Beware of Tea Party Extremists

Sen. Richard Lugar's Parting Words: Lugar said they could not possibly govern for the good of the nation if they held fast to their draconian, uncompromising beliefs.

By Steven Rosenfeld
Posted at May 8, 2012, 9:00 pm
Courtesy Of "Alter Net"

Indiana's Sen. Richard Lugar, who lost in the Republican Primary to Tea Party darling Richard Mourdock, issued a lengthy written statement on Tuesday night that chastised extremists in his party--such as his opponent--who Lugar said could not possibly govern for the good of the nation if they held fast to their draconian, uncompromising beliefs.

Instead, Lugar, who was among one of the last moderate Republican Senators who prided themselves on working with Democrats and Republicans alike, issued a statement that said that the Republican Party would not survive if its U.S. senators could not compromise on issues such as climate change, tax increases, immigration reform or vote for a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominees.

Here's the Lugar statement in it entirety:

Prepared Statement of Senator Richard G. Lugar on the Concluded Indiana Senate Primary - May 8, 2012

"I would like to comment on the Senate race just concluded and the direction of American politics and the Republican Party. I would reiterate from my earlier statement that I have no regrets about choosing to run for office. My health is excellent, I believe that I have been a very effective Senator for Hoosiers and for the country, and I know that the next six years would have been a time of great achievement. Further, I believed that vital national priorities, including job creation, deficit reduction, energy security, agriculture reform, and the Nunn-Lugar program, would benefit from my continued service as a Senator. These goals were worth the risk of an electoral defeat and the costs of a hard campaign.

"Analysts will speculate about whether our campaign strategies were wise. Much of this will be based on conjecture by pundits who don’t fully appreciate the choices we had to make based on resource limits, polling data, and other factors. They also will speculate whether we were guilty of overconfidence.

"The truth is that the headwinds in this race were abundantly apparent long beforeRichard Mourdock announced his candidacy. One does not highlight such headwinds publically when one is waging a campaign. But I knew that I would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other Republican legislators.

"We undertook this campaign soberly and we worked very hard in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to overcome these challenges. There never was a moment when my campaign took anything for granted. This is why we put so much effort into our get out the vote operations.

"Ultimately, the re-election of an incumbent to Congress usually comes down to whether voters agree with the positions the incumbent has taken. I knew that I had cast recent votes that would be unpopular with some Republicans and that would be targeted by outside groups.

"These included my votes for the TARP program, for government support of the auto industry, for the START Treaty, and for the confirmations of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. I also advanced several propositions that were considered heretical by some, including the thought that Congressional earmarks saved no money and turned spending power over to unelected bureaucrats and that the country should explore options for immigration reform.

"It was apparent that these positions would be attacked in a Republican primary. But I believe that they were the right votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets, as I have throughout the campaign.

"From time to time during the last two years I heard from well-meaning individuals who suggested that I ought to consider running as an independent. My response was always the same: I am a Republican now and always have been. I have no desire to run as anything else. All my life, I have believed in the Republican principles of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and trade expansion. According to Congressional Quarterly vote studies, I supported President Reagan more often than any other Senator. I want to see a Republican elected President, and I want to see a Republican majority in the Congress. I hope my opponent wins in November to help give my friend Mitch McConnell a majority.

"If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

"This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.

"Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years.

And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

"Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

"Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today – from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

"I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

"I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

"As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been diminished. I expect great things from my party and my country. I hope all who participated in this election share in this optimism."

When Do We Arrest The Tea Party?

By Wend McElroy,
August 15, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Future Of Freedom Foundation"

Murray Rothbard once spoke fondly of the 19th-century New York politician William M. (“Boss”) Tweed who was notoriously corrupt. Why? Because Tweed operated before the days of Public Relations, in the days when a crook was a crook and he didn’t pretend to pick your pocket “for your own good”; he did it for the money or the power. Tweed, as Murray said of him in chortling admiration, was a real crook — “a crook’s crook.”

The latest anti-terrorism document to issue from the White House is entitled “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” (“Empowering”); as the title suggests, it addresses domestic terrorism. Published in early August, “Empowering” is a blatant expansion of state power not only into the lives but also into the minds of American communities and families. But the agenda is carefully presented in politically correct language and vague bureaucratese. In short, Boss Obama’s team has coated “Empowering” with such a thick patina of PR that few people are reacting to anything else.

In an article entitled “Defeating Islamic Terrorism through Appeasement”, the Conservative FrontPage Magazine declared the message of the “mostly redundant” eight-page document to be “Collaborate!” Those with whom the article stated the document proposes to collaborate are the Muslim communities to which “Empowering” suggests outreach as a means of preventing terrorism. In an article entitled “New White House Extremism Report Sober, Tepid,” the Huffington Poststated of the document, “It is broad, sober, careful not to assign blame to any particular community, and fairly uninspiring.”

Had they read the same document I had? Immediately beneath the PR patina is an agenda for naked state expansion. Specifically, it is an ambitious pre-crime agenda that aims to nip in the bud radical ideologies that are said to inspire violence; and it encourages ideologies of which the government approves through the largely undefined involvement of largely unnamed federal agencies. One thing is crystal clear, however: the White House has declared war on the wrong ideas with the goal of preventing people from becoming too radical.

The Introductory page, signed “Barack Obama”, states, “As a government we are working to prevent all types of extremism that leads to violence no matter who inspires it.... The strategy that follows outlines how the Federal Government will support and help American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism. This strategy commits the Federal Government to improving support to communities, including sharing more information about the threat of radicalization....”

The document defines “extremists” in such a manner as to include half the Founding Fathers and anyone who believes in resisting tyranny. The definition of “extremists” offered is, “individuals who support or commit ideologically-motivated violence to further political goals.” Note that merely supporting “ideologically-motivated violence” makes a person an extremist; presumably that includes those who express approval of the ideologies, whether or not they take violent action.

Al-Qaeda is identified as the key ideological threat, with passing mention of neo-Nazis, anti-Semitic groups, and a broad unspecified “range of ideologies” that promote radicalization. Thus, al-Qaeda would seem to be the focus. Nevertheless, “Empowering” carefully states, “Any solution that focuses on a single, current form of violent extremism, without regard to other threats, will fail to secure our country and communities. Our threat environment is constantly evolving, which is why we must consistently [sic] revisit our priorities and ensure our domestic approach can address multiple types of violent extremism.” In other words, who or what is defined as an ideology of “violent extremism” tomorrow is open-ended. Given that Tea Party congressmen were recently called “terrorists” by powerful Democrats simply because they refused to pass a debt-ceiling bill, this definitional blank check is disquieting.

Equally disturbing are earlier attempts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify extremists. In 2009, DHS issued a nine-page report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The document stated, “Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented ... and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” Veterans were also included as extremist threats.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano stood by the report, even though it was later retracted because of the considerable controversy it stirred. Perhaps “Empowering” has learned a lesson from the earlier report. Steeped in vague and sometimes impenetrable language, “Empowering” has stirred little backlash. And, yet, its language could easily include everyone mentioned in the earlier explosive report. For example, “Empowering” states, “There is no single issue or grievance that pushes individuals toward supporting or committing violence, and the path to violent extremism can vary considerably.” Presumably that path includes political issues such as Second-Amendment or pro-life absolutism.

As it speaks of “grievances,” “Empowering” once again explicitly attacks those involved in the “diffusion of ideologies and narratives that feed on grievances, assign blame, and legitimize the use of violence against those deemed responsible.” Again, it seems as though writers and advocates of improper ideologies or grievances would be targeted.

Targeted how? Predictably, “Empowering” is unclear. On the one hand, there is a great deal of “disclaimer language” in which freedom of speech is saluted as the American way. On the other hand, it decries, “al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents ... openly and specifically inciting Americans to support or commit acts of violence— through videos, magazines, and online forums” [emphasis added]. Moreover, several times “Empowering” mentions a role for “law enforcement” in the prevention of radicalization; for example, “Law enforcement plays an essential role in keeping us safe, but so too does [sic] engagement and partnership with communities.” And, yet, nowhere does the document advocate arresting or otherwise punishing those who merely hold or express wrong ideas.

What, then, is the mechanism “Empowering” advocates to prevent radicalizing ideologies? The document rejects the creation of “a new architecture of institutions and funding.” Instead, it stresses the need to employ “successful models, increasing their scope and scale where appropriate.” In more concrete terms (or as concrete as it gets), that involves the coordination of existing federal agencies and resources to expand the federal government’s relationships with grassroots groups and the private sector down to the family level. Those at “ground level,” it is said, are best equipped to identify the radicalizing threats within their own communities and institutions, and so they can better report suspicious activity. What will be done with the flow of information to government is not disclosed.

Rather, “Empowering” dwells on the information flow from government to the people. It declares, “Communication and meaningful engagement with the American public is [sic] an essential part of the Federal Government’s work.... We do this consistently in a variety of ways: we convene forums, develop brochures, respond to correspondence, post information on websites, and we make available for comment proposed regulations in the Federal Register.” The information will not merely educate people about terrorism or extremism but also promote ideas that the government considers salutary. “Empowering” states that “we refuse to limit our engagement to what we are against, because we need to support active engagement in civic and democratic life....”

The foregoing refers to an ongoing campaign of tax-funded propaganda aimed at instilling the proper attitudes and ideas while battling the wrong ones. “Empowering” is quite open about this tactic. Number 3 of its stated goals is “Countering Violent Extremist Propaganda While Promoting Our Ideals.” An increased presence on the Internet is key to achieving both. “Toward this end, we will continue to closely monitor the important role the internet and social networking sites play in advancing violent extremist narratives. We protect our communities from a variety of online threats, such as sexual predators, by educating them about safety on the internet, and we are using a similar approach to thwart violent extremists. We will work to empower families and communities to counter online violent extremist propaganda, which is increasingly in English and targeted at American audiences.” “Empowering” continues, “The best defenses against violent extremist ideologies are well-informed and equipped families, local communities, and local institutions.” The federal government will be the one to define what constitutes being “well-informed.”

Because it is phrased in such vague terms, it is useful to turn to the reports from which “Empowering” sprang in order to grasp the specifics that the document may be recommending. Two such reports come from the Washington Institute: “Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization” (2009), and “Fighting the Ideological Battle: The Missing Link in U.S. Strategy to Counter Violent Extremism” (2010). The Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) observed, “Several of the latter study’s recommendations offer sound barometers by which to judge” the intent of “Empowering.”

Among the strategic recommendations of the 2010 study, HSPI identifies “Contest the radical narrative. When extremist speech articulates a threat of imminent violence, which could qualify as criminal hate speech, law enforcement authorities should take appropriate action. Short of such an imminent threat, however, extremist speech should not be banned but contested.”

“Empowering” and its underlying documents are a clear statement of the government’s intention to step up ideological warfare against American communities down to the level of families. At the moment, those who merely state disagreement, either verbally or with their pocketbooks, seem to be targeted only for monitoring and discrediting. Yet law-enforcement agencies are viewed as an integral part of the propaganda campaign, and muscle always tends to flex.

The linguistically boring and bland “Empowering” is a hellaciously frightening document.

Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998). She actively manages two websites: http://www.ifeminists.com and http://www.wendymcelroy.com. For additional articles on current events by Ms. McElroy, please visit theCommentary section of our website.

The Tea Party's Unholy War On American's

Tea Party Terror: An Unholy War To Gain Tyranny Of The Majority

We're In The Midst Of An Unholy War By A Minority Of Fanatics Who Take No Prisoners, Nor Apologize For Innocent Cictims.

By Robert Becker
August 9, 2011
Courtesy Of "Alter Net"

Whether or not V.P. Biden tagged the Tea Party "terrorists," more sentient beings have dramatized their politics of crude intimidation with howls about ransom demands, hostage-taking, blackmail and extortion. The stolid NY Times' Joe Nocera condemned this "jihad against America" intent on "blowing up the country." Right, an unholy war by a minority of fanatics who take no prisoners, nor apologize for innocent victims.

We've gone way beyond states' rights on hot-button cultural fixations, even nullifying specific, objectionable "liberal" giveaways. Does not the manufactured debt fallout — nullification of government integrity — demand strong retaliation by the adults before this unholy war impales the ultimate casualty — it's the future, stupid? What defines a third world debtor nation more emphatically than obsolete infrastructure, no new growth industries or updated labor force, paltry education and research commitments, no master environmental, regulatory and/or energy planning? What distinguishes the Tea Party insurrection (and backers) from suicide bombers or unhinged shooters of House members or abortion doctors, is scope, funding, and organization — plus collusion with a radicalized GOP and the 87 rogues the rightwing shoehorned into Congress.

inequality when 2000 kicked off body blows against majority rule. The rightwing Bush-Cheney gang viewed majority will as a problem open to manipulation, rarely the solution or heart of America. Cheney scorned all polls.

The first, worst casualty in this holy war — all policy contradictions aside — isn't just the truth but majority rule, the result of transforming government from gridlock to self-inflicted paralysis that kills the revenue potential that could solve any big problems. More or less, America was plodding along towards only moderate 

Follow this calamitous storyline: 1) the Supreme Court wrongly trumps the 2000 Florida election when installing a minority president (in popular vote) who ends up widely hated. And why? Because 2) W. unilaterally, deceptively drags us into the Iraqi quagmire, then loses popular support when innumerable WH deceptions surface. Plus, 3) terrible wars plus terrible tax giveaways cost 3-4 trillion while shredding the budget-deficit. 4) On his own, Bush tortures innocents and abuses our civil rights — deflecting Congressional approval and in short order inviting public outrage. 5) Finally, while the middle-class gets ambushed by the criminal minority causing the Great Recession, the Supreme Court awards corporate treasuries the golden leverage only tinpot dictators inflict. Though highly unpopular, Citizens United only reflected the sabotage to the democratic spirit when the top 1% seizes 40% of assets and 25% of income.

Majority Held In Contempt

This survey only captures the high points of democratic low points, as endless wars are rejected by increasing majorities starting in '06. Not that that stops any of them in five years, in fact more get added, few with open debate or declarations. And I jumped over the Clinton Impeachment, the most high-handed act of minority arrogance in decades. And now, every time President Obama caves instead of fighting for the majority's clear agenda (quick war exits, public option-price controls-true health care reform plus Wall Street indictments), majority rule withers. Today's Tea Party's hissy fit simply finalizes the rout of democracy this decade as 20% drive the other 80% of us into double-dip recession, maybe worse. When has sustained minority rule — whether by white, male, slavery-accepting landowners in 1800, robber barons of the Gilded Age, ideological Supreme Courts, or economically-illiterate know-nothings — not produced unspeakable pain and suffering for the majority?

What makes the debt ceiling fiasco more onerous than Gingrich's 1990's political theatre — or racist '60's civil rights Senate opposition (eventually defeated), or reactionary assaults against FDR (turned back) — was its utter, needless absurdity. What was gained and how much was lost? Eventually, non-stop crusades that undermine the legitimacy of every Democratic president since LBJ — and now our credit ratings and chance to fight unemployment — torpedo Lincoln's ideal of government for and by and of the people — in short, our collective future. If Tea Party obstructionism is about 20% trumping what 60 or 80% want to do, the magnitude of permanent damage will be incalculable, making 9/11 a blip on the radar.

Majority Rule, The Soul Of Democracy

Majority rule, and open voting (now under siege), are the only insurance against more top-down despotic control, whether military, financial, class, or oligarchic. The supremacy of majority rule precedes America and the Constitution, adjudicating what any one generation elevates to do-or-die status. Issues change, complexions change, personalities change, law and the Constitution change — but what republic survives this mortal blow? Even when the majority is wrong or mislead, or callously slow about human rights — today for gays — some absolute instrument must end debate, make decisions, and start action. Rule by majority, exactly like Churchill's view of democracy, may well be the most dreadful form of government, except for all the others.

What Tea Party insurgencies evoke for me, if sustained and widespread, are divisions we haven't seen in 150 years ago when the South seceded. What else, other than sharing history and this key value, better ties together our six very disparate regions? Today, radical Tea Party ideology disputes our core assumption — that the president and the majority (not white enough, nor religiously right) can and should rule wisely. That defines the ultimate Tea Party sabotage, way beyond the debt ceiling nonsense. Either we have majority rule or some self-appointed, minority, or "faith alone" gang rules. That's why Teavangelists are so dangerous, so inflexible in all their convictions any who disagree are condemned as treasonous, wicked, and/or foreign subversives.

Tea Party — Modern Confederacy?

Guess the percentage of defiant, white, southern, Confederates in 1861 — only 20% of all Americans. Not every one of the 5.5 million white southerners favored violent resistance, nor did all of the 22 million non-southerners adore Lincoln. What about the 3.5 million slaves? Whatever the complex causes of the Civil War, its start was anything but democratic or done by popular vote. No, an elite, plantation-slave owning gentry declared war via secessionist state houses. Lincoln wasn't about to end slavery, inflame the South, or use force to impose federal law — unless coerced.

Now guess the percentage of Tea Partiers in 2011. As polls range from 13% to 25%, let’s call it no more than 20%, too. 52 House members define the Tea Party caucus and another 35 join their fun. Now guess what percentage of the total 435 members that 87 represent. Bingo, 20%.

Not to overplay the comparison, but today's batch of older, white, racially-insensitive conservatives also assert less government is automatically good, federal taxation suspect, the U. S. president's a crass, oppressive dictator — and decentralization would solve all problems. Curiously, today's insurgents want to "take back their country" (just like southern Rebels), forever waxing nostalgic about fantasy golden ages (under Reagan). Not so different from earlier delusions of pre-abolition, ante-bellum plantation golden ages where happy slaves prospered because milk and honey flowed freely.

There is, so far, one great difference: millions were killed and maimed because the Confederacy took arms against its legitimate government. The two-year old Tea Party can't yet match those casualties in its war against the majority — and against reality. But it's still young. Check out the Michael Lind linkage of "The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism," arguing "the goal, methods and passions of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right." Good rejoinder by Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore.

 

Robert Becker is a freelance writer and blogger at TheSmirkingChimp.com

You Can't Use Reason To Fight Insanity

Members of the Tea Party rally outside the US Capitol building [EPA]


Tea Party Terminators

By Cliff Schecter
Last Modified: 11 Aug 2011 10:46
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Towards the beginning of the original Terminator film, Kyle Reese, who has come back to the past to save Sarah Connor - whose spawn will save mankind - lets her know what she's facing in her new cybernetic stalker. "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Substitute "Tea Party" for "Terminator" and "U.S. Government" for "you," and with the exception of "fear" (which I'd argue is what drives them), this pretty much sums up the story of the 60-odd birdbrain Birchers who have rebranded themselves Tea Partiers and brought more crazy than Kanye West to the House of Representatives.

The recent war over the federal budget and debt ceiling were simply the latest in a long line of skirmishes where Democrats - the self-described practitioners of "good faith" and seekers of compromise - found themselves in a pitched policy battle with recalcitrant Republicans. Right wingers so high on radical, Randian, Tea-Party-brewed, Kool Aid, that anything short of dismantling the Federal Government and requiring universal tattooing of Milton Friedman where-the-sun-don't-shine was treason.

Humble Beginnings

After its humble beginnings as an astroturf, Koch-Brothers-funded revival aimed at mobilising ill-informed, reactionary, mostly older white Americans against health care reform and other psychologically-constructed monsters under the bed, the Tea Party has become an malignant force that now holds the Republican Congressional Caucus - and with it the country - hostage.

While the Stockholm Syndrome may not have quite set in yet among all Republicans, the tri-corner-hat crowd seems to behave much like the giant Brain Bug in the movie Starship Troopers, jamming a claw into the heads of their fellow GOPers and slowly sucking out cerebral tissue until only the brainless body remains.

Most problematic, most of the Tea Partiers, private citizens and elected officials alike, seem to possess just slightly less understanding of the Federal budget or tax code of than say, Mater from Cars. Yet, these are the people in the driver's seat as the country heads for what might be Act II of the Great Recession, unless progressives, centrists, and others edified with high school civics adopt a new strategy to counter them.

And counter them we must, for they and their ilk are nothing new, but representative of a recurring and quite dangerous political strain that has always been with us since the dawn of civilization. Their undermining of the traditions, culture, and give-and-take necessary for any democracy to function has had destructive results on free societies in the past, and taken down a Republic or two.

Compromise Is Evil

This is what President Obama seems constitutionally unable to grasp. That even if they are a sometimes useful foil, and (sadly) sometimes equally useful in getting him the policy results he wishes, by definition the Tea Party brigade sees any compromise as evil, because everyone to the left of Pat Buchanan is viewed as a mortal threat to their imagined perfect society, which looks a lot like Utah.

You know, with fewer minorities. And a lot more Jesus.

None other than former Secretary of State and one-time Republican wunderkind Henry Kissinger understood this to be true. In his first book on the Napoleonic wars, Kissinger offered an almost perfect description - on the international stage - of what can happen when an entity with no interest in compromise and no problem destroying the current order gains control of major political party or country:

"It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is 'good faith' and 'willingness to come to an agreement'"; in a revolutionary situation "each power will seem to its opponent to lack precisely these qualities. In such circumstances many will see the early demands of a revolutionary power as 'merely tactical' and will delude themselves that the revolutionary power would actually accept the status quo with a few modifications."

Kissinger concluded that, "Coalitions against revolutions have usually come about only at the end of a long series of betrayals ... for the powers which represent legitimacy ... cannot 'know' that their antagonist is not amenable to 'reason' until he has demonstrated [that he is not]."

Sound familiar?

Fight Fire With Fire

From its inception, the Tea Party is the very definition of the type of revolutionary movement. Until Democrats, and their leader in the White House, realise they need to stop calling people like Paul Ryan "courageous" and "serious", and start fighting fire with fire, Michelle Bachmann and her creepy pinwheel eyes are going to continue to get their way at the expense of American values and the middle-class that once made this country great.

The late, great historian Richard Hofstadter added further insight into just the type of "movement" we're dealing with, in his 1964 award-winning tome, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics". In it, he outlines the psychological origins of the type of crazed, Tea-bagger style of all-or-nothing dedication to an absolute end, when he wrote of their forebears:

"He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated - if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention."

In other words, any compromise, no matter how small, is seen as an act tantamount to treason, which is precisely why we need to stop engaging these tottering tea lovers, because they simply do not believe in the workings of democracy.

Like the Terminator, or The South before the Civil War (the region which spawned much of this movement, not surprisingly) the Bachmannites simply must be defeated - beaten in the world of combat, political combat in this particular case (lest anyone think I am advocating war - which I am not).

The Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, or even Reagan - the GOP in its current form is nothing more than the party of Ted Nugent - hopefully with somewhat better hair.

Speaking of Lincoln, he proffered to Congress in 1861 that, "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthral ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

What he said.

Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

Annihilating Democracy With The Tea Party

Democracy depends on compromise and the American government depends on all branches working together. The Tea Party movement shuns both, preferring instead to drive the state into bankruptcy. On principle.


By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Washington
Friday, Jul 29, 2011
Courtesy Of "Der Spiegel Online"

America's Founding Fathers thought of everything. They wanted to establish several centers of power in Washington rather than just one. They wanted the occupant of the White House to be strong, but Congress was to have the power to check that strength. The friction between Capitol Hill and the White House -- a product of this system of checks and balances -- was to make the decisions of America's leaders cleverer, wiser and better.

But the system only works when all branches of government play the role designed for them. For almost 235 years, the system worked reasonably well. But, about a year ago, things started to go wrong in the US capital; the system began to melt down. The friction is no longer propelling the country to greatness, rather it is hastening its decline. Members of the right-wing conservative Tea Party movement, which is well represented in Congress since the last elections, want friction. But at the expense of results.

These lawmakers no longer view themselves as part of the political system. Instead, they identify themselves as its enemy. They see themselves as outsiders, even as they sit in Congress and enjoy the kinds of job benefits they would like to strip from their fellow Americans.

All Take, No Give

They are, as has become clear during the ongoing debt debate , calling the entire system into question. And they have turned the system of checks and balances into a tool of obstruction.

Experts agree that America can only reduce its vast mountain of debt by both cutting expenditures and raising taxes -- at least a little. Tea Party politicians are eager to slash spending, but they are adamantly opposed to allowing the government to increase tax revenues. Their refusal to compromise has led economists to warn of " Armageddon " should the US become insolvent.

And they could still cause the deal announced by President Barack Obama late Sunday to collapse if it fails to get enough votes in the House.

In response to such "fear mongering," the Tea Party group Campaign for Liberty wrote on its blog that, even if the debt ceiling isn't raised, "the sun will still rise in the East and set in the West, as it has for all time." What, after all, do the experts know?

As a result, America has come to a standstill . The branches of government were designed to both exercise and yield power. More than anything, though, they are supposed to work together. But working together would appear to be contrary to the Tea Party movement's creed. Members aren't interested in making Washington better, they want to annihilate it. Their Holy Grail is a stripped down state.

President Barack Obama wants to improve schools, whereas the Tea Party would prefer to see many state-run schools eliminated. Obama wants to invest in clean energy; the Tea Party denies the existence of climate change. The president wants to make trillions in cuts; but the Tea Party refuses to approve a dollar more in taxes, even on the very rich.

Unbending Principles

Indeed, after talks with Republican leaders broke down last Friday, a visibly annoyed Obama asked reporters: "Can they say yes to anything?" The answer is no, and the blame lies with the new system.

It used to be that politicians would campaign on anti-Washington platforms, but would still be proud of being in Congress once elected. But the representatives who road the Tea Party wave into Washington do things differently. As a recent article in the New York Times noted, several of them actually live and sleep in their offices "so as to pronounce themselves detached from the culture in Washington" and then fly back to their constituencies on Thursdays. It's a matter of principle. They view themselves as being on a mission and proudly claim to not think about their re-election chances. They are focused on their principles.

Yet, in so doing, they are betraying the principles of democracy. It is in the nature of democracy to think about re-election. It means politicians remain in touch with their voters -- and it keeps them open to compromise.

But the Tea Party is opposed to compromise, that lubricant of all legislative bodies. They practice a form of democracy, but in its rawest, most aggressive form.

They have, for example, repeatedly and publicly humiliated Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner. Boehner had hammered out a deal with President Obama involving $4 trillion (€2.8 trillion) in federal spending cuts, including a long-overdue reform to the overburdened social system. In return, Boehner agreed to some tax increases. It would have been a genuine reform -- a rather major one.

The Tea Party, though, saw the deal as a betrayal. Taxes, after all, are poison according to their doctrine. It is an extremely fundamentalist doctrine, and they have used it to take the Republican party hostage. In the past few wild weeks, not only Washington has been in its grip, but the whole financial world.

The Republican Party "has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative," writes conservativeNew York Times columnist David Brooks. He says the movement is driven by protest reflexes and "do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms."

With its stubbornness, the Tea Party is betraying its own idols. They like to quote Ronald Reagan, famous for saying that "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." 

But even he didn't shy away from governing. He raised taxes 11 times and upped the debt ceiling 18 times. The Republican icon spoke often about his dislike for government, but he never made it into a religion.

Stoking Voter Ire

The Tea Party, on the other hand, is the Congressional outgrowth of "you're either with us or against us," the maxim that former President George W. Bush espoused as he launched his "war on terror." And the movement wants to drive the state into bankruptcy, consequences be damned.

Tea Party lawmakers themselves will ultimately have to pay the price for this strategy. Polls indicate that many Americans are put off by the radicalism of these wild new politicians and want to see a compromise reached on the debt ceiling. A majority backs a deal that includes lower expenditures and more taxes. It makes people nervous that Tea Party adherents act as though America can choose whether or not to pay back its debts.

The Tea Party has perhaps won a battle by succeeding in making tax increases taboo in the new compromise. But they could lose the war in the long run.

Most Americans, after all, are also familiar with the Founding Fathers that the Tea Party movement is so fond of citing. And what did Jefferson, Washington, Madison and the others say when their young republic was forced to borrow money? The state, they said, had to pay its debts. On that point, they knew no compromise.

The Cultural Kryptonite Of The American Right

1980s pop culture indoctrinated a cabal of youth that are growing up using Hollywood as a template  [GALLO/GETTY]


Looking Back At The Cultural Climate Of The 80s Can Help Us Explain American Behaviour Today.

By Cliff Schecter
Last Modified: 30 Mar 2011 13:48
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Before US Tomahawk cruise missiles began to rain down on Muammar Gaddafi's air defences this past week, the only conversation that president Obama had to have was with his senior advisors.

They, and they alone would decide whether a country founded as a democratic republic would engage in what George Washington would have likely viewed as a "foreign entanglement" – using 21st century ordinance against a sociopath with a history of violence and a worse hat fetish than Sammy Davis Jr.

Obviously, in 200 years the United States has evolved from a rebel-with-a-cause into a world power, and additional involvement in world affairs has become part of the cost of doing business.

There is also a good argument to be made that after the terrible mistake of the Iraq invasion, the US can do some good by putting an end to the murderous Gaddafi in Libya, as part of an international coalition made up of Arab and African countries, blessed by the United Nations.

Yet, that does not change the fact that congressional support for this operation was as important as an appendix or a Newt Gingrich marriage vow.

Obama and his people simply knew they could ignore the people's representatives and safely rely upon a militarised culture primed to support an attack on an Arab nation. Particularly one the US had already thrown down with only a generation ago.

It is this fact that makes author, syndicated columnist and talk radio host David Sirota's new book, Back To Our Future, not only a fascinating read about the culture of the 1980s, but a manifestly important work in helping explain why the United States does the things it does today.

From involvement in a civil war in Libya to allowing a madman sans background check to saunter into his local arms bazaar and purchase a high-powered firearm for an attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

The latter being easier than say, finding plutonium for your DeLorean in 1955.

'Outlaw With Morals'

As Sirota explains it, the 80s were the age of cross-marketing, when concepts that had a place in American history suddenly became commonplace. The anti-government language of president Ronald Reagan adorned films such as Ghostbusters and E.T.

These "political messages in non-political settings indoctrinated the young, when their filter for political propaganda was turned off." As a result, these framed narratives became part of the conventional wisdom, continuing to this day.

In much the way E.T. heightened suspicions about our government, Lybian terrorists in Back To The Future and a bad-guy professional wrestling star named The Iron Sheikh helped prepare the American people for the role we've played in the Arab world over the past decade.

Meanwhile, the "outlaw with morals", or rogue who had to work against the system to get things done, was a key message that reached the masses.

The bromide of "government being the problem, not the solution", was not only contained in Reagan's philosophy, but Wall Street's ethic, the frontier mythology of many regions of the country, and films, music, and television series, but perhaps most importantly promoted using athletes by one of the most powerful marketing machines ever seen – Nike.

As Sirota offers about Nike's effect, "they took this narrative to the level of societal saturation".

This can at least partially explain the rogue individualism that can be found in the love affair certain Americans have with guns, and even more importantly, the corollary that only they can protect themselves, often from the very government they once looked upon for this service.

Of course, this cultural sea change did not just happen by itself. An array of right-wing think tanks and media organisations, born in the 1970s to lead this kind of a cultural revolution, synergistically grabbed this societal zeitgeist and hopped, skipped and jumped with it, declaring the 1960s and 1970s an illegitimate, naïve, or even dangerous social experiment.

As Sirota reminds us, in the 1980s a minister speaking at The Heritage Foundation, one of these newish (1973) and lavishly funded right-wing media and policy operations intricately tied to the Reagan administration, believed he and his ilk, were "here to turn the clock back to 1954 in this country".

'Prepubescents' In Charge

Danny Goldberg, former CEO of Air America, has also recognised this cultural evolution, and the role played by well-funded conservative organs in helping spread the non-love.

As he sees it, appealing to the psyche and vision of the American people or pulling on their heartstrings, if you will, is in short supply on the Left, as "Democrats do not use imagination and culture to open minds for their agenda".

As Goldberg put it in a Nation piece, "you can count how many people click onto a web page, how long it was viewed and how many people it was forwarded to but determining how much impact it has on the minds of the readers requires educated guesses and fallible intuitive human analysis."

The Left had better begin to under this outsized role of culture, imagination and emotion in our politics soon.

Because if we are indeed operating in parameters set up by not only the politics, but the arts and letters of 1980s, reinforced by millions of dollars invested in long-term conservative projects to convince the American people this is the way it has always been, we are in for a rough decade or three.

For as Sirota says, "our world is increasingly run by the prepubescents, college kids, and young ladder-climbers who were originally indoctrinated and inculcated in the 1980s."

Therefore, if we are looking for an alternative to all-too-present strains of foreign adventurism, Wall Street me-ism and domestic militia-ism – among other challenges – we will need our own cultural rebirth to return to the values that once animated this nation.

Because, whether he comes from Krypton, Kansas City or Kazakhstan, I am not ready to start kneeling before Zod anytime soon.

Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

History Of Violent Right-Wing Extremism

Neo-Nazis and Other White Supremacists Are Most Dangerous

Since 9/11, Right-Wing Extremists Including Neo-Nazis and Other White Supremacists Have Been Involved In 63 Domestic Terror Plots.

By David Holthouse
March 11, 2011
Courtesy Of "Alter Net"

This week, as conservative media hyped the commencement of Rep. Peter King's contentious hearings on Muslim radicalization in America,details continued to emerge about Kevin William Hardham, the 36-year-old Army field artillery veteran accused of planting a "weapon of mass destruction," along the route of a Martin Luther King Day unity parade route in Spokane, Washington earlier this year.

The backpack bomb Hardham allegedly planted contained shrapnel dipped in rat poison. It was discovered just minutes before hundreds of MLK Day marchers arrived. Hardham appears to have a long track record of fantasizing about politically and racially motivated violence in various online extremist forums.

The attempted MLK Day bombing in Spokane was hardly an isolated incident. Right-wing domestic terrorist plots and extremist violence are on the rise in America. Earlier this year the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) released a report analyzing domestic terrorism statistics reported by the FBI and other crime agencies since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The MPAC report shows that since 9/11, right-wing extremists including neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have been involved in 63 domestic terror plots, while radical Muslims have been involved in 45.

Meanwhile, the number of hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) topped 1,000 this year for the first time since the SPLC began counting such groups in the mid 1980s, and the resurgent antigovernment militia movement is exploding, with more than 300 new groups forming in the last year alone.

SPLC Intelligence Project director Mark Potokattributes this dramatic increase in right-wing extremist activity to three factors: "Resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government's handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities."

---

Below is a list of some of the right-wing extremist terror plots and violence from recent years.

July 27, 2008

Unemployed truck driver Jim David Adkisson opens fire on the congregation of a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, killing two people and seriously wounding six. Adkisson tells police he targeted the congregation because its members included gay men and mixed-race couples. A suicide note that Adkisson left in his car outside the church describes the attack as a "hate crime," "a political protest," and "a symbolic killing."

"I'd like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I've done," Adkisson wrote. "If life ain't worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. Do something for your country. Go kill liberals."

Adkisson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

October 22, 2008

Two white power skinheads are arrested for allegedly plotting a multi-state robbery and murder spree that would have culminated in an attempt to assassinate then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Daniel Cowart, 20, and Paul Schlesselman, 18, were later charged with conspiracy, possessing a sawed-off shotgun and threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm upon a major presidential candidate. Both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 14 years and 10 years, respectively.

The skinheads told police they formulated their plot in Bells, Arkansas, after shooting out the windows of a black church. According to a written statement they provided to investigators, the skinheads planned to rob gun stores and kill 88 non-whites, beheading 14 of their victims.

Those numbers are significant in the white supremacist movement. Eighty-eight stands for "Heil Hitler," as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. The number 14 refers to the number of words in the white supremacist catchphrase coined by domestic terrorist David Lane: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

"The final thing we had discussed was dressing in white tuxs [tuxedos] with a top hat and trying to assassinate Obama. We did not plan on living past that day," Cowart wrote in his statement. "One day, while riding in my car, Paul told me that he wanted to go to a predominately [predominantly] black school and kill as many as he could."

A Secret Service agent testified at Cowart's sentencing hearing that in dozens of chat messages found on his computer he discussed wanting to kill African-Americans and start a race war.

December 9, 2008

Law enforcement investigators find radioactive materials and other components for making a "dirty bomb" in the home of Belfast, Maine neo-Nazi James Cummings after Cummings is shot to death by his wife, who told police she killed her husband after years of physical and mental abuse.

According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center, investigators found containers of uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon, along with neo-Nazi materials, including a completed application to join the National Socialist Movement, a major neo-Nazi group.

A local painter who worked inside the Cummings residence earlier in 2008 told police that Cummings expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and showed off the swastika flag hanging in the house.

Amber Cummings reportedly told police that her husband was "very upset" over the election of President Obama, was in contact with white supremacist groups, and had been mixing chemicals in their kitchen sink.

January 21, 2009

Brockton, Massachussets neo-Nazi Keith Luke is arrested after shooting three immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them. Luke tells police that he is "fighting for a dying race," and that the shootings were just the first stage of his plan for a killing spree.  A police report states that he had planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue to "kill as many Jews as possible during bingo night." Luke is being held without bail, awaiting trial for murder, attempted murder, armed kidnapping, and gun charges.

January 22, 2009

Police in Mobile, Alabama discover a "cache of explosives" in the home of white power skinhead Thomas Hayward Lewis during a search conducted after Lewis was arrested for spray-painting swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans on a Messianic Jewish place of worship. The graffiti included "Hitler was right," "Juden raus (German for "Jews get out)," and references to Combat 18, a violent neofascist group based in the United Kingdom that promotes "lone wolf" terrorism. Lewis pleaded guilty to damaging religious property and illegal possession of an explosives device. He was sentenced earlier this year to one year in prison.


April 4, 2009

Richard Poplawski, a 23-year-old neo-Nazi with an Iron Eagle tattooed on his chest, murders three police officers in Pittsburgh. The Iron Eagle was a symbol of the Nazi Party under Hitler. According to police, Poplawski, wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with an AK-47, ambushed three officers responding to a domestic disturbance call. Friends and relatives said Poplawski, who posted frequently to the white supremacist website Stormfront, was convinced that Jews controlled the media and that President Obama was going to seize his arsenal of firearms.

"The federal government, mainstream media, and banking system in these United States are strongly under the influence of- if not completely controlled by- Zionist interests," Poplawski wrote on Stormfront. "An economic collapse of the financial system is inevitable, bringing with it some degree of civil unrest if not outright balkanization of the continental US, civil/revolutionary/racial war, etc. Let comfort and convenience be damned, and I will welcome the hardship and embrace the pain secure in the knowledge that our people will rise above and overcome our darkest days."

Poplawski is scheduled to stand trial next month.

May 23, 2009

Anti-government militiaman Joshua Cartwright kills two sheriff's deputies in Okaloosa County, Florida, after they attempt to arrest him on domestic violence charges at a local gun club. After killing the two deputies, Cartwright fled the scene. His vehicle crashed and flipped during a high-speed chase. When Cartwright began firing out the rear window of his wrecked truck, sheriff's deputes returned fire, killing him. According to a police report, Cartwright's wife said he ""believed that the US Government was conspiring against him. She said he had been severely disturbed that Barack Obama had been elected President."

May 30, 2009

Shawna Forde, the leader of Minuteman American Defense, a nativist border vigilante group, leads the home invasion robbery of a man that Forde and her two accomplices, MAD Operations Director Jason Bush and MAD member Albert Gaxiola, believe to be a drug trafficker.

During the robbery, Arivaca, Arizona resident Raul Flores is shot to death in cold blood along with his nine-year-old daughter, Brisenia. Flores' wife is also shot but survived by playing dead.

Forde's half-brother, Merill Metzger, later tells the Arizona Daily Star that shortly before the murders Forde started talking about forming an "underground militia" that would be funded by robbing drug dealers. "She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

Bush has longstanding ties to the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, and told police that he and Forde discussed recruiting Aryan Nations members for their militia.

Forde was convicted of orchestrating the premeditated murders and sentenced to death last month.

May 31, 2009

Scott Roeder guns down George Tiller as the Wichita, Kansas doctor serves as an usher at his church. Tiller was the director of Women's Health Care Services, a clinic that performed abortions among providing other health services.

Roeder had a long history of involvement with right wing extremist groups, including the Christian anti-government group the Freeman militia as well as the anti-abortion group Army of God, which advocates the use of violence as an anti-abortion tactic.  Previously, Roeder had planned to bomb an abortion clinic.

Scott Roeder was convicted of first degree murder on January 29th, 2010. He received a life sentence.

June 10, 2009

Longtime white supremacist James von Brunn opens fire with a rifle just inside the entrance to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, killing a security guard. Prior to the Holocaust museum shooting, von Brunn was best known for attempting to takeover the Federal Reserve building in 1981 armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Brunn, who died in jail last year while awaiting trial, was friends with the late white supremacist leader Ben Klassen, who founded the virulently racist Church of the Creator. Brunn referred to Klassen as an "Aryan genius."


March 28 to March 30, 2010

Nine members of the Hutaree Militia, a "Christian Patriot" group, are arrested in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. According to a federal indictment, the militia members engaged in paramilitary training in perpetration for an apocalyptic battle with the forces of the Antichrist, who they believed would include local, state and federal law enforcement officers. The indictment charged the militia members with plotting to kill a randomly selected police officer in Michigan, and then detonate improvised explosive devices at the officer's funeral. Searches of Hutaree Militia residences turned up weapons, explosives, a Hitler tract and an audio version of The Turner Diaries, the race war novel written by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi group National Alliance, that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh cited as inspiration.

A federal judge has set the trial date for September 13th.

May 20, 2010

Two police officers in West Memphis, Ark. are shot to death after pulling over a minivan driven by self-declared "Sovereign Citizen" Jerry Kane, with his son in the passenger seat. (Sovereign Citizen adherents deny the legitimacy of the federal government and subscribe to a bizarre alchemy of conspiracy theories popular among right-wing extremists. Notorious advocates of sovereign citizens ideology include Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and the now defunctMontana Freemen, a violent militia outfit.)

As the officers puzzled over a stack of handmade identification documents Jerry Kane provided, 16-year-old Joseph Kane burst from the minivan firing an AK-47. Both officers were killed. Jerry and Joseph Kane died about 90 minutes later during a gun battle in a Wal-Mart parking lot in which two other officers were wounded.

A subsequent investigation revealed the father-and-son team had been traveling the country, delivering seminars on Sovereign Citizen ideology. "I don't want to have to kill anybody," Jerry Kane said at seminar not long before the West Memphis shootings. "But if they keep messing with me that's what it's going to have to come down to."

July 18, 2010

According to a police investigation, Byron Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers who had stopped him on an Oakland freeway for driving erratically. For 12 frantic minutes, Williams traded shots with the police, employing three firearms and a small arsenal of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds fired from a .308-caliber rifle. In an affidavit, an Oakland police investigator reported that during an interview at the hospital, Williams "stated that his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."

March 9, 2011

Kevin William Harpham is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and receiving and possessing an improvised explosive device in relation to the attempted bombing of an Martin Luther King Day parade. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Harpham was previously a member of the National Alliance, an infamous neo-Nazi organization although it's unclear whether he's still a card-carrying member.

An individual identifying himself Kevin Harpham made several posting on the anti-Semitic website Vanguard News Network, including a March 2008 post to a VNN discussion titled, "Violent Revolution Against ZOG." [ZOG stands for "Zionist Occupied Government.]

"Niggers will provide the chaos that consumes the state and federal resources to the point that it can't police all of it. Hopefully by then there will be more of us and we will be able to take some form of action to gain control of the pockets we will have been pushed back into," Harpham wrote. "Just make sure you clean that pocket up real good. Arrest a few every day starting with the former police, political leaders and pastors and then bury them during the night."

Conservative 'Sleeper Agents' In Hollywood

The Right Wing's New War For Culture

The new conservative mediamakers are shedding the baggage of culture war hangups, freeing up energy to infiltrate culture industries and attack the left.

By By Daniel Denvir
March 6, 2011
Courtesy Of "Alter Net"

“You looking for Hollywood? Come on in!”

I walked into a small but packed room at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for a primer on entering show business stage right. It was the panel’s second year at the annual convention, and the young people gathered were planning to skip the D.C. internships and look for jobs in film, music and television.

The movement is shifting away from the outright opposition to popular culture that defined the culture wars of the 1990s. They have embraced a two-pronged strategy to get their message out: making their own films and music, and using Tea Party or church networks to distribute them; and working inside the mainstream entertainment industry to release films and other products with movement themes into the mass market.

The prospect of political action and personal fame proves alluring for a generation where online celebrity meshes easily with real-world political power. A young man canvassed the room--“who does video?”--saying that he helps young videographers plug into local campaigns as he passed out his business card. Young men discussed their Twitter feeds, and two others tried to understand Obama through the prism of Star Wars.

Larry O’Connor, editor-in-chief at Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.tv (of ACORN and Shirley Sherrod political character assassination fame), delivered an insider account. Before coming to the right-wing web-o-sphere, O’Connor worked as a production manager on Broadway and in Los Angeles. Wearing square-frame glasses, with untucked dress shirt, jacket, and jeans, salt and pepper stubble, and a proclivity to strike a sardonic tone, I would have easily mistaken him for a liberal.

“If you’re thinking about coming to Washington to be in politics or you’re thinking of working for some congressperson and be their aide,” an animated O’Connor told the room, “there are a hell of a lot of people who can do that already...We need conservatives in Hollywood...The culture and what happens in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry is a driving factor for what happens in our country and, frankly, for what happens in Washington.”

“Politics is downstream of popular culture,” moderator Kevin McKeever chimed in. “That’s one of the reasons why we do this panel.”

Presenters encouraged the eager young attendees to paddle upstream. One suggested that young conservatives become “sleeper agents” in the entertainment world: establish yourself doing high quality but conventional work as an actor, agent or producer. Keep quiet on politics until you have established influence and power.

Remarkably, John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Big Hollywood (another Breitbart enterprise), pointed to the gay rights movement as an example of the power of (what conservatives tend to call) “the culture.”

“Look at the issue of gay marriage,” he said, arguing that it was an important case study whatever your position was. (This was itself supporting evidence for his argument, as his comments reflected an important shift: gay rights have become a seriously contested issue at CPAC and throughout the conservative movement.) “Look how far we’ve come on gay marriage in 10 years. In the '90s, we were saying ‘are we gonna' do civil unions, are we okay with that as a country?’ Now we’re one vote away probably from legalizing gay marriage throughout the country. And that’s not politics. That’s the culture. That’s television, and movies, and music changing the way we think, and changing what we believe.”

The new conservative film movement has two main currents: the political documentary and the Christian moral narrative. Fahrenheit 9/11 was a wake-up call for right-wing documentarians eager to match the power of progressive documentary. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ sent the opposite message to conservatives and to Hollywood at large: we have a market.

The Passion of Christ made over $370 million domestically and over $241 million worldwide, aggressively reaching out to churches nation-wide, a readymade publicity channel for religious right films. The 2009 film The Blind Side won an Oscar, made over $255 domestically, and simultaneously hit a number of right-wing sweet spots: Sandra Bullock is a Southern Christian lady who saves a black boy from the black ghetto, “shedding nuance and complication in favor of maximum uplift” over “vague stories meant...to conjure a world of violence, dysfunction and despair.”

In popular culture as in politics, conservatives don’t openly defend the oppressor against the oppressed. They deny that any such injustice exists--particularly when it comes to race. The overall goal is simple: more movies with clearly defined good and evil. Less moral ambiguity.

Producer Ralph Winter, who made The Fantastic Four and the X-Men trilogy, is an evangelical. He also produced the film versions of the best-selling “Left Behind” book series--the plot of which is: what happens when Jesus comes back? He throws all the non- or wrong-believers into a lake of fire. He has also made a number of “small-budget, direct-to-video movies based on popular Christian novels.”

“I think things are changing in Hollywood,” said Nolte. “You do have a better environment to walk into than there was five years ago. Andrew Breitbart has a lot to do with that...For your country, I think it’s a very patriotic thing to be willing to go in there.”

Megachurches are also tapping their substantial resources to produce sophisticated media in-house. Evangelical producer Dallas Jenkins, the son of one of the “Left Behind” series’ two authors, is now director of visual media at Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago and is planning to produce feature films directly out of the church. This is a remarkable feat of vertical integration.

The Chronicles of Narnia and even Lord of the Rings strike religious notes in the guise of fantasy. One Baptist writer, though acknowledging that the “Hobbit habit of ingesting mushrooms and smoking ‘pipe weed" got translated into drug use for counter-culture readers,’ was pleased that the Christian J.R.R. Tolkien had set out “the reality of evil and the task to struggle against it."

After a major delay caused by Chapter 11, MGM is planning to release its remake of the Cold War classic Red Dawn. The original Soviet invasion of the U.S. will be Chinese in the new version.

The biggest, most recent and utterly surprising coup for the religious right is the 3-D “documentary” of tween idol Justin Bieber, whose mother is a devout evangelical Christian. Paramount has a Christian outreach plan with special church screenings, which a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article calls “a page torn from the Passion of the Christ marketing playbook.” (Though Wonkette notes that Focus on the Family is worried that Bieber has fallen prey to an “entertainment industry [that] is a sexual and political minefield” thanks to an ambiguous comment about pre-marital sex.

Hollywood is a complicated thing for the right, which hates it for sex and moral ambiguity but celebrates or declines comment on the glorification of war and crass commercialism. And they blame liberals for everything, including stuff that most liberals dislike. Left-wing forces cannot be held responsible for the music video of 17-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus writhing on a bed in her underwear. The conservative hysterics about Hollywood ignore the role big business plays in keeping the system conservatives so cherish up and running.

Stephen Baldwin, the youngest Baldwin brother and a born-again Christian who was supposed to speak at CPAC but had something else come up, actually got an “HM” tattoo in honor of Hannah Montana after Cyrus promised that if he did, Baldwin would get a cameo appearance on the show. He never appeared.

Though his most recent hit was a stint on Celebrity Big Brother, his Web site refers to him as “one of the most sought-after male talents in film and television today” and “one of the few Hollywood actors versatile enough for key roles in everything from The Usual Suspects to Bio-Dome.” 

Other efforts are also frustrated. According to the Washington Post, the new film "Atlas Shrugged was supposed to star Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron; instead, the long-awaited adaptation of Ayn Rand's freedom-loving tract has come to the big screen with actors you've never heard of and no distribution deal.”

And there is no small amount of jealously over the skills on display in liberal Hollywood, including one presenter’s embarrassed compliment for the narrative structure of James Cameron’s Terminator--embarrassed, because Cameron also made the anti-war and environmentalist Avatar. The pro-charter school polemicWaiting for Superman was the subject of unqualified support. As I wrote at In These Times “Superman, directed by An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim, was panned by many education scholars. But for many conservatives, the film’s success was proof that conservative ideas can win ground on the left, especially when they’re dressed up as a story of poor people of color fighting for justice.”

One young filmmaker at the Hollywood panel expressed his annoyance that festivals would not accept his films, though he suggested that revenge was possible: he is now the chairman of the Mississippi International Film Festival screening committee. “All the liberal documentaries that came through, I shut those down fast,” he declared. “Those never made it even to the screening committee.”

Another man was upset that no one was interested in his film, Fear of a Black Republican, “the movie that neither political party wants you to see.” He, like everyone in the room, was by all appearances a white Republican.

Yet B-list actors can make Grade A politicians. For Ronald Reagan, thoroughly lionized at CPAC or any conservative gathering, the invocation and performance of heroic virtues first tried out in Hollywood made a presidency. Reagan is now the stock character for a new generation of political thespians. The drumbeat about manliness, character, virtue and resolve was deafening at CPAC. For all their bluster, it is the conservative movement that brought Hollywood values and a silver screen sensibility to Washington.

Citizen’s United: More Than A Horrible Supreme Court Decision

“Don’t wait for Godot!” Kevin McKeever implored the crowd. He told the audience to steel itself for the rigors of the industry. “It could be that you’re just selling the DVDs out of the trunk of your car. That’s how MC Hammer started!”

While the creatives burrow into Hollywood, the explicitly political new media is bypassing the mainstream. In doing so, they cut out the middleman and directly reach out to their base. Counterintuitively, this strategy also increases pressure on mainstream media to reflect their viewpoint: Breitbart.tv promotes video hatchet jobs; conservative radio and cable news then hector the mainstream media into picking up a fabricated “story” with their perspective baked in; and, finally, the mainstream media succumb to the pressure and oblige.

Citizens United is best known as the plaintiff in the 2010 Supreme Court case that overturned the McCain-Feingold law, obliterating campaign finance restrictions. One might have forgotten that Citizens United is also one of the most important media organizations on the political right. The group put on a constantly running film festival at CPAC, presenting the torrent of documentaries they have produced in recent years attacking President Obama and Hillary Clinton, celebrating Bachmann and Palin, opposing immigration and the ACLU.

The Supreme Court decision, over whether the attack film Hillary constituted a campaign advertisement, was a victory for the entire corporate-funded right. It was also a very particular victory for Citizens United, enabling the organization to pour additional dollars into their films. And in a little discussed June 2010 ruling, the FEC declared Citizens United to be a media organization, which means they do not have to disclose donors or expenditures as it pertains to their films. Citizens United is also a Political Action Committee (PAC) and donates money directly to political campaigns.

“We won,” Citizens United president David Bossie said, according to an article bySlate’s David Weigel. “And we want to make use of that.”

Citizens United films premier at major conservative events, and are screened by Tea Party groups around the country. Taking a cue from liberal groups like MoveOn and Brave New Films, they encourage activists to buy DVDs and screen them at house parties. The Tea Party tribute and anti-Obama screed Battle for America was used as a get-out-the-vote tool in the 2010 midterm elections.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was a defining moment for movement conservatives. Ironically, it was Citizen’s United that in 2004 petitioned the FEC to declare Fahrenheit 9/11 commercials political ads and thus illegal to air in the lead up to elections--taking advantage of the very same laws they would challenge with Hillary four years later.

Citizens United has closely studied the left, releasing their first full-length documentary just months after Fahrenheit 9/11: Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die.

Brave New Films president Robert Greenwald says his organization and MoveOn pioneered the alternative distribution method that Citizens United is using. Brave New Films has produced dozens of videos organized around political efforts, from full-length documentaries like Outfoxed to short and timely commercials like the 2008 bit pillorying John McCain for being unable to recall how many homes he owned (the answer was 10).

“I assume they watch and read and follow what we do,” Greenwald wrote in an email, though he pointed out that conservatives already control a sprawling communications network of their own. “Conservatives have talk radio, so they don’t need film/video the way progressives do.”

They may not need it. But they plan on taking it. And unlike Brave New Films, Move On or Michael Moore, they are seamlessly integrated into a political party and movement flush with corporate dollars.

Citizens United president David Bossie illustrates the close ties between the GOP establishment and movement new media. A young Bossie was involved with Citizens United in 1988 when it made the infamous Willy Horton ad suggesting that Michael Dukakis, if elected president, would let dangerous (and black) felons onto the streets. In the 1990s, he moved to Capitol Hill, where he was the top aid on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigating everything about Bill Clinton and a zealous promoter of White Water and other pseudo-scandals.

At CPAC, Bossie basked in the glow of television cameras and wide-eyed young conservatives, an institution builder at the nexus of media and politics. Taking the stage at the Citizens United bloggers lunch, he gave a shoutout to Breitbart and Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller in the same breath, before praising his friend and former colleague Michael Chertoff for the Homeland Security chief’s role in extraordinary renditions and Guantanamo. And he effusively thanked Newt Gingrich, who has taken a lead role at the organization.

Gingrich and his third wife Callista’s Gingrich Productions have now “co-produced” six films with Citizens United. Gingrich converted to Callista’s Catholicism after first dating her during his previous marriage, and while he was Speaker of the House. Energized by his newfound faith, the Gingriches have produced a film celebrating Pope John Paul II’s role in felling communism, a move transparently intended to deflect growing criticism of a church mired in scandals over child sexual abuse.

Gingrich has been busy: hinting and hinting at a 2012 presidential run, starting a "solutions" oriented think tank and “tri-partisan citizen action network” (which claims a hard-to-believe 1.5 million members on its Web site), aggressively hawking his historical fiction, and giving lectures with titles like "America at Risk: Camus, National Security, and Afghanistan.” It is significant that Citizens United has become a Gingrich vehicle.

There are other independent offerings, too. The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 911 Attacks, produced by anti-mosque mouthpiece Pam Geller, premiered at CPAC in attempt to revive a controversy that has long since flagged.

Rock & Roll: Saving Souls, Fighting Big Government Control

Lisa Mei Norton has no big designs on New York/Hollywood polish. She proudly represents the movement’s DIY arm. The conservative singer-songwriter and former air force sergeant created a webpage in the MySpace aesthetic (and this is not a good thing) for like-minded musicians called Big Dawg Music Mafia. She emphasizes the non-standard spelling of “Dawg” through her street-sense delivery: this is how conservatives roll now, people. She’s part of a growing number of musicians who tour Tea Party rallies around the country, and the composer of one very heartfelt tribute to Sarah Palin’s fairy tale life called “Thank God You're a Woman.”

Norton is also a member of an organization called Oathkeepers, made up former and active duty soldiers and police who pledge to take on the federal government should it be necessary. Like everything at CPAC, the fringe right mingles easily with the Republican establishment.

Jon David is one of the most famous of the Tea Party musicians, and you have probably never heard of him.

David wears a trucker hat and lives in Los Angeles and takes on a singer-songwriter posture at the microphone. He headlined CPAC’s Friday night banquet, and has opened for Sarah Palin and Tea Party rallies nationwide. Jon David is not his real name. He told the Wall Street Journal that he was worried about losing work in liberal Hollywood. Jonathan Kahn is now out of the closet: the persecuted conservative bravely announces his faith before the heathen powers that be, prepared for martyrdom should it come to that.

The core of David’s appeal is a catchy and deeply maudlin song called “American Heart.” He played it right before Phyllis Schlafly was presented with the lifetime “Courage Under Fire” award for leading the successful fight against the Equal Rights Amendment and other such nefarious liberalisms.

The song is very catchy, and the video deftly if manipulatively uses a montage of historical images to elicit an emotional response: victorious USA Olympic teams; soldiers on patrol abroad; that photo of construction workers eating lunch at the top of a skyscraper. That nearly all of the half-dozen black people pictured were firmly on the left--Martin Luther King, who called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," or Muhammad Ali, who resisted the draft to Vietnam--fades into a mush of soft-focus patriotism.

It is the perfect soundtrack for a movement that glorifies the idea of history but rejects knowledge of its substance.

If You Can't Beat Em, Join 'Em

The right is increasingly hostile to political compromise. But in the realm of pop culture, they’ve taken a “if you can’t beat em, join em” approach.

In 2006, the National Review published a “50 Greatest American Rock Songs,” unapologetically co-opting songs that have been traditionally identified with the left.

“According to everyone on the left, we are all 91-year-old white bald men in this room right now,” Stephen Kruiser, a comedian and Fox News commentator, told the large crowd gathered for “Engaging America through Conservative Pop Culture.” “You know that right?...Pop culture, the use of it, opens up the avenues of bringing in a new audience..I am going to steal pop culture from the lefties.”

The panels continually returned to a deep anxiety on the right: conservatives still don’t know what to make of the modern world. They embrace the internal combustion engine and nuclear power while rejecting the theory of evolution and the science of global warming; puzzling over the depravity of "Jersey Shore," they daydream about small-town geniality from the confines of the sprawling rec room of an exurban McMansion.

“It might seem ridiculous,” wrote pop culture scholar Mike Spencer, “for conservative forces to indoctrinate rock music, a popular culture form which they have historically derided and which they recognized as a cause of a variety of social problems (juvenile delinquency, race mixing, Communist subversion, etc.).”

But as cultural theorist Frederick Jameson notes, the passage of time has always allowed for the cooptation of music and art that is “ugly, dissonant, obscure, scandalous, immoral, subversive and generally ‘anti-social,'" making it into something safe for civilization.

Often, the appeals fall flat, like Michael Steele’s infamous promise to bring an “off the hook” GOP to “urban, suburban hip-hop settings.” And rock stars have protested the appropriation of their music for conservative political campaigns. In 2008, members of Heart told Sarah Palin to stop playing their hit song "Barracuda":

“Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image. The song ‘Barracuda’ was written in the late '70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The ‘barracuda’ represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there’s irony in Republican strategists’ choice to make use of it there.”

That working-class bard Bruce Springsteen is a liberal clearly bothers conservatives. In 2009, the Boss turned down New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s request that he play at his inauguration. Glenn Beck attacked Born in the USA as “anti-American” during a show where he also put forth his dumbfounded realization that "This Land is Your Land" was critical of capitalism. Yet Springsteen still commands the image of salt-of-the-earth Americana. (I’m not aware of a situation in which a group or candidate on the left has been criticized for appropriating a conservative musician.)

The Decline of Frumpy Censors

“People are always trying to play Shakira before I speak,” complained one of a handful of Latinos at CPAC, rushing up to speak to members of a panel called "Pop Culture: An Influence or a Mirror?" as they left the stage. She was desperately seeking a family values Latin pop star. “Shakira is a liberal!”

There are still old-line conservatives who pass their days worrying about Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. But as the New York Times noted in an October article on the Parents Television Council, “These are difficult days for the decency police."

The (bi-partisan) Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), formed in response to Prince’s Purple Rain’s lyrics about sex and masturbation no longer exists. Failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s writing in 1996 that “difficult to convey just how debased rap is,” now seems, well, quaint.

During the Hollywood panel, O’Connor of Breitbart.tv made fun of the Family Research Council, apologizing only when an evangelical in the back of the room meekly protested. The most provocative new conservative mediamakers are shedding the baggage of culture war hangups, freeing up time and energy to attack the left and President Obama. That night, Breitbart threw a party for GOProud and passed out stickers that read, “Our gays are more macho than their straights!”

Breitbart and others know that playing at cool while outlawing fun is a hard thing to do. But much of the new conservative media is just more of the same old fear and loathing, however more licentious. That, unfortunately, is something America has always provided a market for.

Daniel Denvir is a journalist in Philadelphia.