Selective Amnesia

You don’t have to abandon your principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn’t get to stamp his foot and have his way…They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration. They are also convinced that Democrats should never start a negotiation because they will always end up losing in the end. – David Brooks

This is what drives me crazy. Why is it that if Dems stick to their guns they are called immature or irrational but when the wing-nuts do it is a principled stand or a policy difference? Let me clear this up for you Mr. Brooks when you hold up 98% of Americans tax relief for the benefit of the wealthiest 2% by borrowing money from foreign countries and mortgaging our future that is not a difference in policy and that is not negotiating. It is blackmail pure and simple. So my question is how do you build coalitions with people who are willing to block all legislation until they get their way? Sounds to me like they are stomping their feet or holding their breath, but I am no student of politics like you.

Here in a nutshell is why Dems can never maintain the majorities like they did following WWII, they have lost the art of politics. It has only been two short years since one of the worst President’s in the history of America left office and they were given majorities in both Houses and the White House and now they are on the outside looking in. This is the same President who stomped his feet and invaded another country under false pretenses, who passed two tax-cut bills for the wealthy, and presided over the collapse of our economy. Remember how the wing-nuts were on the verge of regionalism and extinction as a major political party? What happened? Most Dems think that the power of their arguments and the strength of their ideas will carry the day. If we just educate the public to what we are trying to accomplish of course they will side with us. No, they won’t. You are bringing a knife to a bazooka fight and you are getting killed.

People on Madison Avenue make a boatload of money figuring out how to sell crap to a bunch of people who don’t need it. I mean really do you need a 500.00 cell phone? The wing-nuts have brought those same tactics to politics and the media. They have used branding to not make the country completely conservative, just more conservative than it was 30 years ago. So now the center is no longer the center. You now have Dems espousing former wing-nut positions as if they were now mainstream and rational.

The Dems refuse to call what the wing-nuts are doing for what it really is, immoral. During the healthcare debate it was never couched in terms of its immorality to allow the insurance companies to continue doing what they were doing to people. Is it immoral to have people dying, going broke, or be uninsurable because they happen to have gotten sick in America? No, it became an economic issue. The same thing is happening today concerning the tax-cuts. It isn’t about morality and fairness it is about economics. As long as Dems continue to allow the wing-nuts to frame their positions in purely economic terms they will continue to be defensible. We are just having a difference of opinion about economic policy so the rational thing to do is to split the difference. As if connecting Social Security, unemployment insurance, tuition support, and earned income tax credits with tax breaks for the rich is morally equivalent. And as long as we continue to allow the wing-nuts and their talking heads to get away with creating this false moral equivalency argument we will continue to lose.

What is going on in America today is not about economics, it is about strategically weakening and eventually removing our safety nets and our middle-class. Think about it what better time to set this in motion than when we were are in the midst of the “great recession” and everyone is fearful and trying to hang on to what little they have. This is no time to increase taxes, this is no time to increase infrastructure spending, this is no time to think about the environment. Basically this is no time to do anything but continue to provide the wealthiest more assistance because we know that if they drink enough champagne eventually some will trickle down on us. Of course it may be a little warm and discolored. This is about shared sacrifice and not about class warfare as the wing-nuts and wealthy apologists continue to claim. If I am receiving most of the benefits isn’t it only fair that in times of crisis I be willing to give back more than those who are not. This isn’t about economics it is about the so-called “Christian values” these folks are so proud to espouse and criticize liberals for not having until it actually requires having to live up to them. I am a Christian unless that means I have to stand up for the poor and sick against those who fund my campaigns, or my reality shows, or my library additions.

You did get one thing right Mr. Brooks we do believe that “these” Dems should never enter into negotiations because as the record plainly demonstrates they have a tendency to capitulate before any punches are thrown. This isn’t about purist versus non-purists it is about basic fairness or have you lost sight of that concept. After the way the teabaggers purified the last election how anyone could accuse the Dems as purist is beyond me. Again, it is how the media covers the traits of the two parties. Wing-nut intransigence and obstructionism is doing the people’s will, but you Dems are just being a bunch of crybabies and whiners. Buck up. The wing-nuts are forcing the Dems to take all of the tough votes so that no matter how it plays out they win. If you allow the tax-cuts to expire you raised taxes, if you put in the tax-cuts you have increased the deficit, and if the economy doesn’t turn around then it was your wasteful spending. Call me crazy but if you are going to get it no matter what, then you might as well do the right thing.

The main problem I have with all of this is that we are about to put more money into tax-cuts than we did in the original stimulus bill. Since when did cutting taxes become a Democratic solution to anything? No, Mr. Brooks it isn’t coalition building when you take on the policies of your adversaries. Would it have been negotiation with al-Qaeda if we had agreed to no longer recognize Israel in exchange for anything? If you begin to change your policies to match the opposition to get their approval that isn’t coalition building or collaboration, it is capitulation and that Mr. Brooks is what has so many angry. There was a time when we knew what the Dems stood for. Today the more I read and hear the less I know what they stand for.

If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction. - Mitch McConnell
The Disputed Truth

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Let’s Make A Deal

“I agree, Lord of Darkness, if you grant me the following wishes: First, I would like the nation to be hurled into an economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and recklessness. This will discredit free-market fundamentalism once and for all.” – David Brooks

I just read the David Brooks ode to liberalism article and I must say he makes a compelling case not for the decline of liberalism but for the decline of our shared consciousness. The problem with pundits is that everything happens in a vacuum in their world. According to him there are no connections between any of the events that he described except that they occurred while Mr. Obama was President. So the link is not the failed policies of the Right, but that liberals could not clean them up fast enough. So the future of our governance is not based on those who caused the disasters but on how quickly those elected to repair them can get them repaired.

Using that logic then if I start a fire in a building and then when the fire department gets there I cut the water pressure to the hoses and someone dies in the building then it is the firefighters fault for not putting out the blaze quicker. What Mr. Brooks and many of his talking head friends fail to realize is that very few of the upcoming midterm elections will be decided by national issues. So while they will be trumpeted as the beginning of the end for Obama what they fail to realize is that following the midterms in 1994 Bill Clinton won reelection handily. I suspect the same will be true for President Obama. It is one thing to win an election in South Carolina running on corporate largess and apologies it is a far different thing to win nationally running on those issues. It is amazing to me how quickly these clowns forget that when we had a national referendum of policies the country overwhelmingly chose the policies of the Dems. Are we to believe that after four years of Republican prostrations in front of the corporate gods that the majority of Americans will turn away from those who are at least trying to solve the gigantic problems facing this nation?

Are we also to believe that the majority of Americans will agree with the likes of Glenn Beck that this President is a racist? If I have any complaint towards Mr. Obama it is that he has been too cautious towards the issue of race in America. The reason we are not moving forward as a nation is precisely because we are so divided. As a nation we are not using all of our resources we continue to choose tribalism over nationalism. We will not be able to compete against the likes of China and India if we continue to be willing to marginalize large segments of our population. We are going to need every able body and mind if we are to overcome the problems of energy, climate change, and retooling America. I read that some black leaders are offended by Mr. Beck holding a rally at the Washington Mall on the day that Dr. King gave his dream speech. Their fear is that Mr. Back will somehow diminish the stature of Dr. King and what he accomplished. To me this is akin to worrying about Joseph McCarthy diminishing the legacy of FDR because he accused him of having Communist sympathies. The biggest challenge to blacks in America is not Glenn Beck it is our refusal to deal with the problem that we are allowing women to train up our boys and the outcomes are abysmal. Instead of holding a rally to combat Glenn Beck we need to be holding a rally to recommit to our children.

Another missing component from Mr. Brook’s fairytale is that the Dems are not a monolithic party like the Republicans. An example would be what is currently taking place within the Republican Party with the teabag crowd if this were a Democratic group the Dems would allow them to caucus but that would be the extent of it. No one would suggest and rightly so that the Dems should adopt the lunacy of the fringe but with the Republicans that is exactly what they are doing. I guess when you are void of ideas and critical thought then any ideas seems plausible. The election of 2008 demonstrated that the Republicans were bankrupt of ideas and I have seen nothing since then to make me think they have found any now. With the political landscape of today you will never be a majority party if you are appealing to a shrinking base of gun-toting, history revisionist, pseudo patriots. I don’t know many Americans who want to see America returned to the “good ole” days of intolerance, bigotry, and robber barons. But I could be wrong and if I am then were all in trouble anyway.

Finally, the devil in the details that Mr. Brooks has mischaracterized is that leadership is what we elect President’s to have, that and a vision. Sometimes when you are leading a ragtag mob like America you will appear unpopular because you have to make some unpopular decisions, but the alternative which the Republicans are offering is to continue to defer these difficult choices until they are no longer choices but we are left with imperatives. Prior to the spill in the Gulf we had choices about how to conduct deep water drilling, due to our refusal to stand up to corporations we now are left with an imperative. Plug the hole. My fear is that there are many who are willing to shy away from the difficult in search of the easy quick fix. However when it comes to the issues facing America (climate change, clean energy, unemployment, depression, etc.) there are no easy quick fixes. So if the Right wants to govern based on popularity I suggest the majority of us begin to prepare our tin roof shacks because we are not far from a banana republic.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward. - Amelia Earhart

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Bizarro World: The New Left is now the Tea Party

Because of this assumption, members of the Tea Party right, like the members of the New Left, spend a lot of time worrying about being co-opted. They worry that the corrupt forces of the establishment are perpetually trying to infiltrate the purity of their ranks. – David Brooks New York Times Columnist

First of all I want to apologize to all of those people from the peace movement, civil rights movement, and the other groups from the sixties who fought and died for long denied social change in America for this article from David Brooks. Obviously while so many Americans were actually trying to grapple with a social system that they felt no longer represented who they were Mr. Brooks was too young to know what was going on. I have a real hard time taking anyone seriously who writes about a period of history that they did not actually participate in. To me most post-history is either conjecture or an attempt at a mulligan for those who are promoting their own agendas.

At no time has this fact become more true as it is now during the current period in our history when we are about to be bombarded by the “memoirs” of the disgraced Bush officials and their apologists. The three poster children for this period of selective amnesia ought to be Cheney, Rove, and now Brooks. If this column weren’t so dangerous it would almost be laughable. The reason that this column is dangerous is that it attempts to give legitimacy to the tea-partiers as neo-hippies taking on “the man” and “the system”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tea-partiers began as astro-turf bankrolled by the defeat health-care lobbyist and no amount of cover from the right will legitimize them.

What Mr. Brooks fails to realize is that there are profound differences between what the tea-partiers are protesting and the protests of the “new left”. Has he forgotten that there was actually a war going on in Southeast Asia that was taking the lives, dreams, and family members of hundreds of thousands of Americans? Has also forgotten that blacks were living under the crushing oppression of Jim Crow while their civil rights were being denied in all areas of America? Has he forgotten that many blacks were still being lynched, sent to prison, and beaten for trying to express the rights that he and his friends take for granted? His attempts to equate the tea-partiers exploits to those of people who were willing to risk life, limb, and future for a true cause is not just disingenuous, it’s an insult to the memory of all of the slain civil rights workers and anti-war protesters.

To be fair many people may actually believe that President Obama is a foreign-born citizen and is not legitimately President. There also may be those who truly believe that he is leading the country towards socialism through a government take-over of healthcare. There may be those who truly believe that the federal budget was balanced prior to his taking office, that the country was at full-employment, and our economy was flying right along until President Obama’s coup took over in January of 2009. The truth is that we know that the “paranoia” of the sixties radicals was well founded by the release of so many FBI documents and internal government memos. To compare their legitimate fears to those of a bunch of folks many of whom who have some form of government healthcare today who believe that healthcare reform is a government plot to create death panels is unconscionable.

Actually, I am quite pleased that the Republicans are trying to recruit the tea-party folks it will give them a taste of what Democrats go through daily when you have a big tent. When you allow every voice to be heard you are liable to hear some things you weren’t expecting and for a party where everything is scripted right up to the candidates voting record for the next 10 years this could be a little disheartening. I agree the tea-partiers are radical and theatrical but to compare corporate mouthpiece Dick Armey to Saul Alinsky who spent his life trying to improve the lives of those less-fortunate is a stretch even for Brooks.

"Negroes were being lynched regularly in the South as the first stirrings of black opposition began to be felt, and many of the white civil rights organizers and labor agitators who had started to work with them were tarred, feathered, castrated -- or killed. Most Southern politicians were members of the Ku Klux Klan and had no compunction about boasting of it” – Saul Alinsky

For David Brooks to try and give credence to the “straw” and “boogie” men of the tea-partiers as being similar to the new left is criminal. Mr. Brooks, I don’t know where you got your research of the sixties and seventies but you might leave that history to those who were actually there. Another small difference between the two that continually gets ignored by the mainstream media is during the protests of the new left all races were represented because the issues being addressed affected all the people in the country. Where is the “melting pot” with the tea-party movement? If the issues they are protesting actually affected us all like the injustices of racism or the destruction of a senseless war where are the rest of the folks? Are minorities not concerned with losing their freedoms in a communist takeover?

One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. – Saul Alinsky

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I Give Up

I support the Weak and Feckless Approach. Trust is based on mutual respect and reciprocity. If, at this moment of rage and cynicism, the ruling class goes even further and snubs popular opinion, then that will set off an ugly, destructive, and yet fully justified popular rebellion. Trust in government will be irrevocably broken. It will decimate policy-making for a generation. – David Brooks, NY Times

I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to blog about the lessons of Massachusetts or the direction the President should take in its wake. But leave it to David Brooks to bring out the worst in me. First let me begin by saying that what happened in Massachusetts was a message but not the one that the talking heads and pundits in the media are determined to sell us.

The election in Massachusetts was about President Obama and it wasn’t about President Obama. What am I saying? Am I trying to have it both ways like many of the talking shirts on television who purport to be journalist? No. Let me explain. The election in Massachusetts and the two governors’ races prior to it was not about the President or his policies. What those voters and future voters are repudiating is how our democracy currently functions or fails to function. What the fight over the health-care bill demonstrated to many Americans is that when it came to how our democracy works they didn’t know Jack. Prior to the health-care fight most Americans believed that our democracy functioned like it was taught in civics class so many years ago by a pleasant slightly overweight elementary school teacher. What they witnessed in the past few months turned their stomachs and rightly so. Many Americans had believed the system was broken and now they have some idea how truly broken it is.

The election in Massachusetts was about the President in the fact that he has not been the President he campaigned to be. He was the candidate of change and yet since his election he has not begun the most important change of all, fixing our broken government. The President like so many other politicians thought that the way to fix Washington was this elusive false narrative of bi-partisanship. The way to fix Washington has nothing to do with bi-partisanship in this toxic atmosphere. The term bi-partisanship supposes that you have two parties that are interested in a greater good, the benefit of the people. We currently do not have two groups who share that belief. What the two groups do share is that the greater good is their re-election and job security. The way we fix Washington is to allow our government to function on the most cherished democratic principle; the majority rules. The history of how we have gotten to this mythical 60 vote plateau is long and tawdry but the truth is as long as we allow it to dictate our politics then people like Ben Nelson and Scott Brown become more important than the will of the people.

When President Obama came into office his advisers mistakenly thought that it was George Bush and the Republicans that the public was repudiating, but it was deeper than that. Poll after poll showed that Congress and the government had historical lows in popularity and trust with the American people. To understand this you have to understand the Republican agenda. The Republicans have for decades sought to limit government and its influence in the lives of Americans. Many people have been blindly led to believe it was for patriotic reasons but the truth is that those who have power and rule over others do not need the same government as average Americans do. They don’t need or want for the government to regulate industries, or provide emergency services, or safety nets. In order to convince the American public that government is unnecessary and ineffective each Republican administration has allowed the government to function ineptly and then said, “See we told you the government can’t solve problems.” What this systematic assault on the government through incompetence has done has convinced a large portion of the American electorate that government is unable to help average people. The most recent example would be the Bush administration response to Hurricane Katrina. Has the federal government ever looked more pathetic?

If I were President Obama my number one priority would be to do a series of weekly fireside chats with the American people. I would begin by saying that I am just as appalled at the democratic process as the rest of the American people and we need to begin the process of changing it. Most Americans voted for dramatic change not in their lives but a dramatic change in how government functioned. President Obama was elected to change how the government worked in the lives of average Americans and that should have been one of his top priorities because without that mandate any changes in policy were doomed by the politics of negativity and incumbency. It is time for the President to side with those who elected him and rally those folks to help repair this broken democracy. Until we address this problem it won’t matter what the policies are or who the President is there will be no change. With the latest opinion of the best Supreme Court corporate money could buy the time for change has never been more critical.

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

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A More Decent Society

Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one. – David Brooks; NY Times

I never thought I would see the day when I would agree with David Brooks, the syndicated Conservative columnist from the New York Times. But when you’re right, you’re right. This health care debate is about the values we hold as a nation and those things we think are important. However, after that point our views are markedly different. You see Mr. Brooks believes that wealth should only flow upwards from the middle and lower classes to the wealthy. He believes that by taxing the wealthy we stifle future growth and make ourselves a less vibrant nation. I would be curious as to how he would explain the Bush tax-breaks for the wealthy and how removing the regulations from Wall Street made us a more vibrant nation?

You see what Mr. Brooks fails to divulge is that giving money to rich people has never stimulated anything except profits made from capital manipulation and not the profits made from manufacturing anything. The goal of the wealthy is not to spend money but to hoard money; this is how you get to be wealthy by not spending your own money. His premise that if we continue to funnel money upward that this will insure the future growth of this nation is false and has historically been proven to be false. What has stimulated growth in our nation’s history have been those expensive promises that he and so many other compassionate Conservatives have been opposed to from their inception. It was not the robber-barons that made us a vibrant society; on the contrary it was those programs put in place that created the middle-class. If Mr. Brooks and his cronies had their way we would have two classes: the very wealthy and the rest of us.

But beyond the economic benefits of these “promises” there is also the moral imperative of a society to provide basic services to all of their people. Just once I would like to completely shut down this evil government for one week. For an entire week the government stops providing all the services it now provides and then see how these anti-government wing-nuts would respond. My guess is they would do rather well considering the have the funds to replace government services, but what about all of those folks without a pot to piss in or a window to throw out who turn out for these anti-government rallies? I remember during the Presidential campaign at McCain rallies when he would say Obama wants to raise taxes on those people earning over 250,000 dollars a year and there would be boos and then they would pan the audience and no one at the rally appeared to make over 50,000 a year and it was amazing to me to see their responses to policies that would benefit them.

Another thing that troubles me about the column is its inherent divisiveness. Mr. Brooks is attempting to appeal to the young to choose greed over compassion. As if money and the acquisition of stuff is all that defines a nation and a person and this conversation has come to dominate the health care debate in our country. What’s in it for me is the new mantra of our society. There was a time not long ago when sacrifices for our country was more than a bumper sticker; when having compassion on your fellow citizen’s did not have to be justified by a bottom line. It’s funny whenever we discuss helping the least of us we become suddenly fiscal hawks, but where were these fiscal hawks when Mr. Bush was funding two wars and giving tax-breaks to the richest among us? Why weren’t these expenditures scrutinized to the level that health reform has been?

The bottom line is that our systems are failing not just the least of us, but all of us and until we come to that conclusion jointly as people it will continue to do so. This debate isn’t really about right or left, rich or poor it is about what is best for us as nation. We have seen firsthand what the politics of greed has wrought us. Every twenty years we are brought to the brink of self destruction by a financial industry that puts profits not only before people but also our nation. But why should we believe our eyes when we can take the word of shrills like Mr. Brooks and believe beyond reality that the rich folks will take care of the rest of us once they get enough money. The only problem with that theory is that they will never get enough money and so it goes.

Wisdom: to live in the present, plan for the future, and profit from the past – Unknown
The Disputed Truth

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Machiavellian And The War of Words

For the past two weeks there has been a word that keeps cropping up in the talks of the Republican attack dogs and in the right leaning media types discussions of Senator Obama. I find it striking that so many of them have coincidently begun using the same word in the criticisms of the Senator. The reason that I think it is important to point out this coincidence is because they are actually code-speak for white males. The word that keeps cropping up is Machiavellian. I first heard it on CNN Newsroom last week when the anchor person was discussing Senator Obama’s speech at a church on Father’s Day and his call for black fathers to step up and become more involved in raising their children.

The reason this particular episode stuck out to me was that I was watching the show at my folk’s house and while they are fairly intelligent people they never attended college so they were never exposed to the book, “The Prince” by Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli; an Italian diplomat. For those who also may not be familiar with the author or the book, it is basically a story of how to gain and maintain political power through in many cases dubious and ruthless means. The gist of the story is that the ends justifies the means and in politics most all behavior is fair. My father asked me what did that word “Machiavellian” meant right after the announcer said it. Even though he didn’t know what it meant, he could tell that it wasn’t used in a complimentary manner.

In my explanation of the word and the history surrounding it I made the mistake of saying the author was French instead of Italian. I explained to them that basically it was a story of how one gains political power through devious means. My father then responded, “So he is saying don’t believe what Obama is saying because he is a ni**er?” I said not exactly but you could come away with that impression.

Machiavelli's best known book is The Prince, in which he describes the arts by which a Prince (a ruler) can retain control of his realm. He focuses primarily on what he calls the "new prince", under the assumption that a hereditary prince has an easier task since the people are accustomed to him. All a hereditary prince needs to do is carefully maintain the institutions that the people are used to; a new prince has a much more difficult task since he must stabilize his newfound power and build a structure that will endure. This task requires the Prince to be publicly above reproach but privately may require him to do immoral things in order to achieve his goals.[1]

This little incident in and of itself would not have caused me great alarm except as the week progressed I began to hear the term more and more in the same sentence with Senator Obama. It’s as if the talking points of the Republican attack machine for the week was this Machiavellian thing. It was being echoed across the airwaves. And then in today’s New York Times one of the chief Republican apologist op-ed columnist David Brooks is echoing the same tune. The code is not that Obama is black and therefore untrustworthy although there will be those who come away with that impression. No the code is far more nefarious than that, it is that he is in reality saying that he is for change, but the truth is that he is an ambitious black man who wants to tilt the table towards blacks. Thus reinforcing the fear of many angry white men who believe that this is the beginning of their losing their “rightful” place in America.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.[2]

In the discussion on CNN following the speech the announcer stated that though he could not speak to what was in Senator Obama’s heart, it was still his job to ask the question. I’m sorry but where in his job description or any reporters job description does it say that questioning the hearts of other men was part of their job duties? Would this same reporter ask the Pope if he truly believed in God? Of course not, but for some reason to question the faith of Senator Obama is fair game. What they are really saying is that he is not grounded in faith but in a selfish desire to rule and that he would use anything including God to accomplish this goal. As if God were a requirement for the office that he seeks. Where were these “faith checkers” during the Bush administration when Mr. Bush was proclaiming his faith and that Jesus was his role model while he sent young men and women to their deaths in a war that was not only unnecessary but based on lies?

SANCHEZ: But here's the question. This guy's there trying to sound or sounding or being sincere. I'm not getting into his heart. I'm not going to read what he's actually doing.

I guess the question to you as an analyst is: Is this really Barack Obama sharing something with him that's very real and very personal, or is this a politician taking a Machiavellian step to try and get voters he otherwise wouldn't get?[3]

SANCHEZ: Let's go now to the debut of Preston on politics. CNN political editor Mark Preston is joining us live.

Mark, let's do this. Let's talk first about the politics side of this faith angle. Listen, I don't want to sound jaded and some are going to criticize me for it, but I guess it's part of my job. So let me just ask you straight out.

He does this in an effort to cut into that sizable John McCain white male lead, doesn't he? I mean, this is a values play by Barack Obama. He says trust in the Lord. When was the last time you heard a Democrat in church using language like that?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR: It's a couple of different things there, Rick. First of all it is political. Everything Barack Obama does now until now November is political. Everything John McCain does from now until November is political. In the end, it's very unlikely Barack Obama is going to win a majority of these evangelical voters, these conservative evangelical voters.

But what they're looking for is they're trying to reach out and hit those moderate voters. Those moderate evangelicals who are fed up with the Republican Party.[4]

First Senator Obama catches hell for going to the wrong Church for 20 years, then he gets it for saying that he relies on faith in God when times get tough. As a Christian myself I can understand where he is coming from. There are times when all I can do to hang on and keep from going crazy in this world is to rely on my faith in God. There is a passage in the Bible that states,” To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.”[5] In other words if my heart is corrupt then I believe that everyone else’s is corrupt as well and I can justify my behavior no matter how despicable based on that belief.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/opinion/20brooks.html?em&ex=1214280000&en=1c5f1b8c238d49d2&ei=5087%0A
[3] http://mediamatters.org/items/200806170009
[4] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/15/cnr.03.html
[5] Titus 1:15

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Brooks to the Rescue of the Reagan Myth

It seems that pundit and Republican apologist David Brooks could not sit idly by and listen to the truth about his hero Ronald Reagan. Because of the recent talk surrounding the Reagan visit to Mississippi to kick-off his campaign and its racist overtones, Mr. Brooks is trying once again to write revisionist history concerning “The Gipper”. I wrote an essay detailing this phenomenon called “Revisionist History”, it seems the Republicans have to keep the image of Reagan as the populist hero because of the damage done by the Bush clan. It explains why all of the candidates are falling all over themselves to be the “next Reagan”. So, needless to say his image must not be tarnished by a small little detail like the truth.

The current complaint of Brooks and other revisionists revolves around a speech Reagan gave to kick-off his presidential campaign following the Republican convention. The speech took place in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered just 16 years earlier. In the speech Reagan used the term “states rights” stating that, “I believe in states’ rights.” The term states’ rights has a long history in America and in the South particularly. States’ rights was the false justification used by the Confederacy to secede from the Union and to condone slavery.

The term "states' rights" has been used as a code word by defenders of segregation, and was the official name of the "Dixiecrat" party led by segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. George Wallace, the Alabama governor, who famously declared in his inaugural address, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!", later remarked that he should have said, "States' rights now! States' rights tomorrow! States' rights forever!" Wallace, however, claimed that segregation was but one issue symbolic of a larger struggle for states' rights; in that view, which historians dispute, his replacement of segregation with states' rights would be more of a clarification than a euphemism.[1]

Mr. Brooks would have us believe that Mr. Reagan and his campaign were unaware of these facts at the time of the scheduling of this stop or the location of the stop. For Mr. Brooks to make this claim is incredulous and completely dishonest, you would have had to be a moron not to know the implications of being in Philadelphia, Mississippi and making a statement concerning states’ rights. If there is one thing we do know the campaign staff for Reagan were no idiots, they carefully fashioned a brand that is still being used today as the standard bearer for Republican and conservative ideas. A brand that began with this speech and as we have gained more insight into the Reagan years it has become obvious that every speech, every movement was carefully choreographed. The idea that this was some campaign oversight or slip up flies in the face of reality.

In reality, Reagan strategists decided to spend the week following the 1980 Republican convention courting African-American votes. Reagan delivered a major address at the Urban League, visited Vernon Jordan in the hospital where he was recovering from gunshot wounds, toured the South Bronx and traveled to Chicago to meet with the editorial boards of Ebony and Jet magazines.

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.[2]

Based on his own argument Mr. Brooks makes the case that race played a major role in the rise of the Republican Party, so how did this rise take place? Why would millions of voters flock to a party that didn’t support their views concerning race? According to his article the goal of the Reagan campaign was to move away from the racists roots of the “Southern Strategy” begun by Nixon. I’m sorry you want to move away from racism by going to Mississippi and giving a speech on states’ rights the day your general election campaign begins, am I the only one who is missing something here? That would be like me trying to court the Hispanic vote by going to a rally given by the Minutemen declaring my support of native-born rights and then attending a Cinco de Mayo celebration the same day. How stupid do these people take us for?

Despite their attempts to whitewash history, the truth is that Reagan and his staff knew exactly what they were doing and it is borne out by the policies of his administration. Mr. Brooks states that Reagan could have done something wonderful that day by instead of supporting states’ rights he had said he supported civil rights, but imagine how that would have played with that crowd, so he didn’t. These brand preservers forget one tiny detail, we have a historical record of Mr. Reagan’s policies and legislative agenda and they contain outright pandering and inward support for racist policies. Has Mr. Brooks forgotten about South Africa and Bob Jones University? To have a serious debate it requires a certain amount of honesty, honesty that Mr. Books and his ilk refuse to display.

The Reagan brand is a myth and like all good myths it requires fabricators to keep it alive and flourishing. I can’t say that Reagan was a racist or he wasn’t; only God can know a man’s heart, but I can say that he supported policies that had racist overtones. Mr. Brooks calling a duck a chicken doesn’t make it one.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States'_rights
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09brooks.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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