Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? What Today Means

One Response to “What Today Means”

1. Don Switzer on November 5th, 2008 11:24 am
   

   AMERICA’S CONSTITUTION STILL
   MUST BE RESTORED!
   Conspiracy By Entrenched Neo-Conservative Movement
   Yet To Be Overcome

   Don Switzer
   © November 4, 2008

   Voting in the 2008 Presidential Election is underway; and I make no secret of the fact that I very much hope that Barack Obama wins the Election, for that will make our true task, our recovery from the terrible damage wrought by the Neo-Conservative conspiracy, somewhat easier. But it is critical that we all (Neo-Conservative and Progressive alike) recognize that the election by itself will not overcome or cure the plethora of ills that beset the United States at this point. America must be recovered from those who have been determined to “correct” what they felt to be “errors” committed by the “Founding Fathers.”

   The Neo-Conservative movement has made it clear that they believe the better form of government, whether it be more “efficient” in dealing with the trials of these times or simply be more in tune with their own narrow interests, must be in an authoritarian government of one form or another. Their choices have varied over time from that of a limited democracy with a “unitary executive” with powers paramount to those of all other branches of government, a true monarchy, an oligarchy or a plutocracy where the power to control the destiny of the country and each and every individual within it would be left in the hands of the very few, that is, only the very wealthy. The real task now is to re-make make America so as to restore its original essence–which will not be easy. I hope not to be didactic, but a short history lesson and a re-statement of where we now stand is really necessary.

   We must keep in mind that a fight “to the death” was declared upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America—to change the entire nature of the America of which most of us grew up so proud. It is true that several different “beginning dates” for this could be chosen for historical purposes, but if we discount the opinions of some in the Constitutional Convention itself, the “kick-off” point for the movement must, to my mind, be considered as having taken place during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon in the year 1971. The erosion of the values which “were” America began then; it has continued until the present date–with the Administration of George W. Bush clearly being the most destructive of personal freedom in the history of the Nation; and the erosion will continue after the current election process is concluded until we Americans (including Neo-Conservatives who can be brought to understand) stand up for ourselves and with great resolve restore the progressive values of our Great Nation–and remind us all of those enlightened and very special blessings for which The United States of America stands.

   Everyone must understand that this campaign is much, much more significant than who shall win the imminent Presidential Election, for one President serving one or two terms, no matter how well-intentioned, competent or inspiring he may be, cannot have a lasting enough effect to reverse the ideological tsunami that has been sweeping across America for over thirty years.

   Not many people recognize, or value, that the United States of America was not “destined” to become a representative democracy which was cast in a form which guaranteed to each of us “and our Posterity” the individual rights and the power to govern ourselves. The decision was actually the result of a conscious, bargained-for choice from among all of the potential forms of government that were theoretically available, and our “Founding Fathers”, all “well-read” conscientious men–most with great formal educations and undoubtedly with an informed collective wisdom that exceeded all reasonable expectation–chose for us the form which they believed would assure to us and ultimately much of the world, by reiteration and copying, the most individual freedom possible.

   The political science theory or concept of the “New Enlightenment” came into full effect following Britain’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 and its establishment of a conjointly powerful parliament and a limited monarchy where powers of the monarch were not absolute as they had been but, rather, were immediately limited and thereafter additionally steadily decreased. Then in the last two decades of the Seventeenth Century, British political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), drawing upon his predecessors Thomas Hobbes and Richard Hooker, distilled the ideas of both Hobbes and Hooker (which themselves could in large part be traced all of the way back to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Mid-Thirteenth Century) and set about to draft the “template” of representative democracy. That philosophy, detailing what Locke believed was the ideal relationship between Man and Community and then Community and Government, was, in turn, made the very bedrock of the Government of the United States. This was accomplished by Thomas Jefferson and the Committee of which he played the leading role and the words he chose for the Declaration of Independence; and, secondly, the words, but most particularly the structure created by the Constitutional Convention and put to pen by James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Gouvernor Morris and a host of other great minds in crafting the Constitution of the United States of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791.

   These concepts, which were designed to form the basis of the relationship of Americans and America for as long as the Nation should exist, are briefly encapsulated by the following language appearing in the Preface of the Declaration itself, viz.:

   “WE hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that 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…(emphasis added)

   The concept referenced here (which is almost a one hundred per cent copy of an important analytical line set forth one hundred years earlier by Locke) is but a simple one–and that is that the government of man, whether it be a king, a parliament, or a president is ultimately responsible to the community or the people which it, or they, govern(s). An inherent part of this foundational concept, also known as “Natural Law,” is that while government may be indispensable for the well-being of Man individually and en masse, it is also only derivative from the governed inasmuch as it exists solely for the well-being of the nation and people which it serves and cannot long function without the support of the People, i.e., unless they give the government “legitimacy.” These concepts are those to which the Founders of this United States of America pledged their very lives, i.e., to assure to every American who should follow them that they each had the absolute right to claim innate, indefeasible rights which are inherent in every individual. Implicit in all the contemporaneous discussions and writings of that time was that if the government being established should over time become contaminated or perverse, the People themselves had the innate right to set it aside in favor of one more effective in serving their individual and joint interests.

   The Constitution itself could be described as a “mechanical instrument” in that it sets forth the role in the new government of the three “co-equal” branches, the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial. No branch was designed to operate without or independent of the other(s) but in conjunction therewith, thus establishing the concept of “checks and balances” which has for over two hundred years been the ultimate “safety valve” for the continuation of the “Grand Experiment” in times of great National stress. The Foreword of the Constitution is not itself often quoted, but according to rules of legal interpretation, it must be considered and taken into account in every instance when the meaning or intent of the active portions of the instrument itself be in doubt or the subject of dispute. For this reason, the words should be held dear by each of us, viz.:

   “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the general blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (emphasis added).

   The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) in similar manner sets forth their purpose “…as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government [so as to] best assure the beneficent ends of its institution.” (emphasis added) Then, those amendments go on to specifically set forth, among others, these rights accruing to each and every person: freedom of (and from) religion; freedom of the Press; freedom of speech; the right of the People to peaceably assemble; to petition the government for a redress of grievances; the right to keep and bear arms; the right to be free from search and seizure except upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation; rights of due process of law, against double jeopardy and against the taking of private property for public use without just compensation; the rights to trial by jury, a jury of one’s peers, and to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and so importantly evidencing the intention of limited intrusion upon individual right as intended by this representative government, the ninth and tenth amendments provide for the incorporation of the common law of England by asserting that those rights not specifically given to the government shall not be construed as taking away from or disparaging other rights as retained by the People or by the States respectively!

   The Constitution and the concept of representative democracy have always had their detractors. The great French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, in his authoritative and generally laudatory study of the workings of American government, and a first hand, detailed and even indefatigable view of how it worked in the practical or “real world” sense, wrote in Chapter Fourteen of the second of two volumes of his Democracy in America of 1848, that there are many ways that the poor, distracted and uninformed citizens might be deprived of their political rights by the wealthy and designing “fully-informed.” No lesser a “Founding Father” than Thomas Jefferson often said that it was a primary duty of government to establish schools for all so that the People be informed–for he knew that a popular Democracy would ultimately persevere only if there were an “informed electorate.” H.L. Mencken was a remarkably perceptive and iconoclastic American satirist of the early Twentieth Century, who generally looked upon American Democracy with a sense of amusement, but not condemnation. He is reputed to have said that, “Democracy is a fallacious belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance…” as well as, “…No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste) of the American People.” And then, as if encapsulating his feeling about the ease with which the common man could be “had” by the rich, on July 26, 1920, he wrote in the Baltimore Evening Sun,… “On some great and glorious day the plain folks will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by an absolute moron.” (emphasis joyfully added)

   Obviously, Mencken would have made great, even exciting sport with the presidency of George W. Bush. But I must be quick to add that while devastatingly effective in his efforts to further enrich the wealthy, empower the already too powerful “privateers” of the corporatocracy in performing [or actually not performing the moral duties of government] and ignore the well-being of the “dross,” Bush 43 has by no means been the only President of the last thirty years to take steps to effectuate the de facto plutocracy that now rules the Nation. As a whole, and by reason of a craven Congress and what has become a “not so well-informed citizenry,” the corporatocracy has been allowed, in a de facto sense, to amend the Declaration and the Constitution–destroying the hope of much of today’s “unworthy” and that of our “posterity.” That is, unless we all, with a re-ignited and steadfast self-interest, erase all changes they have made.

   Let us start with Edgar Kaiser and Richard M. Nixon. According to the transcripts of the tapes of conversations within the Oval Office during the Nixon Administration on February 17, 1971, John Erlichman came in to visit with the President about a conversation he had just had with Edgar Kaiser regarding the premise for the operations of the Kaiser-Permanente HMO’s around the Nation. Erichman was excited about what he had learned and, at the same time, frustrated by the fact that the Vice-President (Agnew) was not at all interested in what Kaiser had to say–and how it might relate to the issue of the HMO Bill that was winding its way around “on the hill.” For context, it is important to note that Edgar was the grandson of Henry J. Kaiser, the great industrialist who essentially “invented” the concept of modular construction of ships with the production of Liberty Ships during World War II and had been a great force, along with the American Automobile Manufacturers’ Union, in coming up with the concept of group health insurance during the war for persons employed in war-time industries. The Kaiser-Permanente HMO idea was an offshoot of the group insurance concept–also borne during the War for the protection of workers in defense plants. Auto enthusiasts may recall that Henry J. Kaiser was also one of the co-founders of the Kaiser-Frazer Automobile Company, an enterprise that has long ago disappeared. But at the time in 1971, Edgar Kaiser was the scion of a great family fortune and had great pull within high political circles.

   The relevant lines of the conversation between Ehrlichman and the President are as follows:

   Nixon: “…I’m not keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

   Ehrhlicman: “This, uh, let me tell you how I am…”

   Nixon: “[unclear]

   Ehrlichman: “This is a …”

   Nixon: “I don’t [unclear]

   Ehrlichman: “…private enterprise one.”

   Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

   Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser s running his Permanente deal for profit.. And the reason he can do it…I had Edgar come in…talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because…” (emphasis added)

   Nixon: [unclear]

   Ehrlichman: “…the less care they give them, the more money they make”

   Nixon: “Fine.” [unclear]

   Ehrlichman: [unclear] “and the incentives run the right way.”

   Nixon: “Not bad.”

   Shortly thereafter the Nixon Administration threw its weight behind the HMO bill and it later became law as the HMO Act of 1973. It was the first Federal action to inject itself into the regulation of health insurance or healthcare subsequent to the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944 in the Southeastern Underwriters case, and the Nixon Administration was a conscious party to an effective fraud by knowingly assisting the HMO companies in making extra money by deliberating cheating their insureds, or, in the case of HMO’s, their so-called “members.”

   This was a war of culture in which for a very few years I personally even played a very small role. After obtaining my law degree from Vanderbilt University in 1968, I went to work with the Life and Casualty Insurance Company in Nashville, Tennessee. This particular life and health carrier had been chartered by three men and their families in approximately 1908; one of those gentleman was an attorney. From the very onset of its operation, Life & Casualty had a practice, or creed, that its primary premise in the claim operation was that it began each and every claim consideration from the standpoint of assuming that since the company had set the rates and the insured had paid them, the claim was considered payable if within the coverage provisions UNLESS it was clear after an investigation that it had been the intent of the insured to defraud the Company. This is what I personally came to consider the “family values” theory of claims administration. I learned very shortly after I became involved in the industry that other comparably sized companies located in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama with which I became familiar and assisted in lobbying activities, all family-owned companies, had this very same approach to claims administration.

   In 1969, the Company merged with and became part of the American General Group of Companies located in Houston, Texas. The operations of the Company in Nashville did not initially change, as it continued to operate in a totally autonomous fashion. In 1976, however, I learned that there was a “different world” out there in insurance land. I happened a receive a promotion and became the V.P. and General Counsel of the life and health insurance operations of the Houston-based companies. (The Group had many other types of operations through other subsidiaries.)

   As it was a part of my routine duties, on the second or third day after I arrived at work in Houston, I attended my first Claims Committee meeting, of which I was the Chairman. The very first case that came up for consideration was presented by one of the assistant claims managers, and it was, purely and simply, a proposal that the $50,000 policy death benefit be denied unless and until the spouse of the decedent (who had died in a private airplane crash–arguably because of his blood alcohol content) signed away her rights to the accidental death benefit–which was clearly payable under the law of Texas. That was the last time such a proposal was ever made to the Committee while I was in Houston–but I left the Companies two years later because I could not stomach the “culture” of so much of the Houston operation which was to do anything for a buck–regardless of its legality or illegality.

   And it is that experience that enables me to so easily identify the “Edgar Kaiser’s” of the world and understand the thinking behind the current practices of health insurers, including individual, group, HMO, Third Party Administrators of MEWA’s and the Point of Service networks as they operate all across the Nation. They represent a veritable tidal wave change in the way health care itself, not insurance only, is handled in the United States, and help explain why the World Health Organization ranks the United States as having the highest healthcare cost per capita of its one hundred ninety-two members and only the seventy-second in terms of efficacy (or low morbidity) of its heath care system. The destructiveness of the policy chosen by insurers (with the direct assistance of the Federal Government) is due to the fact that the insurers have utilized the concept of “insurable event” to control access to the system, i.e., the onset of an actual, demonstrable illness or the incurring of an accident, as the test of claim liability to delay and deny care. This forces physicians, as much as possible, to only see patients (other than for annual physicals which most Americans–even if insured–do not even bother to seek) when they are actually ill, i.e., when there is an “insurable event.” Then the physician may bill and be paid on an incident of illness basis rather than upon a preventive care system rewarding everyone for assuring the continued good health of the patients–which is the approach taken by every other nation in the industrialized world. In other words, the United States has a totally fractured health care system–due to Edgar Kaiser, Richard Nixon, the circumstances discussed and how they have played themselves out for the last thirty years.

   In August 1971 a well-known Richmond, Virginia, lawyer, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote a document now known as the “Powell Memorandum” to the Board of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Attorney Powell was counsel to a number of Fortune 500 corporations (including the American Tobacco Company) and, in that capacity, had become alarmed at what the American government had done to American business during the Administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. No one could rightly accuse attorney Powell of treason, but, in fact, that was precisely what he was advocating relative to the Constitution and its spirit, but at least without open, armed class warfare. The actual title to his memorandum was a most revealing, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System,” and it, in fact, became a manifesto around which the leaders of major corporations in America joined in order that they could monitor and control the direction of government, including advocating “constant surveillance” of textbook and television content, as well as close monitoring of left-wing elements in society, including unacceptable members of the clergy, the media, and professors on college campuses.

   His societal goals were to change how individuals and society think about the corporation as a means of doing business, how they think about the law, and the culture of the Country. This was the beginning of the campaign of “big business” against the very fabric of American society, the enormous success of which has been seen over the last thirty years since the “manifesto” came into play. It was successful in every particular until its very excesses and the avarice which it had fueled led to the 2008 bursting of the housing bubble, the credit crunch, the banking bail-out, the fuel-run inflation of consumer goods and the building, again, of the average man’s distrust of the motives of big business.

   It is no accident that within two months of the delivery of the Powell Memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Powell was nominated by President Nixon to become an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

   The Powell Memorandum is an instructive piece of literature inasmuch as it was not only a marvelous piece of propaganda, it was an “action plan” for, as he saw it, correcting the errors of our system of governance–which happens only when there is a change in the manner of individual thought.

   Approximately a year ago, I was discussing the “twelve foot fence” and other immigration issues as they related to the illegal immigration of Hispanics into the United States with a gentleman who I consider a friend. That was one of those conversations that did not continue for more than a couple of minutes, for it quickly became extremely clear that he and I were looking at the issues from two entirely different perspectives. My position then and now was that the United States is a country with a history and legacy of being open and caring to immigrants and that many of the Hispanics, living in unimaginable poverty in Mexico , El Salvador and Nicaragua, for example, were in the position, literally, of choosing to let their families starve or try to cross that shallow narrow little Rio Grande River (or that perilous desert) to try to put some food on the table. Since the United States was not effectively sealing the borders and was not allowing anywhere nearly enough legal immigrants into the United States, we had a moral obligation to provide them pathway to citizenship.

   When my friend heard this he said that I was short-sighted and “immoral!!!” He could not believe that I, a pretty good person, would condone the activities of “law breakers”, of criminals. At some point I must have become “exercised” for he later said that I had called him a racist!

   But while that little incident might seem innocuous to some, I assure you that it is actually most revealing as to the fact that there is a tremendous “disconnect” between his way of thinking and mine. He is, by the way, a Christian Fundamentalist and Neo-Conservative, and I knew in my heart that therein there must lie some dramatic difference in his “worldview” which literally compelled him to take what appeared to me such a radical departure from the essence of humanity. It was, in fact, one of the basic principles discussed herein and which I believe is an integral part of the American experience, i.e., the inbred empathy of Americans for the hurt and despair of others.

   One of the “non-legal” and “non-political” analyses which I have come to love over the years as one of the best expressions of what it is to be an American, and which bears on this very issue, is the poem entitled “The New Colossus” written by Emma Lazarus in 1886, contemporaneous with the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island. The poem was read at the actual dedication ceremony, and later, in 1903, a rendering of it in bronze was installed as a permanent part of the pedestal of the statue. It reads as follows:

   “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
   With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
   Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
   A Mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
   Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
   Mother of exiles. From her beacon-hand
   Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
   The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
   “Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
   With silent lips. “Give me our tired, you poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

   For a very long time, from 1776 until at least 1903, our Nation welcomed the down-trodden and the hopeless; but at some point we became a different Country, one that, for certain, neither Thomas Jefferson nor Emma Lazarus would recognize.

   In my quest to determine the “disconnect,” I came across a book by George Lakoff entitled The Political Mind, published in 2008 by Viking Press in NYC which, obviously, addressed this issue from the perspective of its writer, a Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. I must admit that my reading of this work did not conclude with my wishing to become a professor of cognitive science, and I am not quite certain what one does anyway. The written work does, however, relate to the differences between the subconscious and the conscious mind and how the content and function of the subconscious mind can control our actions in a reflexive, as opposed to a deliberately reflective way. In other words, if we have to think about an issue, and weigh the “pro’s” and “con’s,” we are more likely to react to the issue with a rational result. But, at the same time, most of us have absolutely no control over our subconscious mind, and it acts and causes us to act upon its foundation, its convictions and learning from birth—without our giving it conscious thought.

   I am certain that his theory cannot account for all of the political differences in America, but I would agree that in some situations at least, it may well posit an answer which is helpful. Lakoff suggests that someone who is raised in a strict authoritarian manner, for example in a family where there is a strict authoritarian patriarch or matriarch, where there are many rules to live by and disobedience of any such rule brings quick and certain discipline, that person is likely to internalize that framework into a conviction that “following the rules,” “acceding to authority” is “moral,” and is the way to run one’s life. The more ingrained this “moral framework”, the more impossible it is to change this person’s mode of thinking, for he or she really do not even know or recognize that they are thinking–at the sublimated subconscious level. To them, that is just the way it is…period. Professor Lakoff concludes that persons raised in this manner are the Neo-Conservatives of today, and I would suggest that they are likely also the Nazis or Facists of another era.
   Professor Lakoff says that these are definitely the people who believe to the very core of their being that everyone is supposed to take care of himself, “let the buyer beware” is their guiding light, and if someone is lying in the gutter needing help, that is their fault and the result of their “own immorality.” That is one part of Lakoff’s analysis that I definitely do not accept. There are very few Americans of any mind-set who are this callous.

   The converse of the authoritarian upbringing is what Professor Lakoff refers to as the nurturant upbringing. This is the individual whose upbringing leads him or her into fairly constant contact with action or teaching that he or she should be caring of others, nurturant, and be mindful of other’s wants and desires. This, according to the Professor, is the type of environment that produces progressives, liberals, or more true morally- based personalities. I can personally see how this might really be true, as I view it at work in my own worldview. My father, while engaged in illegal bootlegging in a “dry” county in Arkansas for all of his adult life, was in any “one on one” situation, the most caring, open, understanding and loving person I have ever known. He did not talk about helping others, putting poor but able African-American kids through college, for that would have been unseemly; but he spent his life helping others, whether it was to build a new home after a fire, or even to build a church (so long as they quit asking for money after they finished the church). Dad was a professed atheist.

   And my Dad was extremely distressed by hypocrisy of ay kind. The particular circumstance that most often arose with him was the fact that so many persons in our little home town who kept voting the County “dry” and who publicly professed to be strict Southern Baptists for public consumption, would routinely send their Black “yardmen” to our home to purchase their liquor when they wished to have some liquor. Similarly, my uncle and my grandfather ran illegal gambling halls and the local populace, many members of the First Baptist Church in our little town, were regular customers of these establishments.

   But Professor Lakoff’’s theories cannot be all inclusive, for I can think of several nurturant personalities of my acquaintance who have been in the military, in combat, and I have seen that such a dramatic exposure to a different “culture” (of necessity) can have a dramatic effect on their entire world view. “Morality is duty,” and “duty is morality” are familiar refrains such a context. Similarly, I know of persons who are from extremely nurtuant backgrounds but who were extremely poor and who, for some reason, became ashamed of that. Some of these persons have striven to become wealthy, overcome their roots, or whatever. And they often have changed their worldview and have become what Lakoff terms strict authoritarian personality types.

   One of the best examples of a “truth-telling” strict authoritarian type of individual is attorney Steven Bradley of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Administration of George W. Bush. He was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2006 and was asked relative to the Hamdan case (he was bin Laden’s chaffeur at one time) whether the President might have been wrong in his appraisal of certain aspects of that case. Without hesitation, and as if it were a perfectly rehearsed line from a play, Bradley answered, “The President is always right.” He was met with stunned silence from the Committee. He was, is, a man who has gone so far down the road of authoritarianism that he is beyond the ability to think for himself.

   So, one conclusion has to be that the different personality types, which I do accept as a helpful analysis, can be seen, in rudimentary fashion, as follows:

   Neo-Conservative Progressive
   i.) self-responsibility i.) strength
   ii.) “Greed is good” ii.) fairness
   iii.) leave regulation out of business;
   for all regulation decreases profit iii) moral duty of government is to protect its citizens, e.g. FDA, OSHA, Police, Fire,
   Military, Fiscal System
   iv.) rid government of its duties and
   privatize the function; iv.) order
   v.) inculcate fear and “distance” from all
   “unlike us” v.) cleanliness
   vi.) evangelize our democracy; regardless
   of feelings of other countries vi.) purity and empathy

   As Lakoff sees it, this analysis boils itself down into two simple and exclusionary definitions of morality, viz.:”

   1.) Morality is empathy
   2.) morality is obedience to authority

   And it is important that persons and groups fitting into either category may be fully convinced that those of the other persuasion are also convinced of their rightfulness It is just that the Neo-Conservatives have lost touch with America, what it stands for, and Progressives have a duty to themselves and their posterity to change the worldview of the “posterity” of all Americans.

   A primary tool in this “counterattack” is to change the course of discussion in politics and in everyday life by changing the words used. One good example is to refuse to accept the terminology of persons like Rush Limbaugh, who by the terms of the question dictate the answer or the effect of the answer; e.g., “Do you favor ‘tax relief?” A “yes” answer means that the Neo-Conservative view wins, and a “no” answer just opens up the person to whom the question is addressed to humiliation at Limbaugh’s whim.

   The way to handle such circumstances to turn the question around into terms with which the guest is comfortable. So, the best type of answer would be: “Well, first of all, the burden of taxes is relative, and every marginal bracket of income would have to be examined to determine relative “load”, so to speak. Some taxes, since we are speaking of income taxation, the rates are progressive, but if ratcheted up too high, they might be felt by an “impartial panel” to be confiscatory. Certainly, relief should be considered if the taxes are so as has to be unfair or as to discourage investment. But, it is impossible to speak in absolute numbers, as everyone’s situation is different.”

   Another ploy in the tax field is that Progressives and Neo-Conservatives see taxes in entirely different contexts. The latter need to be able to broaden their horizons, get beyond the visceral action of Lewis Powell, Jr. that all taxes cut profits and by definition, therefore are all bad. A common schematic for taxes from the corporate/conservative view is ;
   -taxation is an affliction;
   -the cause of taxation is government and mealy-mouthed liberals;
   -someone who deserves applause is any politician who opposes or cuts taxes;
   -anyone who proposes institution of a new tax or increase of an old one will feel my wrath.

   What persons of this mindset do not see, or recognize, is that society itself could not function without taxes, for individuals acting disjointedly could not cobble together either the money or administrative structure to do any public works. Taxes make government work. The job of government is to protect and empower citizens; to make possible highways, communication systems, “police” the banking system and the insurance business; protect us from crooks, diseases, disasters, pollution, unsafe drugs and other such things that, individually we cannot do for ourselves. What our point is that it is taxation which makes freedom even possible; it is not just for making a powerful military, for it is has to be viewed as freedom “from” as well as freedom or ability” to…” If Progressive spokesmen think and speak this way–instead of defensively, the other side will begin to see things that are in their best interest as individuals.

   That is the main mission of progressives–to make certain of communication and conveyance of simple ideas in simple terms–and turn the question of loudmouth conservative broadcasters back onto them. If handled in the right way, then, it is seen that even taxes, and the loaded term “tax relief” can be handled with no fall-out, and sometimes the audience will agree.

   Whatever the topic is, we need to throw in the progressive moral view–and what the role of government in America s all about, i.e., empathy and responsibility and people caring for themselves and one another and acting responsibly on that sense of caring for others.

   Historian Lynn Hunt, an expert on the Declaration and the “Miracle of Philadelphia,” has said many times something that all Americans need to place in our “quivers,” i.e., Empathy was the historical basis of our democracy…and makes the most sense of our treasured ideas.”

   Don Switzer
   Rogers, Arkansas
   (c) November 4, 2008

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