The Difference Between Two Parties, Part II

In an earlier post, it was made clear that the Republican and Democratic Parties have clearly-delineated differences between them that separate the two. Though there are still many aspects of the two that are more or less the same - witness President Obama's continuation of Bush-era foreign policy as a good example - there are nonetheless fundamental differences at the core of each party.

One of these core, fundamental differences lies in each party's base. A party's base is the soul of the party. They are the ones who will support the party above all else, who strive to make it the best it can be. The ones who are among the very low percentage of Americans who vote in primaries or non-Presidential election years. The ones who are the most rigidly ideological - conservative or liberal. The base pushes the party either more to the Right or more to the Left, depending on how far the party strays.

It is common knowledge that both parties are actually composed of several factions that together combine to make up a coalition of moderate-to-center-right and moderate-to-center-left organized political bodies. History has shown this to be the case for much of the last 100 years, with most policy being compromises that end up squarely in the middle of the political spectrum.

This common knowledge is, however, completely false. Two moderate, pragmatic American political machines, one center-left and one center-right, have not existed as such for at least 40 years, if not longer. Much of this is due to the increasingly right-ward drift of the Republican Party, whose conservative wing now composes the majority of members and for all intents and purposes is the party. There are barely any liberal Republicans any more, and moderate Republicans have mostly been purged.

With the Republican Revolution in the mid-1990s, when they took control of the House for the first time in over 40 years, the party's conservative wing had finally won an enormous victory (if you discount the 12 years of Presidents Reagan and Bush). This was followed up by the eight-year reign of President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress, who managed to spectacularly fail in essentially every single thing they did. Such failure was always going to happen because the Republican Party had become a party of fanatical ideologues whose only goal it was to enact their pet conservative policies, regardless of whether these policies worked.

Decades of right-wing economic policies and many socially-conservative victories in Congress have substantially shifted the country to the Right. The United States is now one of the most unequal industrialized countries in the world, while also managing to be the lowest-taxed, least-regulated, and most-dependent upon fossil fuels. It is a country in which it has become increasingly complex and difficult to get an abortion, receive already scanty unemployment benefits, but where it is spectacularly easy to purchase and carry a firearm in public.

The immense failure of the Right's policies can be seen in the explosion of the deficit, the racking up of enormous amounts of debt, engaging in two illegal, unfunded wars that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and severely tarnished the nation's reputation abroad, the absolute financial collapse of Wall Street which nearly completely ruined the U.S. economy, and allowed health care costs to rise unaccountably high due to intense opposition to the one thing is known to bring it down - some form of universal, single-payer coverage.

That this failure of conservative ideology has resulted not only in denial of its failings, but in a doubling down of voting in even more conservative conservatives is rather astonishing. But it speaks to the power of the Republican Party's base, and how the party itself caters to it. Republican office-holders will do anything, anything, to appease their base. They will pledge to destroy the economy unless taxes are not raised. They will stand on principle to oppose a health care bill that will lower costs. They will go back on literally anything they have said in the past that might compromise them now - Orwell would be nodding his head - all in order to appease their base. They will do all this because they are absolutely terrified of their base. And they have good reason to be. Republican primary voters have shown that they will not tolerate those who they consider to be insufficiently conservative. So, Republicans constantly harangue each other as to who is the most conservative, who is the true conservative, etc. They do this not only because they have to, but because being conservative is a good thing.

In contrast to the Republican Party's base, the Democratic Party hates their base. With a passion. It should be noted that, though Democrats are usually thought of as "liberals", most Democrats are not self-identified liberals. A plurality of Democrats are liberal, with many moderates and a substantial amount of conservatives. The Democratic Party, then, still embodies the old notion of a center-left coalition. Even though most moderates share almost every single belief that liberals do, "moderate" Democratic politicians often find themselves ostracizing their liberal colleagues. This has resulted in many moderate and conservative Democrats embracing right-wing, conservative, Republican policies that have truly been terrible for the country. As a result, national policies have skewed to the Right for several decades.

Whenever there is a complaint about this rightward drift from the Democratic Party's base - that is, from liberals - the "mainstream", "moderate" Democratic politicians like to push back against them to prove how "serious" they are. Liberals are branded as "extremists" and their complaints are not accepted. And they can do this because they know that nothing will happen to them. Nothing at all. Whereas Republicans are terrified of their base, Democrats hate their base. Democrats will not vote out a politician for not being liberal enough or for doing something that the Democratic Party does not stand for.

How many Democrats lost their primaries to more liberal politicians after voting for the War in Iraq? How many Democrats lost their seats after voting for the Bush tax cuts, or for cutting welfare, or for supporting de-regulation. or for passing the PATRIOT Act, or for voting against gay marriage, or anything else that went directly against liberal principles? The Congressional Progressive Caucus did not stand as a group and vote down the Affordable Health Care Act for not providing a public option or single-payer mechanism like the Tea Party Republicans almost certainly would have done (though this may or may not have been a good thing).

While Republican presidential candidates argue about who is more conservative, you would be very hard-pressed to get a Democratic candidate to admit that they are liberals. Being liberal is a bad thing, you see. It means you aren't "serious", that you are "out of touch". Of course, being conservative means exactly the opposite. This hesitancy to embrace liberalism and the corresponding "hippie-punching" that the Democratic Party regularly engages in with its base is due to the acceptance of the status-quo by liberal party members who do not vote with their principles. By accepting the Democratic Party's embrace of illegal wars, illegal torture, deregulation, unconstitutional surveillance activities, interventionist, warmongering foreign policies, liberals are accepting the status-quo. By not voting to change policies to fit their own values, like conservatives do, liberals allow the American political spectrum to shift to the Right. Inevitably this leads to compromise between the center-right and the Right. This is a terrible choice that inevitably also leads to terrible policies.

Therein lies another major difference between the two parties. Republicans are afraid of their base, while Democrats hate theirs. This divergence among the die-hard ideologues of both parties has resulted in creating a shadow United States, one that is somehow still a superpower but that also is only a fraction of the greatness it has the potential to be. One way to shift the dialogue, shift the spectrum, shift the nature of policies, is for liberal Democrats to gain a voice, stand up, and vote their conscience. They must make the Democratic Party responsible and accountable. They must return the party to its core whence it has for several decades been fleeing.

Staring History in the Face

The crimes committed by National Socialism in World War II were undeniably horrific; the atrocities that occurred in Europe by German soldiers were so terrible, that for many years after 1945 it was very difficult for Germany to fully accept and admit to what had been done by their countrymen. It has only been relatively recently that the entirety of the barbarity of the Nazi regime has become unquestioned in German society; it was understandably difficult for ordinary Germans to accept the fact that the Nazi Party had had mass support and that millions of Germans from all backgrounds did terrible things with the military or could not possibly have been unaware of what was happening to the Jews of Europe. This aversion with the past is gone now. Germany has stared its history in the face and no longer blinks at what it sees.

The German term for this is Vergangenheitsbewältigung - coming to terms with the past. While it has taken many years for Germany to truly come to terms with its Nazi past, the same cannot be said for other countries.

The crimes of the Nazis were so terrible that other countries were able to place the blame for the bad things that happened in the war entirely upon them. So it was that Austria was able to, up through the 1990s, claim that it was the first victim of Hitler - this despite the fact that Nazi membership was disproportionately high among Austrians, Austrians were overrepresented in the SS, and one out of every two concentration camp guards was Austrian. Calling themselves the victim when they were in fact not allowed Austria to escape the kind of post-war punishment that Germany received, as well as the general taint of the Nazis in general.

The French for decades after World War II liked to claim that their Resistance was of mythological proportions, fighting against both the Germans and the hated Vichy regime, which was little more than a puppet government. Yet, the Germans had relatively few administrators in France during the war, meaning that the government was autonomous and legitimate, and regarded as such by the vast majority of French citizens. This inconvenient fact means that all of the Jews that France willingly transported to the concentration camps of the East was not actually at the behest of Germany but rather a willing collaboration on the part of a legitimate, racist French government. What the French still are having difficulty coming to terms with is the way they treated their non-white colonial African soldiers - and this while they were fighting a regime that itself was extremely racist.

This myth of resistance and scant collaboration was prevalent all over Europe until very, very recently. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans willingly participated in the systematic murder of innocent civilians - Jews, gypsies, ethnic minorities - but for most of the post-war years were able to blame this on the Nazis. Most of the resistance movements were not nearly as large as they were made out to be after the war, as well. Having a significant part of your countrymen participate in genocide and mass murder doesn't feel or sound too good for most people, as it should not. But ignoring or misconstruing these facts does humanity and each individual country a disservice. More importantly, it is a continuing slap in the face of the millions of innocent people who were killed in the war.

One of the many tragic aspects of the Holocaust was how little anyone did to stop it. In the 1930s and 1940s, Americans consistently showed concern for the fate of the Jews in Europe, yet supermajorities of the population at the same time refused to allow them to emigrate to the United States. Britain certainly knew about what was happening in Eastern Europe, yet did very little to do much about it. Before and after the war, Poles engaged in pogroms that killed Jews - and this in a country that saw millions of its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, systematically murdered while being treated as sub-humans by Nazi occupiers.

The United States, generally speaking, likes to look back on the Second World War as one of its finest hours. America was a beacon of liberty, fighting a barbaric racist regime so that Europe and the world could be free. While this noble war was being waged, President Roosevelt rounded up hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens, took them from their homes, and imprisoned them in camps - all because of who they were, not for what they had done. In the midst of fighting a country that had legalized discrimination, segregation, and racism, the United States itself had an entrenched system of legalized discrimination, segregation, and racism. The army was segregated until 1948; there was a legal, Constitutionally-upheld system that separated blacks from white society. Many of the American soldiers who fought to free Europe came back to a society that purposefully excluded an entire group of people for arbitrary reasons and did nothing to change it - Civil Rights legislation would only come some 20 years later.

While these uncomfortable truths are talked about in classrooms throughout the United States, they are almost never put into the context which they should be: that one country that practiced discriminatory and racist policies against a minority group was fighting against another country that practice discriminatory and racist policies against a minority group. And while the United States agreed that what was happening to Europe's Jews was unacceptable, they did nothing to stop it for years, while also continuing to oppress millions of their own citizens.

The Nazis are an easy scapegoat because they did indeed usher in humanity's darkest hour - they showed what we as humans are capable of, and it was terrible. But the Nazis' crimes should not excuse the crimes of others. It is right and just that Germany accepts the entirety of the actions of the Nazis, just as countries like France, Austria, and the United States needs to accept the uncomfortable truths buried in their pasts.

Anti-Semitism and racism was not unique to Germany or Europe - far from it. Recognizing and accepting this is one large step in making sure that the darker side of humanity never again resurfaces. We must all stare history in the face and not blink.

Der Mut, Weiterzugehen

Friedrich Nietzsche hat einst geschrieben: Was nicht tötet, härtet ab. Dieser Satz verkörpert etwas, das in jedem Mensch tief im Herzen liegt, aber nur, wenn man es orten kann.

Es gibt solche Zeiten während eines Lebens, in den man sich in einer unbeschreiblichen schwierigen Situation finden kann. Bei diesen Zeiten hat man zwei Auswähle - entweder aufzugeben oder weiterzugehen. Manchmal ist diese Entscheidung ganz leichter, einfach aufzugeben und den Schmerz hinter sich zu lassen. Aufzugeben bringt man zur Entscheidung, die vorher nie denkbar war. Das Undenkbar im Leben reisst so stark und mit soviel Macht das Herz mal ein, dass es besser oder leichter ist, das undenkbare nicht zu tun.

Einige der millionen ukrainer, die gestorben sind, als eine Hungersnot ihr Land langsam zerstört hat, gingen zum Friedhof, um in ihren selbstgebauteten Gräbern zu liegen, denn es war noch zuviel, das Leben fortzusetzen. Frauen, die vergewaltet oder zur Zwangsprostitution gebracht worden sind, versuchen sich das einzige Leben zu nehmen. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg haben Eltern manchmal ihre Kinder getötet, um Sie vor einer einmarschierenden Armee zu schutzen. Deprimierte Menschen, wenn Sie hoffnungslos sind und keinen anderen Ausweg erfinden kann, geben sich den einzigen Weg, an dem Sie glauben kann, den Schmerz zu halten. Und wie musste sich die Opfer der Nazis gefühlt, die in den Konzentrationlagern seit Jahren eingesperrt wurden? Eine Anlage, die die tiefesten Grausamkeit aller Menschheit gezeigt hatten.


Dieses Gefühl kommt ja auch nicht nur bei den gravierenden im Leben; die Tochter, die die Mutter vor einem Tag verloren hat, ist auch trostlos. Oder beim Verlust eines Haustieres. Viele homosexuellen Studenten, die in der Schule tyrannisiert werden, versuchen den Selbstmord zu schaffen. Man will manchmal den leichter oder schmerzlosen Weg nehmen. Bei solchen Zeiten muss man aber den Mut haben, noch einen Schritt zu nehmen.

Als Aron Ralston bei einem Bergsteigenzufall seinen eigenen Arm selbst amputieren musste, er zeigte etwas der Menschheit, das nur seltsam gesehen wird. Der japanische Mann, der auf seinem Hausdach für mehr als 4 Tagen gewohnt hat, nachdem den Tsunami, der sein Land übergestürmt hat und seine Frau entgenommen hat, der endlich gerettet wird, zeigt seine Menschheit. Die Juden und anderen Opfer der Nazi-Verbrechungen, die den Zweiten Weltkrieg und der Massenvernichtung des Holocausts überlebt hatten, zeigten dieses Menscheitsgefühl auch. Der Mensch, den dem Tod überlassen wurden, der zurück kommt und ein besseres Leben bildet, dient jeden wunderschönen Atem.


Es ist der Mut, weiterzugehen. Es ist das, das tief im Geist der Menschheit beerdigt ist. Was nicht tötet, härtet ab. Was wirkt unmöglich, ist nicht. Es gibt ja Zeiten im Leben, die die Menschengrenzen ausdehnen und man hoffnungslos machen können. Wenn man aber den Mut hat, weiterzugehen, versteht am Ende dieser Anreise, dass es besser geworden ist und kann immer besser werden.

I Know What I am, But What are You?

I am an idealist.

I am an elitist.

I am a historian.

I am a poet.

I am a naturist.

I am a romantic.

I am an empathizer.

I am of the Left (though it's not that black and white).

I am a naturist.

I am a pacifist.

I am the real-life physical embodiment of the fictional Eric Foreman.

I am a literaturist.

I am a (sometimes) unashamed hypocrite.

I am a converted urbanite.

I am a writer.

I am a monarchist (except when I am not).

I am a musician.

I am a monogamist.

I am anti-mainstream (though not on purpose, it just kind of worked out that way).

I am anti-totalitarianism, anti-fascism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination.

I am trilingual.

I am ideological (except when I am not).

I am privileged.

I am a punk-rocker, a stargazer, a headbanger, a singer-songwriter, a hip-hopper, and so much more.

I am an amateur astronomer.

I am a gamer (of all kinds).

I am an honorable man.

I am biased (except when I am not).

I am imperfect (and very aware of it).

I am an athlete and a competitor.

I am a brother, a son, a nephew, and a grandson.

I am a traveler.

I am a dreamer.

I am a carnivore.

I am anti-smoking (except when I am not).

I am pretentious (except when I am not).

I am awkward.

I am a humanist.

I am all of these things - what are you?

The Decade of Boston

With the Boston Bruins' win over the Vancouver Canucks in Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, the city of Boston celebrated the seventh professional championship title in a span of only 10 years. The years of 2001 to 2011 were the Decade of Boston. No other city in the United States can claim anything remotely similar to what Boston has been able to celebrate over the past decade. Here, a tribute to the unparalleled sporting success of Boston.

The Boston Red Sox - 2004 and 2007 World Series Champions
The Red Sox ended an 86-year drought without a World Series win in 2004, after an incredible playoff run that culminated in an epic 7-game series win over their hated rival, the New York Yankees - who at one point in the series were up 3 games to 0 in the series.

The New England Patriots - 2001, 2003, and 2004 Super Bowl Champions
The Patriots were the best team in the NFL for years - period. They were simply untouchable.

The Boston Celtics - 2008 NBA Champions
The Celtics, with the help of the trio of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and and Ray Allen, brought the storied franchise its old glory back with the first NBA title since the Larry Bird era of the 1980s.

The Boston Bruins - 2011 Stanley Cup Champions
The Bruins caused an enormous upset over the hometown favorite Vancouver Canucks, bringing Boston its first Stanley Cup in over 30 years and prolonging Vancouver's title drought.

The Liberal Seduction; or, the Abandonment of a Party's Soul

In the 2010 New York State gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo won over 60% of the vote in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2 to 1. That this happened in an election year which saw massive gains for the Republican Party was not in itself terribly surprising; after all, New York has reliably voted for the Democrats in Presidential elections for decades and the state Assembly has been controlled by the Democratic Party for over 35 years in a row.

Governor Cuomo's father, Mario, was also a Democratic governor of New York in the 1980s and early 1990s. Mario Cuomo was an outspoken and proud liberal, and his time in office reflected that. He governed at a time when, nationally, the political atmosphere was very much in the camp of Republican, conservative values. As such, his policies and overwhelming popularity of the time could be interpreted as a liberal and Democratic rebuke to the federal policies of the Reagan administration, which would pursue policies that led to increased inequality, homelessness, and poverty. Just as in the 1980s, the election of a liberal Democrat to serve as governor of a state of 20 million people could show that there were viable, progressive alternatives to the right-wing policies en vogue at the national level.

The only problem with this narrative is that Andrew Cuomo has not governed as a liberal; rather, he has governed as a mainstream, "serious" Democrat. This breed of the Democratic Party calls itself centrist but in reality is center-right. Generally speaking, the traditional American political spectrum for decades was that of two large, Big Tent parties, both of which were coalitions ranging from the center-left to moderate for the Democrats and center-right to moderate for the Republicans. The past 30 years has seen a shift in this paradigm, however, as the Republican Party has moved ever farther to the right, and much of the Democratic Party has shifted along with them. In doing so, they have abandoned the core, fundamental soul of their party and betrayed those whose interests they most need to represent.

Governor Cuomo exemplifies this mainstream Democratic strand. He embodies the "centrist" Democrats who have been nominated for president since Michael Dukakis in 1988 showed that true liberals had become laughingstocks, unable to be elected. President Clinton, a Southern Democrat, attempted health care reform, tried to allow homosexuals to openly serve in the military, slightly raised taxes on the rich, and presided over a period of economic expansion for the United States. All of these things were generally applauded by the liberal base of the Democratic Party. What the liberals did not care about was the fact that his economic policies were, in certain crucial areas, to the right of Nixon. Clinton campaigned on "ending welfare" as we know it, and his approval of a bill that did just that was a huge step forward in the conservative assault against the already-meager social safety net in America. His deregulation of the financial sector was a major cause of the financial calamity that would engulf the United States several years later. He did nothing much, as a Democratic president, to reduce inequality or enact any other liberal policies of substance. But he remained a popular president, especially among liberal, because of the rare treats he threw to the Left.

Governor Cuomo's policies reflect this type of Democratic politician. His single greatest achievement so far must be considered the passage of a gay marriage bill, which made New York the biggest state by far to enact such legislation and in the process effectively assured his re-election due to the importance of this issue to the liberal base of his party. To be sure, this is a significant and welcome milestone of progress in American society. His efforts in getting it through the Republican-controlled Senate are to be given the highest commendations.

This one admittedly outstanding success serves to gloss over the other conservative, right-wing policies that he has enacted. While calling himself a "progressive who is broke", Governor Cuomo was faced with a rather large budget deficit and unable to borrow money to help pay for it. He refused, however, to extend a surtax on millionaires that was favored by the Democratic-controlled Assembly and would have covered almost a quarter of the multi-billion dollar shortfall in the budget. Instead, Cuomo has presided over mass layoffs of state employees, huge cuts in funding to public education, and prolonged fights with labor unions over issues such as collective bargaining and health care. He has supported the use of fracking in Upstate New York after declaring it unsafe for New York City (if it's unsafe for one area, why would it be safe for another?). He has enacted a mandate relief bill that was originally a passionately conservative idea and has been proven to be ineffective.

When Cuomo was running for office, he did not especially seek out the help of the Democratic Party's most consistent and loyal supporters: labor unions. Of course, this did not matter - who were they going to vote for, the Republican? It remains to be seen what the final effect of his cuts to social, health care, and education spending will be - but the important point is that his draconian fiscal measures fully encapsulate the ideology of the party that the vast majority of New Yorkers did not vote for.


Now, Governor Cuomo will be able to achieve a second term as governor with ease and, if he seeks it, can be a viable candidate for president in 2016. He will be re-elected as governor because he passed a gay marriage law. That this is such an important piece of legislation to liberal supporters, as well as the fact that there are only a handful of states (all in the Northeast) that have passed such laws, means that it is a landmark piece of legislation that will effectively dominate any summary of his tenure for the next several years. There will be little discussion of his atrocious budgetary decisions or that these decisions would have been almost identical to a Republican governor's. Even if there were such a discussion, who should the millions of Democratic voters elect, then? They won't vote for a Republican who is even further to the right than Cuomo. There is in actuality, no real good choice for voters.

This is a result of the Democratic Party's abandonment of its soul. There will also not be an issue made of the governor's fiscal policies among liberals, and that is the liberal seduction.

The Democratic Party, as an alleged party of the Left, is supposed to stand for the excluded of society; racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities, women, organized labor, the poor, the forgotten. Representing the Other means enacting policies that improve their condition and stand for what they stand for. This translates to social progress, but also should result in economic policies that reduce inequality, strengthen the safety net, and generally give a viable, progressive alternative to that of the Right. There are becoming fewer and fewer Democrats who embody this duality of social and economic liberalism, and fewer and fewer liberals who will make this something politically accountable to the politicians who no longer act in such a way.

Governor Cuomo can become Presidential Candidate Cuomo in 2016 (and he could win, too); for the Left, he can say "I passed a gay marriage law"; for the so-called middle, he can say "I reformed health care, worked with both parties, and made hard decisions that were necessary to New York on a path to fiscal security"; and for the Right, he can say "I passed a budget ahead of schedule, without raising taxes, in New York!" By showing favorable sides of himself to the Left, Right, and Center, Cuomo would be a formidable candidate in the Democratic primaries and the general election. His is such a good template for success that Maryland governor Martin O'Malley is now also going to attempt to pass a gay marriage law in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans.

This is the template of the modern day, mainstream, centrist, "serious" Democrat. The safety net is an entitlement program that can and should be tweaked (read: shredded). Universal health care is a pipe dream. Taxes are bad. Cutting education funding is a responsible decision. Labor unions are nice fundraisers, but let's face it, they're on the decline and they have to be realistic. Even illegal, malicious, unjust, preemptive war is acceptable (the number of prominent Democrats, many of whom were considered "liberal", who voted for the Iraq War Resolution is too many to count). It's important that the middle class is strong (but no substantial steps are taken to bolster them). Women should have the right to choose whether to have an abortion, the riff-raff should stay out of areas where decent people do their business (what have "serious" Democrats done about the prison industrial complex? What about improving the lives of the millions of impoverished and oppressed minority population?) and at the same time, we need to ensure that business, Wall Street, and the wealthiest campaign donors enjoy the good life, above everything else and even at the expense of everyone else.

The United States needs and deserves viable choices and alternatives when choosing for whom to vote. The Democratic Party's abandonment of their historic core ideals too often make this choice a false one for Americans. America needs a bold, robust, viable progressive alternative to the policies of the Right. The Democratic Party must fulfill this need, and come up with a 21st-century New Deal, a 21st-century Fair Deal, a 21st-century Great Society. The void of the past 35 years has been deafening; now is the time for the Left to roar.

The Puzzling Triumph of Right-Wing Economics

In the decades following the end of World War Two, industrialized countries' embraced left-wing socio-political concepts and embarked upon ambitious social-democratic agendas: taxes on the wealthy rose, unions grew larger and stronger, things like health care and education became universalized, and in many cases large segments of the economy - like banking, natural resources, transportation, etc. - were put under control of the state, or at least regulated fairly rigorously.

In the United States, Harry Truman's Fair Deal and Lyndon Johnson's expansion of the welfare state and Civil Rights legislation led to the longest, most sustained economic boom in the nation's history. At a time when taxes on the wealthy were the highest they'd ever been, union strength was stronger than ever, America was the most prosperous. wealthiest country in the world. This prosperity was largely shared by everyone; wages for the top and bottom rose from 1945 to 1970, and the middle class was robust.

European countries, notably Scandinavia, Germany, France, and Britain, also experienced huge economic growth. Britain's Labour Party enacted universal health care and created a large social safety net, while taking control of the coal and railroad industries for public use. Social-Democratic parties in Scandinavia were almost always in power, and they used the post-war economic boom to ensure that all of their citizens would enjoy free and universal health care, education, strong labor laws that created high-paying, stable jobs and lasting, well-endowed pensions.

At the expense of the wealthiest citizens and big businesses, and to the chagrin of economic liberals and corporations, the vast majority of society in these countries were able to enjoy some of the best years of prosperity that Europe and North America had not seen for decades.

But then in 1970s and 1980s, things changed; the public sector was deemed too large, deficits too severe to maintain such a system. These countries' governments were too large and clunky to be competitive in an international marketplace. The tax burden was too high, unions had too much power, and business was being stifled by burdensome regulation.

The answer, said conservatives and the Right, was to radically alter the economy from a socialist-inspired, leftist, closed economy to one that would promote "liberty" and "freedom".

Low taxes, low spending, privatization, deregulation, weakening of unions, free-trade, free-markets, reduced pensions and benefits: these were the solutions to the terrible problems Keynesian and left-wing economics had produced over the past 30 years.

So the shackles came off. Business was unleashed, and economic freedom was pursued so that all could enjoy the prosperity that was sure to come.

Led by neoliberals like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, massive tax cuts were enacted, coupled with privatization of formerly-state industries and the reduction in the power of unions. Free-trade deals were signed, banks, businesses, and corporations saw their regulations shredded.

In the United States, Wall Street was treated with a "hands-off" approach, culminating in the efforts of Democratic President Bill Clinton, who repealed the New Deal-era banking regulations that had largely averted massive economic crises. Corporate taxes were lowered to foster competition. Capital gains were taxed at a lower rate so that investment could grow. President George W. Bush enacted two of the most massive tax cuts in the history of the country at a time when the U.S. had experienced its first few years of budget surpluses in decades.

The result of all these policies, with all the wishes and promises of the Right, has been a complete and utter failure. Deregulation of the financial sector directly led to the most morally indignant, self-induced, criminal economic crises since the Great Depression - to the cost of trillions upon trillions of taxpayer money and the loss of millions of jobs.

While corporate profits have soared, the average wage for middle-class Americans has barely moved. Income inequality is at the highest its been for 80 years, and millions of citizens are in poverty. Unions have become decimated, but this has not led to any kind of stability in the private sector, or a reduction in budget deficits either at the state or federal level. Thousands of Americans die every year because they cannot afford health insurance to pay for the care they need. Yet the chances of the U.S. receiving a universal health care system any time in the near future is incredibly low.

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher's anti-union, pro-free-market, neoliberal reforms massively increased inequality. Tony Blair's "Third Way" economic policies did nothing to correct this, despite being a part of a Labour government that was supposed to work in the interests of the working class.

Germany's Social Democratic Party enacted right-wing labor market reforms that were supposed to halve unemployment; while unemployment did go down, millions of people now work full-time but don't earn enough money to live out of poverty and millions more are forced to receive welfare - the exact opposite of what the SPD had said would happen.

Since the end of the colonial era, many African, Latin American, and South American countries have been desperately short of cash with which to spur their economy, build infrastructure, and develop their state. In stepped organizations like the IMF and the World Bank, who loaned millions and billions of dollars to these countries, but only on the condition that they enact neoliberal reforms. The result has been crippling, unfair, immoral debt for many Third World countries; free-trade has allowed multinational corporations to take profits from those developing countries and deprive African peoples' natural resources from them; a shocking and indefensible transfer of wealth from the poorest countries on earth to the richest ones has taken place.

Now that the utter failure of right-wing economics has been exposed - and by almost all measures, they have not worked the way they were promised to -, and with the world economy laying in ruins because of these policies, almost every single government in the industrialized world is sticking with their neoliberal economic paradigm. Even supposed Social-democratic parties have almost entirely embraced this right-wing system, becoming increasingly less of a truly viable alternative to mainstream conservative parties.

It seems as though, in the face of this failure, industrialized countries are doubling down on the veracity of this narrative. People like British Prime Minister David Cameron and conservative parties like the Republicans in the U.S. are acting as though government spending and huge budget deficits caused this financial crisis, when they are largely simply the result. In order to fix the mess that neoliberal, right-wing economic policies created, the solution is to do even more of them!

So it is that millions of people must face severe, draconian cuts in social spending - there goes health care, pension benefits, education funding, and infrastructure improvements. They are told that they must d0 more with less, because....well, because they just have to.

But why must the only answer be austerity? Why is the "natural" solution to reduce government, to reduce unions, to reduce pensions, to reduce spending? How is it, that after such an obvious and upsetting upbraid to the dogmatic mantra of economic liberalism, that right-wing economic policies are not only being implemented, but are the only types of policies even seriously being discussed?

No one is forcing David Cameron's Conservative Party to proceed on the course they are; they simply have different priorities about how to proceed with governing the country.

That is essentially it: a matter of priorities. For 35 years, European and American governments have been run by financial elites, businessmen, and members of a peculiarly fiscally conservative clique who have enacted policies that their ideology tells them will benefit everyone. It hasn't worked, and only a small percentage of society has benefited; of course, those who enacted these policies just so happen to also be the ones who have benefited the most.

This group is telling society that these cuts, these policies, will be painful but must take place and will eventually pay off. But why does the pain have to be felt by those who least deserve to feel it?

Would it be just as painful to end corporate welfare? To close tax loopholes? To strengthen labor unions? To enhance the safety net? It would be - but for different people. And that is all the difference. As long as the industrial economy's engine is the corporation and Big Business, so too will fiscal policies be neoliberal and inadequate. Growth will be slow, life will be harder for most people, but everyone will be told it is the only way.

But it doesn't have to be.

The Unacknowledged Shame of Slavery in America

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Excoriating National Socialism's Defilement of Germany

For too many people, when they think about Germany the first thing they think of are Nazis, the Holocaust, fascism, and World War II. This is understandable, considering the monumental destruction the National Socialist regime execrated on humanity that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. But for many of these people, the modern, industrialized, economic heavyweight, European country of Germany is equated only with the fascist criminals who carried out crimes against humanity in the name of Germandom.

This equating all of Germany with the Nazis is ubiquitous; the notion of collective guilt is one that was prevalent in the Allied camp after the atrocities of the Hitlerite regime became fully known. Every German citizen who has lived and died since 1945 has born the weight of guilt on their shoulders and felt, constantly sitting in the back of their mind, the acknowledgement that it was their country, their soldiers, their fellow Germans who pursued such abominable paths that led to the destruction of countless lives and the almost-annihilation of Europe's Jewish population.

These atrocities - Your fault!

This is something vitally important for Germans growing up today to be aware of; though they may only be 15, or 20, or 30, and have had nothing at all to do with the crimes of the past, they are told in explicit detail and are never allowed to forget for one moment the horrific atrocities the racists who led their country committed. And they should be aware of these facts.

But the Germany of today, and the Germany that was around before the fascist dictatorship, is not the National Socialist Worker's Party. The fact that this stain upon the nation will never be gone is the enduring and terrible legacy of the darkest chapter in human history.

The Nazis have forever defiled Germany.

The National Socialist regime were composed of extremists, right-wing fanatics, racists, fascists, authoritarians, gangsters, criminals, and terrorists. These people ruled the country, waged war, oppressed entire civilizations, and committed the heinous act of genocide in the name of Germany. But they were not Germany.

A majority of German voters in 1933 voted for parties other than the NSDAP, which is often overlooked. They illegally and undemocratically seized power after they were unable to obtain the necessary parliamentary majority. A democratic country became a dictatorship that would ruin the essence of everything it touched.

The dictatorship outlawed other parties. Opposition delegates to the Reichstag were murdered shortly after the election. Non-members of the party were forced from their jobs, their homes, their country. Opponents to the regime were oppressed and murdered. The press was censored. There were no elections. The Gestapo turned the nation into a police state. A brutal war was waged against millions of people that resulted in countless innocent lives destroyed, and everywhere experienced death, misery, and destruction.

The Jews became the target of a racist, authoritarian, purposeful, cold-blooded, state-led campaign of terror, persecution, and extermination. Millions of people, from Germany, Poland, Russia, France, and elsewhere across the continent, were singled-out for annihilation.

Six million human beings were taken by other alleged human beings from their homes, their families, their countries. Six million human beings were forced to live in disgusting, disease-ridden, walled-in ghettos. Six million Jews were rounded up, stuffed into trains, and brought to isolated hell-holes so that they could be systematically degraded, debased, abused, oppressed, and exterminated. The very depths of evil were culled forth by the fascist dictatorship's leaders to bring about such a nefarious and unimaginable horror that was the Holocaust genocide.

Another six million human beings were likewise murdered for belonging to the wrong political party, having a non-fascist opinion, for being homosexual, homeless, mentally-retarded, disabled, or having the wrong skin color, name, or background.

This totalitarian regime was not made up of Germans, or humans. When Berlin was being ravaged and torn down, with millions dead already, the leadership of the NSDAP kept fighting. Though it meant that children and teenagers were sent to die in a battle they could not win, and that millions of civilians would be killed, the leaders of the dictatorship did not care. They did not care about the German people. They were ruthless, bloodthirsty, tyrannical gangsters, thugs, criminals, and despots. Their terrible legacy lives on, as it should, as a reminder of the evils of fascism and the depths to which humanity once sank.

But the stain of the Nazis should not smear the true Germany: the Germany of the millions who voted against the fascists; the millions of the German Resistance who fought against them and tried to stop their takeover, their crimes, their oppression; the too-few Christians who protected persecuted Jews.

The true Germany is that of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Hoffmann, and Hegel;

of Immanuel Kant, Heinrich von Kleist, Johann Gottlieb Fichte;

of Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, and Theodor Fontane;

of Albert Einstein, Max Weber, Alexander von Humboldt, Max Planck;

of Manfred von Ardenne, Karl Benz, Christian Doppler, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit;

of Friedrich Nietzsche, Caspar David Friedrich, Arthur Schopenhauer;

of Franz Stuck, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann.

This is the true Germany. The Germany of literature, art, philosophy, and science. The attempted genocide of Europe's Jews, and the denigration of the contributions that Germany's Jews had made to their country, irrevocably turned German-Jews away from their former homeland, as it should have. As Peter Gay, a historian who fled Germany when he was still young, has explained - he cannot consider himself German, or feel comfortable ever stepping foot in the country of his birth again due to the crimes committed by the fascists and the acceptance of these crimes by much of the population.

This is Germany's shame. This is the result of the Nazi dictatorship. The Nazis destroyed their own culture, ruined their own cities, and murdered their own citizens. National Socialism defiled Germany, its culture, its history, and its future. The crimes of the past should never be forgotten, or pushed aside. But they should not define the nation.

Lessons from Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations

The effects and implications of Scottish economist Adam Smith's magnificent 1776 opus, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, dramatically influenced European thought and continue to be felt through to the current day.

The Wealth of Nations was a piece of comparative economic history; as its title suggests, Smith sought to determine the root causes of what makes any country wealthy. By wealth, he didn't just mean the upper crust, the aristocracy, the elites. Rather, he sought to discover what determined how all of society could become wealthy, and he was mainly interested in why England in particular had become wealthy.

Adam Smith was a liberal in the classical sense - he helped develop the set of beliefs that came to be known as political and economic liberalism. Though it has been several centuries since he put pen to paper to write down his thoughts, Smith's liberal ideas and the foundation they created carry on through to today, in varying forms such as neoliberalism and libertarianism.

His belief in economic liberalism - free markets, reduced regulation, free trade - helped spur a general trend in Europe that eventually spread around the world to influence the entire industrialized world. Modern libertarians' obsession with the so-called "invisible hand" stems from Smith's economic ideas, though it may surprise them to know that this term was only mentioned once in the book.

One would get a rather different view of the advantages and disadvantages of the free market if one were to actually read The Wealth of Nations or simply hear about it from people who didn't actually read it. The leading economic strain en vogue right now in many countries is neoliberalism, one of whose tenets is a belief that the market is self-regulating because of the actions of the "invisible hand" - that is, in the pursuit of self-interest (profit), businesses' decisions will benefit the rest of society.

Yes, Adam Smith believed that self-interest benefits the rest of society because humans have a unique need to cooperate with each other by bartering or trading; by pursuing self-interested goals, humans tend to specialize in those things that they are good at and thereby tend to offer up services and trades to everyone that would not have been possible without this multiplicity of talents and specialization.

But in contrast, however, to the uncritical, blind faith modern libertarians, neoliberals, and so-called free-market parties (like Germany's FDP, Canada's Conservative Party, and the Republican Party) place in the invisible hand's ability to regulate industry and the market, Smith realized the inherent weaknesses of this ideology.

He posed the question of why England had become so wealthy, while other countries such as Spain had not. England had a national government that had created the institutional frameworks, such as a rule of law and a system of canals, necessary to promote, protect, and sustain the market economy. Smithian liberalism posited that government intervention in the market economy was necessary and vital to keep competition alive, dissuade monopolies, and ensure that the benefits of trade could reach all of society. In other words, the market is not self-regulating and the government is necessary to ensure stability and prosperity for all.

For the "wealth of nations" was just that - the riches accrued by a country should benefit all citizens of that country. For, by enriching everyone, the nation as a whole is better off. In the same manner of thought, Smith believed that the wealth of other nations benefited England; if the United States wanted to trade with France and Spain and not just with England, then all parties would benefit because of it.

It was this mode of thinking that led Adam Smith to his support for the American Revolution, free trade, universal and free public education, and his arguments against imperialism, protectionism, and slavery. Smith would have hated the concept of "Buy American" or the nativist attitude of Americans toward the rising stock of China's economy.

Smith's arguments can be extrapolated in different ways. Indeed, they have been extrapolated by fundamentalist libertarians and conservative political parties to pursue policies that have benefited only a small segment of society while maintaing the status quo for millions of people; that have given multinational corporations free reign to harm the environment, infringe upon human rights, and maintain abhorrent levels of poverty around the world; de-fanged regulations that destabilized the market economy and saw an amassing of financial institutions into fewer and fewer hands; and that have generally led to the economic and social stagnation of the vast majority of society.

This is not to say that Adam Smith was some kind of proto-communist; he firmly believed in free trade, and that the free market was the most efficient and natural way of conducting a nation's economy. The point is that Adam Smith was able to see the innate deficiencies of a market economy and actively promoted ideas that would enhance the prosperity of all citizens while maintaining what he believed to be the liberty of the economic system. This is one of the lessons that Adam Smith can teach us.

The slavish devotion to the "invisible hand", "free-market principles", the belief that markets self-correct, that corporations can regulate themselves, the contradictory promotion of protectionist policies: these all are twisted extrapolations of the classical liberal economic and political doctrines that Adam Smith helped develop that, were they to be followed through to their logical conclusion, would result in devastation for the vast majority of society and the world in which we live.

Republicans are Authoritarian Corporate Fascists

Professor Bob Altemeyer from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, has spent several decades scientifically studying authoritarianism. The findings of his life's work were published in the 2006 book The Authoritarians, and is available in its entirety for free.

What he has through his years of research discovered - who authoritarian followers are, what their characteristics are, how they act, how they think, why they think and act the way they do - explains the roots of fascism and authoritarianism in a way that many will find helpful. His conclusions also describe the current state of the Republican Party and most of its followers.

Altemeyer's research deals mostly with the followers of authoritarians; those who submit to their authorities. Right-wing authoritarians show a high degree of submission to the perceived legitimate authority figures in their society, high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities, and are highly conventional, adhering to traditions and social norms endorsed by society and authority figures while believing that the rest of society should as well. Most right-wing authoritarians are conservative, though they can also be politically on the left (think Stalinist-era Communist Party cadres).

The Right-wing Authoritarian Scale has been developed to determine how authoritarian a person is. Most people who take the test admit to a certain amount of submissiveness to authorities: people follow traffic laws, for example. Right-wing authoritarians, however, submit on a far greater scale, and will do so regardless of whether what their leader is doing is evil, corrupt, undemocratic, unprincipled, or dishonest. Conservatives and Republicans tend to scale much, much higher on this scale than most other Americans. Republicans, no matter where they were from or at what level of government, were much less diverse in their responses than Democrats.


Right-wing authoritarians display high levels of hostility towards any "out groups" that their authorities tell them they are against (an "us versus them" mentality); this can be seen in Republicans' marked anti-homosexuality stance, fervent anti-immigrant and anti-minority legislations, and their religious devotion to the Constitution - which does not stop them from curtailing sacred and inalienable rights with policies such as the PATRIOT Act.

This hostility towards the out group is also remarkable in that they approve of authorities who attack members of the out group, despite any crimes the authority figure may have committed. People showing this trait are also unable to display normal levels of empathy, to "go a mile in someone else's shoes" - Republicans have no sympathy for those who have fallen on bad times through no fault of their own and are virulently against any form of universal health care.

Right-wing authoritarians share a strong sense of group loyalty and cohesion, are more likely to be fundamentally religious (thereby also being extremely prejudiced), trust leaders who cannot and should not be trusted despite evidence to the contrary (Richard Nixon, George W. Bush), do not hold authority figures accountable for crimes, and accept illegal abuses of power by government authorities (the PATRIOT Act, legislation discriminating against minorities and immigrants).

Authoritarians cannot draw logical conclusions based on evidence. They hold many contradictory ideas at the same time in their head, use double standards, accept insufficient evidence to support their beliefs, and believe fully without questioning what their leaders tell them.

Authoritarians are dogmatic, hypocritical, oppressors who abuse their power when they have it to dominate others and inflame inter-group conflict. They are self-righteous, do no believe in any of their own failings, and embrace religion as a way of masking their guilt while sustaining this self-righteousness.

All of these traits of authoritarianism can be seen in the modern Republican Party and their followers.

Authoritarian conservatives believed more firmly and for a longer time than most other Americans the egregious lies that the Bush administration spread about Saddam Hussein's connections to the September 11 terrorist attacks and the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Republicans claim to believe in small government and the Constitution, yet while in power they massively expanded the government and infringed upon the inalienable rights of millions of Americans in flagrant violation of these so-called beliefs. Though they nominally should believe in the Constitutional right that every citizen shall not be put to cruel or unusual punishment, conservatives had no problem when the Bush administration sanctioned torture, arrested citizens without trial, repealed habeas corpus, or turned the country into a police state. Conservative authoritarian followers unflinchingly followed George W. Bush, and the Republican Party single-mindedly pursued a dogmatically authoritarian track while in power.

The Republican Party and its base are constantly in fear of those who are not like them: Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, gays, atheists. They believe these "others" to have a sinister, nefarious plan to deliberately destroy the country - just see some of what they have had to say about the first president of non-European descent.

Republicans cannot accept the legitimacy of a Democratic president. Conservatives believe, because they were told so by their authorities, that Obama is a terrorist, a Muslim, that he hates America, that he is a Communist and that he used massive voter fraud and a biased media to cheat a win out of the 2008 Presidential election.

The Republican Party, its members, representatives, and most of its followers are authoritarians. The traits that distinguish them as such blend as well into fascism - an undemocratic ideology that believes in devotion to a strong leader, aggressive nationalism, suppression of others, and the right to engage in violent war to secure its safety.

Republicans are nationalistic, ethnocentric, glorify and exalt the military, reject any measure to increase equality, oppress those who are not like themselves, and stop at nothing, no matter how undemocratic, to rout their political enemies and gain power. Republican lawmakers who exhibit exceptionally high authoritarian tendencies and display one of the above-mentioned fascist ideological traits are likely to rise up through the party; the same cannot be said for Democrats.

The Republicans' hatred of democracy is well-documented:

-in the 2000 Presidential election, there were multiple cases of crimes by Republicans that effectively disenfranchised thousands of African Americans in the hotly-contested state of Florida, allowing nominee George W. Bush to be awarded the state's electoral votes by the conservative Supreme Court in an unprecedented decision that, for the first time in the entire history of the country, was told would count for this one instance;

-in 2004, Republican lawmakers held an open vote in the House of Representatives for over three hours (the mandated limit is 20 minutes) in order to threaten enough other members to vote for a bill that added billions of dollars to the national deficit;

-the democratically-elected Democratic majority in the United States Senate was unable to pass any legislation or appoint any person due to the undermining of democracy that is embodied in the filibuster as used by Republicans

-Republican-controlled state legislatures all over the country are pursuing policies that adversely affect and disenfranchise African-Americans, Latinos, students, and immigrants - all of whom tend to vote for Democrats.

-in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature, lawmakers flagrantly violated laws in order to pass an anti-union law that they did not campaign on; in the aftermath, a contest for Supreme Court was awarded to the conservative after a county clerk in a heavily-Republican district made a "mistake" in miscounting over 7,000 votes that happened to hand the victory to the Republican.

The Republican Party is the party of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Afghanistan, McCarthyism, the PATRIOT Act, multiple sex scandals, Savings and Loans, and the Committee on Un-American Activites; the party that massively increased the nation's debt and then used it to hold the country hostage several times for partisan political gain.

The modern Republican Party cares exclusively about the corporations that run the economy and the super-rich plutocracy who benefit from their economic policies. They will do all in their power to maintain and enhance their corporate overlords, including holding the American and global economies hostage to preserve the favored status in tax brackets of the world's most well-endowed businesses and oligarchs.

Republicans have shown almost no interest in curtailing the pervasive and outrageous influence that corporate money presses upon American politics; on the contrary, they have embraced it, thereby undermining democracy even further.

This is despite clear evidence showing that the American economy was at its strongest when taxes on the rich were at their highest, savings from tax cuts are much more likely to be saved than spent by the wealthy, the United States is the least-taxed industrialized country in the world, and that corporate profits are higher than ever but they are not now and do not usually create that many jobs. But facts and evidence don't matter to the authoritarian, slavish devotion to their ideology does.

The Republican Party is a monolithic, extreme right-wing, antidemocratic, ideologically driven authoritarian, corporate, and fascist political organization.

They are not interested in governing, nor compromise. They exist solely to gain political power at any cost and to destroy their political opponents, while worsening the oppressive socio-economic power relations that keep all minorities - religious, ethnic, racial - excluded from the upper echelons of society in the richest country in the world. And they are dangerously close to gaining control of the levers of power of the richest, most powerful country in the world.

Very Attractive Men