Would that the ladies and gentlemen of Rightist persuasion who write for this Forum were less insistent on their own infallible righteousness. It would be nice to read calm expositions from them instead of incessantly acrimonious attacks on any other view. So furiously do they militate that one can scarcely make out through the smoke of rattle what the things are that they actually support. Little education results from their effort.
Experience quickly shows us, you cannot catch chickens or house cats by throwing stones at them. You do not attract another group of people to your position by pointing guns at them unless you mean for them to arrive running at you with fixed bayonets. One such gentlemen has recently exerted himself unsuccessfully, trying to villify and debunk Eric Alterman and his admirably well-documented, data-packed book: Why We’re Liberals. Alas, that book is somewhat mistitled. It reads more like, Why We Liberals Are Not Radical Idiots. Alterman is as far above and beyond reach of our local writer’s gabbling-gun as the moon is beyond range of Tom Sawyer’s sling-shot. The mean-minded fellow does his best to deface Alterman by ignoring vast realms of substance in favor of his usual, ad-hominem tarbrush, choosing to swish the sibilantly sinister and sinful “S-word” at him. Socialism has become a word so inflated, emptied and devalued in far-right use as defies sense unless we already know its true definition.
Why will these writers not educate us on their views or explain the facts if theirs really differ from whatever views Leftists really hold whether correct or incorrect, or from whatever the Left sees as the facts? It seems often that these writers on the Right fabricate their enemies in whole or part, making ‘straw-men’ of them, easy to kick apart.
Such tactics are thoroughly unstrategic, earning them epithets like “wing-nut.” They could resolve this impass by actually revealing themselves in meaningful essays instead of starting what appear to be substantive monographs that turn out to be mere staging platforms for snide pot-shots, low blows and negative inuendo. These speak ill for them. But, let them desist from writing more airy stuff about lost liberty, oversized government, abandoned constitution or tyrannical taxation unless they will tell us concretely to what they refer. Readers are tired of hyper-abstractions and the grand generalities of alleged “First Principles” that reduce to casuistries of talking-points urging regressive agenda as if it were panacea to all our ills.
For instance, tell us why Congress may not delegate certain responsibilites to regulate and enforce. What in the Constitution deprives Congress of its power so to legislate?
What’s wrong with the Civil Service Commission? The Food and Drug Administration? The Interstate Commerce Commission? The Federal Trade Commission? The Occupation Safety and Health Administration? The Federal Aviation Administration? The Federal Communications Commission, and others? Perhaps we can all agree that the Federal Reserve Banking System and the Securities Exchange Commission were interlocking parts of an immense scam from the start, designed to create a money monopoly and lucrative banking cartel disguised by law. What other things may we actually agree on that we communicate too poorly about with each other ever to discover by rational means, but repeatedly experience only as frustration, one side or the other, or both, after each election? Tell us further what’s good, or bad, about our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, supporting a corrupt Karzai government only for Big Oil interests’ hoped-for pipeline from the “Mini-stans” to the Indian Ocean?
Explain to us how the American People’s best interests are the same as those of your fascist internationalists and how patriotism is required of us but not of them. Tell us how your idea of freedom doesn’t mean financial enslavement of middle and lower classes? Why are labor unions worse than trade unions? How can unions that ask members to contribute to their PACs endanger the political process by donating to candidates only a tenth of one percent as much money as corporate sources spend on elections via command decision and demand on employees? Tell us how fine it is that funding by the wealthy will now be much higher, since the “Citizens United” decision? Tell us also how an economy of bare survival-level wages and inaccessible education is good for working Americans with middle-class management and genuinely small-business people barely making it? Explain the wonders of rigged inflation and the lion’s share of income going to the richest few.
We’re honestly ready to listen. We hope you’re ready to give us an honest account. Then, we’d like you tell us what your people will do to fix everything if you actually get into power. Negativity won’t be enough. Austerity measures aimed mainly at us folks in the middle and down on the bottom won’t be satisfactory or sufficient. You’ll have to get real, for a change. Or else. There will be consequences unforeseen by you. The long-trusted security of the upper-crust will come apart. Swat-teams are made up of people, not machines. They will stay home or respond on their own terms. National Guard units will break under the stress of conflicted loyalty. Don’t count on your wealth for safety when you have gone too far. Grassroots at last don’t need astroturf organizers to stand and deliver. Your dwellers in stratospheric penthouses will have to flee the country or live in fortified compounds until the lower classes are decimated. But, then, you’ve already quit needing the U. S. workforce. Right? Conundrum. Where will you smarties find consumers and people to tax instead of yourselves? Nobody will be Left!
Please! Put up or shut up?
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