The Authoritarian GOP

[Oscar Wao]

Don't get me wrong....I HATE how the GOP has turned out, but to take the mote out of another's eye while there's a bigger one in your own is...

You fill in the blank.

 

[Fatality]

as opposed to the totalitarian DNC? a pox on both houses

 

[Bfgrn]

Well I don't know many conservatives that are actually anti-tax. You're right that Libertarians are anti-tax, but that's because we view taxation as theft. I don't think many Libertarians support supply-side economics, so much as we support free market economics.

I would agree that true libertarians would not be authoritarian followers...and to your point Kevin...true libertarians also understand that a true free market is completely undermined by corporate subsidies and corporate welfare...

The combination of government and corporate power is fascism, no more and no less. I fought it under Bush, and I continue to fight it under Obama.

Unfortunately, I'm not rich, nor have powerful connections, and so I can't do much more than scream and holler, hoping people will wake up.

Here is one of the best takes I've seen or heard on the role of corporations...


There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

This White House has done a great job of persuading a gullible press and the American public that the big threat to American democracy is big government. Well, yeah, big government is a threat ultimately, but it is dwarfed by the threat of excessive corporate power and the corrosive impact that has on our democracy. And you know, as I said, you look at all the great political leaders in this country and the central theme is that we have to be cautious about, we have to avoid, the domination of our government by corporate power.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign power but he warned that our political institutions, our democratic institutions, would be subverted by malefactors of great wealth, who would erode them from within. Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican, in his most famous speech, warned America against domination by the military industrial complex.

Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican in our history, said during the height of the Civil War "I have the South in front of me and I have the bankers behind me. And for my country, I fear the bankers more." Franklin Roosevelt said during World War II that the domination of government by corporate power is "the essence of fascism" and Benito Mussolini -- who had an insider's view of that process -- said the same thing. Essentially, he complained that fascism should not be called fascism. It should be called corporatism because it was the merger of state and corporate power. And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Speech, 9/10/05 > Press Room > Sierra Club

 

[midcan5]

Modern conservatives have these weird glasses that only see faults in others, but fail to see their own faults. Unable to face the fascism of right wing politics they make empty efforts to tag others with their faults. Consider only their opposition to a woman's right to choose, their argument is they care for these potential cells, but if bombing Iraqi children is mentioned that's Ok. If education or welfare is mentioned for children, that's bad too, but ghettos are good or deserved in their moral spinning. They are a weird hypocritical bunch with the depth and insight of a dried up puddle.

"If you think the United States could never elect an Adolf Hitler to power, note that David Duke would have become governor of Louisiana if it had just been up to the white voters in that state." Robert Altemeyer

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: John Dean and Authoritarian Cultism - a Review

"Jonah Goldberg has to be one of the most idiotic revisionists of modern times. Any person even vaguely familiar with Fascism knows it is of the Right and not the left. I will grant that extremists seem to meet in a circle as in the end dictators dictate but if you can't tell the difference between political ideologies you should stay home."

Jonah Goldberg's 'Liberal Facism' Brings Historical Revisionism to Comical New Heights | | AlterNet

 

[Newby]

What an old story. Sounds like more deflection to take the heat off of the CURRENT administration that is doing exactly what the Bush administration did on steroids.

 

[eagleseven]

Government's role in the larger economy ought to be limited to contract litigation, externality fees, and monopoly-busting. Nothing more, nothing less. The less government involvement, the fewer the opportunities for corruption.

No SEC? No licensing of the electromagnetic spectrum? No child labor laws?

The SEC falls under "contract litigation" as does EM regulation.

Child labor laws are now obsolete, we are no longer in the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, we cannot re-construct our political economy from the ground up...

Of course we can. We can have a constitutional convention and rewrite the entire document from scratch, if enough states agree. (If it included taking all donations out of campaigning, I might even get on board...)

We've got roughly 400 people in Congress and hundreds more in the states who benefit from the current system, and you'll scrap it over their dead bodies.

 

[Oddball]

Modern conservatives have these weird glasses that only see faults in others, but fail to see their own faults. Unable to face the fascism of right wing politics they make empty efforts to tag others with their faults.

Did I hear someone say "projection"??

 

[Centrism'sVoice]

Unfortunately, we cannot re-construct our political economy from the ground up...

Of course we can. We can have a constitutional convention and rewrite the entire document from scratch, if enough states agree. (If it included taking all donations out of campaigning, I might even get on board...)

We've got roughly 400 people in Congress and hundreds more in the states who benefit from the current system, and you'll scrap it over their dead bodies.

I didn't say it was likely, only that it's legally possible without a violent overthrow of the current system.