The Plot Against Liberal America

Conservatives don't want to debate, they want to destroy their opposition.

The most cherished dream of conservative Washington is that liberalism can somehow be defeated, finally and irreversibly, in the way that armies are beaten and pests are exterminated. Electoral victories by Republicans are just part of the story. The larger vision is of a future in which liberalism is physically barred from the control room -- of an "end of history" in which taxes and onerous regulation will never be allowed to threaten the fortunes private individuals make for themselves. This is the longing behind the former White House aide Karl Rove's talk of "permanent majority" and, 20 years previously, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's declaration to the Republican convention that it's "the job of all revolutions to make permanent their gains."

When I first moved to contemplate this peculiar utopian vision, I was struck by its apparent futility. What I did not understand was that beating liberal ideas was not the goal. The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism irrelevant not by debating, but by erasing it. Building a majority coalition has always been a part of the program, and conservatives have enjoyed remarkable success at it for more than 30 years. But winning elections was not a bid for permanence by itself. It was only a means.

read full article: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/95372/the_plot_against_liberal_america/

Which, during the last age of colonialism & empire, the people didn't have.

There have ALWAYS been neanderthals trying to turn back the clock and keep the masses in check. They will have their victories but they will never obliterate liberals or liberal thought.

And, last time I checked, Republicans weren't exactly in style anymore in this country. Neither is the Taliban. Neither is witch-burning. The hell with them.

and relocated to the Halliburtons and Pfizers, the Constitution becomes irrelevant. That is the actual purpose of the current international trade agreements--not enhanced trade, but a grab of the natural monopolies, like utilities and railroads, which have been a large part of the power of the commons, and the hand-cuffing of the ability of national gov'ts to regulate in the public interest by redefining regulation as "unfair trade".

You speak the truth.

Welcome to the sane asylum, aka DU.

they really had their utopia? What kind of Hell their world would really be like? The paranoia of anyone not of their own group. The inhumanity against all others. Anarchy. After a time they would be reduced to throwing rocks & wood spears at each other because of the total collapse of civilization.

would write a short story (very short for the conservativ4e attention span!) of a day in the Republican Utopia...the one where liberalism has been killed off and they've achieved all their goals.
It might scare a few of these idiots who keep voting for repubs not realizing what the conservative agenda really is.

Everything's falling apart, the world is polluted 'cause nobody cares any more, a facist but ultimately ineffective government is "in power" but the actual power rests in armed gangs. There's plenty of kids, though, just with the infant mortality rate of Somalia

They don't understand how the structure underneath it all works and then even if all of the "rest" become mere peasants, they would still insist on tea and crumpets on the veranda.

It's like the French Aristocracy before the guillotine fell. Clueless. Totally clueless.

kinda like us.

elections will continue to be stolen; NO CHANGES made in machines/voting methods.

Don't expect anything different this time around.

and that is from an atheist!

(ie. fascist) goals and an important read for those who want to retain the Republic in any meaningful way. The horrific aspect of this is that though they seem to have the ability to relocate power from national, representative governments to interlocking mega-corporations (going by what they've achieved so far--supra-national banking structures, the much less representative European Trade Union, the redefinition of national regulation of industry as "unfair trade", the wholesale ability to steal elections, the privatization of natural monopolies, media consolidation and corporatization, the privatization of armies), their dreams of controlling untold wealth can never be realized because in the process they are destroying the middle class that is almost the entire market demand necessary for the maintainance of wealth. In other words, they've shown that they can grab the whole pie for themselves, but by doing so they're dramatically shrinking the pie.

The impulse that drives this is a kind of lizard-brain cancer of male dominance. "I don't care if I have less, as long as I (defined as my select group) am the only one who can have things and everyone else has to beg me for scraps." At this point I can hear a subset of DUers saying, "So Marx was right and capitalism is leading to an intolerable consolidation of wealth which will inevitably bring on the revolution resulting in the ownership of the means of production by the workers. I'll just sit back and let everything play out for the best."

History doesn't support that prediction. For the most part, fascism, including the consolidation of wealth, has almost always led to more fascism, sometimes to a crash in the standard of living lasting for centuries--a Dark Age. With the extent of our planet's overpopulation, and the knife-edge of environmental catastrophe on which we're teetering, the level of destruction and suffering resulting when our more reasonable and enlightened structures have completely lost control, is hard to imagine. It is in this context that I feel such desperation when I see Obama's complete lack of understanding of the global "trade" agreements (he thinks they're about trade), and his apparent belief that the ultra-powerful both can be placated, and are superior to, smarter than, those who want power widely distributed. I may be wrong, but I see progressivism as more than a nicer sort of politics. I see it as our species' only hope.

not just to keep electing the less awful candidate from a worse and worse pool to a weaker and weaker gov't: A good FIRST step is to impeach an administration that makes a policy of violating the Constitution and to establish election integrity. A good SECOND step would be to repeal those provisions of the current "trade" agreements that override national laws. A good THIRD step would be to take steps against the current consolidation of the media and re-instate the Fairness Doctrine, to allow non-corporatist voices and opinions on MSM.

Core issues like universal healthcare, economic justice, and ending wars for capitalist expansion will gain no traction without winning the above structural victories, no matter their popular appeal. Without those structural changes, as soon as progressives approach success on issues, a corporatist MSM will erode popular support, and/or neocons will find a way of spending/stealing enough that it could be claimed that these measures are unaffordable.

So insistence on support for the structural changes must be a prerequisite to be backed by progressives.

Wish I could recommend your post!