old-style Republicans, including now Douglas Feith, are excoriating Bush et al.
But intelligence doesn’t always bring enlightenment - take Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Karl Rove as but a few of many examples. Neuroscientists have identified two different types of intelligence; “intellectual” and “emotional”. If you have a huge intellectual intelligence, but the emotional parts of your brain are all messed up, you get Lex Luthor, or Karl Rove.
That is what John Dean meant when he wrote about conservatives without conscience.
by
John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 610 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 3:18:04 PM
There is a neat article in the NY Times about Williams syndrome, and a bit more:
July 8, 2007
The Gregarious Brain
By DAVID DOBBS
If a person suffers the small genetic accident that creates Williams syndrome, he’ll live with not only some fairly conventional cognitive deficits, like trouble with space and numbers, but also a strange set of traits that researchers call the Williams social phenotype or, less formally, the “Williams personality”: a love of company and conversation combined, often awkwardly, with a poor understanding of social dynamics and a lack of social inhibition. The combination creates some memorable encounters.
[...]
by
Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 4:57:38 PM
It isn't just that they need terrorists, John, I have been convinced for several years, that their old friend and member of Carlyle Group, Osama, or someone hired by Cheney or Rumsfeld or all of them are on call for custom made or off-the-shelf terrorism on demand. They will try to shut down the election process and perhaps call Marrtial Law. They who have murdered 775,000 people, would not hesitate to do a Katrina type devastation on some big city that is pretty much in the Bag for the Dems, like my hometown Chicago,
Many intelligent, old-style Republicans, including now Douglas Feith, are excoriating Bush et al.
That's because the DUBYA regime is anything but conservative. With DUBYA throwing money around like it's being printed in the back room, he's given excessive governmental spending a completely new meaning. His manifold constitutional violations are also not big with true conservatives. Then there's the fact that the government has gotten larger under him, not smaller as most conservatives like.
I can't help but think my personal political hero, Barry Goldwater, would have rolled his eyes at DUBYA. It's a surety that DUBYA's looseness with the constitution and his rimming the leadership of the Religious Reich would have driven Goldwater to complete irritation.
No, DUBYA's regime isn't conservative. Frankly, I don't know how to classify the DUBYA regime...but complete insanity comes pretty close.
But intelligence doesn't always bring enlightenment - take Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Karl Rove as but a few of many examples. Neuroscientists have identified two different types of intelligence; "intellectual" and "emotional". If you have a huge intellectual intelligence, but the emotional parts of your brain are all messed up, you get Lex Luthor, or Karl Rove.
Yes. With what I know about computers, I could become a malicious hacker in no time flat, and I'd probably be pretty formidable. However, of all the talents and abilities I possess, I don't possess the required personality twists to make me a criminal.
I don't lie well. Whenever I let a fib drop out, it's clear that I have just spoken an untruth. The number one ability a real criminal needs is the ability to lie. I don't qualify. I also have a conscience that gets to me whenever I do something wrong. Guilt eats me alive when I know that I have actively hurt someone by something I did or didn't do. Ergo, any criminal career I'd try for would be as disastrous (if not more so) than my professional career.
Anyway, I agree that progressive minded people are a real threat to DUBYA. Let's just hope we are dangerous enough to get his pathetic ass thrown out of the White House.
Blessed be! Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 860 comments)
on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 2:17:31 AM
17 comments
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