GOP Debaters Needn’t Worry: Obama’s No Socialist

The spectacle of a bunch of babbling idiots with a mean-spirited agenda (except for a clever operator, Romney) duly represents the state of politics in America as it faithfully reflects the class power of the oligarchs. Rick Perry, while not much worse than the rest, is only missing the drooling from his lips to certify him as a moron. —Eds.

John Nicholson September 23, 2011 – 1:09am ET

Mitt Romney tried to talk his way around the most predictable question of Thursday night’s Fox News/Google debate.

Romney replied. “He takes his political inspiration from Europe and from the socialist democrats in Europe. Guess what? Europe isn’t working in Europe. It’s not going to work here.”

The president rejects the title, explicitly.

When he began talking deficit reduction last summer — with a proposal for a little bit of tax fairness combined with a suggestion that he was open to negotiations with regard to the future of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — Obama went out of his way to explain that his was not “some wild-eyed socialist position.”

Agreed.

Obama is no socialist.

Indeed, he has made the point again and again that he rejects the socialist and social-democratic solutions that have worked in countries such as Germany, Sweden, Britain and Canada. He has rejected “socialized medicine” in favor of a health care reform plan that requires uninsured Americans to buy policies from for-profit insurance companies. He has refused to get tough on Wall Street and the big banks, allowing “too big to fail” private institutions to threaten the U.S. economy. He has chosen not to respond to the unemployment crisis with the sort of jobs programs that Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented during the New Deal era, and that Hubert Humphrey made central to his advocacy as a senator and presidential candidate in the 1960s and 1970s.

So Obama is right. He is no socialist.

But his determination to distance himself from socialist ideas and socialist thinkers also distances him from past Democratic presidents and party leaders — as well as past Republican presidents and party leaders.

Socialism is not a foreign concept. Socialist ideas have been a part of the American discourse and American policymaking for the better part of two centuries. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by, among others, followers of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier and radical land reformers who proudly promoted the ideal of redistribution of the common wealth. Horace Greeley employed Karl Marx as the European correspondent for the great newspaper of the Republican movement, the New York Tribune. And Abraham Lincoln employed Marx’s editor and friend, Charles Dana, as a presidential assistant.

Seventy-five years later, Franklin Roosevelt consulted with the Socialist Party presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, before assuming the presidency and launching the New Deal. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt announced that, had her husband not been a candidate in 1932, she would have voted for Thomas on the Socialist ticket.

During the Cold War, cities as diverse as Milwaukee and Bridgeport, Conn., elected socialist mayors.

As president, John F. Kennedy read and praised the writings of Michael Harrington, a Socialist Party member who would go on to lead the Democratic Socialists of America. Lyndon Johnson’s administration brought Harrington into the fold as a consultant on the development of “war on poverty” programs and invited veteran socialist union leader A. Philip Randolph (the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom) to present his “Freedom Budget” for ending poverty at the White House.

It is certainly true that Barack Obama is not an advocate for any “wild-eyed socialist position.” Nor is he an advocate for any sober and sound socialist position.

Obama’s explicit and frequent rejection of the word “socialist” parallels his rejection of the ideals and ideas associated with that word.

But distancing himself from socialist and social democratic ideals does not make Obama or his policies any more “American” — or any more in sync with the approaches of the country’s great presidents.

Quite the opposite.

Great American presidents, from at least the time of Lincoln, have respected and engaged with socialists and social-democratic ideas. They have not always embraced those ideas. And even when they have borrowed from the socialist toolkit, the act of doing so did not make them socialists — any more than Jimmy Carter’s openness to drug law reform made him a libertarian or Obama’s intriguing with those who would begin the gutting of Medicare makes him a Barry Goldwater Republican.

When Obama goes out of his way to declare that his is no “wild-eyed socialist position,” the president tells us what everyone except Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney knows. Obama also buys into the right-wing rhetoric that tells us America needs a narrower and more listless debate.

Obama and the conservatives he echoes are wrong. Now, more than ever, America needs more ideas, more debate, and a wider range of options.

Rejecting whole ideologies — conservatism or liberalism, libertarianism or socialism — is unhealthy, especially in so dynamic a country as the United States. And doing so reinforces the notion that the false choices peddled by corrupt politicians and convoluted thinkers are all that we have available to us.

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URI AVNERY: Mutiny on the Titanic

The Crucial Question

By URI AVNERY

Here is a story that has never been told before:

When the Titanic was well out into the Atlantic, its crew mutinied. They demanded higher wages, less cramped quarters, better food. They assembled on the lower decks and refused to budge from there. A few old hands from the engine room tried to extend the scope of the protest. They claimed that the captain was grossly incompetent, that the officers were nincompoops and that the voyage was bound to end in disaster.

But the leaders of the protest resisted. “Let’s not go beyond our practical demands,” they said. “The course of the ship is none of our business. Whatever some of us may think about the captain and the officers on the bridge, we must not mix matters. That would only split the protest.”

The passengers did not interfere. Many of them sympathized with the protest, but did not want to get involved.

It is said that one drunken English lady was standing on deck, a glass of whisky in her hand, when she saw the huge iceberg looming. “I asked for some ice,” she murmured, “but this is ridiculous!”

* * *

FOR A WEEK, or so, all the Israeli media were riveted to the goings on at the UN.

Ehud Barak had warned of a “tsunami”. Avigdor Lieberman foresaw a “bloodbath”. The army was prepared for huge demonstrations that were certain to end in unprecedented violence. No one could think of anything else.

And then, overnight, the bloody tsunami faded like a mirage, and the social protest reappeared. State of war Out, welfare state In.

Why? The commission appointed by Binyamin Netanyahu to examine the roots of the protest and propose reforms had finished its work in record time and laid a thick volume of proposals on the table. All very good ones. Free education from the age of 3, higher taxes for the very rich, more money for housing, and so on.

All very nice, but far short of what the protesters had demanded. The almost half a million demonstrators some weeks ago did not go out into the streets for that. Economics professors attacked, other economics professors defended. A lively debate ensued.

This can go on for a few days. But then something is bound to happen – perhaps a border incident, or a settlers’ pogrom against a Palestinian village, or a pro-Palestinian resolution at the UN – and the whole media pack will veer around, forget about the reforms and return to the good old scares.

In the meantime, the military budget will serve as a bone of contention. The government commission has proposed reducing this budget by 3 billion shekels – less than a billion dollars – in order to finance its modest reforms. Netanyahu has voiced agreement.

No one took this very seriously. The slightest incident will enable the army to demand a special budget, and instead of the suggested tiny reduction, there will be another big increase.

But the army has already raised hell – quite literally – describing the disasters that will surely befall us if the diabolical reduction is not choked in its cradle. We face defeat in the next war, many soldiers will be killed, the future investigation committee will blame the present ministers. They are already shaking in their shoes.

* * *

ALL THIS goes to show how quickly national attention can swing from “protest mode” to “security mode”. One day we are shaking our fists in the street, the next we are manning the national ramparts, resolved to sell our lives dearly.

This could lead to the idea that the two problems are really one, and can only be solved together. But this conclusion meets with resolute resistance.

The young leaders of the protest insist that the demand for reform unites all Israelis – male and female, young and old, leftist and rightist, religious and secular, Jew and Arab, Ashkenazi and Oriental. Therein lies its power. The moment the question of national policy comes up, the movement will break apart. End of protest.

Difficult to argue with that.

True, even so the rightists accuse the protesters of being leftists in disguise. Very few national-religious people appear at the demonstrations, and no orthodox at all. Oriental Jews, traditional voters for the Likud, are underrepresented, though not altogether absent. People speak of a movement of the “White Tribe” – Jews of European descent.

Still, the movement has succeeded in avoiding an open split. The hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have not been called upon to identify themselves with any particular political party or creed. The leaders can rightly claim that their tactic – if it is a tactic – has worked up to now.

* * *

THIS CONVICTION has been reinforced by recent events in the Labor Party.

This moribund congregation, down in the polls to a mere 7% of the votes, has suddenly sprung to new life. A lively primary election for the party leadership has restored some color to its cheeks. In a surprise victory, Shelly Yacimovich has been elected party chairwoman.

Shelly (I dislike these long foreign surnames) was in the past an assertive, abrasive radio journalist with very pronounced feminist and social-democratic views. Six years ago she joined Labor and was elected to the Knesset under the wing of Amir Peretz, the then leader, who she has now soundly beaten.

In the Knesset, Shelly has distinguished herself as a diligent and relentless militant on social issues. She is a girlish-looking 51, a lone she-wolf, disliked by her colleagues, devoid of charisma, not at all the hail-fellow-well-met type. Yet the party rank and file, perhaps out of sheer desperation, preferred her to the members of the bankrupt old guard. The atmosphere in the country produced by the social protest movement certainly contributed to her success.

In all her years in the Knesset, she has not mentioned any of the national problems – war and peace, occupation, settlements. She has concentrated exclusively on social issues. On the eve of the primary, she shocked many members of her party by publicly embracing the settlers. “The settlements are no sins or crimes,” she asserted, they were put there by Labor Party governments and are a part of the national consensus.

Shelly may really believe this or she may consider it good tactics – the fact is that she has adopted the same line as the protest movement: that social affairs should be separated from “national” affairs. Seems you can be rightist on the occupation and leftist on taxing the rich.

* * *

BUT CAN YOU?

On the morrow of the Labor primaries, something amazing happened. In a respected opinion poll, Labor rose from 8 to 22 Knesset seats, overtaking Tzipi Livni’s Kadima, which sank from 28 to 18.

A revolution? Not quite. All the new Labor votes came from Kadima. But a move from Kadima to Labor, while interesting in itself”, is not important. The Knesset is divided into two blocs – the nationalist-religious and the center-left-Arab. As long as the rightist bloc has a 5% edge, there will be no change. To effect change, enough voters must jump from one side of the scales to the other.

Shelly believes that by shunning national issues and concentrating on social matters, voters can be moved to make the jump. Some say: that’s all that counts. What’s the use of putting forward a program of peace, if you can’t change the government? Let’s first come to power, by whatever means, and than see to peace.

Against this logical argument, there is the contrary contention: that if you start to embrace the settlers and ignore the occupation, you will end up as a minor partner in a right-wing government, as has happened before. Ask Shimon Peres. Ask Ehud Barak.

And then there is the moral question: can you really chant “the People Demand Social Justice” and ignore the daily oppression of four million Palestinians in the occupied territories? When you abandon your principles on the way to power, what are you likely to do with that power?

* * *

THE JEWISH High Holidays, which started the day before yesterday, provide a pause for reflection. Politics are at a standstill. The protest leaders promise another huge demonstration, restricted to the social demands, in a month’s time.

In the meantime, the Titanic, this beautiful masterpiece of naval architecture, is riding the waves.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

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Masters of the Big Lie

The War on Regulations

By RALPH NADER

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. “Job-killing regulations,” exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall Street-licking side-kick Eric Candor and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Then all the way down the line, the Republicans are on cue bellowing “job-killing regulations” must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA (protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer). Imagine how much more civil servants could do to accomplish the statutory missions of their respective agencies if they could get the Republicans and their corporate pay masters off their backs.

These same Republicans get in their cars with their children and put on their seat belts. Out of sight are the air bags ready to deprive them of their freedom to go through the windshield in a crash. Who makes those seat belts and air bags? Workers in the USA.

The jobs these regulations may be “killing” are those that would have swelled the funeral industry, or some jobs in the healthcare and disability-care industry. On the other hand, by not being injured, workers stay on the job and do not drain the workers’ compensation funds or hamper the operations of their employer.

About twenty years ago, Professor Nicholas Ashford of MIT came to Washington and testified before Congress in great detail about how and where safety regulations create jobs and make the economy more efficient in avoiding the costs of preventable injuries and disease. He received a respectful hearing from members of the Committee. It is doubtful whether Messers Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and Dr. Coburn (Senator from Oklahoma) are reading Professor Ashford these days, who just co-authored a book with Ralph P. Hall called Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development.

The corporatist Republicans’ minds are made up; don’t bother them with the facts. But we must keep trying to dissolve the Big Lie.

In 2009 Professor David Hemenway published a stirring book titled While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention which in clear language described the success stories of people, often with the support of a past, more enlightened Congress, made lives safer and healthier in the U.S. Yes, life-saving, injury-preventing, disease-stopping regulations resulting in life-sustaining technology produced by American industry and workers.

Wake up Democrats. Learn the political art of truthful repetition to counter the cruelest Republicans who ever crawled up Capitol Hill. You’ve got massive, documented materials to put the Lie to the Republicans.

President Obama should set an example. For instance, on September 2, 2011 President Obama fell for the regulation costs jobs lie. He said: “[I] have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

Pete Altman, from the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote:

“In reversing his Administration’s previously strong support for ozone regulations to protect the health of American children, President Obama (in the words of one observer): ’drank the conservative Kool-Aid’, and agreed that tightening ozone emission rules would have cost billions and hurt the economy. But clean air is very popular politically, and the EPA’s own studies show that a tighter standard could have created $17 billion in economic benefits.”

Earlier this month, Public Citizen issued a report about five regulations that spurred innovation and a higher quality of economic growth. As one of the authors Negah Mouzoon wrote, when federal agencies implement rules for efficiency, worker safety, or public health and welfare, companies need to reformulate their products and services to comply. And so begins good ol’ American competition. To comply with federal standards, companies need to invest in research and development, which often yields to new products and systems that both solve public policy problems and, often, boost business. The result? A brighter idea emerges.

It is important to note that such regulations give companies lengthy lead times to comply and, under the daily sandpapering of corporate lobbyists, regulations issued lose much of their early industry-controlling reach.

Here are the report’s five innovation-spurring products or processes that at their outset encountered significant industry resistance and inflated estimates of complying with the regulations. Before that is, the companies came to their senses, responded and found that such changes were not just good for the people but for their own bottom line.

1. Protect energy-efficient light bulbs.

2. Reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.

3. Preventing ozone-layer-destroying CFC emissions from aerosols.

4. Improving the energy efficiency of home appliances.

5. Utilizing energy-efficient light bulbs.

For the full report go to http://www.citizen.org/regulation-innovation.

Maybe some “kids”—between the ages of 10 and 12 – having learned from their parents the importance of telling the truth, can start a Kiddy Corps for a Truthful Congress drawn from the Internet-savvy children all over the U.S. What a wonderful expression of grassroots truth-telling directed toward the Great Prevaricators on Capitol Hill. Yes –job-producing, life-saving, economy-stimulating, innovation-producing regulations for a more secure future for our children.

Interested parents may contact us at info@csrl.org.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!

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Occupy Wall Street Ends Capitalism’s Alibi

Published on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims

By Richard Wolff

Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants of the status quo over-reacted and that failed to end it – indeed, it fueled the fire. And millions looking on said, “Wow!” And now, ever more people are organizing local, parallel demonstrations – from Boston to San Francisco and many places between.

Let me urge the occupiers to ignore the usual carping that besets powerful social movements in their earliest phases. Yes, you could be better organized, your demands more focused, your priorities clearer. All true, but in this moment, mostly irrelevant. Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion.

The next step – and we are not there yet – will be to fashion the program and the organization to realize it. It’s fine to talk about that now, to propose, debate and argue. But it is foolish and self-defeating to compromise achieving inclusive growth – now within our reach – for the sake of program and organization. The history of the US left is littered with such programs and organizations without a mass movement behind them or at their core.

So permit me, in the spirit of honoring and contributing something to this historic movement, to propose yet another dimension, another item to add to your agenda for social change. To achieve the goals of this renewed movement, we must finally change the organization of production that sustains and reproduces inequality and injustice. We need to replace the failed structure of our corporate enterprises that now deliver profits to so few, pollute the environment we all depend on, and corrupt our political system.

We need to end stock markets and boards of directors. The capacity to produce the goods and services we need should belong to everyone – just like the air, water, healthcare, education and security on which we likewise depend. We need to bring democracy to our enterprises. The workers within and the communities around enterprises can and should collectively shape how work is organized, what gets produced, and how we make use of the fruits of our collective efforts.

If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movement.

We all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of “socialism” from the usual predictable corners. The tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory. The audience for that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long.

We take pride in questioning, challenging, criticizing and debating our health, education, military, transportation and other basic social institutions. We argue whether their current structures and functioning serve our needs. We work our way to changing them so they perform better. And so it should be.

Yet, for decades now, we have failed to similarly question, challenge, criticize and debate our economic system: capitalism. Because a taboo protected capitalism, cheerleading and celebrating it became obligatory. Criticism and questions got banished as heresy, disloyalty or worse. Behind the protective taboo, capitalism degenerated into the ineffective, unequal, crisis-ridden social disaster we all now bear.

Capitalism is the problem – and the joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, and austerity it now imposes everywhere are the costs we bear. We have the people, the skills and the tools to produce the goods and services needed for a just society to prosper. We just need to reorganize our producing units differently, to go beyond a capitalist economic system that no longer serves our needs.

Humanity learned to do without kings and emperors and slave masters. We found our way to a democratic alternative, however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains. We can now take the next step to realize that democratic project. We can bring democracy to our enterprises – by transforming them into cooperatives owned, operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them and all the residents of the communities who are interdependent with them.

Let me conclude by offering a slogan: “The US can do better than corporate capitalism.” Let that be an idea and a debate that this renewed movement can engage. Doing so would give an immense gift to the US and the world. It would break through the taboo, finally subjecting capitalism to the critiques and debates it has evaded for far too long – and at far too great a cost to all of us.

• Richard Wolff is participating in a day-long teach-in at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park, New York on Tuesday 4 October. This article is based on remarks he will be addressing there at 6pm local time

on his site

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The Return Of The Confederacy

April 19, 2011

Editor’s Note:

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

“The South shall rise again!” Who knew these words would be so prophetic? Indeed, not only has the South risen, but it has also brought the Confederacy with it. However, this time it isn’t the Democratic Party that is bringing up the Confederacy, it is in fact, the Republican Party.

Confederate sympathizers have been around since the end of the Civil War in 1865 but it has only been since President Obama took office in January 2009 that the Confederacy movement reared its ugly head. Driven by racism and hatred of government and liberals, the Republican Party has revealed itself to be the political force behind this resurgence, and they aren’t even trying to deny it.

In the last two years, Republicans have been touting states rights in their effort to take down President Obama and destroy the federal government. There have been threats to secede, proposals in states to print their own separate legal tender, rewrites of American history to glorify the Confederacy movement, and increasing racism.

There are many actions happening today that mirror events in the past that led to the formation of the Confederacy, one of which, is the threat of secession. Many states and individuals have either stated that secession is on the table or have come right out and threatened it outright. In April 2009, Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax tea party audience with his stance against the federal government and for states’ rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!” Perry stated that “There’s a lot of different scenarios…But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” Perry clearly fanned the flames of rebellion with his statements but it’s not just that one crowd or Perry himself, it’s at least half of Republicans in Texas. One poll reveals that half of Texas Republicans favor seceding. And Texas isn’t the only state that has made this threat.

In April 2009, the State Senate in Georgia also threatened to secede not long after Texas made its threat. Later in July, Zach Wamp, the US Representative of Tennessee stated during his run for Governor, “I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government.” Wamp also promised to refuse to implement the federal health care law at the state level if elected Governor of Tennessee. Then, just this past February, Arizona’s Republican Senate voted to secede. The secession bill also asserts that Arizona can nullify and refuse to abide by any federal laws with which it does not want to comply. Russell Pearce, the lawmaker who introduced the bill stated that, “It’s not the law of the land when a Supreme Court issues a bad decision. It’s to be challenged and overturned.” Basically, Pearce is saying that whatever the Supreme Court passes isn’t the law of the land if he deems it a bad decision. Many other states are also considering secession, including Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama and a few others. And it’s no surprise that most of these states are located in the South.

This isn’t the first time that Southern states have threatened to secede. In the 1850′s, the threat of secession occurred throughout the South. The argument of course concerned slavery. Southern states threw temper tantrums from time to time so that they could get their way. In 1860, the South objected to the anti-slavery Republican Party winning the Presidency and took their threats to the next level. One by one they seceded because Abraham Lincoln had been legally elected as the 16th US President. The South believed wrongfully that they had the right to own slaves when in fact, no such right exists in the Constitution. In this time period, the Republicans were the liberals fighting for the Union and the freedom of slaves. Democrats were the conservatives of the era fighting for slavery and states rights. Contrary to what Republicans believe today, the Constitution does not permit a state to secede once it is a part of the Union. Nowhere in the Constitution does it give a state the right to secede, nor does it give states the power to ignore laws they don’t like. It took a Civil War to settle that and the Supreme Court has even weighed in. In Texas v White in 1869, the court stated that the entry of Texas into the United States was its entry into “an indissoluble relation.” It said that only through revolution or mutual consent of the state and the United States could a state leave the Union.

But threats of secession are not the only actions that Republicans in the South have undertaken. There are many other signs that Republicans have completely embraced the Confederacy. Take money for example. One of the first things that southern states did to prepare for secession was to print their own separate currencies. Many Republicans in multiple red states are pushing to do the same thing in the present day. As of today, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah have all introduced bills or have passed bills that allow their states to print their own money, or decide what constitutes legal tender. In North Carolina, state Rep. Glen Bradley wants his state to issue its own legal tender backed by silver and gold. He is also drafting a second bill that would require state government to accept gold and silver coins as payment for taxes and fees. Bobby Franklin, a Republican state legislator from Georgia, has introduced a new piece of legislation that, if passed, would force Georgians to pay their taxes in pre-1965 gold and silver coins. In Utah, the Senate approved a bill that would require the state to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender. Another proposal in Utah would allow residents to operate their own mints.

And a proposal in Virginia would allow the state to print its own money. These actions are all unconstitutional as well. The Constitution specifically states that only the federal government has the power to coin money and only the federal government has the power to decide what constitutes legal tender. It forbids states from printing their own money. The Constitution is clear on this subject. Republicans are knowingly violating the law of the land. But there’s more.

Republicans all over the South are making it a priority to honor and glorify the Confederacy and everything it stood for, including treason, racism, and slavery. Once again we take a look at Texas, where officials there are rushing 888 million dollars worth of new changes to textbooks that rewrite American history to turn the slave trade into the Atlantic triangle trade, and to present more Confederate figures in the Civil War as heroes. Texas is also crafting the Civil Rights Movement as being little more than a footnote in history. Republicans are trying to brainwash American children. They want kids to look up to the traitorous leaders of the Confederacy and become nothing more than a foot soldier willing to wage war against the United States. They want children to see other races as inferior to whites and they want to make kids believe that slavery is right. They also want people to believe that states rights can overrule federal law.

Republicans are glorifying the Confederacy in other ways too. Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell declared April to be “Confederate History Month,” the first time in 8 years that such a proclamation had been issued in the state. And McDonnell conveniently omitted slavery as a part of that history. The Confederacy is not something that should be honored. If anything Virginia should apologize for being a traitorous state that treated African Americans like animals and stabbing the Constitution in the back in its effort to continue doing so. The rest of the South should apologize as well. Repeatedly. To honor such a dubious bunch of traitors is treason itself and Republicans should be ashamed to call themselves patriotic Americans. They have no right to proclaim their love for America while plotting against it at the same time.

Then there’s Mississippi, where The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans is proposing a license plate that honors Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. To even propose such a thing should be a crime and what’s worse is that Governor Haley Barbour refuses to denounce it. Governor Barbour has been known to defend white supremacy groups and the Confederate history of the South. Just another Southerner that refuses to let go of the past. Part of that refusal to let go of the past are the current calls to repeal parts or all of the Civil Rights Act which protects people, particularly those who are not white, from being discriminated against based on their skin color, national origin, and race. Many Republicans freely admit their disdain for the Civil Rights Act, including Rand Paul who publicly stated his belief of repealing Civil Rights in an interview with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. Republicans want Civil Rights repealed because they want to return to segregation. They say that businesses should have the right to do business with whoever they want but that’s not the entire story. Republicans know that if businesses have the right to discriminate, so will hospitals, private schools, and so on. This is why Republicans are calling for an end to the public school system in favor of private schools. Republicans want to separate white kids from black kids and want to make it harder for black people to get medical care.

But it gets more sinister than that. Republicans intend to bring back Jim Crow as a way to keep African Americans from voting. This already occurs in Virginia and Kentucky where even if you have a minor criminal record, you are forbidden to vote. You can apply for clemency from the governor but unless it’s granted, you have no right to vote even though you’ve served your time. This criminal disenfranchisement all goes back to Jim Crow and the reason for it is very clear. During the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901, delegate Carter Glass described the criminal disenfranchisement provision as part of a plan to “eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than 5 years, so that in no single county…will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”

More than 300,000 people have lost the right to vote for life in Virginia. One in five African-Americans, and one in four African-American men, have no voting rights in Virginia due to this provision. African Americans make up one fifth of Virginia’s population, but over half of those denied the right to vote are African-American. And Virginia plans to make it even harder to get voting rights back. They are adding a written essay to the application to make former convicts explain why they should get back their civil rights. To me, this is just a way to keep people from voting. Any trumped up charges against an African American and a racist judge corrupt enough to lock them up is all it would take to remove another potential Democratic voter off the rolls. I agree that if you are IN prison, you shouldn’t have the right to vote, but once you’ve served your time, you should have ALL of your rights as a free citizen. But Republicans want to game the system and make elections easier to win for themselves.

Call it whatever you want to call it, to me, Republicans are committing treason by even thinking about doing these things. Republicans were the ones who originally brought down the Confederacy in the first place and now the Party of Lincoln has been hijacked by a bunch of Confederate sympathizers who long for the good old days of treason, states rights, and slavery.

Today’s Republican Party is proud of the Confederate flag and what it stands for. South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag outside of the state house. No government entity, whether it be local, state, or federal, should be allowed to fly that flag. Period. Its the flag of traitors and racists and has no place in American society where everyone is considered equal. If Republicans are so proud of the Confederacy, they must also be proud of slavery. Proud of those who beat and lynched African Africans. Proud of those who are responsible for the deaths of 600,000 Americans. Proud of the people who assassinated President Lincoln. Proud of those who segregated the South. Proud of those who almost destroyed this nation that Republicans claim to love. They must also be proud of the Ku Klux Klan and the crosses they burn. The South hasn’t learned anything from their utter defeat during the Civil War. They have thirsted for revenge for almost 150 years now, and have passed on their hatred of government, liberals, and people of color to their children and grandchildren in the hope that one day, the South can rise back up and re-institute the Confederacy and everything it was all about. Republicans are nothing more than neo-Confederates that have shown their true colors because a black man became President of the United States. It’s time to punish Republicans for their treasonous ways. The federal government can cut the budget and pay down the debt by completely cutting off the South. No more welfare, no more government grants, no more money for education, no more Medicare or Social Security, no more transportation, infrastructure, energy, and health care funding. And no more grants or funding to southern based corporations. If you live in the South, you will have no one to blame but the Republicans that run your part of the country. They’re the ones calling for cuts of this funding.

I say cut the funding from the South and put it to good use where people want the funding. I’d love to watch Republicans explain to their southern constituents why they have nothing. We do not need a war to punish Republican turncoats. All we need to do is punish them economically. Anybody who glorifies treason and racism do not deserve to have the freedom and rights that the United States has. Republicans are playing a dangerous game with all these threats of secession and refusals to follow federal law. The Confederacy is no more and should remain dead. All Confederate flags need to be burned and any glorification of the Confederacy needs to permanently end. But if Republicans choose to continue their treasonous actions, they had better watch their necks, because last time I checked, the punishment for treason is still execution. It may be time to start building scaffolds.

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