Saturday, September 19, 2009
The fringe is putting progress at risk
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Colleen Redman
Redman is a writer from Floyd.
As an independent who votes Democratic because the party represents my views on women's rights, civil rights, labor rights and the environment better than its counterparts, I often disagree with my Republican friends but can understand and respect their conservative views. What I can't understand (and what I have only disdain for) are the far-right extremist Republicans who are making bizarre comparisons of President Obama to Hitler (and essentially making a mockery of the Holocaust atrocities).
I don't understand how any working American who accepts Medicaid, Social Security, government disability, the role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government functions can then make the leap to believing that Obama's proposed public option for health care is a form of socialism or fascism. If Obama is a Hitler in this context, so are the rest of the leaders of the free world whose governments all provide health care to their citizens.
Do taxpayers who oppose a public option understand that they are already picking up the tab for emergency room visits of the uninsured? Do they realize that a public option would force insurance companies to be more fair and affordable and could provide a step to improving our country's health care system rated by the World Health Organization as only 37th in the world?
As a Baby Boomer who as a child pledged allegiance to the flag next to a picture of President Eisenhower, I find it hard to understand how some schools would decline to show Obama's address to school children in which he was encouraging them to stay in school and work hard. And when I heard that fringe groups and right-wing radio personalities referred to the address as indoctrination into Obama Youth Corps, it was hard to keep a straight face.
I think it's ironic that President Bush supporters blame Obama for the deficits that Bush created and that they loudly complain to Obama about bailouts that began under Bush's presidency. Even more ironic is that so many Americans accepted a war promoted by the Bush administration under false premises at the cost of many thousands of lives but are suspicious and adamantly against health care reform designed to improve and save lives.
When I witness a member of Congress shout "You lie!" to Obama during a presidential address to the nation, I worry that the Rush Limbaughs of the world have infected our country's institutions and traditions with their bully tactics. When Sarah Palin makes the ludicrous claim that Obama's health care plans could lead to death panels to decide who will live or die, I fear that the paranoid politics of Joseph McCarthy -- whose lies and witch hunts in the 1950s spread hate and ruined the lives of many innocents -- is on the rise again.
I recently heard NPR's Terri Gross interview Max Blumenthal about his new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." The documentary filmmaker and author, who has been covering the Christian right for the past six years, says that right-wing extremists have reduced the big tent party of Eisenhower to a one-ring circus. He exposes those responsible for leading the characterization of Obama as Hitler or Stalin and reveals that many of those parroting it didn't know the difference between fascism and communism, saying "the goal is to paint Obama as a totalitarian, secret communist, fascist, terrorist, Muslim" and whatever they can come up with to delegitimize him and mobilize opposition against him.
In other words, spread lies.
Blumenthal pointed out the irony of leveling Hitler/Stalin rhetoric at the centrist, consensus-building Obama, especially considering that one of the extreme right's inspirations, R.J. Rushdoony, has "advocated replacing the U.S. Constitution and secular government with a totalitarian theocracy in which disobedient children, adulterers, witches, abortion doctors, women who receive abortions, etc., would all be executed."
Posing a mostly rhetorical question, Blumenthal asked, "When one side is completely hysterical, conspiratorial and is leveling baseless attacks, should it be taken seriously?" Later in the interview, he answered that question saying that the extreme rhetoric of the right-wing fringe is going to become mainstream if the Republican Party echoes it and Fox News and right-wing radio shows provide a megaphone for it.
Meanwhile our country is currently facing a convergence of some of the biggest challenges in modern history. The lies about Obama and those who are spreading them exasperate those challenges by threatening the integrity of our country and putting its progress at risk.
