Madame M,
Earning a degree without taking any American History? Appalling, as you say, but even many of those who do take it learn next to nothing because the culture says “you don’t have to pay attention, it’s not important; it’s just some silly requirement that has nothing to do with your JOB.” The intellectual and emotional grounding of critically thinking CITIZENS has been washed away in service of churning out channeled and unaware WORKERS. Jefferson and his compatriots, who initiated the thought that only by an appreciation of what you have, and the historical struggles and reasons behind it, will you know, value, and defend your real freedom, would not be comforted.
“Remember it always. For it is the doom of men that they forget.” Merlin, in “Excalibur.”
Fascism OF TEA Party members? Not the inference. The fascism fear is from fearing the result of manipulated and frustrated real fears and concerns, not present day membership in any particular organization. However, the word “liberal” is tossed around like an epithet by TEA Partiers just a little too, well, liberally, for my tastes. It hints at knee-jerk ideology and parochialism. Labels are often meaningless and divisive.
It is important to connect to the ideals of the founders, but the zealous extremist portion of the patriots of the colonial period should perhaps not always be the model. Many of them were a bit hypocritical and selfish in many respects, and in any event it wasn’t so much the amount of taxation (at first), but the fact that the taxation was an internal one, and without suitable representation (although even suitable representation probably wouldn't have been enough).
Being deeply concerned about the rate of spending and the deficit is quite appropriate. But if such things remain general only, without specifics, they become worse than useless.
But we need to stay focused on living within our means and economic health (especially needing to reward the truly productive so they will be even more so; in short, to incent the right behavior and disincent unproductive behavior). Our historical disdain repeatedly bites us, and increasingly critically and painfully. The Cold War demonstrated that it doesn’t matter how much your military is (or appears to be) capable of, if the underlying economy is not sound, it doesn’t matter for long.
The three core values of the TEA party are spot on. The last one about free enterprise needs expounding or perhaps qualifying however, as the corporate-dominated model has choked much of its progression and perhaps much of its validity or even possibility.
Are we so in need of simplifying excessively that we need labels and categories for our views? Those are what polarize and turn us against each other. And stop real dialogue. The preconceived notion sabotages us. What people THINK they know (often insufficiently or even incorrectly) gets our culture an us vs. them mentality. Why do we need a description of peoples' beliefs? How about just listening to what they say without pre-filters or dismissive categorization at the ready? The dilemma you have identified is self-defeating: we want to simplify and categorize others, but don’t want that same methodology applied to us. Exactly one of the problems, so why do it?
Chomsky and Gingrich and others are only too glad to stand in their intellecutal-emotional communities and close their gates in self-assurance—and maybe even a bit of self-righteousness. They are being lazy and divisive. Sometimes I think they even like having an opponent (even a general one) to vilify.
Labels don't serve us very well. For instance, people like to cry “Socialism” in a knee-jerk, uninformed, and even hypocritical fashion. The term is too loosely used. For instance, cooperatives are a bit socialist, but you won’t hear many people (especially “anti-socialist” farmers) discussing that, because it is the “right” kind of socialism. You don’t even hear many people saying that Social Security (it’s right in the name!) or Medicare are socialist, because most of those who are “anti-socialist” are for both of those programs. And the Democrats are painted with the term “socialist” when it doesn’t apply. The most right-wing parties in Europe are more socialist than the American Democratic party (which has certain socialist-LIKE proclivities, but doesn’t qualify by political science definition). So where does this zealous language come from? Perfectly playing on fears and other emotions, those who want to stay dominant (the wealthy, cough, “elites”) define the lexicon for the average person they exploit! Just like the poor white farmers of the Antebellum South were brilliantly manipulated by the small plantation class into helping their system, when the poor white farmers didn’t even like the plantation owners!
Our polarizing, divisive language is not only a lack of civility, it is too often a deliberate attempt to demonize those whose policies you disagree with. The American Democrats are a widely varying bunch that for the most part believe in a bigger government and that government needs to smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. Having those views might make them misguided, depending on policy preference, but that does not make them Karl Marx, or even Eugene Debs. American Republicans might hold preferences for more accommodating treatment of businesses and preservation of traditional social expressions. That might make them coddlers, depending on policy preference, but it does not make them Warren Harding clones or agents of the Ku Klux Klan.
The infuriating fixation on “right” or “left” masks the true parameters of American economics and politics: top to bottom. I agree with Hightower that true dissatisfaction with that reality is being twisted by corporate fronts into a hatred of government, which is classic diversion, classic misinformation, and classic “noise” jamming. With the result that private interest is elevated above public. Weak government is the ultimate goal of corporatism, for it allows corporations to escape the one power—the people through its representatives and executive agents—that can slap them down. Right now, the plutocrats have abandoned everyone else and told everyone to get used to a new kind of economy. No one of worth gets arrested for their corporate crimes unless their fellows offer them up as sacrificial lambs. The corporations and their top folks work the world over for “market-friendly” governments to “enrich the rich further at the expense of labor” (in the very words of their own strategists and economists). In fact, the corporations and their top folks benefit from the increases in worker productivity; the workers largely don’t. The top executives and board members’ arrogance and greed crush our chances of doing anything to help ourselves if we continue to play by their rules or believe their lies (and even though not all corporations and executives are as described, the number of exceptions who have power and influence appear small). Populist, progressive, I don’t care what my thinking that “labels” me, I just know it needs to be addressed openly.
And here is the dilemma. Yes, government has grown far too big and unsustainable, mostly in entitlements of one form or another, but certainly in bureaucracy as well. And it needs to be reined in and the true drags on the producers reduced dramatically. Yet it can’t be done in such a fashion as to leave we, the people, naked before the awesome economic and political might of the plutocrats.
The legitimate desire to keep the nation and state out of people's lives has been manipulated by those who have another agenda. So when people express a natural desire for less regulation (because more than just a bit of that can be stifling as all hell), corporations and the plutocrats that run them then push this natural desire into something they want: no meaningful oversight, restrictions, or repercussions. BP and Wall Street didn’t want oversight; their resulting behavior and the effect on the rest of us is a look at what zealously demanding no regulation can get us.
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