What Do Republicans Want?
Let’s start with what they don’t want.
Republicans don’t want safety, health, environmental protections, pensions, education and infrastructure. That’s all gooey liberal gibberish.
Republican’s want a strict Daddy. We all know this, but Wisconsin offers some fresh proof.
The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.
The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.
In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.
Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should not have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil’s own means can be used again conservatism’s immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women’s doctors.
The sad/funny thing is that the people who put these people in power are the very people who most need to be protected from them. Good post!
Yes, I’ve already been reading love letters to Walker from conservatives. One thing this union-busting is goo for is distracting people from the real wrong-doers. Never mind that teachers and firefighters had nothing to do with the budget deficit. All the GOP does is use people’s resentment – look they have nice pensions and you don’t to drive the race to the bottom. An added bonus is no one is talking about how much money the Kochs are using to influence a state they don’t live in.
It’s our own damn fault, Democrats. Right up until a few months ago we were tut-tutting at the positions argued by Madison liberal types and calling them purists and fringe leftists. Republicans smelled our lack of cohesiveness, noted it correctly as weakness, and pounced.
We thought we had the luxury of compromise. We thought we had all the time in the world for debate. But we didn’t.
Now the DFHs in Madison are our new BFFs, and the fate of the middle class may rest on their shoulders. We waited too long to support the Democratic platform.
Next time Democrats try speaking up for the Democratic platform, are we going to clutch our pearls, look over our eyeglasses, and tell them they are purists and it’s not pragmatic?
Or are we going to give them our support from Day One?
If there is a next time.
Right up until a few months ago we were tut-tutting at the positions argued by Madison liberal types and calling them purists and fringe leftists.
Actually, *we* were doing no such thing. What we were doing was working on rounding up enough votes to get bigger stuff done. While you were having your internet hissy fits and railing at the President for not doing everything you wanted. Even though he would certainly sign pretty much anything you wanted that had enough votes to get to his desk.
Maybe next time you’ll join the rest of us and pick your targets better.
Quite the contrary, Obama08. I’ll decide for myself when it’s time to fight. I don’t listen to those who think it’s always time to fight.
In this morning’s TNJ there’s a headline for a Letter to the Editor that links Republicans with class warfare. Must have gotten by the TNJ censors. Up to now “class warfare” has been verbotten. We haven’t been allowed to talk about it. But today there it is on the Op-Ed page. Interesting.
Obama and Biden were in the Senate for a combined 30+ years. Do you seriously believe they didn’t get the bills they wanted?
I’ll decide for myself when it’s time to fight.
Keep your powder dry, Geez.
Maybe next time you’ll join the rest of us and pick your targets better.
I am going to pick my targets like a Democrat.
What I’m hearing from the pearl-clutchers and pragmatism-lecturers is: “Public health care and tax increases for the rich are for purists and not worth our precious time. But labor law in Wisconsin is the righteous cause of martyrs.”
Democrats who tut-tutted the Democratic platform, but now support the crowds once they showed up in Madison, are nothing but front-runners.
You do realize that crowds showing up is what Obama needed to pass more ambitious legislation, right? There were no large scale protests in favor of the public option or tax increases for the wealthy, right? I’m glad that now there’s a mass popular movement other than the Tea Party.
There were no large scale protests in favor of the public option or tax increases for the wealthy, right?
Is this the new bar to get legislation passed? I really can’t accept that “lack of mass street protests” is now a legitimate excuse not to do the right thing. The thing you got elected to do.
We all had plenty of opportunity to express our opposition or support, even right here. I don’t even expect people to get on a bus and go to DC. All I want is for the Pragmatist Democrats to stop biting the ankles of Democrats. Republicans interpret it as weakness, and then they beat us.
There are other tools in politics apart from street protests. If the outcome is not what you wanted, you can hold politicians accountable after the fact.
Or, you can call people purists all over again when they try to hold Democratic politicians accountable.
Unless the outcome is what you wanted all along.
You can’t fake passion and anger. And you’re wrong about “Republicans interpret it as weakness.” If you believe that strength equals victory, if you insist your way is the only way, then you’re just the flip side of an authoritarian conservative. No thanks.
You might not have noticed, but I am fighting now. I just don’t care to take orders from your type.
if you insist your way is the only way
Increasing taxes for the rich or not is pretty much a binary decision. If you try to play the middle, the rich win, everybody else loses, and you have made your choice.
If you think there is a way to cut taxes on the rich and everybody wins, congratulations, you are a supply-side Republican.
Obama2008 is correct. Many issues facing the USA right now are binary in nature, especially those that involve fundamental human rights and incontrovertible pressing human need. While Obama2008 is in principle correct that the litmus test for supporting progressive legislation should not be that it is reinforced by mass public protest, that standard presupposes a healthy and well functioning democratic system of governance. Well, that is precisely what we don’t have in the USA. Therefore, the current sickly nature of the USA system of governance probably requires mass public advocacy for progressive legislation and policy to be effective. I suspect that our system is that far gone.
the current sickly nature of the USA system of governance
It seems to be working great for conservatives. But conservatives are beginning to show the same kinds of fractures typically enjoyed by Democrats. So far it hasn’t slowed them down much though, mainly because Democrats are self-destructing even faster than Republicans.
Democrats don’t really seem poised to take advantage of Republican disarray. We Democrats tend to have an instinct for the capillary.
Yes, that’s a binary issue, one I’m pretty sure everybody here agreed with you about. The disagreements were over whether or not Obama should have been supported even when he took Republican positions. That’s not a binary issue.
You can’t tell people what should make them take to the streets. They make up their own minds on that. Now that they have, this, too, has become a binary choice.
I agree with Dana: The system has reached this pathetic state. Since it has, let’s man the barricades.
First order of business: Get Delaware’s progressives to stage a sympathy rally for Wisconsin workers.
What do Republicans want.
Republicans want it all.
Even though republicanism embraces the rules of survival (mainly lead by power hungry males) it ignores it’s own society of fat, gauging, pampered, inheriting, permanently nested creators whose rule of survival is to overpower, possess, out last, to advance themselves.
This means of gluttony would not work in the animal world, as other species live within nature with the natural world protected, in order for survival of life to continue. Modern man is the species to develop the means to destroy their own existence on earth, through greed.
Men are born with a capacity to accumulate, store and utilize knowledge, but these men are dangerously different from other forms of life.
It is as if something has gone dead in the brains of republicans, only to have been replaced with connective tissue that demands, more, more, ‘Survival begins and ends with me. Starve beneath my feet peasants, but serve me first.’ Such thinking is viewed as terror, as rantings of many dictators, when viewed by humans not similarly afflicted with uncontrollable deadly greed.
One could think of republicans as vultures swarming individually and collectively to scavenge on life, salvaging only their grand, immediate needs.
Republicans concern of survival of man or species or even the planet itself, is overwhelmed by their overpowering greed to survive on others’ exhaustion, broken backs, contaminated resources, dead bodies, crushed dreams. The very nature of earth is being changed by ways of greed, that will deem it no longer capable of supporting life on the planet. All of these are of no concern to such men, with power vacuums in their brains, that millions, tens of billions, all the riches, cannot satisfy.
In addition to being endlessly overwhelmed by their own survival instincts, they continuously use all and any tactic to dim the minds of men, to close mens’ eyes and minds to knowledge, to ignore history, to control and rule, to deny what republicans fear most, any interference to the gouging of the exhausted peasants, their resources, which would lessen republican access to the best the world and man has to offer them alone, even to the extent that it means destroying the planet to maintain their power over nature and all life. Who, but republicans would stump their feet and chant, drill baby drill, as the composition of air is altered by man, mountain top and ice caps melt around them, the seas and currents change, shores sink, populations soar, rivers flood, fields dry, forests burn, as the prospect of overall survival dims for the next generations.
That children aren’t well education, good; that other men labor for unlivable wage, great; that women labor for less, they should; that societies suffocate by their greed, who cares; that hazardous wastes of their industry destroy, deny it; that the planet is changing by their denial and persistence, doesn’t matter.
Instead these men (and women) continue to fear knowledge, understanding, enlightenment, freedom of thought and direction for the masses. A government of, by and for the people, would be a government free of the shackles and bonds for all. That the American dream was intended to bring life, liberty and even happiness for all, cannot be tolerated by republicans who fear it might compromise the advantage of the ruling chateau vultures, always on the ready to pick the bones dry.
The end result may well be a feast for the (actual) vultures.
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/mattersdorff/1/1220364000/vultures-feasting-on-juvenile-elephant.jpg/tpod.html
You do understand that it’s hard to get progressive legislation through when the energy is on the other side. We can barely get people to vote, much less make phone calls. The atmosphere that Democrats had to deal with was conservative backlash. You needed progressive energy to influence the fence sitters like Nelson and Lincoln. The energy coming from our side was mostly in the form of “Obama sucks.”
UI is quite right here — energy spent on bitching and complaining about Obama not doing everything everyone wanted was energy not spent in helping to get the votes needed to get those items done. Which is the only real lesson from the “pragmatic” crowd — you can get done what you have support to get done. And in the Congress that support = votes — votes that the so-called progressive crowd could bother to show up to help get. Because pretending that your government is just another episode of American Idol — cheering, booing and dishing about the action on the screen without ever getting in the game.
Geezer
Delaware’s progressives should stage a rally protesting the union busting eviction of 100 Perdue chicken catchers. The silence from Progressive Political leaders, Progressive citizen activists, Progressive Bloggers, and Progressive Union Leadership is deafening. This situation is disgraceful and these people have no one opining, rallying or even giving a split-second of a damn about them. Get your self-centered heads out of your self-absorbed derrieres and at least acknowledge that these workers exist. “Getting in the game” would be a good start.
John Kowalko
Obama2008 will be stepping up to get this organized and executed any minute now.
… and then the PragmaDems will jump on the wagon when they see it filling up and leaving the station. By the time it arrives they will be sitting up front smiling and waving.
You are correct that I am not a community organizer at this point in my life. Right now I am busy raising children. I was an activist before, and I will be again.
You say you want a revolution… We’d all love to see the plan.
aaaaaaa lg! I heard that song the other day and all I could picture was John screaming it at Glenn Beck.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask an elected official to show you plans to protest a Delaware employer. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. JK has already gone above and beyond by expressing his support for the chicken catchers. It is up to everyone else to follow up.
Mass protests work well in urban central squares, producing dramatic photos and loud noise. I guess that might work in Dover. But a gaggle of protesters standing in front of Perdue offices in Delaware is not the way to go. The protesters probably wouldn’t even be supported by Markell, who worked hard recently to get Perdue to expand its operations in Delaware.
Instead of nostalgic protesting, why not fight for public health care so the chicken catchers can be covered when they are fired? And why not fight for tax increases on the rich, so the very wealthy people who fired the chicken catchers can help pay for the consequences of their actions? Or bring some legal attention to bear on the facilities and the North Carolina contractor – just to make sure everything is in order.
All I heard was “Cluck, cluck, not pragmatic, cluck.”
You are correct that I am not a community organizer at this point in my life. Right now I am busy raising children. I was an activist before, and I will be again.
WTF am I saying. Last month I wrote a letter to the school board, attended two public forums on education, and met with my representative on a serious educational issue, and helped out with a PTA activity. Of course I am an activist, just on different issues. Now you guys have me apologizing for not leading a union mob into battle.