http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-why-cant-the-us-learn-to-love-its-government-1816868.html

Rupert Cornwell: Why can't the US learn to love its government?

Out of America: Suspicion of rulers dates to the founding of the nation – and even Obama is unlikely to change that

The passions the measure has generated among its Republican opponents have been remarkable. One Republican Congresswoman has declared that health reform was a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism, while John Boehner, the party's leader in the House, urged the protesters to join Republicans in "defending our freedom".

A neutral observer would not know whether to laugh or cry at this so-called "Super Bowl of Freedom", featuring inter alia a giant banner describing the proposals as "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945". Yes, the tea-party movement, currently touring the country, contains more than its share of cranks and nutters. But the fringes, too, can express political truths. This particular truth is that Americans just can't bring themselves to love government.

When President Barack Obama came to power, the stage seemed set for government activism unmatched in decades. The parallels with the early 1930s were palpable. Talk of a second Great Depression was everywhere, economists were urging a "new New Deal", Franklin Roosevelt was suddenly back in fashion. Nine months on, however, the urgency seems to have vanished. And why this cooling of reformist ardour? True, the economy has improved (though not by much, as evidenced by the news that unemployment last month rose to 10.2 per cent, the highest level in a quarter of a century.) The huge deficits being run up by Washington are also legitimate cause for concern. A more important reason though is America's ancestral suspicion of government.

The governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia last week, in which Mr Obama's Democrats were soundly defeated, were largely local affairs. But in so far as they sent a message to the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, the message was plain: slow down, the voters said, don't force change down the people's throats. With a young and charismatic President who won power by promising change, it's easy to forget that the US is a conservative country. Mr Obama triumphed in 2008 not by harnessing a vast tide of liberalism, but by persuading the wavering centre that he was a better bet than another four years of discredited Republican policies. In Virginia and New Jersey, exit polls showed, the centrists (moderates, independents, call them what you will) changed their minds and decided to put on the brakes.

A fascinating Gallup survey last month found that despite the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008, fully 40 per cent of Americans, more than ever, describe themselves as conservative, while 36 per cent call themselves moderates. Only 20 per cent are avowed liberals. It's not a question of government having failed the country. It's just that Americans aren't comfortable with the beast when its role, as now, threatens to expand – even when the deficiencies of the unfettered free market have never been more glaring.

Mr Obama secured his record-breaking $787bn stimulus package last February, albeit with virtually no Republican support. But that might be it. Yes, the House will probably pass a version of healthcare reform, but the measure could yet founder in the Senate, where party discipline is weaker, and a 60 per cent majority is required to pass anything of significance. If it does fail, it will basically be for fear that the reform amounts to a "government takeover of healthcare". The most contentious part of the bill is the "public option" – whereby a publicly financed scheme would be set up to provide some competition to rapacious private insurers. But that option now hardly dares speak its name. Leading Democrats prefer to speak of a "consumer option".

And health care is but one of three massive public policy issues on the table, beside a green energy programme to combat climate change, and regulation of the financial markets, aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's crisis. But there's no guarantee any of them will get through. For Europeans, all three would be no-brainers: assured health coverage for all (or rather almost all), steps to reduce both pollution and imports of costly foreign oil, and curbs on the excesses of Wall Street. Not so in the US – because each implies a substantial increase in the role of government.

And it has been ever thus. Suspicion of government is as old as the Republic. The movement that turned up on Capitol Hill again last week takes its name, of course, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Americans like to see their War of Independence as a revolution against government – back then the far-away government in London that taxed the colonies without allowing them representation – and the habit has never died.

These days, one thing unites every presidential candidate: a readiness to denounce the federal government in Washington and all its works. That the candidate in question might have made a long and comfortable career in that den of corruption and iniquity makes not a scrap of difference. Usually – as now – the sentiment works to the advantage of Republicans, but not always. Sometimes, the beneficiary can be a genuine outsider like the eccentric Texan businessman Ross Perot, who in 1992 came closer to winning the White House than any independent in 80 years. Sometimes it takes on the hyperbolic aspect of the tea-party crowd, and last summer's raucous town-hall protests against health reform. And on occasion it spills over into tragedy, into the raw hatred of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

No one is more aware of how distrust of government is part of America's collective political DNA than Mr Obama. Whether he can tame it is another matter.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/productivity-soars-as-us-on-the-mend/story-e6frg926-1225794888461

Meantime, the number of US workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell by more than expected last week to its lowest level since the start of the year, data from the Labour Department showed.

Non-farm business labour productivity rose by an annual rate of 9.5 per cent in the July-to-September period as the economy recovered and employers saved money by slashing staff. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a 7.0 per cent increase in third-quarter productivity.

A rise in productivity is ultimately good for companies, workers and the economy. More productive companies have greater profits, which allow them to pay higher wages. That also allows the economy to grow faster without generating inflation.

But during a difficult time for the economy, a short-term productivity rise can be a sign that companies slash workers faster that they cut output. In other words, stretching existing workers means hiring fewer new ones.

Still, economic recoveries have in the past generally followed a consistent pattern: first productivity grows, then employment rises, and finally wages increase.

Over the past few weeks, economic data have continued to show that the worst recession since the Great Depression appears to be winding down, with clear improvements in manufacturing and the housing sector.

Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity, rose by an annualised 3.5 per cent in the third quarter as the US government's massive stimulus plan boosted consumer spending.

"Message to the Fed: subdued inflation trends it is," said Jonathan Basile, economist at Credit Suisse, in comments on the two latest economic reports.

In its declaration that interest rates would remain near zero for "an extended period," the Federal Reserve yesterday included new qualifiers explaining the conditions that would justify keeping rates low: "low rates of resource utilisation, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations."

The Fed voted to maintain the target federal-funds rate for interbank lending at a record-low range of zero to 0.25 per cent to bolster the fragile economic recovery.

Productivity is defined as output per hours worked. It rose 6.9 per cent in the second quarter of the year, revised up from a previously estimated increase of 6.6 per cent.

A key gauge of inflationary pressures within the productivity report plunged. Unit labour costs fell 5.2 per cent last quarter at an annual rate. Economists had expected a 4.5 per cent decline.

"Modest unit labour costs indicate that there are few short-term worries about inflation," said Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics.

Big productivity gains are common at the end of a recession or beginning of a recovery. But the increases come at the expense of jobs.

The US employment report for October, out tomorrow (AEDT), is expected to show that the jobless rate stayed close to a 26-year high of 9.8 per cent in September.

In a separate report, the Labour Department said new claims for jobless benefits decreased by 20,000 to 512,000 in the week ended October 31. That is the lowest level since January 3. The previous week's level was revised to 532,000.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a decrease of only 5000 claims.

The four-week moving average of new claims, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, fell by 3000 to 523,750 from the previous week's revised figure of 526,750. That is the lowest level since January 10.

Initial claims still remain at a fairly high level, suggesting the job market has a long recovery ahead.

But some economists still see positive signs in the recent decreases in the four-week-moving average, and the latest 20,000 decrease in initial claims also may suggest an improvement in labour conditions.

My neighbour DoctorD recently had a thoughtful post on where conservatism was heading in the U.S. He also linked to the following article on the Becker-Posner blog on the same theme, which I thought said it all very well.

May 10, 2009

Is the Conservative Movement Losing Steam? Posner

I sense intellectual deterioration of the once-vital conservative movement in the United States. As I shall explain, this may be a testament to its success.

Until the late 1960s (when I was in my late twenties), I was barely conscious of the existence of a conservative movement. It was obscure and marginal, symbolized by figures like Barry Goldwater (slaughtered by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election), Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, and William Buckley--figures who had no appeal for me. More powerful conservative thinkers, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and other distinguished conservative economists, such as George Stigler, were on the scene, but were not well known outside the economics profession.

The domestic disorder of the late 1960s, the excesses of Johnson's "Great Society," significant advances in the economics of antitrust and regulation, the "stagflation" of the 1970s, and the belief (which turned out to be mistaken) that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War--all these developments stimulated the growth of a varied and vibrant conservative movement, which finally achieved electoral success with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981. The movement included the free-market economics associated with the "Chicago School" (and therefore deregulation, privatization, monetarism, low taxes, and a rejection of Keynesian macroeconomics), "neoconservatism" in the sense of a strong military and a rejection of liberal internationalism, and cultural conservatism, involving respect for traditional values, resistance to feminism and affirmative action, and a tough line on crime.

The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement. But there were signs that it had not only already peaked, but was beginning to decline. Leading conservative intellectual figures grew old and died (Friedman, Hayek, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Buckley, etc.) and others as they aged became silent or less active (such as Robert Bork, Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb), and their successors lacked equivalent public prominence, as conservatism grew strident and populist.

By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of "originalism," the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004.

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

And then came the financial crash last September and the ensuing depression. These unanticipated and shocking events have exposed significant analytical weaknesses in core beliefs of conservative economists concerning the business cycle and the macroeconomy generally. Friedmanite monetarism and the efficient-market theory of finance have taken some sharp hits, and there is renewed respect for the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Kenyes, a conservatives' bête noire.

There are signs and portents of liberal excess in the policies and plans of the new administration. There will thus be plenty of targets for informed conservative critique. At this writing, however, the conservative movement is at its lowest ebb since 1964. But with this cardinal difference: the movement has so far succeeded in shifting the center of American politics and social thought that it can rest, for at least a little while, on its laurels.

It has been noted that the richest 1% of the American population owns as much as the combined wealth of the bottom 90%.

So let’s think about that. The U.S. is a democracy, right? So everyone is equal. Wrong. If you’re one of the 90% you are not equal to those in the 1%. You just don’t have the power that they do; power to impose your wishes on others through manipulation of the mass media; power to manipulate legislators; and power to manipulate the justice system. Like it or not, little guy, that’s the way it is.

It is an inconvenient truth that when it comes to matters that threaten your physical survival, such as ability to afford health insurance, you’re right behind the eight ball. You don’t have the ability to influence Fox News and other “news” outlets. You don’t have the ability to pay big bucks to lobby (bribe) the legislators. And you don’t have the money to take on health insurance companies when they drop you from their plan because you are costing them money.

So what to make of all those little guys who defend such an unequal system? I mean those so-called conservatives in the 90% who speak for those true conservatives who make up the 1%.  I’ve been observing them here on Vox. No, this isn’t another anti conservative rant. It’s an attempt to understand just why someone would defend a system that clearly doesn’t work in their interests. A typical conservative here on Vox would believe the following. Note I say typical. I know that not all conservatives hold to all of these views. I'd still venture to say that these views are typical of the millions who are avid viewers of Glenn Beck:

1. Liberals are all stupid.
2. Climate change is a fallacy.
3. Evolution is another such fallacy. 
4. Christianity is the one true religion.
5. Unions are bad.
6. The Health Care system in the U.S. is the best in the world, and needs no change.
7. The U.S. is entitled to enforce its will on every other country in the world.
8. Barack Obama is a Communist/ socialist/ fascist.
9. Fox News is the only true and informed news source.
10. Government cannot be entrusted with anything except the security of the country. (Yes, I know…)

Notice anything about that list? Yes, that’s right. Those listed items all benefit the top 1% at the expense of the bottom 90%. Not true you say? Let’s look at the list again.

1. If liberals are all stupid, then that implies that all conservatives are smart. And who are the real conservatives? Why, those 1%. They don’t want anything to change. They’re doing very well thank you. A lot better than those in the 90% who do their bidding and call themselves conservatives.
2. Climate change? Say that another way. Profit change. And anything that threatens profits must be resisted. That is conservative holy writ. Profits are sacrosanct, even if survival of life on the planet isn't.
   
3. A belief in evolution must not be allowed to flourish. Why? Because a belief in evolution threatens the very foundations of religion, a religion that has served a useful purpose for centuries in keeping the masses in line by threatening eternal damnation if they step out of line.
   
4. Christianity is seen as just another tool to enslave the minds of the masses. That is why the Republicans encourage conservative political propaganda by Pentecostal church pastors. And which political party is the favourite of the 1%?
   
5. Organised labour represents a threat to profits, and as such must be resisted, preferably destroyed..
6. As health insurance is tied to employment, this is an additional weapon to use to keep employees in line. The combined threat of loss of income together with loss of health insurance is a double whammy that will make an employee even more beholden.
   
7. American imperialism? More profits. This was illustrated by Rupert Murdoch’s outrageous (Oil will be $20 a barrel) reason for the Iraq invasion. You see, little guys, you’re not a person to the 1%. You’re a number. You’re a means to increasing the wealth of the 1%. That’s all. And if your life is lost in pursuing that wealth then that is of no consequence. The 1% still get to live out their lives in comfort. They don't fight wars. That's for you.
   
8. The election of Barack Obama frightened the living daylights out of the 1%. That a black man from the wrong side of the tracks could become the most powerful man in the world represents a clear threat to their power. So, it is imperative to them that his presidency is a failure, no matter the risks entailed in following such a self destructive course. The 90% must be "educated" that all power, both political and economic, must reside in the 1%. That the authority of the President of the United States is trashed in the process, and may bring the whole house tumbling down, is either a risk they are prepared to take, or they are so consumed by their hatred that they are blinded to it.
9. Fox News follows the conservative think tank agenda faithfully, together with the likes of Freedom Works. Rush Limbaugh and other well paid conservative mouthpieces spread the message on radio. And that message? What is good for the 1% is good for the 90%. And so the 40,000 who die each year because of lack of access to health care continue to die. No matter, some conservative Social Darwinist will have an answer for that too. They have an answer for anything that they perceive as a threat to their interests.
10. So, little guy, if you don’t have the power to stand up to that 1%, who does? A Government attuned to your interests, that’s who. So that is why the conservative narrative is so shrill about “getting government out of my life”. The 1% want to maintain their privileged position. That is why they finance conservative think tanks, Freedom Works, and Fox News. So they can continue to screw you, including the mindless zombies who cheer them on.
    

So, where to from here? The way I see it is that your only chance is to make government a true representative of the people. I think Michael Moore has something with his 15 things that you can do now. I think it is a call to arms that you have had enough. You’ve had enough of conservatives distorting the public debate through their diversionary tactics designed to stifle debate on the real issues. You've had enough of mindless stooges, incapable of thinking for themselves, parroting the latest Beck inanity. You have had enough of politicians who pretend to speak for the people, and yet truly speak for the 1%. If they don’t speak for you, then boot them out regardless of party, race or creed. It’s time for you to adopt the conservative catch cry of “taking back your country”. Only this time it will be a country for the 90%, and not the 1% the conservatives speak for.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/world/143465/oil_tycoon%3A_our_troops_died_..._we%27re_%22entitled%22_to_sweet_contracts_in_iraq!

After all that, it looks like the Iraqis are cutting some big deals to develop their massive oil wealth -- but with the mushy Europeans and the damn Chi-coms!

Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told a Washington conference on Wednesday that his government was happy with the energy auction it held earlier this year. The auction was the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

BP and the Chinese oil company CNPC were the only firms to win a contract in Iraq's bid round this summer, the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Seven other oil and gas fields failed to attract bidders on the terms Iraq offered.

But a consortium headed by Italy's ENI (ENI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) said last week it signed a deal to develop the giant Zubair field for a remuneration fee of $2 a barrel. At Iraq's oilfield auction in June, the consortium refused to go below $4.40 a barrel.

Another consortium headed by Exxon is still in the running for one project, but that doesn't mollify hedge-fund gazillionaire -- and natural gas honcho -- T-Boone Pickens. He's none-too-happy:

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

[...]

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

[...]

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

Nothing new -- In August T-Boone called on the administration to "demand" oil contracts from Iraq before considering a withdrawal ($$). But it is an unusually brazen admission that many energy bigs did in fact consider "blood-for-oil" to be a straightforward deal.

http://www.alternet.org/story/142754/bill_moyers%3A_conservative_radicals_and_the_politics_of_vengeance?page=entire

Bill Moyers: Conservative Radicals and the Politics of Vengeance

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted September 21, 2009.

Editor's note: In the following interview, Bill Moyers and powerhouse NYT editor and author of "The Death of Conservatism Sam Tanenhaus discuss the last gasps of the conservative movement. Tanenhaus says that far from signifying a resurgence of conservative ideals, the Tea Party protesters and shock jocks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh spell the doom of the conservative movement. The interview starts with some scenes from journalist Max Blumenthal's video of last weekend's right-wing protests in Washington. Check out the video, which features exclusive footage of the Tea Party protesters that swarmed the Capitol, at the end of this article. 

BILL MOYERS: Conservatives were out in force in Washington last weekend. They had come to express their opposition to big government, to taxes and wasteful spending, and health care reform they fear would lead to a nightmare of bureaucracy. Max Blumenthal, author of REPUBLICAN GOMORRAH waded into their midst to sample opinions. 

MAX BLUMENTHAL: So you're saying if the government eliminates Social Security and Medicare then you'll get out of the program? 

WOMAN: No, I said if they get out of my life. 

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Out of your Social Security and- 

WOMAN: No, out of everything. 

BILL MOYERS: But they had also come to deplore and denounce President Obama- in their minds a tyrant akin to Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. 

MAN: I'm afraid he's going to do what Hitler could never do and that's destroy the United States of America. 

MAX BLUMENTHAL: And what's the Obama revolution, what's going to happen? 

MAN: Similar to Germany, like what Hitler did. He took over the auto industry, did he not? He took over the banking, did he not? And Hitler had his own personal secret service police, Acorn is an extension of that. 

BILL MOYERS: They had found a new hero in Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican whose shout heard 'round the world was now the rallying cry of the weekend. 

CROWD: You lie! You lie! 

BILL MOYERS: Glenn Beck, their favorite pundit, had promoted this march and was reveling in its success. 

GLENN BECK: This is a collection of Americans who but want both parties to stop with the corruption, stop with the spending and start listening to the people. Fox's Griff Jenkins is there now in Washington D.C., hey Griff. 

GRIFF JENKINS: Glenn its unbelievable, thousands and thousands of people, look at this crowd right there. Do you guys have something you want to say to Glenn Beck? 

BILL MOYERS: Watching those protestors you would have to say there's a lot of fight left on the Right, and you wouldn't be wrong. This rising tide of populist resistance to Obama, the anger over the massive government bailout of Wall Street and big failed corporations, have raised Republican hopes for a comeback. And it has Democrats scratching their head wondering how to respond. 

So what do we make of this new book titled THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM? Has the author Sam Tanenhaus spent his time and considerable talent on a premature obituary? 

Sam Tanenhaus edits two of the most influential sections of the Sunday NEW YORK TIMES - the Book Review and the Week in Review. He's has had a long fascination with conservatives and conservative ideas. He wrote this acclaimed biography of Whittaker Chambers, the journalist who spied for the Russians before he became fiercely anti-communist and a hero to conservatives. Now Tanenhaus is working on a biography of the conservative icon William F. Buckley JR. 

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL, Sam Tanenhaus. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Oh my pleasure to be here, Bill. 

BILL MOYERS: So, if you're right about the decline and death of conservatism, who are all those people we see on television? 

SAM TANENHAUS: I'm afraid they're radicals. Conservatism has been divided for a long time -- this is what my book describes narratively -- between two strains. What I call realism and revanchism. We're seeing the revanchist side. 

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean revanchism? 

SAM TANENHAUS: I mean a politics that's based on the idea that America has been taken away from its true owners, and they have to restore and reclaim it. They have to conquer the territory that's been taken from them. Revanchism really comes from the French word for 'revenge.' It's a politics of vengeance. 

And this is a strong strain in modern conservatism. Like the 19th Century nationalists who wanted to recover parts of their country that foreign nations had invaded and occupied, these radical people on the right, and they include intellectuals and the kinds of personalities we're seeing on television and radio, and also to some extent people marching in the streets, think America has gotten away from them. Theirs is a politics of reclamation and restoration. Give it back to us. What we sometimes forget is that the last five presidential elections Democrats won pluralities in four of them. The only time the Republicans have won, in recent memory, was when George Bush was re-elected by the narrowest margin in modern history, for a sitting president. So, what this means is that, yes, conservatism, what I think of, as a radical form of conservatism, is highly organized. We're seeing it now-- they are ideologically in lockstep. They agree about almost everything, and they have an orthodoxy that governs their worldview and their view of politics. So, they are able to make incursions. And at times when liberals, Democrats, and moderate Republicans are uncertain where to go, yes, this group will be out in front, very organized, and dominate our conversation. 

BILL MOYERS: What gives them their certainty? You know, your hero of the 18th Century, Burke, Edmund Burke, warned against extremism and dogmatic orthodoxy. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, it's a very deep strain in our politics, Bill. Some of our great historians like Richard Hofstadter and Garry Wills have written about this. If you go back to the foundations of our Republic, first of all, we have two documents, "creedal documents" they're sometimes called, more or less at war with one another. The Declaration of Independence says one thing and the Constitution says another. 

BILL MOYERS: The Declaration says-- 

SAM TANENHAUS: …says that we will be an egalitarian society in which all rights will be available to one and all, and the Constitution creates a complex political system that stops that change from happening. So, there's a clash right at the beginning. Now, what we've seen is that certain groups among us-- and sometimes it's been the left-- have been able to dominate the conversation and transform politics into a kind of theater. And that's what we're seeing now. 

BILL MOYERS: When you see these people in the theater of television, you call them the insurrectionists, in your book, what do you think motivates them? 

SAM TANENHAUS: One of the interesting developments in our politics, in just the past few months, although you could see signs of it earlier, is the emergence of the demographic we always overlook in our youth obsessed culture: the elderly. That was the group that did not support Barack Obama. They voted for John McCain. It was also the group that rose up and defied George W. Bush, when he wanted to add private Social Scurity accounts. It was a similar kind of protest. 

BILL MOYERS: There's a paradox there, right? I mean, they say they're against government and yet the majority of Americans, according to all the polls, don't want their government touched. You know, there were people at these town hall meetings this summer, saying "Don't touch my Medicare." You know, keep the government out of my Social Security. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Yes. This is an interesting argument. Because it's very easy to mock, and we see this a lot. "Oh, these fools. These old codgers say the government won't take my Medicare away. Don't know Medicare is a government program?" That's not really what's going on, I think. I think there's something different. A sense about how both the left and the right grew skeptical of Great Society programs under Lyndon Johnson, and the argument was everyone was becoming a kind of client or ward of the state. That we've become a nation of patron/client relationships. And a colleague of yours, Richard Goodwin, very brilliant political thinker, in 1967 warned, "We all expect too much from government." We expect it to create all the jobs. We expect it to rescue the economy. To fight the wars. To give us a good life". So, when people say, "Don't take my Medicare away," what they really mean is, "We're entirely dependent on this government and we're afraid they'll take one thing away that we've gotten used to and replace it with something that won't be so good. And there's nothing we can do about it. We're powerless before the very guardian that protects us." 

BILL MOYERS: So, how do you see this contradiction playing out in the health care debate? Where what's the dominant force that's going to prevail here at the end? Is it going to be, "We want reform and we want the government involved?" Or are we going to privatize it the way people on the conservative side want to do? The insurance companies, the drug companies, all of that? 

SAM TANENHAUS: I think what we'll see is a kind of incremental reform. Look, we know that health care has become the third rail of American politics, going back to Theodore Roosevelt. The greatest retail politician in modern history, Bill Clinton, could not sell it. But here's another thing to think about. In the book I discuss one of the most interesting political theories of the modern era, Samuel Lubell's theory of the solar system of politics. And what he says is what we think of as an equally balanced, two-party system, is really a rotating one-party system. Either the Republicans or Democrats have ruled since the Civil War for periods of some 30-36 years. And in those periods, all the great debates have occurred within a single party. So, if you go back to the 1980s, which some would say was the peak of the modern conservative period, the fight's about how to end the Cold War, how to unleash market forces-- were really Republican issues. 

Today, when we look at the great questions -- how to stimulate the economy, how to provide and expand and improve a sustainable health care system, the fight is taking place among Democrats. So, in a sense what Republicans have done is to put themselves on the sidelines. They've vacated the field and left it to the other party, the Democratic Party, to resolve these issues among themselves. That's one reason I think conservatism is in trouble. 

BILL MOYERS: You write in here that they're not simply in retreat, they're outmoded. They don't act like it, you know? 

SAM TANENHAUS: They do and they don't. What I also say in the book is that the voices are louder than ever. And I wrote that back in March. Already we were hearing the furies on the right. Remember, there was a movement within the Republican Party, finally scotched, to actually rename the Democrats, "The Democrat Socialist Party." This started from the beginning. So, the noise is there. William Buckley has a wonderful expression. He says, "The pyrotechnicians and noise-makers have always been there on the right." I think we're hearing more of that than we are serious ideological, philosophical discussion about conservatism. 

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain the fact that the news agenda today is driven by Fox News, talk radio, and the blogosphere. Why are those organs of information and/or propaganda so powerful? 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, there's been a transformation of the conservative establishment. And this has been going on for some time. The foundations of modern conservatism, the great thinkers, were actually ex-communists, many of them. Whittaker Chambers, the subject of my biography. The great, brilliant thinker, James Burnham. A less known but equally brilliant figure, Willmoore Kendall, who was a mentor, oddly enough, to both William Buckley and Garry Wills. These were the original thinkers. And they were essentially philosophical in their outlook. Now, there are conservative intellectuals, but we don't think of them as conservative anymore-- Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukayama, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Lind, the great Columbia professor, Mark Lilla-- they've all left the movement. And so, it's become dominated instead by very monotonic, theatrically impressive voices and faces. 

BILL MOYERS: Well, what does it say that a tradition that begins with Edmund Burke, the great political thinker of his time, moves on over the years, the decades, to William Buckley, and now the icon is Rush Limbaugh? 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, in my interpretation it means that it's ideologically depleted. That what we're seeing now and hearing are the noise-makers in Buckley's phrase. There's a very important incident described in this book that occurred in 1965, when the John Birch Society, an organization these new Americanist groups resemble -- the ones who are marching in Washington and holding tea parties. Essentially, very extremist revanchist groups that view politics in a conspiratorial way. 

And the John Birch Society during the peak of the Cold War struggle was convinced, and you're well aware of this, that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent, who reported to his brother Milton, and 80 percent of the government was dominated by Communists. Communists were in charge of American education, American health care. They were fluoridating the water to weaken our brains. All of this happened. And at first, Buckley and his fellow intellectuals at NATIONAL REVIEW indulged this. They said, "You know what? Their arguments are absurd, but they believe in the right things. They're anti-communists. And they're helping our movement." 

Cause many of them helped Barry Goldwater get nominated in 1964. And then in 1965, Buckley said, "Enough." Buckley himself had matured politically. He'd run for Mayor of New York. He'd seen how politics really worked. And he said, "We can't allow ourselves to be discredited by our own fringe." So, he turned over his own magazine to a denunciation of the John Birch Society. More important, the columns he wrote denouncing what he called its "drivel" were circulated in advance to three of the great conservative Republicans of the day, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Senator John Tower, from your home state of Texas, and Tower read them on the floor of Congress into the Congressional record. In other words, the intellectual and political leaders of the right drew a line. And that's what we may not see if we don't have that kind of leadership on the right now. 

BILL MOYERS: To what extent is race an irritant here? Because, you know, I was in that era of the '60s, I was deeply troubled as we moved on to try to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by William Buckley's seeming embrace of white supremacy. It seemed to me to taint-- to leave something in the DNA of the modern conservative movement that is still there. 

SAM TANENHAUS: It is. And one of the few regrets Bill Buckley ever expressed was that his magazine had not supported the Civil Rights Act-- 

BILL MOYERS: Really? 

SAM TANENHAUS: …but you may remember that in the late '70s, he supported a national holiday for Martin Luther King-- 

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, I remember that. 

SAM TANENHAUS: …where someone like John McCain did not. I once heard Buckley give a lecture -- brilliant lecture in New York City -- about the late '90s in which he talked about the importance of religion in American civil life. And it was Martin Luther King who was the object. 

BILL MOYERS: What changed him? I mean, because he was writing in the National Review about, endorsing the White Supremacy scheme of the country at that time. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, he actually did that, Bill, a little bit earlier. 

BILL MOYERS: '50s? 

SAM TANENHAUS: '50s. He did more of it. In the early '60s, even a great thinker and writer like Garry Wills, who was still a part of the "National Review," though he supported the civil rights movement, thought it might weaken the institutional structures of society, if it became too fervent a protest. Now, what the Republican Party did was to make a very shrewd political calculation. A kind of Faustian bargain with the South. That the southern whites who resisted civil rights legislation-- and as you know, Lyndon Johnson knew, when he signed those bills into law, he might lose the solid south as it had been called, the Democrats might lose them for a generation or more. And yes, the Republicans moved right in, and they did it on the basis of a state's rights argument. Now, however convincing or unconvincing that was, it's important to acknowledge that Republicans never-- conservatives, I should say, northern Republicans are different-- but conservatives within the Republican Party, because the two were once not, you know, identical-- thought that a hierarchical society and a kind of racial difference-- a sense of racial difference, established institutionally, was not so bad a thing.

They were wrong. They were dead wrong. But that sense of animus is absolutely strong today. Look who some of the great protestors are against Barack Obama. Three of them come from South Carolina, the state that led the secession. Joe Wilson and Senator DeMint, Mark Sanford who got in trouble. These are South Carolinians. And there's no question that that side of the insurrectionist South remains in our politics. 

BILL MOYERS: When you heard Joe Wilson shout out, "You lie," and you saw who it was, did you think "the voice of conservatism today"? 

SAM TANENHAUS: No. I thought "This man needs to read his Edmund Burke." Edmund Burke gave us the phrase "civil society." Now, people can be confused about that. It doesn't mean we have to be nice to each other all the time. Bill Buckley was not nice to his political opponents. What it means is one has to recognize that we're all part of what should be our harmonious culture, and that we respect the political institutions that bind it together. Edmund Burke, a very interesting passage in his great book, the "Reflections on the Revolution in France," uses the words "government" and "society" almost interchangeably. He sees each reinforcing the other. It is our institutional patrimony. When someone in the floor of Congress dishonors, disrespects, the office of the President, he's actually striking-- however briefly, however slightingly-- a blow against the institutions that our society is founded on. And I think Edmund Burke might have some trouble with that. 

BILL MOYERS: There's long been a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this coalition that we call "conservative." I mean, you had the Edmund Burke kind of conservatism that yearns for a sacred, ordered society, bound by tradition, that protects both rich and poor, against what one of my friends calls the "Libertarian, robber baron, capitalist, cowboy America." I mean, that marriage was doomed to fail, right? 

SAM TANENHAUS: It was. First of all, this is absolutely right, in the terms of a classical conservatism. And here is the figure I emphasize in my book is Benjamin Disraeli. What he feared-- the revolution of his time, this is the French Revolution that concerned Edmund Burke-- half a century later what concerned Disraeli and other conservatives was the Industrial Revolution. That Dickens wrote his novels about-- that children, the very poor becoming virtual slaves in work houses, that the search for money, for capital, for capital accumulation, seemed to drown out all other values. That's what modern conservatism is partly anchored in. So, how do we get this contradiction? 

BILL MOYERS: Why isn't it standing up against turbo-capitalism? 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, one reason is that America very early on in its history reached a kind of pact, in the Jacksonian era, between the government on the one hand and private capital on the other. That the government would actually subsidize capitalism in America. That's what the Right doesn't often acknowledge. A lot of what we think of as the unleashed, unfettered market is, in fact, a government supported market. Some will remember the famous debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman, and Dick Cheney said that his company, Halliburton, had made millions of dollars without any help from the government. It all came from the government! They were defense contracts! So, what's happened is the American ethos, which is a different thing from our political order-- that's the rugged individualism, the cowboy, the frontiersman, the robber baron, the great explorer, the conqueror of the continent. For that aspect of our myth, the market has been the engine of it. So, what brought them together, is what we've seen in the right is what I call a politics of organized cultural enmity. Everybody-- 

BILL MOYERS: Accusatory protest, you call it. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Accusatory protest. With liberals as the enemy. So, if you are a free-marketeer, or you're an evangelical, or a social conservative, or even an authoritarian conservative, you can all agree about one thing: you hate the liberals that are out to destroy us. And that's a very useful form of political organization. I'm not sure it contributes much to our government and society, but it's politically useful, and we're seeing it again today. 

BILL MOYERS: It wasn't long ago that Karl Rove was saying this coalition was going to deliver a new Republican majority. What happened? It finally came apart. Why? 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, I believe it had come apart earlier than that. I really think Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 sealed the end of serious conservative counterrevolution. We forget that election. It seems like an anomaly, but consider, Bill Clinton won more electoral votes than Barack Obama, despite the presence of one of the most successful third party candidates, H. Ross Perot, another Texan, in American history. But that's not the most important fact. The most important fact is that George H. W. Bush got less of the popular vote in 1992 than Herbert Hoover got in 1932. That was really the end. But what happened was the right was so institutionally successful that it controlled many of the levers, as you say. So, what happened in the year 2000? Well, the conservatives on the Supreme Court stopped the democratic process, put their guy into office. Then September 11th came. And the right got its full first blank slate. They could do really whatever they wanted. And what we saw were those eight years. And that is the end of ideological conservatism as a vital formative and contributive aspect of our politics. 

BILL MOYERS: Why? 

SAM TANENHAUS: Because it failed so badly. It wasn't conservative. It was radical. It's interesting. Many on the right say, "George Bush betrayed us." They weren't saying that in 2002 and 2003. He was seen as someone who would complete the Reagan revolution. I think a lot of it was Iraq. Now, I quote in the book a remarkably prescient thing. The very young, almost painfully, 31-year-old, Benjamin Disraeli wrote in 1835, he said you cannot export democracy, even then, to lands ruled by despotic priests. And he happened to mean Catholic, not Islamic priests. But he said you actually have to have a civil society established in advance. He said that's why the United States had become a great republic so shortly after the Revolution. We had the law of English custom here. You see? So, we were prepared to become a democracy. There were conservatives who tried to make that argument before the war in Iraq. Francis Fukayama was one, Fareed Zakaria was another-- they're both well outside that movement. There were people in the Bush Administration who tried to argue this -- they were marginalized or stripped of power. What America saw was an ideological revanchism with all the knobs turned to the highest volume. The imperial presidency of a Dick Cheney and all the rest. And we saw where we got. 

BILL MOYERS: Here's another puzzle. Back to what we were talking about earlier. You say in "The Death of Conservatism" that, "Even as the financial collapse drove us to the brink, conservatives remained strangely apart, trapped in the irrelevant causes of another day, deaf to the actual conversation unfolding across the land." And the paradox is, it seems to me, they are driving the conversation that you say they don't hear. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, you know, they have many mouths, Bill, but they don't have many ears. The great political philosopher, Hannah Arendt once said, in one of her great essays on Socrates, whom she wrote about a lot -- that the sign of a true statesmen, maybe particularly in a democracy, is the capacity to listen. And that doesn't simply mean to politely grow mute while your adversary talks. It means, in fact, to try to inhabit the thoughts and ideas of the other side. Barack Obama is perhaps a genius at this. For anyone who has not heard the audio version of "Dreams from My Father," it's a revelation. He does all the voices. He does the white Kansas voices, he does the Kenyan voices. He has an extraordinary ear. There's an auditory side to politics. And that capacity to listen is what enables you to absorb the arguments made by the other side and to have a kind of debate with yourself. That's the way our deliberative process is supposed to work. Right now, at a time of confusion and uncertainty, the ideological right is very good at shouting at us, and rallying the troops. But, you know, one of the real contributions conservatism made in its peak years, the 1950s and '60s, I think as an intellectual movement, is that it repudiated the politics of public demonstration. It was the left that was marching in the streets, and carrying guns, and threatening to take the society down, or calling President Johnson a murderer. Remember it was William Buckley, who said, "We're calling this man a murderer in the name of humanity?" It was the conservatives who used political institutions, political campaigns, who rallied behind traditional candidates produced by the party apparatus. They revitalized the traditions and the instruments and vehicles of our democracy. 

But now we've reached a point, quite like one Richard Hofstadter described some 40 years ago, where ideologues don't trust politicians anymore. Remember during the big march in Washington, many of the protestors or demonstrators insisted they were not demonstrating just against Barack Obama, but against all the politicians-- that's why some Republicans wouldn't support it. They don't believe in politics as the medium whereby our society negotiates its issues. 

BILL MOYERS: What do they believe in? 

SAM TANENHAUS: They believe in a kind of revolution, a cultural revolution. They think the system can be-- what some would say hijacked. They would say maneuvered, controlled, that they can get their hands back on the levers. An important thing about the right in America is it always considers itself a minority position and an embattled position. No matter how many of the branches of government they dominate. So, what they believe in is, as Willmoore Kendall, this early philosopher said, is a politics of battle lines, of war. 

BILL MOYERS: So, here, at this very critical moment, when so much is hanging in the balance, what is the paradox of conservatism as you see it? 

SAM TANENHAUS: The paradox of conservatism is that it gives the signs, the overt signs of energy and vitality, but the rigor mortis I described is still there. As a philosophy, as a system of government, as a way all of us can learn from, as a means of evaluating ourselves, our social responsibilities, our personal obligations and responsibilities. It has, right now, nothing to offer. 

BILL MOYERS: Now, they disagree with you. They think you have issued a call for unilateral disarmament on their part-- that brass knuckles and sharp elbows are part of fighting for what you believe in, and therefore, you're calling for a unilateral disarmament. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Well, you know, that's what Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style, is when it's always living on the verge of apocalypse. That defeat is staring you in the face, and the only victories are total victories. Because even the slightest victory, if it's not complete, means the other side may come back and get you again. This is not serious responsible argument. Much of my book is actually about the failures of liberalism in that noontime period of the 1960s. And many of the conservatives simply ignore that part of the argument. 

BILL MOYERS: How to explain this long fascination you've had with conservative ideas, and the conservative movement. Why this fascination? 

BILL MOYERS: Well, I think it has been the dominant philosophy, political philosophy in our culture, in America, for some half-century. What particularly drew me first to Chambers and then Buckley is the idea that these were serious intellectuals, who were also men of action. Conservatives have kind of supplied us in their best periods-- the days when NATIONAL REVIEW and COMMENTARY and THE PUBLIC INTEREST were tremendously vital publications, self-examining, developing new vocabularies and idioms, teaching us all how to think about politics and culture in a different way, with a different set of tools. They were contributing so enormously to who we were as Americans. And yet, many liberals were not paying attention. Many liberals today don't know that a great thinker like Garry Wills was a product of the conservative movement. It's astonishing to them to learn it. They just assume, because they agree with him now, he was always a liberal. In fact, he remains a kind of conservative. This is the richness in the philosophy that attracted me, and that I wanted to learn more about, to educate myself. 

BILL MOYERS: The book is THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM. Sam Tanenhaus, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for joining me. 

SAM TANENHAUS: Oh, it's my great pleasure to be here. 

Easy. Just go here.

http://www.alternet.org/story/142477/10_of_the_most_obscenely_stupid_right-wing_conspiracy_theories_and_attacks_against_the_president?page=entire

10 of the Most Obscenely Stupid Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories and Attacks Against the President

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2009.

Today, President Barack Obama is slated to give a speech urging America's schoolchildren to do their homework and stay in school.

Naturally, conservatives are extremely alarmed, because obviously the president is looking to create a vast army of adorable little zombies that will help him destroy America faster.

All last week, conservative bloggers and pundits gleefully accused the centrist president of plotting to force radical politics on America's impressionable youth, after Florida's Republican chairman Jim Greer said Obama's address would "indoctrinate" children and spread "socialist ideology."

The week of right-wing echo chamber freak-outs led to protests by conservative parents, which put school districts throughout the country in the unenviable position of having to deal with the "controversy": Some have decided not to air the president's address; others are requiring parental permission.

So, thanks to the right-wing saviors of America's youth, a bunch of kids will be shielded from the president's dangerous message that learning things is good.

Could this be the stupidest, most irrational way conservatives have tried to tear down Obama? Is it even possible to answer that question?

We've assembled the most absurd, logic-defying right-wing attacks on the president. Some you've undoubtedly encountered before, as all are incessantly blared by conservative pundits and shock jocks, while many are cynically embraced by GOP lawmakers.

Assembled together, they illustrate the absurd extremes to which right-wingers are trying to drive the public discourse in their efforts to thwart essential reforms in health care, energy policy and the economy.

The Advent of Socialism/Fascism

Most historians would agree that fascism and socialism represent vastly different ideologies and historical phenomena. But not the historians at Fox News! Since Obama took office, right-wing pundits have lobbed these smears interchangeably, not quite clarifying whether Obama is leading the proletariat to a glorious utopian future or trying to bring the master race to world dominion.

Obama's Nefarious Plan for the Nation's Genitals

When news leaked of a CDC report recommending that boys be circumcised as a preventative measure against HIV infection, right-winger conspiracy theorists began to fret that the federal government would mandate circumcision.

Since Patrick Henry isn’t around, it was up to Rush Limbaugh to sound the rallying cry against tyranny: "Leave our penises alone, too, Obama!" roared Limbaugh in a July 24 radio broadcast.

The next day, while discussing an unrelated dispute with Jay-Z, the talk show host said, "I would remind the rapper Jay Z; Mr. Z, it is President Obama who wants mandated circumcision. We had that yesterday. That means if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama."

Needless to say, Obama had nothing to do with the CDC report, and doesn't appear to have ever publicly uttered the word "circumcision." Nor did he recommend the CDC promote circumcision.

None of this, of course, discouraged Limbaugh from running with the best metaphor for white male anxiety about a loss of power and masculinity in the age of Obama, ever.

The Birthers

Remember when the president invented a time machine and traveled back in time to plant his own birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper and forge a certificate of birth proving he was born in the States, all to hide the fact that he's a foreigner from a country filled with scary black people?

That, of course, appears to be the only explanation for why the birther nonsense continues to gurgle up online (even though certain idiots, who for mysterious reasons still have shows on CNN, have finally stopped giving this nonsense the patina of mainstream credibility).

Recently, some birthers on Free Republic argued that the only way to determine the president's birthplace for sure was by checking if he is circumcised. (It would seem that there needs to be a subcategory on this list for these patriots' obsession with the president's penis.)

The Deathers

In America in 2009 -- a time and place where most people have access to a high school education and can read -- a rumor emerged that the overhaul of our terrible health care system would allow the government to put old people to death. This rumor was stoked by the crazy people on Fox News and talk radio, then embraced and propagated by Republican lawmakers and others who are supposed to be sane adults.

"A lot of people are going to die. This program of government option that‘s being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people." said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga, said.

Then there was almost-a-heartbeat-away-from-the-presidency Sarah Palin, who contributed to the discussion by saying that under a reformed health system, the government would have killed her child Trig because he has Down syndrome. (Palin took back the comments after much outcry, but that didn't stop the vocal minority of town hall protesters from screaming about Obama killing old and disabled people all summer).

The End of the Internet?

Cass Sunstein, currently awaiting confirmation to head the Office of Information an Regulatory Affairs, is apparently doing Obama's dirty work on this one. Someone enterprising at crackpot site World Net Daily cherrypicked from a long-ago Sunstein statement, making it sound like he wants government regulation forcing blogs to link to opposing viewpoints.

In fact, as Julian Sanchez writes, in the statement in question Sunstein floated the theory as "food for thought." And then he noted the free-speech issues involved. And then he called the idea stupid and unconstitutional.

Czars

Obama has "czars" in his administration. The word "czar" is Russian, which of course is scary ("Too Russian!" said former Oklahoma Rep. Ernest Istook. "Why not call somebody the Big Boss?").

One of Glenn Beck's favorite things to do is list off and rail against the czars in Obama's administration. Neil Cavuto, Mike Huckabee and others on Fox and like-minded media are also pretty excited about it and have made lots of puns (czar wars!) and wild accusations about Obama's alleged czar shadow army.

Somehow, their balanced take on this threatening phenomena fails to mention that George W. Bush was pretty fond of czars himself, overseeing the creation of a "food-safety czar," a "cybersecurity czar," a "regulatory czar," an "AIDS czar," a "manufacturing czar," an "intelligence czar," a "bird-flu czar" and a "Katrina czar," according to Steve Benen in Washington Monthly.

Our Half-White President Has a Problem With White People?

One would think Obama is pretty OK with white people, since he is half white and was raised by a white mother and grandparents. Beck would disagree.

In July, Beck bizarrely accused the president of having a deep-seated hatred for white people and "white culture," an attention-grubbing overreach that has led to a successful boycott campaign that has cost Beck 57 advertisers.

Beck's offensive statement was only the most extreme iteration of a conservative strategy to sneakily accuse the president of undermining the interests of whites. One other example is the absurd claim that the president is trying to trick white Americans into paying reparations through health reform.

Snitch Site?

A few months ago, the White House made a valiant attempt to help steer the health care debate toward existing things like policy, rather than totally made up crap like death panels. They did so by setting up a Web site where people could submit questions about the wild conspiracy theories circulating about reform.

Naturally, the fringe decided that Obama was asking people to report on their neighbors. And, of course, Republican lawmakers irresponsibly and shamelessly joined the fray, with Texas Sen. John Cornyn, for example, accusing Obama of compiling an "enemies list" and demanding the site be shut down.

An Expansion of AmeriCorps. The Horror!

And finally, what does Obama plan to do with all those kids he brainwashes during his speech today?

Wait, with diabolical patience, until their teeny little arms grow strong enough to wield heavy weaponry so he can draft them into his massive domestic paramilitary force. At least that appears to be a fear held by Beck, who has said Obama's "civilian national security force" is like Hitler's SS, or something Saddam Hussein would do.

Michelle Bachmann warned of a massive effort to herd kids into re-education camps. What were they talking about? The expansion of AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.

And there you have it: Public discourse in 2009.