There is a lot of activity on the right now. The media are giddy reporting it, and exaggerating it. We were recently treated to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). We have also been reading about the Tea Party for a few months. And of course there is the Republican Party. How do these forces relate and compare?
Major speakers at the CPAC included Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney. Earlier, Sarah Palin had been a keynote speaker at a gathering of the Tea Party. Both the CPAC and the Tea party make it a point to distance themselves from the Republican Party, accusing it of having betrayed its principles. Everybody is trying to out-right-wing each other. Wow!
The Tea Party is mostly anger without substance - little old ladies in tennis shoes. For example, one demonstrator holding a board of Obama as a Nazi was asked why he thinks Obama is a Nazi. He said: 'Because he is'. 'But why do you think he is a Nazi?'. 'He just IS'. That was his illuminated explanation.
CPAC is more slick. It consists more of the wealthy and the powerful, aiming to protect their privileges. But the similarities between the two are greater than their differences. The Dutch say, “een pot nat,” or as some of my eloquent students might put it, “it’s the same difference.”
What are these conservative groups for?
I could only find 3 things:
1. The Constitution.
2. The Way We Were.
3. Taking the country back.
Well, I am also for #1. I also would like to be the Way I Was - young, handsome, virile and healthy. As to taking the country back, I’m not sure who we take it back from?
Next, What are they against?
Many things. Here are just a few examples, and why most of them are pseudo-issues:
1. Minorities. The ethnic composition of their meetings says it all. I believe that it all starts with a visceral dislike of the President’s tan. They may never admit this, or even be conscious of it. What else would fuel frantic accusations that Obama is a Socialist Nazi and that he is not a born American? I believe that what truly sticks in these people’s craw is the color of his skin. How dare a black man become the most powerful person in America? Don’t people know their place anymore? (CPAC does have room for token blacks)
2. Taxes. Taxes are a waste. They are spent on useless things such as roads, schools, parks, electricity, transportation, a government, an army, police, fire protection, etc.
3. The deficit. Government budgets must only be balanced by cutting spending, never through increased taxation. Just one problem: This is impossible.
4. Closing Guantanamo, giving those prisoners due process and transferring them to stateside prisons: Pseudo-issue: those prisoners will remain safely locked up forever, wherever they are detained and tried.
5. A stateside civil-criminal trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11: Ditto: Pseudo issue.
4. Closing Guantanamo, giving those prisoners due process and transferring them to stateside prisons: Pseudo-issue: those prisoners will remain safely locked up forever, wherever they are detained and tried.
5. A stateside civil-criminal trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11: Ditto: Pseudo issue.
6. The Government’s handling of the Underwear terrorist: Pseudo-issue: Nothing happened. we dodged a bullet. Move on.
7. Terrorism in general: Over the past year, the country has experienced one botched terrorist attempt and one successful one - the murder of 13 people by Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood. Meanwhile, 50 to 60 people are murdered every day in American cities. There are daily instances of murder-suicides, such as the man who flew his plane into an Austin IRS building on February 18. Public opinion accepts the thousands upon thousands of annual murders in America as business-as-usual. At the same time, terrorism remains a national fixation. In that sense, another pseudo-issue.
8. Health care reform: Every civilized country in the world has universal, single-payer, public, portable health care. We don’t. We are wrong. Discussion over.
9: Global warming: A fact, not a theory. Discussion over.
10. Unions and Union PACs: And what about corporation PACs, which give 10 times more to campaigns?
11. Obama’s claim that he was born in the US: I’m afraid they got us on this one. The President was born on the planet Vulcan. Just look at his ears.
The list can go on:
12. Foreign entanglements.
13. Intellectuals (= elite).
14.Gay marriage.
15. Abortion.
16. Welfare.
17. Immigration.
18. Everything else.