First a little history for those who may not know. When we declared our independence in 1776 from the crown of King George of Great Britain, we created what was called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The Articles were created by the representatives of the states in the Second Continental Congress out of a perceived need to have "a plan of confederacy for securing the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the United States." Nationalists felt that the Articles lacked the necessary requirements for an effective government. There was no tax base, no executive agencies or judiciary. The absence of tax base meant that there was no way to pay off state and national debts from the war years. In 1788, with the approval of Congress, the Articles were replaced by the United States Constitution and the new government began operations in 1789.
In one of the Articles, it does not call the United States of America a "nation" or "government," but instead says, "The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever." However, after a few years, it became apparent that this type of alliance would not work and there was a need for a stronger federal system to bind the states together and to balance the needs of each state with the need of the new nation. Thus the establishment of the Constitution.
From the very beginning there has been the political battle and yes even a few military battles between the states and between a state or several states and the national government, the well known Civil War as most call it, for the south it is still called the Northern Aggression War. After that war, President Lincoln said it best in his Gettysburg Address...
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...
...Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this... ...That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."Much of the war was for States Rights. The very same issue that the Tea Party and Conservatives are pushing today.
As for slavery, it took another 100 years for true equality to be extended to the descendants of slavery. But what we must remember is that this great war was about economics as much as it was about ending the enslavement of humans. Slaves were cheap labor and could not collectively bargain with their slave masters for better wages, working conditions and housing. Families would be torn apart because a wife or husband or child would be sold to another slave master. The slaves actually were prohibited by law to marry (sound familiar?). There where no actual Husband and Wife among the slaves. The war freed them from one form of slavery to another form of economic indenture. Since they had no money and were never given the 40 acres and a mule after President Johnson revoked the reconstruction act and returned the land given to the slaves back to the white plantation owners that it was taken from.
For more than a decade leading up to the Civil War, political discourse was much the same as we see today. There was great divide in Congress. Some states wanted to return to the old Articles of Confederation and abolish the federal government. Others were wanting to make the new nation stronger to compete with the changing world in Europe as a solid nation, rather than loose affiliation of states negotiating their own trade deals and military alliances. Some of these same arguments we are having today about states rights and the power of the federal government were exchanged back then.
The Tea Party movement, though not called that back then, was a force in leading up to the war. There were demonstrations, threats to life of those who advocated on both sides of the issues. After the war, things did settle down until the 1960's with the Civil Rights movement. Again it was the federal government that had to step in to force equality among citizens.
Jim Crow law sanctioned by the US Supreme Court stated that black's were equal as humans, instead of 3/5th of a human as stated in our Constitution, but must remain separate from the white population. It also created road blocks for minorities to have any involvement in the political process and governance. They essentially were still enslaved to the white population for most everything, for fear of death or acts of other violence if they tried to exert any form of independence. They received minimal education, if any. This was to ensure that they remained subservient to the more educated white population. So Martin Luther King Jr changed all that with his civil rights marches and speeches. President Johnson, the other Johnson (LBJ) with the majority Democrats passed two landmark civil rights laws creating equality in the political process and education.
We now fast forward to our current situation, you have the Tea Party wanting to again return to the what is essentially the original Articles of Confederation and abandon the Constitution. They want greater states rights and more limited federal governance. You have threats by some states who want to secede from the union, like Texas.
There is rejection by many citizens, mostly southern conservatives and Tea Party supporters, as to President Obama's legitimacy as President of the nation, for no other reason than the color of his skin.
You have celebrations occurring this year in the south about the 150 year anniversary of the formation of their confederacy when they seceded from the USA. They want to honor some of the most racist politicians and military officers who organized the southern states to separate and battle the Union States of the north. To them the war is not over and the South will rise again in power to over turn the desegregation laws forced upon them through the aggression of the Northern States. Senator Rand Paul want to amend the civil right act to allow business owners to discriminate against individuals they do not like, such as Blacks, Jews, Gays, Hispanics, etc.
Adding to this movement, there are the Republican Conservatives who want to establish a virtual single party system. They have for decades worked to demonize Democrats as evil, putting a religious tone to their rhetoric. They have worked hard to ingrain into the American psyche that socialism and communism are one in the same and are evil because of the Soviet Union rather than different economic and social ideologies. So they have tied the Democratic Party to these evil ideologies, which is not accurate. They have set out to destroy the Democratic party any way they can. Lies and rhetoric has been an effective tool. They have learned that if you say it loud and often, then people will believe it is true.
To this end they established a game book several decades ago. First, keep talking about government as Big Government and that Big Government is very bad. Quote by Ronald Reagan, "government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."
Second, merge the social conservative religious movement into the party, as the highly religious will easily accept the rhetoric that Democrats are anti-God and therefore evil people. Start to breed stealth candidates with very conservative and religious beliefs into the party and work them up in the political process by starting with being members of school boards, city councils, etc. then into state legislative and on to federal office. When they can get enough members in these positions, then they can make major changes to our form of government. Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition would hold seminars around the country at evangelical churches teaching them how to become politicians in stealth mode.
The Christian Coalition and another fundamentalist group called The Fellowship, both very fanatical groups that do not believe in the separation of church and state, joined forces to embed followers into high political offices. Ralph Reed as director of the Christian Coalition was very effective in training potential political candidates to run for these lower offices and groom them to become state and federal office holders, keeping a stealth position until the time was right to start to make changes in public policy. He even work his magic in some of the more conservative Democrat party members. We are witnessing these changes today. Removing the funding for Planned Parenthood, further restricting abortion availability, pushing to have more control over the FCC and what content is displayed on television, regardless of how you receive it. Many of the Congressional members who are pushing these laws through Congress live at the Fellowship's C Street boarding, Apartment, building in Washington D.C. for free. (see my earlier article about this organization)
The conservatives had to change the dynamics of how elections were financed and how the Get out and Vote process worked. The Democrats have always been better at getting the average voter out to the polls and working to get as many young people and poor people registered to vote. Some of the organization that assisted the Democrats in registering and getting the voters out to the polls were labor unions and community support groups like ACORN. Conservatives receive most of their financial support from large businesses and the very wealthy. The Democrats financial support has been from labor unions and their get out to vote movement. Obviously the conservatives needed to neutralize these organizations so the Democrats no longer had the financial and get out the vote support of these organizations. They went after ACORN with false, highly edited videos of fake wrong doings of ACORN, this allowed the Republicans to take away all federal funding for this organization before the truth came out that they did no wrong. The Democrats were so confused by these lies that they reacted by supporting the Republicans in removing any financial support for ACORN. This of course caused the organization to close down.
The movement to eliminate labor unions started in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan started the ball rolling by decertifying the Air Traffic Controllers union. Corporations then started to move jobs over seas to non union countries where labor laws were lax and wages were cheap. Eventually this removed most all major labor unions in America except for public employees. Today there is an assault on public employee labor unions, witness Wisconsin governor and Republican controlled legislature who not only wants wage and benefit concessions from these employees but to eliminate collective bargaining, effectively destroying the need for a union. If other states and eventually the federal employees loose their unions, then the large money and the activism by them would be neutralized.
In order to effect the outcome of elections there were several processes needed to be completed. First the large financial supporters of this new conservatism movement need to have the ability to spend whatever it took to sway the outcomes of our elections through media buys and fake grass root organizations to stir up the public. The Koch brothers, who are billionaires, met with justices Scalia and Thomas to obtain knowledge of what kinds of legal actions could be put in place so they could rule that the election finance laws are unconstitutional. Thus the Citizens United case that now allows unlimited corporate money to be spent to effect the outcome of elections. This is very apparent with the outcome of the 2010 mid-term elections.
Couple this Supreme Court ruling with the elimination of nearly every labor union of any size that can support the Democratic Party, and they might be able to pull off a virtual single party governance system dominated by Republican Conservatives. Eventually they will stack the local and federal courts with like minded judges, fill most every state legislature and assembly with like minded individuals and then the country is theirs to control. This process was actually laid out decades ago and most recently improved upon by the likes of Karl Rove, who has advocated from the time he entered political consulting to create a virtual single party governance, such as in Utah, where he saw how it worked when he went to school there. The Republican Conservatives have had a super majority in power since the 1970's. The Democratic Party is impotent to do anything, but complain.
Once they achieve this super majority control of all three elements of our government, you then witness the dismantlement of the federal system and all social programs. This will lead to abolishing the 5 day 40 hour work week, over time pay, vacation pay, sick pay, medical leave, child labor laws, and any labor safety laws. We will be back to the early 1800s before labor unions fought to establish all these benefits we have today.
Free speech and assembly will be restricted. Any laws allowing equality for LGBT citizens will be eliminated. Jim Crow laws will be re-established. Christianity will become the official religion of the nation. Islam will be outlawed, as well as any atheists. Woman's reproductive rights will be stripped. The government will control a woman's uterus and vagina. All adult entertainment will be prohibited. Television and radio will be censored more than they are today. All information and news programs must be from the Conservative perspective. Liberalism and progressiveness will be abolished as harmful to the state.
Why do I say this, look at the current de-funding of public broadcasting, not because it costs a lot, but because the conservatives feel they are liberal leaning with their science programs, their investigative reporting on the wrong doings of government, the liberal arts they show like opera, plays, music, theater, and literature. They are de-funding all the art subsidies to universities and colleges that promote all forms of art. You have the Utah legislature now wanting to control the content of our local public television station KUED at the UofU by having control over their budget.
In Utah, the legislature is about to change student curriculum to remove the term democracy and only teach kids about republicanism and that America is only a republic, not a democracy. They already control sex education curriculum and have attempted to change what is taught in science classes by removing any teaching of evolution or to teach creationism as an equal science.
An ignorant society is more easily controlled by those in power. So they are continually reducing or not keeping up with the funding for public education. If they could, they would eliminate public education all together and parents would have to pay for their children education at privately owned schools and universities, as it was during the 15th and 16th centuries. Our children then become economically subservient to corporations at very low wages and in poor working conditions. Unless the family is wealthy and can afford to send their kids to a private school.
If you look at the BIG picture of what the Conservative movement is doing, you can easily see what they are doing and their objective. It is not to further the American dream of a free and open society governed by the people, for the people and of the people. They claim to hate communism and totalitarian governments, but that is exactly what they intend to create, whatever they are going to call it.
America must wake up to what is happening. We must peacefully march in the streets to retain our freedoms and liberties. If we don't we will become enslaved to the conservatives and their benefactors; corporations, religious fanatics and the very wealthy. America as we have known it will parish from the earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment