QUOTE
America's Right-Wing Zealots Will Not Fade Away
America's Right-Wing Zealots Will Not Fade Away
Thursday 09 October 2008
by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona ran for president as a rock-ribbed conservative who yearned to roll back both the Soviet Empire and FDR's New Deal. He carried only six states with 52 electoral votes, and Lyndon Johnson remained the commander-in-chief that an entire generation loved to hate. Yet, even after suffering a stunning defeat, the rabidly anti-New Deal Republicans, ultra-right-wing millionaires, evangelical Christian preachers, John Birchers and other extreme anti-communists who backed Barry Goldwater went on to build the modern conservative movement that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.
...
The right-wing zealots will, in fact, ratchet up the cliched mantras that led us into most of the current ca-ca. We all know the routine:
*Leave the free market free of government oversight and regulation.
*Privatize Social Security and government services.
*Pursue free trade with no protection for workers or the environment.
*Expand American control of the world's oil and natural gas, both to benefit Big Oil and as a political weapon to control the behavior of other nations, friend and foe.
*Talk of spreading democracy while propping up dictators.
*Give the Pentagon a budget every year the size of the hopefully one-time Wall Street bailout.
*Leave the military as the heart and soul of our response to militant Islam.
*Continually break down our constitutionally-mandated separation between government and militant Christianity.
America's Right-Wing Zealots Will Not Fade Away
Thursday 09 October 2008
by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona ran for president as a rock-ribbed conservative who yearned to roll back both the Soviet Empire and FDR's New Deal. He carried only six states with 52 electoral votes, and Lyndon Johnson remained the commander-in-chief that an entire generation loved to hate. Yet, even after suffering a stunning defeat, the rabidly anti-New Deal Republicans, ultra-right-wing millionaires, evangelical Christian preachers, John Birchers and other extreme anti-communists who backed Barry Goldwater went on to build the modern conservative movement that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.
...
The right-wing zealots will, in fact, ratchet up the cliched mantras that led us into most of the current ca-ca. We all know the routine:
*Leave the free market free of government oversight and regulation.
*Privatize Social Security and government services.
*Pursue free trade with no protection for workers or the environment.
*Expand American control of the world's oil and natural gas, both to benefit Big Oil and as a political weapon to control the behavior of other nations, friend and foe.
*Talk of spreading democracy while propping up dictators.
*Give the Pentagon a budget every year the size of the hopefully one-time Wall Street bailout.
*Leave the military as the heart and soul of our response to militant Islam.
*Continually break down our constitutionally-mandated separation between government and militant Christianity.