The Crushing Blow to Mitt’s Quix-Toxic Quest: ‘Good Samaritan’ or ‘Corporate Bandit’

All secure behind closed doors we have seen and heard you Mitt, chumming with your choice of friendlies - ultra-rich supporters. You told us in Tampa you were a man of goodwill and great benevolence. We know the story of the Good Samaritan… However, now we know you, Mitt… You are not that kind of benefactor. You are the worst kind of Taker not a Giver. Some stories/parables from a Christian’s childhood Bible Stories are indelible and belief driving. The parable of the Good Samaritan is just exactly one of those powerful life teachings.

Good Acts and Civic Good – But Does It Pay? The Parable of the Good Samaritan shows even the ‘unbelievers’ have the capacity for economic-free empathy (Georg Pencz Engraving 1543)

Christ told this illusive story to draw out the real meaning of his ministry and God’s wishes for believers. The truth Christ said is that even a man who practices a “cult” religion (Samaritans were a labeled a “sect” for “unorthodox religious practices” during the time of Jesus and where therefore social outcasts)--is more compassion and understanding about human needs and poverty than the Pharisees and the Sadducees of Christ’s own orthodox Jewish practitioners and leaders at the time. The Good Samaritan parable arose out of a challenge given Jesus by a lawyer who confronted him about his ministry and unorthodox practices (such as eating with prostitutes and tax collectors).

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind “[Deuteronomy 6:5]; and “your neighbor as yourself” [Leviticus 19:18]." He said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live." But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" — Luke 10:25–29, World English Bible

Given this challenge Jesus replied with this parable/teaching story:

Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?" He said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Note who did not intervene or help out: A religious priest, and then a lawyer. However, a Samaritan (a heretic member of a religious sect and outcast in the eyes of Jews to whom Jesus was speaking) was “moved with compassion” and “took care of him.” A “Good Samaritan” cares deeply about “victims.”

Sermonizing some pastor Sunday may obtain or gain insight expanding upon this parable for our times. She or he might skip over to refer also to that other story that expounds upon the relationship of the rich to the poor, The Rich Man & Lazarus. (See McGuffey: "The Blind-eyed Marriage of the Conservative Churches to the Excessive & Corrupt Business Practices") Yet using the Good Samaritan as an anchor, the good pastor can illuminate the power of the parable - educated and able men pass by those who have fallen among thieves and pass along indifferent and unmoved by such, a victim.

Those thieves the pastor may chance to connect with the Koch Brothers. who have stolen the clean air and pure water from those who work in their life threatening and notorious, heavily EPA-fined dirty manufacturing and cancer-causing petro operations/leaking pipeline facilities slung across America, many inflicting death and suffering on both Koch workers and communities surrounding them.

Or the pastor could refer to those clever manipulators of corporatocracy (Corporatist Job Thieves) whose lobbying and bribery (ALEC) for loophole and financial friendly legislation seeks laws and regulations which allow them to “steal” the jobs, livelihoods, and local places of employment from working families in order for their own “harvesting” of such community wealth as Mitt has so successfully done in the name of “free enterprise.” (See the video from the 1980’s were Mitt actually uses the term “harvest” when exalting in his shrewd methodology to his backers). These men are the same cut as the “robbers” in Christ’s parable.

One indication of Romney’s involvement in untoward activity and collaboration in the building Bain Capital includes the following:

“After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the '80s. The investors include the Salaverria family, [whom] former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, has previously accused of directly funding the Salvadoran paramilitaries. In his memoir, former Bain executive Harry Strachan writes Romney pushed aside his own misgivings about the investors to accept their backing. Strachan writes, quote, ‘These Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital.’"

Source: On Democracy Now the piece “Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched with Millions from Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities”, August 10, 2012.

Let us not forget that super rich cabal that in 1913 persuaded Woodrow Wilson to allow the federal banking system to be privatized and put into the Federal Reserve System. Those same wealthy manipulators did in fact pull or harvest their “takings” from the 1929 stock market crash just prior to The ‘29 Crash, thus using insider information and skills, protecting their wealth and holdings. But at what horrendous human cost and the sowing of the seeds of WW II, a time of high crime against the entire world.

Let’s return to the meaning found in the narrative of the “Good Samaritan”.

Seeing a badly injured man, the victim of a crime, along the roadside is one thing. But notice what Christ said. Look. See. Who was it that decided to observe and assess the man’s conditions of need and simply pass on indifferently?

The entire point of the GOP National Convention in Tampa would appear to be an attempt to “sell” Mitt Romney as a very generous man. Mitt: the benevolent Mormon Bishop. Mitt: the caring family man, etc. Then came Romney’s 47% damning Revelation:

“All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax. … [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” “There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what."

These, Romney’s closed door revelations, were so shocking that Dr. Gregory Prince, a Mormon Historian and powerful defender of his religion, was compelled to proclaim, “Mitt Romney is not the face of Mormonism.” Dr. Prince:

“The issue of Romney's Mormon faith has never gone away, although its presence has waxed and waned as other issues have come and gone. How -- or if -- he chooses to use his religion as part of his public biography is up to him, but the fact that he is the only Mormon ever to be the nominee for the Presidency of a major political party makes it inevitable that even if people do not judge him because of his religion, they will judge his religion because of him. Given the unfolding news of this week, I regret to say that Mitt Romney is not the face of Mormonism.” (Emphasis Added)

So in his Quixotic Campaign Mitt has now devastatingly failed to redeem his father and has, in-fact, brought irreparable damage to his own precious Mormonism tradition. He’s a disgrace; having lost face in his own America, a nation that has never fully understood his cult religion and its place in society.

 Is it any wonder Wife, Ann Romney, would reveal on CBS that she has become very anxious over Mitt’s mental and emotional abilities to carry out the burdens of office, if elected? A lot has been made over the fact that Mitt is clearly more “centered” and “himself” when he’s campaigning accompanied by Paul Ryan and/or Ann, his wife.

 It is more than abundantly clear Mitt is in a unrelenting bind. He cannot control the radical GOP Apparatchiks (Operatives) “not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details”] who are determined to elect him to act as a figurehead ready to cooperate with an extremist anti-government agenda. That is, they are determined to elect a Republican if only as a compliant “document signer” for their planned radical legislation ala the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC’s nationwide agenda and the checklist of the Tea Party’s anti-government blitzkrieg coup d'etat. Now the “Mormon Candidate”, Mitt Romney, once portrayed as a kind and compassionate “Good Samaritan, ” falls prey to his own greed and duplicity--the dangerous vicissitudes of vicious politics. This is a crushing blow to Romney, a man on a crusade to save and rebuild his beloved father’s broken legacy, elevate, and authenticate in the eyes of the nation and the world his own Mormon Faith and bolster his father’s honor as a political leader well-suited to have been elected U.S. President back in 1968. How personally tragic and very, very sad for Mitt! Ann Romney has every reason to worry over the mental well-being of her Mitt; this man has been on the road to the presidency for six long slogging years, far too long to survive without fissures and stress due to the contortions and reversals of personal beliefs/religious training, and ambitions that such a grueling task exacts from a man whose main purpose in life may well-be to find his own place out from under his father's political shadow and avenge his father’s tragic and ignominious rejection from the 1968 GOP Presidential Nomination.

George Romney Campaign Slogan in 1968 – “Great for 68”

Michigan’s Gov. George Romney was rudely ejected from the process ostensibly because of Gov. G.W.R’s statement that he had been “brainwashed” by military brass that were determined to take the nation further into that horrible Vietnam War. It was a war Gov. George Romney abjured as a high quality Mormon on basic Mormon principles and would have no doubt changed the military execution thereof and possibly withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam as its Commander-in-Chief:

“Initially, (George) Romney supported the Vietnam War, but after a 1965 trip there, he began to question the mission, feeling he had been ‘brainwashed’ by military officials. In August 1967, he articulated his opposition to the war.”

Source: Wikipedia, George W. Romney Campaign 1968 Mormonism, as a religion, has a conflict with serving in the military writes one Mormon; war and killing:

“…(T)here has always been an uneasy alliance between Mormon attitudes about serving in the military and religious devotion. President Spencer W. Kimball famously taught: "We (Americans) are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” - (Matthew 5:44–45)" “For many there is a person who kills for country or a traitorous coward. There are no positive terms for a non-combat hometown warrior, peace soldier, or citizen diplomat.” (Emphasis Added)

The exposure of Mitt’s most intimate thoughts concerning and defining the 47% of Americans whose support he forfeits, which Romney identified in Boca Raton as never voting for his candidacy and, coupled with the insider knowledge that his “cult” status as a Mormon was, and is, blocking his hoped-for plurality in the Deep South. This presents an intransient obstacle to his election. From a Brooking Institution Study titled “Does Mitt Romney have a ‘Religious Problem” in May 2012:

“Decades of polling has shown that Mormon candidates face steep obstacles in the American electorate. Roughly one in five Americans say they would not vote for a generally well-qualified nominee for their party who happened to be a Mormon according to Gallop surveys going back to 1967.”] , where “white” Evangelicals [by wide margins according to the Brookings Study make sure “Things are worse in the South, a region with especially high shares of Evangelical Christians. Romney lost Evangelicals (in the 2012 primaries) by 35 points in Louisiana, 33 points in Georgia, 24 points in South Carolina, and 16 points in Tennessee, carrying none of these states).”

Apparently there is a big problem here for Mitt. Southern far-right-religious will not back Mitt and in protest against his “cultist” status –they may “sit this one out”, may refuse to vote for president all together, despite the efforts of the Southern Baptist Convention via Dr. Richard Land’s attempts to assuage his some sixteen million SBC members to see Mormonism as a noble Fourth Abrahamic Religion-not a unique and suspect American Nativist non-Christian Cult, and vote, not for Romney but, directly against a “Black” Barack Obama (believing they are “saving American Exceptionalism” from a Socialist). Actual context of Dr. Land’s Statement:

“As controversy over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith continues to stir among conservatives and other candidates ahead of tomorrow night’s debate, some have questioned whether Mormons can be considered true Christians. “According to Richard Land, President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the answer is no. “Most Evangelical Protestants and most conservative Catholics would say no, it is not,’ Land told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, refuting the notion that Mormonism is a Christian faith. ‘It is another religion. It does not have an orthodox view of the Trinity and the full and complete deity of Jesus Christ.’” He continued: “Perhaps the best way to look at Mormonism is it is the fourth Abrahamic religion. Joseph Smith playing the role of Muhammad, and the Book of Mormon playing the role of the Quran.”

That rancorous old political street fighter and cultural warrior, Pat Buchanan, has weighed in the following manner, in direct reference to the role race plays in the Southern Baptist Convention and the nostalgic Deep South. Joan Walsh, on July 25, 2012 in Salon:

“Remember that Pat Buchanan has compared the Tea Partiers to “George Wallace voters,” and bragged that he won them over to Nixon. Buchanan and [FOX’s Roger] Ailes are trying to do it again, and having a black Democrat in the White House makes them think it will be even easier this time. “Honestly, it won’t be easier. There are too many people of every race who are genuinely not racist, or open to naked racial appeals. I truly believe the vast majority of American voters will judge Obama on his accomplishments or lack thereof in 2012, not the color of his skin. But older white voters scared by social change are a small but reliable base for [FOX’s] Ailes and Buchanan to rely on.”

In another Salon Piece on February 2, 2010, Joan Walsh reported this bit of background:

“I reminded Buchanan that I covered a local tea party last year and worked hard to acknowledge the economic populism and anti-corporate-bailout sentiment animating some of the demonstrators. Whatever. But my favorite part of the debate was when Buchanan bragged about capturing the George Wallace vote for his boss, Richard Nixon, and I called that the “racist” vote. (For the kids, George Wallace was the Alabama governor who preached “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” and stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering in 1963. He ran for president as an independent in 1968 and won five Southern states; Nixon and Buchanan clawed many of his supporters back in 1972, after an assassination attempt put Wallace in a wheelchair.) “Calling the Wallace vote ‘racist’ enraged Buchanan too, and he countered that those racists had voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I acknowledged many of them did: Johnson lost them when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he probably knew it at the time, famously remarking (although I can’t find a reliable source for the famous remark) that he’d delivered the South to the Republicans for a long time. Right about then Matthews called time on our segment. “You can dismiss this as dumb cable TV chatter, or ancient history, and that’s your right. But I would urge you not to do either. By bragging about his success in winning the racist Wallace vote for Nixon way back when, Buchanan is (perhaps unconsciously) admitting the through-line from that racist GOP segment through the birthers and extreme anti-Obama tea partiers of today. It’s a remarkable admission. We should pay attention to it.”

How exasperating and angering it must be for so many of those nativist Americans-who still hold racial prejudice and intolerance for Mormonism--a religion outside “born again” Christianity—who have only two major choices in their interpretation of the choices for president in November 2012: Vote for a Cultist or vote against a Black! Historic race between a “Sect-ist” Romney and a “Black” Barack Obama raises a very bifurcated dilemma for the Southern Evangelical American voter . Southern Baptists in particular can vote either against their settled doctrine condemning “sects” or express their “racism” by voting against America’s first black president. Again Brookings:

“Those supposedly anti-Romney voters are among the least supportive of the president. Only one in four, Evangelical Christians has favorable opinions of Obama. (FOX News-Roger Ailes-Racist) Indeed, among Republicans who do not think of Mormons as Christians—that is, the subgroup believed most predisposed against Romney—fully 92% have unfavorable opinions of Barack Obama.” *

*Note: This information is as of May 2012, some of that opposition to Pres. Obama may be changing due to the Romney/Ryan full-frontal attacks on Social Security.  

Guest commentary cross-posted with permission to Kos.

On the Reader:
See the VIDEO of Mitt Romney while at Bain Capital talking  about 'harvesting' profits or read the analysis from the Brookings Institution on Mitt Romney's religion and politics
“Does Mitt Romney have a ‘Religious Problem'”.

Related Slates:
Middling Mitt Romney Not of His Fathers' Sterling Civic Michigan Mettle (Gaskell & George Romney) (June 2012) - Mitt Romney: America’s Nascent Holy “god” & Possible President? (February 2012) - Welcome to Planet Willard: Michigan's Wayward Son Mitt Romney to Rule His Own World (January 2012) and more on Mitt Romney and his father George Romney on the Gazette.

Holy Tomatoes! Detroit News' Nolan Finley Plays Catchup

In response to Nolan Finley and those on the right attempting to spin the story that it's supposedly President Obama and Dems not the GOP that has been using 'social issues' to gin up votes.

Sez Brother Finley in "Obama milks social issues" (Obama gave Romney an implied snuggy) on May 11, 2012:

"Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney again took the bait, allowing himself to be drawn into this discussion. So again the campaigns are debating divisive social issues instead of fiscal policy. That plays to Obama's strategy of painting Romney as an extremist and avoiding having to answer for the economy."

Catch up to reality, Nolan. This is exactly what Republican Svengalis have been so artfully doing for decades; beginning under the nefarious tutelage of Newt "the genius" Gingrich or so he was labeled by friendlies until Newt crossed that thin red line and was tossed.

Rich Men Ride while the Rest of Us Run: Corporatocracy
and Income Inequality is THE current 'social issue'.

No one, no party, no group, no clique, no organized political faction does a better job milking the essence of divisive issue politics than the Republican Party; so weakened that the GOP can be taken over by the wealthy elites like the the Koch Brothers, the Club for Growth, various Christian Dominionists, religious and racial bigots, and radical militia elements (gun nuts) until the once sensible and civic-minded Grand Old Party is no more. Poof! Think Ike.

Let Ted Nugent go on wallowing in hate and incitement to mayhem; as evil as he is, he 's only a "scare'jim'crow" archetype of a certain redneck gnarl of lawless tyranny that smirks across the nation. Nugent's part of a cohort of wild and reckless men, dark alley troublemakers, civic hoodlums. And don't they love the trouble they incite... the attention they get!

For decades Newt Gingrich's distraction & negativatization of language made useful for undermining civil discourse has prevailed in the dark hearts of the "Hard Right," as former President Gerald R. Ford labeled them during the Pat & Bay Buchanan dominated 1992 GOP National Convention. It was at Houston where Pat Buchanan declared religious and cultural war on the nation. As a direct result George H. W. Bush, the standing president, high right off the First Gulf War 100 hour victory, when down to stunning defeat to William Jefferson Clinton.

From "Ford tells Gingrich He'd Better Tone It Down" by AP reporter Lawrence L. Knutson:

Ford believed Gingrich should leave "partisan attacks" to others. "One thing that speakers have to understand is that the speaker is speaker for the House. You have to keep that high-level attitude and let the partisan attacks come from your majority leader.... The Speaker (Gingrich) is better advised to stand back." Ford went on to say that looking at the wider future, he believes that if the "extreme-right" partisans within the GOP control the party's policies and dictate who is the candidate... "the party will lose at the polls."

Note: This account also appeared in the Grand Rapids Press, June 2, 1998 and is still spot-on for the 2012 election cycle.

Social Issues Aside: Our National Troubles & the Great Bush Recession Have Created Vast New Opportunities for Unscrupulous Business Opportunists & Scammers

The aggressive CORPORATOCRACY (see the expanded definition from Wiki below) had better get out their act together and begin to restore the rule of law in financial and banking affairs. So far they haven't. The plague created by Citizens United will make this a very reprehensible election season; bar none.

Corporatists were quick to sense an opening, an "opportunity" and they seized it. They have profited immensely from the great disturbance in the economy brought on by the buffoonery of George W. Bush, the Lesser. (The man no Republican can bring themselves to mention in favorable light.) The Bush TARP and the bailouts have put stunning amounts of cash in the coffers of bankseters and Wall Street schemers and shysters'; amounts so large and so excessive as to be incomprehensible in light of in historic perspective. Are we angry? You bet we are!

War profiteering has egregiously enlarged the holdings/coffers of Dick Cheney and Neo-Con Cronies.

Things are still in need of repair and restitution.

Corporatocracy for Idiots

"A corporatocracy is a situation in which corporate bodies interact with sovereign power in an unhealthy alignment between business and political power. In a corporatocracy an elite upper-class, maintains ties between business and government, sometimes by lobbying efforts or funding political advertising campaigns, or providing bailouts when corporations are seen as too big to fail, for the purpose of controlling government and dictating policy to serve its financial interests.

"A corporatocracy is viewed as anti-democratic or opposed to democracy or used to describe situations in which democracy has been manipulated negatively, sometimes resulting in a passive citizenry and subservient media.

"A corporatocracy represents what some see as economic exploitation, and the concept has been used to explain bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as generalized complaints such as the plundering of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. The concept has also been used by critics of globalization, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank or unfair lending practices, as well as criticism of free trade agreements which, according to these claims, move high-paying jobs overseas.

"The term corporatocracy is a negative term, likened pejoratively to cancer, fascism, and Orwellianism, perhaps because, according to this view, business-government ties are seen as secretive, lacking transparency and accountability. The elite engaging in corporatocracy is sometimes termed the 1 percent."

Source: Corporatocracy on Wiki (Be sure to click on all the footnotes to this piece. Go from ignorant to informed.)

So Nolan, fearless thought leader, it's time you play catch-up. Pocket your rotten tomatoes, stop our carping, and do something substantive, pro-active about saving Michigan and America. You can begin by restraining yourself from "milking social issues" and move toward a sound economy and a restructuring of taxes so as to save Michissippi's middle class. Put aside your poison pen, and take up your Habitat for Humanity hammer, rise early, move out to save the day for a family in need. It would be a start.

Dump the tomatoes. Catch-up Finley, catch-up!

On the Reader:
List of Responses to Nolan Finley on the Gazette (Topic DATE):

• High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View (General Idiocy and use of Racial Undertones February 2012)
• Nolan Finley: Maniacal Warmonger? (General Idiocy and Violence September 2011)
• Dead End/Bad Trade Off: Profitazation or Abandonment of Detroit’s Public School Children (Education June 2011)
• No National Honor Given Finley: Taking Down Detroit’s Public Schools is a Civic Crime (Education May 2011)
• Snyder, the Socialist, Takes on Local Democracy Calling it a "Status Quo" That Needs to Be Radically Re-invented.(Ideology April 2004)
• Honest Abel “AWOL” in Michigan just as in Wisconsin (Ideology March 2011)
• A one nostril false grunt from Nolan: It’s not my pigs that stink (Ideology June 2011)
• The Detroit News is "Tapped Out" (Taxes and Ideology February 2011)
• Nolan Finley Rocks Local Detroit High School With His Decision to Teach English to Sophomores (Education December 2009)
• Raw Revenge Raises Its Ugly Head (Education December 2009)
• An Additional Dollar a Day... (State Budget and Ideology November 2009)
• The only place a teacher gets a fair shake in the Detroit News is on its obituary page (Education June 2009) 
• Finley's Right Wing anti-teacher Crusade: A man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen (Education October 2009)

Related Slates:
More on Corporatocracy and the Republican Party on the Gazette.


Original.

Déjà Vu (Part 2): Buchanan's Pitch of Racial Undertones - "Suicide of a Superpower" a GOP Dog Whistle

MSNBC Sacked Pat Buchanan - Why? His "Suicide of a Superpower" & other of Pat's - Dusty Books (filled with racism, and bigotry) have found their way into the subtext of GOP Candidate's stump speeches and unscripted comments: Too much renewed interest in Buchanan’s racist & anti-immigrant rants, raises public awareness of the GOP’s "dog whistle" use of race as a  conservative voter stimulant. This harms the unity of the country and even dooms the GOP candidate in November, whoever he is.

Continued commentary on the struggles of the religious right with their candidates in the GOP Presidential Primary with comparisons back to 1996 campaign of Pat Buchanan. Pat has acted as a tapeworm in the bowels of our body politic for a very, very long time. His Cultural War speech in Houston, 1992 was but one strong example of how his exulted hyperbole and propensity for partisan fisticuffs has bruised our republic-with all respect to free speech.

"I'm like a Jesuit missionary to the Iroquois over there (at MSNBC)"
-- Excerpted from Buchanan's mea culpa to Glenn Beck concerning his (former) employment at MSNBC (10/28/11)

Ironic that the old Cultural Warrior and Race Baiter would use this analogy: The Iroquois being "an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America. (T)he Iroquoian... coalesced as distinct tribes, by the 16th century or earlier, they came together in an association known today as the Iroquois League, or the 'League of Peace and Power.'" (Wiki)

SEE ALSO PART 1 - Déjà Vu All Over Again: A Flashback to Another Fiery & Bizarre Michigan GOP Primary

Been here before: "The Suicide of the West" by former Marxist,
turned radical right conservative author James Burnham (1964)

AAP's David Bauder, AP Television Writer, reported (2.17.12):

"MSNBC dropped conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on Thursday, four months after suspending him following the publication of his latest book.

"Buchanan's "book "Suicide of a Superpower" contained chapters titled "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America." Critics called the book racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, charges Buchanan denied.

"MSNBC President Phil Griffin said last month that he didn't think Buchanan's book "should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC."

See also this video clip of Pat Buchanan as he ruminates with Glenn Beck, who pontificates to Pat that President Obama is a "Marxist" while pitching his latest book "Suicide of a Superpower".

Power of the apocalypse: Tools of right wing encoded messaging
and political power in Buchanan's "Suicide of a Superpower"

Buchanan's recent chapter, "The Death of White America" is a textbook example of "dog whistle" and "bat language" to radicalized Republicans promoting racial fears. And should be outed for what it is.

The old warrior has fallen on his own sword.

Pat Buchanan Trumpets “The End of White America”

Pat Buchanan's key jabs, quotes, and factoids are often "clip and paste" in a clever and twisted manner from liberal or progressive sources to aggregate them cleverly into his edgyand provocative, radical racist premise found in his 2011 book, Suicide of a Superpower.

The following points taken from Buchanan's chapter four entitled "The End of White America":

• The Year 2042 is "the white peoples deadline," engenders the fears in the white minority
• Race is the real source of the over-the-top rage
• Beginnings of a 30 year racial struggle
• The Tea Party's Town Hall events were almost all white.
• What is coming is a "national existential reordering"; May cause "some Americans run off the rails"
• Last gasp of White America..."your time is limited, real damn limited..."
• "As long as you think you are white there is no hope for you" " co-opting Baldwin's quote
• Obama's 2008 victory-Payback for white bigotry
• 2009 Blue collared men have lost pace;-Blue collared white men have lost the largerportion of jobs (510K jobs lost), 17% of illegal aliens now own jobs
• Plurality of Americans lost confidence in the Federal Government
• Election sweep in 2010: WHITES MADE UP OVER 3/4ths of the vote nationally, In the South 2010, Whites voted Republican 73 to 27 Democratic
• White Democratic national congressmen from the Deep South are close to becoming extinct
• If there's an epicenter of angst it is "among Whites without college degrees" 64% of whom blamed the government in Washington

-----

"The atmosphere in this recording is, as you may expect, dark, grim, apocalyptic."

Source: Alternative Right (Alternative Right's founder, Richard B. Spencer, was formerly an editor at The American Conservative magazine and Taki's Magazine. AltRight became a media project of the National Policy Institute).

Pat Buchanan is...

"(t)he author of six New York Times bestsellers traces the disintegration to three historic changes: America's loss of her cradle faith, Christianity; the moral, social, and cultural collapse that have followed from that loss; and the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation.

"America was born a Western Christian republic, writes Buchanan, but is being transformed into a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic stew of a nation that has no successful precedent in the history of the world.

"'Where once we celebrated the unity, the melting pot and shared experience, that the Depression and World War gave us, our elites today proclaim, 'OUR DIVERSITY IS OUR GREATEST STRENGTH!'- EVEN AS RACIAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY ARE TEARING NATIONS TO PIECES.'
(emphasis added)

Buchanan book quotes:

"'Rejecting the commitment to a God-given equality of rights for all as inadequate, our government is engaged in the manic pursuit of equality of rewards, as it seeks to erect an egalitarian utopia that has never before existed. Less and less do we Americans have in common. More and more do we fight over religion, morality, politics, history, and heroes.

And as our nation disintegrates, our government is failing in its fundamental duties, unable to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.'

"How Americans are killing the country they profess to love, and the fate that awaits us if we do not turn around, is what Suicide of a Superpower is all about."

Source: Amazon Book Description

Back to the future: Pat Buchanan's version
of Burnham's sixties spirit in "The Death of the West" (2001)

Couching his ruminations and anger in religious terms and emotions, Buchanan tries to seed great fear and anxiety into the minds of the country, specifically targeting the minds and emotions of the radical religious right - a vocal mob who are the most reliable GOP base, the uber-loyal voting bloc, the angry Teapartisans of 2010.

Currently Rad Religious Radicals are seeking a way forward out of a disoriented electorate embarrassing itself here in the spring of 2012, behind all of that confusion and angst is a strand of Buchanan's race fear.


Background Reading:
James Burnham, author of "The Suicide of the West" (1964) just one of many quotes from Burnham:

"Modern liberalism, for most liberals, is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow."
-- James Burnham in The Suicide of the West (1964)

In a later book, "The Machiavellians", [James Burnham] argued and developed his theory that the emerging new elite would better serve its own interests if it retained some democratic trappings - political opposition, a free press, and a controlled 'circulation of the elites'." (Wiki)


Review of "Suicide of the West" by Morton Blackwell at the conservative "Leadership Institute":

"First published in the early sixties, "Suicide of the West" is a withering indictment of liberalism.  Far from serving as a bulwark against communism, liberalism, Burnham shows, is the ideology of Western suicide, communism in its preliminary stage.  Though Soviet communism has collapsed, liberalism remains, and as long as it does, Suicide of the West should be read by conservatives."

On the Reader:
A series of articles on Pat Buchanan over the years at The New Republic (1990-2009). Also Pat Buchanan book "The Death of the West" (2000) read a synopsis.

The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement by Eric Heubeck based on the writing and teaching of Paul Weyrich founder of the Heritage Foundation, CNP, ALEC and a number of other right wing institutions, on the complete defeat of "the Left" referred to by Newt Gingrich as "replacement of the Left".

PART 1 - Déjà Vu All Over Again: A Flashback to Another Fiery & Bizarre Michigan GOP Primary


Original Part 2A and Part 2B.

Déjà Vu All Over Again: A Flashback to Another Fiery & Bizarre Michigan GOP Primary

As this year's Michigan Republican Presidential primary 'cynical circus' approaches next month (March) it might be a good time to take a look back at a little history. Many of the same feats were performed in the past that can be observed in this cycle's 'circus'. What is to be learned from that history? Let's take a look and see how it informs us and applies today.

Harold Meyerson's classic print piece takes us down memory lane with a master provocateur and raconteur. It was candidate Pat Buchanan on the stump in southeast Michigan vamping for populist support to underpin and boost his fading bid to be President of the U.S. It was St. Pat playing to the workers of Michigan like a virtuoso strummer on a two string guitar with a silver tongued pick.

-------

It’s the Michigan GOP silly season of primary voting as wackos escalate. That short  period when the more and more radicalized Four Horsemen of the Rad-Right Apocalypse will gallop about the state in full Crusader armor/regalia.  They will loudly pontificate with unholy god-speak, aggrandizing/dangerous hyperbole, and “drown the government” psyco-talk.

STOP!

Let’s step back and take the long view, the common sense inhale, and consider the history of social /cultural warfare in Michigan the home of Father Charles E. Coughlin and the dusty bramble of George Wallace and Patrick Buchanan on the hustings.

We’ve seen it before, it’s happened over and over and this ride is but one more plunge into the muck of racism, despair, corporate disinformation, and wild media ads and blitz. Stay in control of your disbelief.

(Ted Soqui Metro Times) Original Caption -
"Bully Pulpit: A tremendous performer on the stump, Pat Buchanan
holds rallies that are like nothing else in American politics today."

In 1996, any sensational, shocking cord Pat could hit, he would, he did !

Writer and Opinionator Harold Meyerson penned "St. Pat's Day" in the Mar. 21-27, 1996, Metro Times Detroit a concise clip: "Pat Buchanan, avenging angel of the white working class, guns for the conservative elite."  Meyerson's assessment:

"Buchanan himself is uncomfortable with his leftward march--"We're moving onto terra nova here," he tells me early on. Mainstream American conservatism has always been more capitalist than traditionalist, placing a higher value on corporate freedom than on the claims of community.

With the globalization of once-American corporations, though, Buchanan has shifted himself onto the community side. "This libertarian strain of conservatism has really gone too far," he tells me. "The worship of the great god Efficiency has gone too far. And the indifference to the impact on communities and families and towns of this rapid, turbo-charged global economy and accelerated change--you just want to say, 'Stop! What is it we are celebrating?'"

Pat Buchanan: "Maximum efficiency and the tremendous change that capitalism engenders is having a devastating impact on the other values we're supposed to cherish."

"Buchanan talks the language of class warfare more bluntly than any other American politician--emphatically including Democrats. For Buchanan, it's the ability of corporations to pay 10 cents an hour in China for work that Americans used to perform that's at the heart of the brave new world economy. "That's why middle-class incomes are stagnating while profits soar. They're pocketing the difference!"

(Break)

"We need an equalization tax with some countries," he told me, "especially some countries that have very able labor forces but very, very low pay. You know, many of the countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Mexico and Latin America."

(Break)

Buchanan's lunch with UAW members (1996) in LaPeer, just outside Flint--site of the 1937 sit-in where workers won their first contract with GM, and in some sense, then, the birthplace of both the CIO and of America's middle-class majority--is a LESS THAN OVERWHELMING AFFAIR. ONLY 40 AUTO WORKERS ARE PRESENT, NONE OF THEM SO MUCH AS A LOCAL SHOP STEWARD.

(Break)

Buchanan's union supporters are invariably two-fers: they're also drawn to him because they loathe gun control, or favor home schooling, or dread affirmative action, or believe abortion is a sin.

The gap that has opened between Buchanan and (Newt) Gingrich, say, on economics is huge. No public figure is more committed to the agenda of America's multinationals than the Speaker. No public official is less committed to that agenda than Buchanan, even though he still favors a Gingrich-like deregulatory agenda here at home.

(Break)

How much room there is for compromise is another question. The Republican Party cannot easily repudiate free trade, nor Buchanan embrace it. At the level of fundamental ideology, Buchanan is not likely to transform the GOP from Gingrich's hypercapitalism to his own ASSERTIVE NATIONALISM.

Like Coughlin, Long and Wallace, Buchanan has become a distinct third force in American politics, outside the camp of either party. What's distressing is that there doesn't seem to be a first force."(emphasis added)

Concluded Meyerson:

"In the mid-1930s, historian Steven Fraser has written, German- and Polish- and slavic-Americans could turn on the radio and choose between the social conservatism of Father Coughlin and the social democracy of John L. Lewis, father of the CIO. In the mid-'90s, when the economic crisis takes the form not of unemployment but of declining incomes, the heir to Father Coughlin is alive and well, tromping through California all this week. (That candidate was cultural warrior, Patrick Buchanan)

The heirs of John L. Lewis have a ways to go yet: the new leadership of the union movement is just embarking on a long journey of reconstruction, while the Democratic president (Bill Clinton) prescribes only more training to restore the living standards of America's workers.

(Break)

Buchanan's answer...resonates...deeply in some pockets of working-class America. And as the world market continues to wreak havoc among American workers, as the potential for xenophobia continues to mount, Buchananism may grow stronger yet. Defeated in the primaries, he is not yet done cashing in on the promise of Coughlin and Wallace."

In the 2012 Primaries - GOP Paranoia Spreading like Kudzu


On the eve of the traveling cynical circus, media mash (made up of the four remaining major GOP presidential primary candidates) begins its sweep across Michigan in search of delegates, Meyerson's throw back to the era of Pat Buchanan (with its: rabble rousing, stoking the fires of anger & fear, blames-laying and hyperbole) strikes a baseline for such Michigan based political events.

Buchanan's fictional exaggerations are both a guide, a stern warning, an archetypical example of the extremes emanating from the drive to defeat an opponent and rally that netherworld of dangerous provocation believed to be needed to harvest votes-regardless of fact or civic virtue.

Application to this cycle's Michigan’s GOP Primary
Just as George Wallace's shocking Michigan primary victory was able to garner the angst of Michigan workers and appeal to their racial and religious distrust and fear, and as Father Coughlin’s tirades and bombast.  He was the fiery broadcast  Catholic priest (leader of a huge populist following out of Michigan's Royal Oak) who could stir men to radicalism; moving from one "enemy," one strawman to another, moving as a powerful negative yet compelling religio-political voice.

There's warning and prophetic meaning here in Meyerson's report; enough to temper and shape the impact of this ongoing campaign characterized by James Marshall Crotty (as published by Forbes Magazine) in "Why Do Republicans Gleefully Embrace Idiots as Presidential Candidates?":

"The question naturally begs a larger question: How can a country, with the world's highest national GDP, and absurdly complex systems regulating everything from credit default swaps to nuclear missile safety, possibly allow onto its national stage men and women of such transparently inferior intellect?

"The easy answer is that there has always been a long, pathetic history of anti-intellectual paranoia in American politics, as Richard Hofstadter documented in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). It is like kudzu. You just can't kill it. No matter how advanced the U.S. becomes in technology, biomedicine, and weaponry, it not only attracts, but promotes, under the rubric of equal opportunity, a confederacy of dunces as Presidential candidates."

Michigan must learn not to suffer fools.

This is PART 1 of 2: 
See also Déjà Vu (Part 2): Buchanan's Pitch of Racial Undertones - "Suicide of a Superpower" a GOP Dog Whistle

Recommended Reading:
More on Hofstadter and anti-intellectualism recently - an interesting review and contrast of Richard Hofstadter’s 'Anti-intellectualism in American Life' and Susan Jacoby’s 'The Age of  American Unreason' and a Jacoby interview with Bill Moyers. Also,listen to Michigan's 1930's firebrand Father Coughlin in "Somebody Must be Blamed".

On the Reader:
More on Pat Buchanan and the candidates in the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary on the Gazette.

Original.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and No Jobs in Michissippi (Michigan)

"The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent." 

-- Daniel Webster, 1782-1852

If the greedy Corporatists won't take a hint from the protests sweeping state houses across the land, then take it from a Founding Thinker and Patriot, extreme inequality between the OnePercenters and the 99 Percenters is a foreboding omen of coming disaster.

Be Glad and Give Thanks for the Occupy Movement: Light is shining in the darkness, and exposing the Wall Street deeds, and the Corporatocracy (an unhealthy alignment between business and political power) of the Koch brothers-so corrupt and evil-via A.L.E.C.'s 'plug and play corporate state legislation". It's all coming into that laser light.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and No Jobs... this quote is from Pat Buchanan, Member the Conservative Caucus, during his campaign for the presidency:

"What is an economy for if not so that workers and their families can enjoy the good life their parents knew, so that incomes rise with every year of hard work, and so that Americans once again enjoy the highest standards of living in the world? Our American the most productive in the world; our technology is the finest. Yet, the real incomes of American workers have fallen 20 percent in twenty years. Why are our people not realizing the fruits of their labor?

We have a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference, a government that does not listen anymore to the forgotten men and women who work in the forges, factories, and plants and businesses of this country. We have instead, a government that is too busy taking the phone calls from lobbyists for foreign countries and the corporate contributors of the Fortune 500."

Source: Presidential announcement speech of Patrick J. Buchanan at the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences on March 20, 1995

One Buchanan supporter shares a vision: "Imagine a Ron Paul / Pat Buchanan ticket. I would cry with joy. But I can dream."


Original Part 1 and Part 2.

The great experiment in liberty we enjoy in America: a deliberate attempt to establish a conservative order of stability, justice and honor

The "hard" ideology, Hard America, Soft America, that Michael Barone ('Hard America plays for keeps.') has so much encouraged as the bedrock of 'conservatism' in the mindset of the present day GOP, is corrosive and deleterious to the present and future of our country. The harshness encouraged by a select cadre of mega-wealthy-to be ensconced as a standard of suppression for the 99 %, the rest of us--is the sure road to national disillusionment and collapse.

While the many foundations and so-called Think Tanks they back: Koch/Cato, Amway/Heritage, Sarah Scaife, John M. Olin/ Lynde and Harry Bradley & ExxonMobil/Heartland make ardent efforts to shape public policy and mold legislation; they continue to actively undermine freedom and personal liberty in aggressive ways. One group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, having come out of the shadows and into the harsh light (via Walker in Wisconsin) has already done equal, irreparable harm to Michigan and other states by directly enacting corporate designed bills directly introduced by A.L.E.C. member Legislators and moved seamlessly into state laws (Michigan has upwards of 200 present or past members of the legislature who are in league with the American Legislative Exchange Council.) Best known currently is Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester; albeit there are many others, willing "tools" in the present legislatue.

The recent revelations of the impact of the "front group," The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, highlight and ring alarm bells as to the untoward and aggressive "programming" such groups in league with A.L.E.C. have had in service of an elite group of mega-wealthy and corporatists in hot pursuit of their own well-being and advancement, the public be damned. Such revelations are a renewed warning that such private serving "think tanks" are too much in control of America, and Michigan in particular. The damage they are doing with devolution of law and standards of living and common sense are rightfully alarming as they are extremely dangerous to Michiganians' "pursuit of happiness" and economic and personal freedoms.

The Real & Abandoned 'Conservative' Idealism

'The great experiment in liberty we enjoy in America was a deliberate attempt to establish a conservative order of stability, justice and honor. The tremendous freedoms that we exercise were thus carefully secured against the arbitrary and fickle whims of men and movements by the rule of law. Our social system was not designed so as to depend on the benevolence of the magistrates, or the altruism of the wealthy, or the condescension of the powerful. Every citizen, rich or poor, man or woman , native born or immigrant, hale or handicapped, young or old, is under the standard of unchanging, immutable , and impartial justice.

'As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the powerful booklet that helped spark the War for Independence, 'In America, the law is king.'

'If left to the mere discretion of human authorities, even the best-intended statues, edicts, and ordinances inevitably devolve into some form of death-dealing tyranny. There must, therefore, be an absolute against which on encroachment of prejudice or preference may interfere. There must be a foundation that the winds of change and the waters of circumstance cannot erode. There must be a basis for law that can be depended upon at all times, in all places, and in every situation.

'Apart from this uniquely Christian innovation in the affairs of men and nations, there can be no freedom. There never has been before, and there never will be again. Our Founding Fathers knew that all too well. The opening refrain of the Declaration of Independence affirms the necessity of that kind of absolute standard upon which the rule of law can be established:

"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'

"Appealing to the 'Supreme Judge of the World' for guidance, and relying on His 'Divine Providence' for wisdom, the framers committed themselves and their posterity to the absolute standard of 'laws of nature and of nature's God.' A just government exists, they argued, solely and completely to 'provide guards' for the 'future security' of that standard. Take away those guards, and the rule of law is no longer possible."

"G.K. Chesterton once quipped that 'America is the only nation founded on a creed.' Other nations find their identity and cohesion in ethnicity, or geography, or cultural tradition. But America was founded on certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility.

"It was this profound peculiarity that most struck Alexis de Tocqueville during his famous visit to this land at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He called it 'American Exceptionalism.'

"Thomas Jefferson asserted that 'the chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.'"

So wrote conservative author George Grant in his book "Buchanan: Caught In The Crossfire".

Certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility are indeed at stake in America, and more acutely for us, here in Michigan. When the law is bent to serve business and corporations at the exclusion of all others, this is wrong. This present Michigan TeaPublican legislature is spinning flat, out of control of the citizens of this state, hell bent to serve the immediate and long-term needs of the Corporatocracy and the elites; 1%ers and wannabees who have the cash to move a "hard" agenda ...all others excluded.


Original.

Before Rick Snyder Removes the Michigan Public School Code, Step Back to the Engler Revolution: What Will NO CODE Mean?

No State School Code Equals Stealth Control

" A virtual de-regulation of schools" is being sought by Gov. Snyder and Mike Flanagan

No School Code in Historic Perspective
Engler's State of the State (SOS) announcement calling for complete destruction of the State School Code had a clear purpose. It was to be no longer the state, acting as consensus of the whole, but rather local boards who will have the ultimate power to make and enforce the rules. Who then will control education?

Now that may seem easy to answer. The community and the parents at large decide, right? NOT SO. Engler's illogical action is designed to dovetail with the stealth campaign of the Hard Right (A Betsy DeVos backed and funded Citizens for Tradi-tional Values which claims 68% of the winners in one Michigan statewide election were their/her candidates). Their purpose is made clear in these words:

"We are now in the process of putting born-again Christians on every school board in America. How? by COMMUNITY IMPACT EVANGELISM! A school board with five members needs only three Christians to take complete control of a school district. You can literally own that system and control all personnel, curriculum, materials, textbooks, and policies. You will influence the mindset of between 20,000 and 50,000 children." - Robert L. Simonds, president, National Association of Christian Educators/Citizens for Excellence in Education 1986.

Simonds, a former California teacher and preacher who in 1983 founded Citizens for Excellence in Education/National Association of Christian Educators, heads a Christian crusade which is mounting a vigorous attempt to gain control of public education, and it is a crusade in which there are armies of willing warriors. It is succeeding because of the lethargy of a preoccupied citizenry that no longer votes or takes part in civic affairs. They assume too much!

On the surface it seems like an attack only on the publics' schools, but it is part of an even larger purpose. This activity is aimed as much against the Mainline Protestant churches and their memberships as much as it is against those whom these religious enthusiasts label "secular humanists." Mainline Protestants serve on school boards in large numbers and don't, except in rare cases, operate church related academies via their churches.

This sea change in America is an all-out-no-holds-barred attack upon the Methodists, Presbyterians, and other major Protestant denominations which are labeled "apostate" in the view of this militant army of Pentecostals, Fundamentalist Catholics, and Fun-damentalist Independents. The Mainline Chruches' "liberal" stances on human sexuality and the co-operation with the World Council of Churches are but two examples of this tradition's' "sins." Nor is there likewise any real ultimate historical reverence or toleration of the Jewish and Muslim--Abrahamic faiths, or the Buddhists. Read their literature. The Fundamentalist Magazine, Tim LaHaye, "Only Christians should hold high office." (LaHaye's definition of "Christian" is on his own narrow terms and does not include many Christian believers with less Fundamentalist views than those of LaHaye.)

1/22/04 Former Republican State Rep. Joanne Voorhees' simply stated conviction (quoted by the Grand Rapids Press) was Christians are the only folk she would endorse or support for public office. She explicitly trusts Christians The general public, perhaps casually agreeing with her sentiments, fails to understand Voorhees' thinking, practice, and parlance. Qualified Christians according to Voorhees are very specific, narrowly defined believers. Society thinks of Christian as a broad, inclusive term. Voorhees defines/limits Christian to narrow, specific dogmas and exclusivity. Her "Christians" must adhere to exacting/specific religious demands.

It's a problem. Voorhees, was, at the time, an elected representative who must do all the people's business: her approved "Christians", other Christians and faiths, as well as everyone else's business. She as an elected state legislator was sworn to uphold a national constitution disallowing religious testing for public office. Yet, in practice, Voorhees espouses religious tests for public office--conflicting with the constitution and putting herself above it.

Voorhees' subsequent restatement: "Christian" includes the Jewish faith--awkwardly and inaccurately attempted to mitigate damage her candid expression of her "selective" Christians only viewpoint had previously created.

This is just one example of what Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson announced in Houston '92 at the GOP National Convention: a "Cultural and Religious war." Such unbridled intolerance is a serious threat to America's pluralistic tradition and well-being. It must not be taken lightly.

This is a time of great unrest worldwide. In America, the undefined unhappiness of many citizens over the loss of personal control over their financial futures, and a preoccupation with crime and violence, contributes to a volatile and dangerous time. Adopting simplistic solutions to complex problems has a great and widening appeal. Provocateurs and provocations abound.

These "values voters" are souls who feel, with all fervency, that they have the "absolute answers" to the problems of education and society. Those answers come straight and literally from the Bible, as taught and expounded by their powerful leaders. These leaders know the power of faith in the lives of the Faithful Followers and covet the power of government to impose that narrowed view of faith on a wayward society, a culture and worldview, they condemn.

In any age or time this kind of crisis mentality spawns fears that constitute the formulic recipet for violence and repression. Just as the ultra-right national leaders picture it, it's a war (a starkly harsh term) on all unbelievers.  They allude to it as analogous to the Civil War where a moral issue was said to be the root cause of the conflagration....

It was a specious and treacherous act on the part of Engler to willingly and deliber-ately attempt to open the flood gates of carefully constructed and tested pubic school control to such ideologues - by a radical reconstruction of state government policy-so clearly favoring the Hard Right's pre-announced, divisive purposes.

Remove the State School Codes? Can educational apartheid be far behind?

Original Post.