Rick Santorum: the Too Far Right’s Radical Dominionist Theolotican on a Dangerous Rip

Disclaimer: The right to one's religious beliefs is a sacred aspect of our American Values.

However, when one religious sect, organization, or leader begins to trespass against the Founding Freedoms (even egregiously misquoting and misrepresenting the Founders' words and intentions), which we have enjoyed as a nation, established around a carefully crafted secular governmental structure, then it is time to ask citizens of this nation--of whatever faith or no-faith--to earnestly attempt to determine if this kind of relio-political theolotics is acceptable for the entire public.

Ask whether such intrusions should be passed over when our votes are cast for representation in civic government? If these radicals take a path of study and research and their mounted crusade becomes onerous to such parties as may want to preserve America's historic separation of church and state. Now we must reject these who may be attempting to radically co-opt government for their form of theocracy, claiming that any rejection of their erroneous attempts to religiously inject religion into government is a process of anti-Christian persecution of themselves. Calling themselves "persecuted" over their promotion of such radical ideology is an expected protective reaction and a typical defensive tactic-in itself erroneous and incorrect.

Rick Santorum is undermining the stature of the Roman Catholic Church in America and is engendering a backlash of Know Nothing blow-back reminiscent of the KKK ugly anti-Catholicism of the 1920's.

If only the more sensible American Catholic Bishops could guide Sen. Santorum back to basic truth-telling and the vital balance necessary for the preservation of universal religious tolerance--the mature attitude we have striven as a country to achieve for so many decades.

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Rick Santorum is a Christian Nationalist. He supports a "Christian" America, he, as other Christian Nationalists, refuses to accept separation of church and state, and they are bound to continue to set out to mold, force, the rest of society to conform to their peculiar and specific sense of what is morally right and wrong-both politically and religiously. They're prime backers of the Right-to-tell-you-how-to-run-your-life-for-you crowd which is mounting its church-based efforts to Christianize American society. Sen. Santorum and such groups hold a theocratic and narrow definition of Christianity and morals based in historic Fundamentalistic, Strict Catholics, and capitalistic Calvinism. This is best exposed in Sen. Santorum's blatant attack on "mainline" Protestant churches, whom Rick claims are at the end of their influence and purposes-no longer "Christian."

Many of the religious far right are strident Puritans akin to that of the John Calvin's Geneva during the fifteenth century. Another part of the "values voters block" include individuals such as Santorum, who is symptomatic of the crusading uber-Catholic conservatives who want to see Roman Catholicism made dominate in America. This group includes Ann Arbor's Tom Monaghan of Dominoes fame. Monaghan has created distinct enclaves of "pure" traditional Roman Catholic belief, such institutions as the Ava Maria University in his idyllic theoloplis Florida town, Ava Maria, east of Naples. Tom Monaghan, Ave Maria's founder, has been criticized in the press for proposing that contraceptives, abortion, and pornography be banned from the university and the town itself. In 2007, Monaghan drew criticism from Catholics both inside and outside the university when he removed theologian Joseph Fessio as provost.

Mr. Monaghan is reputed to be a member of Opus Dei and has been aligned with a number of other very conservative Catholic organizations and causes. Santorum is a close ally of ,if not a member of Opus Dei. Both Monaghan and Santorum are knights of magistral grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Monaghan materials here are drawn from Wikipedia).

On the Reader:
See "Opus Delusional: Santorum - God’s Avenger" - "St. Santorum Fails the Defender of Truth Test" and more on Rick Santorum and the 2012 GOP Primary.

Response to religious right use of religion in politics in "Let the government be the government & Let the church be the church".


Original.

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.

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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.

One Thing Social Conservatives Dislike as a Candidate for President: A Sex Addict

If Newt Gingrich is to pass muster with the "values voters"- strong convictions evangelical Christians - he will have to pass the morals test. The job of president is far beyond the biblical role of a Christian elder. The character history of a "elder" requires that person to pass a biblical minimal standards task: "one in whom no fault is found."

This is the scripture verse lining out the moral qualifications for a early Christian deacon:

"An Elder ought to be one in whom no fault is found and is the husband of one woman, is of a vigilant mind, sober, orderly, loves strangers and is a teacher."
-- I Timothy 3:12

If there is one thing that most social conservative Americans dislike in a candidate for president it's a sex addict. 

Fred Barnes wrote recently in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in "The History of Newt: Are Republicans ready to look past his transgressions?":

"... Gingrich has 'told friends he's like Richard Nixon, not particularly likable and hated by the press and the left.' And here we see Gingrich taking a page from Nixon's playbook. If there was one thing Americans disliked more than the not particularly likable Nixon, it was dirty hippies."

Newt must believe that if one has a new haircut, a clean, odorless body, and a filthy mind, that because that person is not "dirty," cleaning up should qualify that individual for the office of a church "elder"? What about Newt with a stylish haircut, crisp suits, and a long history of sexual indulgence, if not addictions to fornication and adultery? Does just cleaning himself up with a confession to Focus on the Family's James Dobson and subsequently becoming a a Roman Catholic convert overcome and expunge his immoral past?

If there is one thing that most Americans dislike in a candidate for president: Being a sex addict. Newt's history is that of a serial adulterer. He has a long, early, history of easy sex and lax, if non-existent restrain on his libido.

Writer Paul Wilkes in "THE GOOD ENOUGH CATHOLIC" penned:

"Not that we Catholics are better or stronger, or more or less sexed, than other Christians or non-Christians; but there is simply a Catholic way of looking at things. We know the ideal; Catholicism has never been a religious faith that has called for anything less than the best in people. There IS such a thing as a Catholic ethic of sexual morality " and it makes sense, because it is based on the firm foundation of true love of self and true love of others, inspired by God's love for all. It is an ethic worth pursuing, a way of respecting sexuality that can last a lifetime, a legacy worth passing on to children who need a true and steady beacon by which to guide their lives."

Do you want to see into the twisted mind of Gingrich?
Read for yourself Gingrich's co-authored novel, with the title "1945". The book "1945" is a 1995 alternate history novel, which included descriptive lewd sexual material. Here's what occupied Gingrich's characters in his novel as per the September 1996 issue of Locus (issue 428, Vol. 37 No. 3):

"Baen (publishing) has been running full-page ads for 1945 by Newt Gringrich and William R. Forstchen, saying, 'You've heard the noise, now read the book.' Well, I've read the book, and I'm going to save you the trouble.

"The quotes you've seen in print and heard read over the air, the stuff about the pouting sex kitten and all, come from the first three pages. That may be because that's as far as anyone could get in the Forstchenian awfulness, but I am made of sterner stuff... So this is the last time I'll mention that "noise" Baen is so concerned about, other than saying that it's a pity the paragraph dealing with the pouting sex kitten was disemboweled between the bound galley review stage and the printed book stage. Her kneeling athwart her lover's shoulders would have added entertainment value that this book sorely needed.

"Our story starts with John Mayhew, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, wrapped in passionate embrace with his mistress who is, oh dear! a Nazi spy. He, poor fool, dazzled by her charms, reveals the US atomic bomb secrets to her.

"As befits the scene, the prose is some of the most turgid imaginable. Before we get to the bottom of page one we find such gems as an "initial gambit" (all gambits are openings -- it's what the word means). This should be a warning flag, telling us that we aren't quite in the presence of a master wordsmith.

"The pouting sex kitten's name is Erica, though we don't learn that until page 110, 109 pages after she's introduced. She's Erika by page 115 -- copy editing and proofreading weren't this book's high points, though I still have to give the copy editor points for making it through the book at all. The poor bugger needed a machete."

Remember, it was Newt that pushed the Clinton impeachment while having an adulterous affair with his now, but then future wife. Newt pushed forward with his attempts to "get" Clinton on morals grounds while pursuing his habitual sexual adventures at the same time.

What the nation paid for and what the youth of the world were exposed to was the printing of the papers (The Starr Report) which detailed the sexual activity of the president and his intern. The impact of the material on the here-to-fore sheltered Irish youths was said to be dynamic and debasing.

Restored to moral virginity by his Catholic conversion, Newt Gingrich need never be elevated to the role of an example -a "true and steady beacon by which to guide" the lives of youthful Americans. His tragic and twisted sexual history takes away Gingrich's right to national leadership, even if ultimately endorsed by James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, or Don Wildmod of the American Family Association or not. However, we all have seen what softies the Religious Right weakness is when it comes to stories of repentance and being "born again." They gave us that tragic and flawed cardboard Christian, George W. Bush, didn't they - just because he claimed to be "born again"? Bush was the man who said he answered to and took direction from a "higher father" - thus blaming God for his multiple failures as a president and commander-in-chief, and guardian of the national economy.

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Ultimately, it's important to focus on the Gingrichian MO: Toy with ideas, grand schemes, astonishing facts & figures, scenarios & proposals It's this skill set that most endears him to the rad right religious voters-whom he must woo in order to win the 2012 GOP nomination. These things endear Newt to his cultish followers and gin up their racialism.

Now Newt has accepted the role of uber-partisan "war dog"-a highly skilled predator/vicious attacker-who can "draw blood" and destroy. It's this ability of Gingrich to create, tear out, red meat and inflame ideological and racially-tinged carnage that voters, such as those Teapublicans in South Carolina, are raring to join forces with to defeat President Obama.

Gingrich is the most dangerous and amoral man in America, bar none! Newt must be denied the presidency.



Original.

See also previous pieces in this SERIES:

• Let the government be the government & Let the church be the church.
• "We Always Need a JESUS CANDIDATE"? - Just Who Will be God's People's Choice for President in 2012 
• Diehard Fundamentalist Evangelicals & Pentecostals have essentially a no-choice “choice” for GOP Candidate for President

A Preface to the Religious Right’s Revelation of Their ‘Righteous’ Royal Flush - GOP Endorsement

Where it all started: The Coalition formed by George Benson et al, Creating the New Religious Right
Though much has been penned about the American Religio-Political-Conservatism too little has been laid out about George Benson and his seminal work in pulling together Conservative Christian Values and Free Enterprise Economics.

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In 1964 semi-retired Ronald Reagan delivered a zinger of a speech for Barry Goldwater. That speech put Reagan on a path to 'sainthood' become the hero of the "stricken" Christian Conservatives of the American South. They were to find a new "media savvy" front man in Reagan - who became the "savior of conservative ideology" on into the 1980's.

The sudden shift of the Religious-Conservatives away from Jimmy Carter, who was too soft on race for the newly emerging Republicrats, created a giant opening for Ronald Reagan; he was to fill the gap and beyond for the South crushed and angry over the Civil Rights advances under Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson. This turning was the handiwork of Ronald Reagan, who found a way to substitute himself into national Republican politics and take advantage of the beginnings of the New Religious Right, the coalition that would propel Reagan into the presidency and mount what was then called THE REAGAN REVOLUTION - a spin off of the CULT OF REAGAN.

President Jimmy Carter, an active, genuine Southern Baptist "bornagainer," had activated the hope amongst religious conservatives and Old South diehards that there would be a "revival" of morality in the presidency following the moral debacle of the Richard Nixon Watergate and its cover-up disaster and resignation.

However, Carter failed to deliver on a long list of items of great interest and importance to the "New Religious Right." Carter quickly lost favor. The reaction of Fundamentalist on the ascendency in the Southern Baptist Convention and other aggressive politicos seeing real advantage in the 180 turn the south had taken following the Voting Rights and forced integration edits of the Federal government were aroused to a "white" heat. Nothing since the uptick of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920's could produce such a rapid and indelible political "loyalty reversal" as first against Lyndon Johnson, and then the final slippage coming under Jimmy Carter.

It was the residue and angst of Carter that helped gin up the social conservatives and the old Dixicrats now coming on board with support for the smooth talking radical, Ronald Reagan. Reagan did not fail. One giant and profound signal was sent immediately following the 1980 convention when Ronald Reagan went to the selfsame county in Mississippi where civil rights workers were notoriously murdered and made his carefully crafted states' rights statement (part of a insidious Southern Strategy begun under Dick Nixon). The switch-over was "set" with that event. The Dixicrats had found their new man!

Resentment festered around the fact that Carter did not strongly attack the critical problems facing the South such as establishing "segregation academies" and other "moral" issues facing the nation and especially the South. This angst "helped to break down the long-standing feeling among Evangelicals that electoral politics was not the proper realm for Christian activity." Prior to this time, scripture shibboleths were etched on the minds of the faithful: a.) "Avoid the very appearance of evil (politics)." b.) "Do not be unequally joined together with unbelievers." These biblical admonitions were enough to keep "real Christians" out of politics and partisanship.

Carter had failed to stack his administration and the federal system with enough evangelicals and Fundamentalists, Carter did not actively make a move to overturn Roe V. Wade, he did not stand sufficiently in the way of forced busing for the purposes of integration. Advocates for church academies were hell bent to receive tax exemption for church schools which sufficed as the neo-segregation academies. Jimmy Carter appeared unable or unwilling to stop the spread of "secular humanism" seen as running rife in the public schools and the nation.

The capstone seen as the key to moral disaster ignored the up-whelming cry to reinstate prayer in public schools.

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Concurrently, at one critical interval, three secular New Right operatives/strategists began a bold crusade. They were: 1.) Howard Phillips 2.) Richard Viguerie 3. Paul Weyrich. They named their non-denominational creation, "THE MORAL MAJORITY" a clever all-inclusive coalition that quickly became the hub of radical political actions.

An assemblage of notable religious right captions and generals included: 1.) D. James Kennedy 2.) Jerry Falwell 3.) "Pat" Robertson 4.) Ed McAteer 5.) James Robison

At a precisely opportune moment during the August 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, speaking to a large gathering of like-minded religious far righters (over 15K), spoke these words:

"When I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep traditional moral values away from policy making, I am shocked...The First Amendment was written not to protect the people and their laws from religious values, but to protect those values from governmental tyranny." Reagan deserves credit for choosing a speech writer who could strike this once lost, then found, lost cord with the values voters gathered. And to cap off his remarks, Reagan added "I want you to know I endorse you and what you are doing." 

That was that, Reagan became their man of the hour, he went on with abundant help from the religio-political-economic Right to win the presidency. And as they say, "The rest is history."

George Benson, The Gipper's Far Right Mentor and Divine
For years in the unseen background, the little-known George Benson was building his National Education Program. He was there prior to 1980, with the Gipper, helping to present and hone a specific work, THE TRUTH ABOUT COMMUNISM, a film where Reagan and Benson had cooperated. Benson's lifelong cause was to be wed to that of the new leader, Ronald Reagan. As a later newspaper editorial put it:

"GEORGE BENSON WAS A MEMBER OF THE MORAL MAJORITY YEARS BEFORE THERE WAS ONE. In an era when most Fundamentalist clergymen would as soon be seen hoisting a highball with the local madam as become involved in something as worldly and tawdry as politics, Benson was laying the foundation for what become known as the Religious Right." 

(emphasis added)

Source: Mike Trimble Arkansas Times, July 1986.



And so "the Vote Values show" hits the road again this weekend. It's latest attempt to hornswoggle the nation, via the GOP and the U.S. Presidency, marches out of the minds of a crafty and deceitful group of religious leaders - still besmirched with the vetting and endorsement of the preemptive warmongering George W. Bush on their hands.


Original.

Michissippi’s TeaPuritan (Michigan's Republican) Legislative Purification Campaign Powering Up for 2012

Response to Dan Calabrese in "Will Michigan GOP blow it?" on the Michigan View January 03, 2012


The Salem Witch Trial Principals Were Not America's Founding Fathers. 2012's MI legislative year promises to reveal the full TeaPuritan agenda: They are rallying now to hold the modern equivalent of infamous witch trials and pass fanatical religiously tainted laws and acts designed to allow harsh church-think to dominate state affairs and citizens rights.

Dan Calabrese gets it. Our Calabrese Pray Group has given it up for Dan! Hallelujah...light has shone in.

Calabrese:

"If Michigan Republicans fumble away their leadership opportunity before it's even really begun, they won't be the first. Just the latest - and one of the stupidest.

"It's not often one political party is handed so much power and has free reign to do anything it thinks it should for the benefit of those it has been entrusted to govern. And on the rare occasions when it happens, the empowered party inevitably spends much of its political capital pandering to various constituencies by enacting nonsense that has long been demanded of them - thus ensuring a short reign with limited achievement."

We, here in the Calabrese Prayer Group aren't near as excited about what the "one political party handed so much power" and "free reign to anything it thinks it should" has done for the state, that's a tragic mistake and an enduring embarrassment. Beating down the poor, the elderly, and the school children is anti-caring. But Dan's warning is so apropos! So insightful!

Sez Dan:

"The empowered party inevitably spends much of it political capital pander to various constituencies by enacting nonsense that has long been demanded of them." 

Dan is spot on!

Calabrese's accurate assessment of the Michigan Mess:

"Michigan Republican can't seem to stop there (having achieved a number of their radical legislative goals), largely because they have a determined constituency of social conservatives and angry knee-jerkers who want what they want, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything. So along with the economic changes the state badly needs, we get proposals to mandating the Pledge of Allegiance, drug-testing welfare recipients, and banning domestic partner benefits for some public employees."

"They even passed a law "banning" partial-birth abortion, which is already illegal at the federal level, just to make anti-abortion activists happy."

"(W)hen it comes to manipulating the democratic process for their own self-serving purposes, Michigan Republicans have been second to no one. They drew congressional and legislative district maps so contorted and absurd, the only defense anyone can come up with is to suggest that Democrats would have done the same thing if given the chance. The GOP has been so blatant about grabbing power through redistricting, it even passed a law that allowed it to throw out Democratic-drawn Oakland County Commission districts - after the fact - because it didn't like the outcome. REPUBLICAN SECRETARY OF STATE RUTH JOHNSON IS MISUSING HER OFFICE TO PUT RIDICULOUS REQUIREMENTS ON VOTER REGISTRATION GROUPS, WHO TEND TO LEAN DEMOCRATIC."
(emphasis added)

Calabrese's balanced conclusion:

"This is all stupid. REPUBLICANS DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES THAT IT'S NOT GOVERNMENT'S JOB TO MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE. They don't know how to tell haters that welfare recipients are entitled to the same equal protection under the law as everyone else."
(emphasis added)

Original.

Occupy America: Finding a Way to Free Citizens of the 99% from the “Mastery of the Ignoble elite.”

The hand-cranked memographers failure at the mighty propaganda mill - Mackinac Center for Public Policy - to do "the right thing" has caused it to lose all claim to pro-active philosophy, a sustainable fairness and renewal direction for Michigan.

This is profoundly sad and frightening.

It is the Mackinac Center incessant pounding of the legislature with proto-lobbying and the hectoring of the public to achieve their privatization and for-profit goals (while destroying and undermining the necessary order of Michigan and the everyday lives of its working people) that is creating ugly Michissippi - a newly decimated state pushed to be run over by TeaPublicans "gone wild" under the tutelage and direction of the Koch Bros., Amway, big oil, American Legislative Exchange Council put-and-take legislation and other mega corporations. These have put their demands well before the needs of Michigan's struggling populace.

The Mackinac Center is not conservative. The Mackinac Center is not moral. The Mackinac Center has lost all sense of religious mores. The Mackinac Center is a blight on traditional conservatism as led by Michigan's own Dean of Conservatism, the late Russell Kirk. The 'ignoble' mega-wealthy who back and propel Mackinac Center are not worthy of statesmanship and honor. They and their goals are ignoble.

Read this assessment of Russell Kirk's impact as relates to TRUE CONSERVATISM:

"First among the concerns of modern conservatives is the regeneration of spirit and character, by which Kirk means the renewal of religious ideals, the one sure foundation for a life worth living.

"Kirk cautions that political Christianity, in which God is a means to an end, will not suffice. Rather, spiritual renewal must be done for its own sake.

"The conservative is also concerned, as Kirk has mentioned before, with the PROBLEM OF LEADERSHIP, which has two aspects: the preservation of reverence, order, discipline, and class and the cleansing of our system of education, so that it can become liberal in the best sense of that word.

Stated Kirk "ONLY JUST LEADERSHIP CAN REDEEM SOCIETY FROM THE MASTERY OF THE IGNOBLE ELITE."
(emphasis added)

Excerpted from "Russell Kirk: The Conservative Mind".

America Faces Coming Judgment for Its Unbridled Worship of Pagan Mammonism

The Mackinac Center stands squarely with the Godless paganism of Ayn Rand, Friedman, Greenspan and others who exult the individual above the community and the congregation of the righteous, and still too, the common good, must be seen for what it actually is, a pagan libertarianism: Mammon whose fixation on "freedom" has degenerated into a raid on the foundations of our Republic; its banking and investment services, and yes, upon the distinctly religious basis given American life by the Framers of the Constitution.

Occupy America with righteousness and restore probity to the government and its institutions; stand with those who demand that business abide by moral standards. Too many of the "smartest men in the room" would have us believe that in America, if something has the force of law - a proposal is made into legal statues it bears the impress of morality, not so. All that is called 'legal' is not all moral. Legal is not necessarily 'moral.'

Americans suffer under many laws and corporate designer regulations that are anything but moral and righteous; beneficial to the common welfare.

Join Kirk's fight against twisted ideology and the corruption of real conservatism by the greedy usurpers mentioned above. Be genuinely 'Conservative.'
________

It is said that mankind faces judgment by God in the afterlife. Nations, however, receive their judgment and punishment in this life. America stands to face harsh judgment from God in the here-and-now. Repent.

Will repentance now be too late to save our fair land?

For more on the 1% follow the "Mega-Wealthy" and "Wealthy Elites" tags on the Gazette.

Original.

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.


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Gingrich, Like Nixon, Hates Dirty Hippies: Yet Loves His Own ‘Free Love’ Lifestyle

If there is one thing that most social conservative Americans dislike in a candidate for president it's a sex addict.

Fred Barnes writes in this week's issue of The Weekly Standard in "The History of Newt: Are Republicans ready to look past his transgressions?":

"... Gingrich has 'told friends he's like Richard Nixon, not particularly likable and hated by the press and the left.' And here we see Gingrich taking a page from Nixon's playbook. If there was one thing Americans disliked more than the not particularly likable Nixon, it was dirty hippies."

A specific scripture verse on the moral qualifications for a early Christian deacon applies well to the office of President for the character qualifications demanded by values voters:

"[An] Elder ought to be one in whom no fault is found and is the husband of one woman, is of a vigilant mind, sober, orderly, loves strangers and is a teacher."
-- I Timothy 3:12, Aramaic Bible in Plain English

Newt must believe that if one has a new haircut, a clean odorless body, and a filthy mind, that because that person is not "dirty" then there should be an elevated acceptance of that individual on the basis that, as in the Fundamentalist apocryphal "Cleanlyness is next to godliness." The many dirty deeds of Wall Street are not expressed in their choice of personal toiletry or dress, evil is a deep dirt condition that passes the surface 'smell test' that Gingrich so snarkedly presents.

What about Newt, himself, with a stylish haircut, crisp suits, he smells good, and possesses a long history of sexual over indulgence, if not addictions to fornication and adultery, he can claim he is cleaner than those he seeks to discount who are the OWS patriots. The Newtonian dirty deeds-in pursuit of the support and acceptance of himself by the 1% - are hard to continence, even if Newt runs up his tab at Tiffney's-in an ostentatious manner.

Want to see into the twisted morals and mind of Gingrich? Read his co-authored novel, the book entitled "1945" , a 1995 alternate history novel.

"Ultimately, it's the Gingrichian way with facts, figures, and ideas that most endears him to these (rad right) voters," ogles Barnes admiringly.

If there is one thing that most Americans dislike in a candidate for president, a sex addict. Newt is a serial adulterer. He has a long early history of easy sex and lax, if not existent restrain on his libido.

But the crushing blow to Newtonian claims to be a true conservative comes in crushing form from George Will, ABC's This Week, Sunday.

Conservative scribe George Will ridiculed Newt Gingrich as a 'rental politician' on ABC's 'This Week' yesterday (11/20/11), scoffing at the idea that the Republican Party's self-described 'big ideas' candidate is employable as a historian:

"Gingrich's is an amazingly efficient candidacy, in that it embodies almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington. He's the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He's gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra " he's all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a "historian." He's not a historian. Hire Sean Wilentz, hire Gordon Wood if you want a historian." 

So said Mr. Will.

"Will's undisguised scorn is a good illustration of why Gingrich, even as he makes a bid for the affections of rank-and-file anti-Romney voters, is unlikely to win over much of anti-Romney conservative upper crust. As much as there's still a demand for an impressive, thoughtful conservative in the race who can lead the party to Romney's right, most of the political elites who know Gingrich best were convinced a long time ago that he isn't that guy."

So says Alexander Burns in Politico on Nov 21, 2011.


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U.S. Federal Government Created the American Middle Class – In spite of What You May Have Been Told by Free Market Advocates

The American Federal Government Invented the Middle Class: TeaPublicans now in power in DC are determined to shoot it down.

For the American Dream - directly related to the rise of the Middle Class - to work, people have to believe that it is "possible" for them to reach a higher standard of living. If they don't believe the possibility or opportunity is there to rise in society, then the Dream is dead.

Occupy Wall Street is making all of us face serious questions about the future of the Middle Class and survival of "full faith and confidence" so necessary to the value of our monetary script and a thriving marketplace.

A full chance for individuals to work toward a higher level of wealth and successful achievement has been a perennial draw for immigrants striving to come to America.

"America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily," Herbert Croly wrote.

American Economic Paradise

"It's no accident that the United States has always been an economic paradise for the middle class -- that class was invented and reinvented by the government. Now the government needs to reinvent it again -- before it's too late."

This a part of a commentary by Michael Lind, Whitehead Senior Fellow, in the Atlantic Monthly in "Are We Still a Middle-Class Nation?"

The Economy of America Has Taken Distinct Changes in its Unfolding Stages: Agricultural, Industrial, and Service

Back to Michael Lind:

"To most of us, the transition from farmer to industrial worker to service worker -- sometimes within three generations of one family -- appears in retrospect to have been inevitable, like some geological process. Indeed, MANY CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT A MASS MIDDLE CLASS IS AN INEVITABLE BY-PRODUCT OF CAPITALISM. The truth is that each of AMERICA'S SUCCESSIVE MIDDLE CLASSES HAS BEEN ARTIFICIALLY CREATED BY GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED SOCIAL ENGINEERING -- a fact that is profoundly important for us to admit as we think about the future of middle-class America."

 The favorite mantra of so many advocates of individual freedom, the myth of the stand alone individual, and the anti-government and anti-tax rebels is based on a false premise: The Middle Class is the distinctive work of individuals who work hard, take risks, and are rugged entrepreneurs; best divorced from government intervention or help.

Lind lines it out historically:

"From 1800 to 1848 the U.S. government acquired more than two million square miles of territory, much of it arable, by purchase or negotiation (the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803; Florida from Spain in 1819; Oregon from Britain in 1846), by annexation (Texas, 1845), or by conquest (the Mexican Cession in 1848). Populists sought to ensure that this land went to small farmers rather than large landowners or speculators. THE DANGER OF EUROPEAN-STYLE FEUDALISM IN THE UNITED STATES WAS NEUTRALIZED BY THE LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785, WHICH GUARANTEED THAT THE FEDERAL DOMAIN WOULD BE BROKEN UP INTO "FEE SIMPLE" PROPERTIES, with no complex web of multiple ownership. And the Homestead Act of 1862 provided 160 acres of free public land to settlers who would live on it and improve it for at least five years. Meanwhile, the federal government subsidized continent-crossing railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers built much of the country's rural infrastructure. This was social engineering on a colossal scale."

"The story was similar for the second American middle class, made up of prosperous urban industrial workers. FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO HERBERT HOOVER, AMERICAN POLITICS WAS DOMINATED BY A BARGAIN BETWEEN CAPITALISTS AND WORKERS; HIGH TARIFFS ON IMPORTS SERVED THE INTERESTS OF BOTH, BY PROTECTING GOODS FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION."

"In addition, the dominant industrial labor force successfully lobbied the government to protect it from competition with other groups. In the late nineteenth century Congress cut off "Oriental" immigration, and after World War I -- with the support of organized labor -- it cut large-scale European immigration. Before World War I informal discrimination prevented southern black Americans from moving to the Northeast and the Midwest to compete for industrial jobs. Finally, child-labor laws removed children from the work force, and "family wage" or "breadwinner" systems -- which paid married fathers more than unmarried, childless men -- encouraged married women to become homemakers. TODAY NOSTALGIC CONSERVATIVES ATTRIBUTE THE PROSPERITY OF THE 1920S TO FREE ENTERPRISE. IN REALITY THE MARKET WAS RIGGED."

To take a deeper look at the basis of the American middle class the writer Lind adds this explanation of the service sector's Middle Class's underlying mechanisms:

"Whereas the second American middle class was founded on high wages for workers in the industrial sector, the third American middle class was founded on the supplementation of wage income by government benefits that collectively constituted a "social wage."

"The social wage included not only private-sector benefits encouraged by the tax code, such as employer-provided health insurance, but also subsidies such as the home-mortgage-interest deduction and government entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare (which freed many middle-class families from the bankrupting burden of caring for elderly parents), the GI Bill for higher education, and student loans.

"As the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, when the hidden welfare state is counted along with the visible welfare state, the United States has a system of social provision as generous as those in Western Europe -- though in this country much of that system extends only to the middle class and the professional elite.

"The social-wage system had many flaws -- for example, it failed to provide health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Nevertheless, the third American middle class, the product of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, was larger and more inclusive than the earlier two. From the 1930s to the 1970s income inequality in America shrank dramatically, producing what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have called the Great Compression."
(emphasis added)

Since the 1980's the Service Era Middle Class has been undergoing drastic cuts and a ballooning gap between the now famous 1%'ers and the 99%'ers (who control a vastly unequal portion of the nation's wealth) highlights the 1%'ers who have seen their financial status go from static to negative, from employment to unemployment, from solid home equity to undermined "under water" equity-based on a tsunami of foreclosures.

The vast part of this condition rests squarely on the failed policies of Republicans under George W. Bush and a runaway economic epic including fraud, deception, and theft by Wall Streeters who saw themselves as the "SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE ROOM." The 2008 market value plunge tallies at a staggering multi-trillion dollar loss, nearly equal to the accumulative income of the nation for one entire year!

The fact that many corporations, national and multinational, have billions in assets which are set outside the economy and banks have used only a small fraction of their government provided billions legislated to help homeowners sits idle, and big banks are severely restricting consumer credit, tells us that Occupy Wall Street is directly on target with its protesting.

We want our money back. We want felony convictions. We want a clear path to recovery.

Americans want the "do nothing," "NO" to everything, TeaPublicans out of the way of the American Dream's recovery and reinvention. Let the government continue to sponsor and provide for our Middle Class-the key to the American experience.

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The Evangelical “Base” - So Indispensible to the GOP Electoral Success - is in Denial and Utter Confusion

What's alarming and mysterious is how faithfully "true believing" folk are taken in by crass political and business practices that are destroying their lives, ruining their communities, robbing them of living wage jobs, foreclosing on their homesteads, and sending their young and brave to die on foreign soil for private/corporate causes... and worst of all this faction (the GOP's diehard religious base) is taking down the entire country with their demands that we all be subservient to their beliefs, while steadfastly ignoring the real issues: loss of saving, no jobs, wealth inequality, privatization of the public square, and rampant corporate greed.

It's clear that the leadership of this religious segment of American society hasn't come to face reality that the harm which they have prophesied for decades as coming from OUTSIDE FORCES is really now most virulent and destructive as forces organized and promoted from sources on the inside as well. THE COUNCIL FOR NATIONAL POLICY HAD IN IT MEMBERS WHOSE INTERESTS EASILY SLIP FROM RELIGIOUS TO ENTREPRENEURIAL, FROM MORAL ISSUES TO DE-REGULATED CORPORATE INTERESTS. These forces have promoted and put in place legislation, programs, and business models that have inflicted considerable harm on themselves: the members of the conservative Catholics, Pentecostal, Mormons, and Evangelical congregations across the country.

"...(J)ust how pervasive the alliance between the rich on the one hand, and the church on the other, has become can be measured by the harsh new attitude towards the poor manifested today by so many evangelicals - an attitude which ascribes poverty to "laziness" and "individual failure;" while such an attitude is not particularly reflective of Christ's attitude towards the poor, it certainly reflects the historic attitude of the rich" 

... writes S. R. Shearer - one brave prophetic voice that has been crying out in the wilderness of these times against the sinfulness and moral injustice these highly skilled and politically connected men of immense wealth have perpetrated on the poor and the very people, who are the base of the Republican Party and the 8 year threadbare "morals" cult of "Texas born-againer" George W. Bush.

Shearer insightfully explains:

"In attributing poverty to "laziness" and "individual failure," evangelicals have unwittingly bought into the arguments of their elite "business allies" - allies which have ostensibly joined them in their struggle to "return America to Christ and the church." But what evangelicals have evidently not fathomed is the fact that much of the poverty which has developed in the country since 1972 is directly attributable to the "free trade" (and, ipso facto, anti-union) policies and practices of their own business backers - phony "supporters" who, on the one hand, financially aid the ministries and churches of their evangelical allies, while on the other hand they mercilessly ship American jobs (many of which are held by rank-and-file evangelicals) overseas to Third World sweat shops. Maybe the next time evangelicals hear of large sums of money pouring into their churches and/or ministries from wealthy benefactors, they might do well to ask themselves what all this money is purchasing? What deals - implied or otherwise - might have been struck? WHAT KIND OF SILENCE ON THE PART OF THEIR LEADERS THIS MONEY MIGHT BE BUYING?"
(emphasis added)

This is a very troubling era, and if it is not corrected, OUR SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT WILL COME INTO GREAT CALAMITY... The "conservative" church, the "use-the-government-to promote" their ideological and theological goals faction, has become a huge economic source of adventure for an evil cabal of far right corporatists and free marketers (given effective cover from the religious groups) as well as the latest group of "free marketeers" among them are 400 OR SO CORPORATE MEMBERS WHO DOMINATE AND CONTROL THE AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL.

Now that the auspices of FOX/Rupert have given us (via the saturation promotion of so-called Tea Parties) the scourge of angry white men with placards and megaphones in mimic of the original Tea Party hooligans and vandals. Thanks to Karl Rove, Dick Armey, the Brothers Koch, and FOX we have a movement (laced with conservative religionists) completely out of control of GOP regulars and forcing the country deeper into ongoing economic chaos.

The "values voters," Fundamentalists, conservative Catholics, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals have only themselves to blame for the thundering failures now raining down on America. They have made the current mess possible by their blind allegiance to their own narrow beliefs and beguiling operatives while blind to the day-to-day problems of everyday life and gridlocked federal government.

Keen to choke all Americans with their sectarian dogmas and strict behavioral demands and aggressively using "government coercion" in many areas of human life, while ignoring the crumbling economy and the ongoing wars of present day. This command leadership has put a full nelson on the selection of appointees, the Supreme Court, and federal judgeships.

Decrying "big government" THESE FORCES HAVE ACTUALLY BECOME THE CLUELESS PROMOTERS OF BAD GOVERNMENT-BLIND TO THE FOIBLES AND FLAWS OF THOSE IN GOVERNMENT WHO ESPOUSE THE KIND OF BRANDED "CHRISTIANITY" THAT THESE THEOLOTICIANS USE TO PULL-THE-WOOL ON THE HUMBLE BELIEVERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, WHILE CATERING TO THE NEEDS OF A VAST CORPORATOCRACY.

Blind to greed, fraud, and corruption in the business and financial world, these religious groupings (and their compromised leadership) have abandoned social justice, to become the enablers of catastrophic crimes against the economic well-being of the nation and their own children.

Social Justice Defined
Social Justice means an equal participation of all groups in a society mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.

None less than the "national pastor" Dr. Billy Graham once weighed in on the scope of Social Justice: "Jesus taught that we are to take regeneration in one hand and a cup of cold water in the other."

And "Christians, above all other, should be concerned with social problems and social injustice."

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A mighty Meeting of the Minds: Judis & Kirk & Lofgren

In willful disunion sanctified by TeaPublicans, can a sovereign government survive? Are there no limits to endless their rebellion against the proper role and functions of government?

Russell Kirk laid down this the 6th of his Canons of Conservatism: "...innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence."

It is doubtful that Jesus will return to Michigan anytime soon. Yet in the meanwhile, Russell Kirk, the guardian of all things conservative has spoken, he said that Christianity and Western Civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another." and that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."

Quotes from Russell Kirk Conservative, Michigan's own master philosopher and laureate: 1.) The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 2.) The Portable Conservative Reader 1982.

Kirk's Six Conservative Canons

1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

John Judis reflects on the total lack of "political value" ascribed to "prudence."  He writes:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

The TeaPublican lack of civility and "prudence", respect for historic traditions and the role of honest advice and consent has raised the question of the sincerity of their religious faith. Or as Russell Kirk proclaims: "...all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."

What has happened in Washington is a breakdown of culture, a disrespect for religion, and a terrible "iron hatred" that seems to permeate every GOP partisan act of obfuscation.

Writes Veteran Republican Washington insider, Mike Lofgen has just left the party after near 30 years of service:

"It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant."

Here, in part, is Lofgren's analysis of the great danger- present and future - being brought on by the TeaPublican rebellion and it's anti-government putsch which has decimated the party of Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower and now threatens the sovereign success and stability of our nation. Lofgren writes that in his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

Lofgren:

"The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare "Act than the old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself."

This disorder and brinkmanship in Washington has not derailed the wealth sucking multinationals from having a record, banner year in extreme profits.

What is wrong with this picture?

Ask any A.L.E.C. member why so many unfairly loaded and corporate benefiting legislative proposals (prepackaged Pro-Corporate designed legislation) are getting fast tracked in the midst of our slide into the Great Bush Depression. God forbid.

The TeaPublican dysfunction and lack of "prudence" have greatly abetted and benefited the "takers" who apparently live in a world removed from those of us who work, teach or serve our fellow community members.

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Michissippi (Michigan) as Gone from Conservative, Headlong Into Brazen Corporatocracy

Michissippi as Gone from Conservative, Headlong Into Brazen Corporatocracy: “Good institutions neglected and ancient moral principles ignored, the evil in us tends to predominate.”

"Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical: moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial..." "Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age."

-- Russell Kirk (Michigan Conservative and role model claimed by John Engler)

Intemperance in the pursuit of Corporate Supermacy, Corporatocracy, is no virtue. 

More from Russel Kirk:

"Men and women are not perfectible, conservatives know; and neither are political institutions."

"We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell. We all are creatures of mingled good and evil; and, good institutions neglected and ancient moral principles ignored, the evil in us tends to predominate."

"Therefore the conservative is suspicious of all utopian schemes."

"He does not believe that, by power of positive law, we can solve all the problems of humanity."

"We can hope to make our world tolerable, but we cannot make it perfect. When progress is achieved, it is through prudent recognition of the limitations of human nature."

Unfortunately we so soon forget the greatness of Kirk's integrity, art, and brilliance extolling the virtues of true and lasting Conservatism.

Shamefully, the TeaPublican Super Majority has ignored and degraded Kirk's wisdom in their willful slide from the ideals of a real Conservatives into the near Anarchy of a godless Corporatocracy.

Corporatocracy is a direct threat to everything GENUINELY Conservative.

Michigan is being sold out for pennies on the dollar! We are being propelled well on the way into being legislatively and morally bankrupt; as well as economically stillborn.

CORPORATOCRACY: A social theory that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes "a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label."

Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical: moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial; and if innovation is undertaken in a spirit of presumption and enthusiasm, probably it will be disastrous. 

 

 - All human institutions alter to some extent from age to age, for slow change is the means of conserving society, just as it is the means for renewing the human body.
- American conservatives endeavor to reconcile the growth and alteration essential to our life with the strength of our social and moral traditions. With Lord Falkland, they say, "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."
- (Conservatives) understand that men and women are best content when they can feel that they live in A STABLE WORLD OF ENDURING VALUES.

Conservatism, then, is not simply: - the concern of the people who have much property and influence;
- it is not simply the defense of privilege and status.

Most conservatives are neither rich nor powerful;
- But they do, even the most humble of them, derive great benefits from our established Republic.
- They have liberty, security of person and home, equal protection of the laws,
- The right to the fruits of their industry, and opportunity to do the best that is in them.
- They have a right to personality in life, and a right to consolation in death.

Conservative principles shelter the hopes of everyone in society. And CONSERVATISM IS A SOCIAL CONCEPT IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE WHO DESIRES EQUAL JUSTICE AND PERSONAL FREEDOM AND ALL THE LOVABLE OLD WAYS OF HUMANITY. 

Conservatism is not simply a defense of "capitalism."

"Capitalism," indeed, is a word coined by Karl Marx, intended from the beginning to imply that the only thing conservatives defend is vast accumulations of private capital.) But the true conservative does stoutly defend private property and a free economy, both for their own sake and because these are means to great ends.

What are these "Great Ends"? 

Those great ends are more than economic and more than political. (Great ends) involve:
- Human dignity
- Human personality
- Human happiness
- The relationship between God and man

(T)he radical collectivism of our age is fiercely hostile to any other authority: modern radicalism detests religious faith, private virtue, traditional personality, and the life of simple satisfactions. EVERYTHING WORTH CONSERVING IS MENACED IN OUR GENERATION.

Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age.

A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination.

Note: This is an outline of conservatism by Russel Kirk.

Original Post and supporting Post.

Michigan Business Leaders Have Linked Their Operations With State Government to Assure Higher Profits...

...Without the Need for Strong Performance.

The endless loop of repeated shibboleths and mantras telegraphed by the ideology of this Michigan View blog are not conservative, they are some contrived form of hybrid thinking invented and promoted to cover a vast chasm of real world political and social danger arising from the ascendency of this very contrived political and cut-and-paste philosophical point of view-having at its heart an anti-Jesus thrust.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy Sides With Ayn Rand Against Jesus

From one of several feeds in the circular references promoted by the Mackinac Center and the sponsors:

"The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. Rand values human beings only for their achievements. A person who does not offer value is a leech, a 'second rater.'"

The "rugged" in the form of the Mackinac Center's Rugged Individualism is useful to those who want to divorce themselves from co-operative community, from individual participation as citizens in government as a legitimate function of social organization.

We have seen how certain wealthy Michigan residents have used cunning and ability to "plunder" bit-by-bit their way to immense riches. This kind of money-making remains suspect and just a millimeter this side the line to legal-even forbidden by some national governments.

Now operating a system, similar and drawn from the model they developed, which promotes itself as somehow the genuine American way of a honest, credible business plan, it's harvesting huge profit from its admission to the Asian Market. This Mackinac Center co-founder and underwriter actually churns tens of thousands of recruits, sells they overpriced products in a what some define as a product-based pyramid scheme. It maintains a tight, top-down control on its organization in a manner repeatedly taken to court and into legal conflict.

It certianly took a "rugged" individualism to devise and carry out this phenomenon. Always on the line with what is barely legal, it has endured, in large part, by its clever decision to seek direct involvement in state and federal government and political activities furthering its select causes-not the least of which is seeking its own survival and wealth protection.

This license to prosper, while taking advantage of the nature of the human greed, coupled with a historic Calvinism, is a sectarian dogma that puts the "elect" above and in power of control over the "non-elect" and thus infuses this kind of Ayn Rand modus operandi with a "god-blessed-us-over-you elitism that consumes the best of community and continues to raid the assets of the community commons for the furtherance of personal wealth and power of this elite; aggressive powerbrokers thusly attempting to extend the power of wealth out over to the children of the elite for perpetuity.

There is a steely indifference to others deep inside this set of elites. They harbor and foster class warfare. Overlooking the path they took to gain wealth at the hardship and expense of the dreams of others, and operating on a plan that could only provide a limited success for a chosen few over the tens of thousands of eager raw recruits-who expend much time, energy, soul, and money to duplicate the success controlled and managed from atop the pyramid, these elites among the founders of Mackinac Center have made a mess of both Christianity and capitalism. Their source of wealth, viewed on a workable and restrained level, can be sustained and duplicated in the pursuit of providing for the needs of self and society. It's a failed model-unsustainable.

The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. "Rand values human beings only for their achievements" and not for whom they are as individuals, part of the human community. The Mackinac Center has wrangled the stiff corners of rampant capitalism and its many abuses into a type of civic religion that denies the fellow human and falls short of the known plan of God for society.

An Aynian maxim: "A person who does not offer value is a leech, a 'second rater.'" The brainwashing and the propaganda of the past 3 decades from the MacCen have centered on finding a way to mollify critics, take command of the public opinion by means of a bargain that allows Mackers near, to total, access to the editorial pages and the story lines of the state's flagship newspapers. They have been gifted the prime source of philosophical and political opines for far too long.

What positive good has the Mackinac Center delivered for Michigan? Did it shelter us from the ravishes of the Bush Economic Debacle? Did it inspire a new vision for the state as a more progressive and effective aid to work-a-day life? Are the workers and middle class citizens and their children more economically well-off after years of hectoring by the Mac Cen?

Has the Mackinac Center created a positive and pro-active state culture as opposed to the present negativist culture so derided by Rick Snyder?

Nitpicking and fly-specking has become the high art of the MacCen. Its ability to negate any opinion other than that of its own has become oppressive and smothering to the public normal discourse.

There is of course, a true purpose for the Mackinac Center: To promote and prosper the highly sought goals of its private membership, to punish and defeat its perceived enemies in both politics and the world of economic and ideological pursuits.

In it's defense, the Mackinac Center would present itself as a faithful guide to the "free market." Free it is not. Every way and manner it can, the MacCen has skillfully utilized the power of government to defeat government as it would serve any group or purpose other than itself and its utterly selfish ways.

Hunter Baker writes concerning Ayn Rand:

"Though Rand certainly made no secret of her contempt for those unable or unwilling to engage in true exchange of economic value, she was right to tell interviewers that she was no totalitarian because of her abhorrence for the use of force. She did not believe in compulsion. Instead, she wanted a world in which a man stood or fell on his productivity. Rand saw production as the one great life affirming activity. Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth. He must labor and produce."

"This was Rand's bedrock and explains why she had such contempt for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements. She saw this parasitism on every point of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of crony corporatism."

Herein lies the piercing condemnation of the Mackinac Center, straight from Rand herself: The Center deserves condemnation and contempt because it has (and continues to) use power and money to further "gain wealth through political arrangements" and Ayn saw this abuse for what it is, an ugly "parasitism on every point of the economic spectrum from beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of crony corporatism."

Elaborates Hunter Baker in "Understanding Rand" on May 4, 2011, concerning the recent re-lease, the remake of Rand's Atlas Shrugged:

"Government action occurs under the rubric of equity, but these people who 'move the world' - as one conversation in the film expresses - do not understand what claim the government has to order their lives or to confiscate the fruits of their labor. THE VILLAINS OF THE PIECE ARE NOT SO MUCH ANY WELFARE CLASS AS MUCH AS CORPORTISTS WHO WANT TO LINK THEIR COMPANIES TO GOVERNMENT ARRANGEMENTS SO AS TO ASSURE PROFIT WITHOUT THE NEED FOR STRONG PERFORMANCE. THEY GO ON ABOUT LOYALTY AND PUBLIC SERVICE, BUT IT IS A MASK FOR MEDIOCRITY AND GREED."

And this is exactly what the Mackinac Center has done. With the legislature on a rip, Michigan "corporations" and certain business interests have now successfully "LINK(ED) THEIR COMPANIES AND ENTERPRISES TO (MICHIGAN STATE) GOVERNMENT ARRANGEMENTS SO AS TO ASSURE PROFIT WITHOUT THE NEED FOR STRONG PERFORMANCE."

Over the next 2 years nearly 3 trillion dollars harvested by class warfare will be ladled out to Snyder's business backers with no provisions or parameters for performance-thus there is no need for strong performance. Thus the Snyder business bailout becomes "a mask for mediocrity and greed."

That is simply not right, that is not fair, that is not efficient.

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Remember When: Conservatism meant something good, wholesome, and dependable

If only we could believe again that Conservatism meant something good, wholesome, and dependable. Its definition being: Conservativism - a political or theological orientation advocating the preservation of the best in society and opposing radical changes.

Whatever is infusing the Michigan Legislature and the Michigan GOP at this juncture-Reinventing Michigan-it is not that traditional understanding and that historic definition of what it means to be a true conservative. Indeed, conservatism as thus defined has long ceased to exist in Michigan, all apologies to Russell Kirk. It's all about Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Congressman Paul Ryan, and the "virtues of selfishness" and "extreme individualism" with special contempt for government of all kinds.

We have been entering a dangerous and unholy time. Language as we once knew it had a dependable meaning. Civility, while badly assaulted on occasion, was known to exist in our public discourse and respect for the "loyal opposition" was the rule of the day. Long ago drinking in the Michigan legislative chambers was banned, and David Jaye was embarrassed when his pistol slipped to the floor of a House ante-chamber (while it is not clear where proposed legislation will take or permit carrying of handguns in this state) we have set some gun limits which have been upheld. It was perhaps that profane ruffian, Gil DiNello who last struck a fellow in the chambers, such events had become rare. Now however, there is a new and mercurial tone in the Lansing Capitol building, one of real hard feelings and a ill-tempered spirit of "gottcha" that has all but poisoned the people's house.

The very idea that the State of Michigan would find support to turn on itself in such a vicious and unseemingly manner as is now occurring would be for true statesmen and "men of goodwill" an in-toleration and an insult to the institution, if not basic morals. But the attitudes and the stoneheaded minds now inhabiting the people's house are set against all contrary views- displayed by the maurading new breed of TeaPublicans. As one has said, it's not about re-election for himself, it is about doing "God's work." Can it be that stifled debate and killing all compromise is the plan of the Almighty? Delusion reigns. This rouge crowd has created a terror by majority.

It must be said that much of what has happened to Lansing is an import from outside our state, not that there have not been untoward ideas raised and grim reprisals mouthed about prior. One of the most despicable outside Michigan, one of the dispoiling sources of disunity and conflict is the person of Newt Gingrich. Newt's connections to Michigan via Amway, Engler and Saul Anusis are well-documented and easily tracked. Newt's presence in Michigan always spells increased civil discord and trouble.

This current kind of "conservatism" is so close to anarchy it can hardly be distinguished from that brand of revolutionary-government is the problem, less government, more personal freedom to act as one wishes ala Ayn Rand is the new prototype for systemic corruption of what remains of the Founder's ideals and the concept of American democracy.

In a recent blog article entitled, "Budget Battle Pits Atheist Ayn Rand vs. Jesus" there is this assessment concerning U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R Wisc:

"'You've got a guy who is a rising Republican star, and who wrote the budget, saying he's read her books and Washington needs more of her values,' said Eric Sapp, executive director of the American Values Network, which produced the video. 'If you're a Christian, you've got to ask some serious questions about what's going on here.' In other words, Sapp argues, you can follow Ayn Rand or Jesus, but not both."

USA Today reprinted this from the Tuscan Citizen in Tuscon, Arizona, thoughts from Stephen Prothero, religion professor, Boston University:

"In Rand's Manichaean world, it is not God vs. Satan, but individualism vs. collectivism. While Jesus says, 'Blessed are the poor,' she sings Hosannas to the rich. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged (which, alas, is only slightly shorter than the Bible) are captains of industry such as John Galt. The villains are the 'looters' and 'moochers' - people who by hook (guilt) or by crook (government coercion) steal from the hard-won earnings of others.

"Turning the tables on traditional Christian morality, Rand argues that altruism is immoral and selfishness is good. Moreover, there isn't a problem in the world that laissez-faire capitalism can't solve if left alone to perform its miracles."

This new kind of "conservatism" has no basis in traditional Conservatism and enhances, preserves, or protects nothing of the real American Values we all once learned to cherish and for which many have fought and died.
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