Core Issues

"What the Right-wing Assault on Women, Unions, the Environment, Health Care and PBS Is All About"

This is one of the very few, and yet one of the most succinct discussions about what's really been going on in American politics since the 1950's.

Unfortunately, although it gets a few dots down onto the paper it fails to connect them into the larger pattern.

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

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Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement. Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

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The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

This is all very good, as far as it goes.

I've been proselytized by, and paying close attention to evangelical Christians since the mid-1950's: my maternal uncle and aunt were card-carrying, Southern California right-wing Christian lunatics (they quit the John Birch Society in the late 1950's because it wasn't conservative enough).

There has been a deliberate, determined effort to force the evangelical Christian world view onto America at large for decades.

Not being able to live in a world that includes views other than their own, they full intend to force their views onto every one else.

More later, as this is a Core Issue...