A Decade of Fear

An article by Mark Penn for Time (reprinted below and available here) makes the case that the decade since 9/11 has seen the US fall into a tailspin of pessimism and shaken confidence.  He based his assessment on the results of a poll which show the majority of Americans having very negative views on the present and future of the country.  Many believe another terrorist attack on our soil is likely.  Still other see economic worries threatening our future.

In all, Mark seems to be wanting the comparison to Carter's "malaise" speech (despite the fact that Carter never used the word "malaise") in order to create the assumption that we have a vacuum of leadership in the country.  In fact, I think the primary issue here is much simpler and direct.  We have had terrorist attacks before, we have had economic woes, and we have had uncertainty about the future.  During all those times, however, we also had Presidents and a Congress who stood up and reassured the American people that we would get through it.  We were tough and could take the heat.  President Obama pretty much ran his campaign on such Roosevelt-type of reassurances and to this day ends his speeches on a similar high note.

Contrast that to the 8 years of the Bush administration.  This is the administration that declared war on "terror", thereby solidifying "terror" into an entity for us.  He never said "don't be afraid, we got this".  He said continually "be afraid because they are coming to attack us and these Democrats hate our troops" (paraphrased).  He handed us a color coded chart which never, ever went below yellow in terms of caution.  He resurrected Cold War era fears of impending massive attacks using "suitcase nukes" or bio weapons or chemical agents.  People were actually buying hermitic bomb shelters again.

This shows the simple, singular difference between our previous national crises and that created by 9/11: the willing and rather open exploitation of fear for political advantage.

 

Read Mark's article:

 

The Pessimism Index

By Mark J. Penn

Just 10 years into a new century, more than two-thirds of the country sees the past decade as a period of decline for the U.S., according to a new TIME/Aspen Ideas Festival poll that probed Americans on the decade since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda seriously weakened, but the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the decisions that followed have, in the view of most Americans, put the U.S. in a tailspin that the country has been unable to shake during two administrations and almost 10 years of trying.

The poll confirms that the country is going through one of its longest sustained periods of unhappiness and pessimism ever. Today's teenagers hardly remember a time before 9/11, the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq and constant economic upheaval. Baby boomers, the generation known for continuous reinvention, are filled with worry and doubt about their future and the future of their children. (See TIME's cover story: "The Optimism Bias.")

It is hard to overstate what a fundamental change this represents. A country long celebrated for its optimism amid adversity is having trouble finding the pluck and the spirit that have seen it through everything from world wars to nuclear threats to space races. The U.S. usually bounces back after a few years of difficulty, such as the Vietnam War, Watergate or recessions. After two or three years of anxiety and worry, the electorate normally returns to its innate optimism. Yet the forces now aligned against the American people seem much more formidable to those we surveyed; the poll uncovered the kinds of attitudes we saw among Europeans during the decade after World War II.

According to the poll, only 6% of more than 2,000 Americans believe the country has completely recovered from the events of 9/11. Some of this pessimism can be tied to fears of more terrorist attacks. Despite the death of bin Laden, most Americans think another terrorist attack in the U.S. is likely. Americans generally supported the post-9/11 measures to secure the homeland, like those in the Patriot Act, and have confidence in the military to deal with terrorists — and yet they see an attack coming anyway. America's feelings of invincibility have been replaced by a new sense of inevitable vulnerability. Nearly 8 in 10 believe there will be a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the next decade. When asked which major city would most likely be the target of such an attack, 30% selected Washington and 27% chose New York City.

A startling 71%, including a majority of every major demographic group other than African Americans, see the U.S. as worse off now than it was a decade ago. Americans blame their leaders and politicians for the decade of decline. The Bush Administration takes the most heat — 23% named it as the cause — followed closely by the Obama Administration (20%) and the U.S. Congress (16%). In contrast, only 6% blame Wall Street. (See the case for optimism in TIME's special report: "10 Ideas That Will Change the World.")

If there is widespread agreement that the U.S. is in bad shape, there is also a perception that not everyone has experienced the difficult decade in exactly the same way. Those surveyed say middle- and working-class Americans, followed by seniors and younger people, have borne the brunt of the decline — an ominous sign for any incumbent, regardless of political party. Yet those surveyed said some demographic groups were better off than they were a decade ago; they say the quality of life has improved most for gays and lesbians, the affluent, Hispanics and immigrants. And while overall the U.S. is seen as becoming more socially and politically tolerant in the past decade, the majority agreed that 9/11 set off a wave of suspicion against Muslim Americans.

Post-9/11 America is also a more isolationist country. Americans recognize that the election of President Obama brought with it a renewed sense of respect for the U.S. around the world. However, the effect of those improved relationships is overshadowed by the finding that most respondents have no desire to be more involved in global affairs. Almost two-thirds (62%) believe the U.S. today is too involved overseas. Americans are particularly impatient with U.S. policy toward Pakistan. With 69% believing that Pakistani officials knowingly harbored bin Laden, it is not surprising that 3 in 4 Americans — older Americans and Republicans especially — want the U.S. to cut back its military and nonmilitary aid to that country.

But whatever the U.S.'s worries about external forces, the biggest threats today are widely regarded as self-made. It's the enemy within that Americans register the most concern about: runaway deficits, political gridlock, skyrocketing health care costs and other structural problems. A full two-thirds of Americans see the greatest long-term threats to national stability as coming from within the U.S. This too is an enormous change from the days and months after September 2001. (See the U.S. optimism deficit.)

President Jimmy Carter — at the urging of his pollster — rather famously gave a speech in mid-1979 suggesting that a crisis of confidence had befallen America. It took several years and a new President to return the country to its optimistic ways. President Bill Clinton faced a similar moment in 1995 and turned the mood of the country around a year later. This poll suggests we are at another malaise moment, one even longer and deeper than the mid-1970s', presenting even greater challenges — and opportunities — for leadership.

Penn is CEO of Penn Schoen Berland, the strategic-research firm that conducted the TIME/Aspen poll. He was a pollster for six years under President Clinton.

 

Michele Bachmann: Hiding in the Bushes

This is old, but worth reposting just for the entry at #9 on the list.  Scroll down for more.

 

 

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 193)

April 11, 2005
Spouting Thomas Edition

Tom DeLay (1,6) tops the list again this week after a tough week for ethics violators, but Fox News (2) is more than happy to give him an assist. Mel Martinez (3) owned up to the Terri Schiavo memo - sort of - not that The Forgery Shovelers (4) cared of course. And John Cornyn (5) suggested that perhaps judges should tone down the old "judging" thing if they cared about their safety. Yup, it's been a prime week for conservative idiocy. Elsewhere, Republican Hypocrites (7) seem to have gone silent on the issue of high gas prices, The Jeff Gannon Show (8) rolled into town for an encore, Michelle Bachman (9) hid in some bushes, and what happens when you mix professional wrestling with right-wing whackery? You get my new all-time favorite conservative idiot in the form of Warrior And Chums (10). Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

Tom DeLay 
This might be the understatement of the year, but Tom DeLay is in the shit. Last week the Campaign for America's Future put up a handy cheat sheet of DeLay's recent scandals, which include taking fancy business trips paid for by lobbyists, taking campaign contributions for favors, using a federal agency (the FAA) for partisan purposes, and alleged money laundering, among other things. In the past week it was also revealed that since 2001 DeLay's wife and daughter have personally received more than $500,000 from his political action committees, and in 1997 DeLay took a trip to Russia which was "underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government," according tothe Washington Post. He later cast votes in support of those same business interests. DeLay has done what he can to clear himself of the charges by, um, trying to change House ethics rules to make the whole thing go away. But let's face it, that doesn't really make him look any better. So what's a poor, downtrodden House Majority Leader to do when the heat is on? Why, blame somebody else, of course! Last week DeLay called the reports about his scandalous behavior "just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me." Aww, poor baby. But let it be known that the GOP is backingTom DeLay all the way, so hats off to the Republican party for standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Bugman, and we'll just wait and see where their firm conviction for being led by an unethical megalomaniac gets them in 2006.

Fox News 
Of course, DeLay's pals at Fox News have been doing their best to disabuse the public of the notion that he might bear just a tiny bit of responsibility for his alleged ethics violations. Media Matters noted that several Fox News hosts went out of their way last week to assist DeLay in his attempt to blame the media for his problems: Brit Hume reported that, "Here in Washington, the press is after Tom DeLay again, but wait 'til you hear the facts," and, "speaking of Tom DeLay, the mainstream media were out after him again today." John Gibson said, "The liberal media is hammering 'The Hammer' - Tom DeLay under a microscope and under the gun. Is this simply a media hit job?" (In order to get a fair and balanced answer he interviewed Rich Lowry, editor of the right-wing National Review.) And our old friend Sean Hannity referred to the "liberal allegations" against DeLay and asked, "Is he the target of a smear campaign?" So if you want to know the details of the charges against Tom DeLay, don't bother asking Fox News. They're more concerned about protecting their buddy than they are about actually reporting the facts.

Mel Martinez 
Last week conservative pundits and bloggers were agog with the possibility that the infamous "Terri Schiavo memo" - which instructed Republican senators to make political hay out of her case - might have been a fake passed around by - booo! - Democrats in order to make Republicans look bad. Because surely Republicans simply aren't capable of playing such awful political games. Yeah right. But the whole thing fell apart at the seams last week when it wasrevealed that the memo actually came from the office of freshman GOP senator Mel Martinez. Of course, Martinez was completely in the dark about the memo - which explains why he was, uh, carrying it around in his pocket - and fired his aide Brian Darling for taking action "unilaterally." At this point it's probably worth mentioning that the St. Petersburg Times said back in November 2004 that "When challenged, Martinez was too eager to assign blame to his staff or to groups he said he couldn't control. As a senator, he will need an office and a staff that speaks with the measured and centrist tone he says will be his own. He can't pretend to be above it all if the people he employs are not." It certainly appears that Martinez hasn't taken that advice to heart. But in case you were worried about the future of poor Brian "Unilateral" Darling, don't fret. He used to work for the Alexander Strategy Group, whose chairman Edwin A. Buckham (former chief of staff to - ta da! - Tom DeLay) said last week that "He is still going to have a bright future in this town." Why am I not surprised...

The Forgery Shovelers 
The news that the memo was in fact not a fake, and did in fact originate from the office of a Republican senator, was somewhat embarrassing to the folks who'd been shoveling the forgery meme. After the "Democratic fakery" angle had played out on right-wing talk radio during the week - without any actual evidence, of course - The Washington Times ran a front page, above-the-fold story alleging that the memo could have been a dirty trick. The Times' claim that the memo was fake was based, incredibly, on this: "A survey by The Washington Times found that every Republican said the memo was not crafted or distributed by him or her." Which obviously cleared up the whole matter. Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh announced that "it appears it's a forged memo all over again!" quoting the American Spectator who wrote, "It's Rathergate all over again, and the same vigilant entities that brought about the collapse of CBS News could now also cause heads to roll among Democratic Senate leadership staffers and further shame multiple news organizations that would appear to have fallen for another document hoax." Crowed Rush, "The memo was made up by Democrat staffers." Whoops. John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has a greatscreenshot of a page from Rush's website which tells the world to "Listen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence." Aravosis also noted that one of the American Spectator's aforementioned vigilant entities, "blog of the year" Powerline - who went nuts accusing the Democrats of faking the Schiavo memo - were still clinging desperately to the possibility that they could turn it against the left byblaming the media for misreporting the story. Nice try, morons.

John Cornyn 
What could be the reason for the recent wave of violence against judges? Just a few weeks ago, a judge's family was murdered. And there was that incident where a man on trial for rape and murder stole a gun and shot a judge dead in court. What could be prompting this crime wave? Have no fear: Sen. John Cornyn has the answer. "I – I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection," he pondered on the Senate floor last week, "but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in – engage in violence." Don't worry though - apparently Cornyn didn't mean it. According tothe UK Guardian, he wrote a letter last week saying he was "not aware of evidence linking judges' decisions with possible violence. 'I certainly hope that people will not construe my remarks on Monday to state otherwise,' he said." Oh, perish the thought. So I guess you were talking about... what, exactly, Senator? The good news though is that John Cornyn has learned a lesson from all this. And here it is: "The lesson I learned is that Washington is a very tough political environment and if people can take what you say out of context and use it against you, they will." Seriously. He actually said that.

Tom DeLay 
One more entry for the Bugman this week, and it relates directly to the John Cornyn entry above. Cornyn may not be able to legitimately blame the most recent incidents of violence against judges and their families as some sort of revenge for their supposed judicial activism - but he soon will if Tom DeLay keeps it up. We already noted DeLay's not-so-veiled threats to the judges involved in the Terri Schiavo case ("The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior") and last week he kicked it up a notch. DeLay said that the judiciary has "run amok" and "overstepped its authority on countless occasions." His solution? Unclear. But he also said that "Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric." Various conservative leaders decided to pick up that ball and run with it, meeting in Washington last week to discuss "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny." Phyllis Schafly and Michael P. Farris - chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association - both agreed that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ought to be impeached for his opinion that juveniles shouldn't be executed. But it was Edwin Vieira who seemed to be taking Tom Delay's comments to their logical conclusion, citing Joseph Stalin in his "bottom line" for dealing with judges. "[Stalin] had a slogan," said Viera, "and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem.'" The full quote that Viera paraphrased, in case you were wondering, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." So, uh, is anyone else bothered that leading conservatives are now using Joe Stalin as an example of how to deal with their enemies?

Republican Hypocrites 
Special thanks here to the Top Ten reader (you know who you are, sir!) who sent me a list of links featuring Republicans whining about high gas prices in 2000. I'm sure most of you are aware that average gas prices have been topping $2.50 per gallon recently, with San Franciscans recently reporting more than $3 per gallon for regular unleaded:

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

Now let's take a look at what some of those Republicans had to say in 2000, when gas was around a full dollar cheaper per gallon than it is today:

Rep. Terry Everett: "The Clinton Administration has failed in its duty to develop a policy to deal with our national energy supply and is therefore directly accountable for the higher prices Americans are now paying at the gas pumps."

Dennis Hastert: "House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Clinton administration Friday of misleading members of Congress about the causes of skyrocketing gas prices in the Midwest."

Rep. Wally Herger: "Congressman Wally Herger recently denounced the Clinton-Gore Administration's complacency during the current gas price crisis. 'Northern Californians are being held hostage at the gas pump,' Herger said. 'The Clinton-Gore Administration has demonstrated a complete and total lack of leadership in preventing this problem. It is a clear failure of domestic and foreign policy.'"

Larry Kudlow: "The Clinton-Gore administration’s hapless and incoherent management of foreign policy is nowhere as evident as in their bungling on OPEC’s oil-price hike. ... While crude oil prices could drop to $25 per barrel, they will stay well above the average $20 real price of oil registered over the past ten years. And way above the $10 worldwide average marginal cost of producing new oil. Meanwhile gas prices at the pump are likely to be upwards of $2 per gallon well into the summer."

Glenn Spencer: "In recent weeks, gas prices have surged to their highest level in a decade. Prices for home heating oil and natural gas are expected to rise by about 30 percent this winter. ... With the Clinton-Gore administration's policies largely to blame for the pain being felt by consumers, Vice President Gore's camp has pulled out all the stops to shift blame away from his own administration."

Various Repubs: "Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Menomonee Falls), Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac), Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), and Mark Green (R-Green Bay) today blasted Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and the Clinton-Gore Administration for their failure to implement a comprehensive energy policy to deal with staggering gas prices Wisconsin consumers continue to face at the pumps."

So, gas is about 60-75% per gallon more at the pump and oil is about 100% more per barrel than it was when these moaning minnies were whining about how much Bill Clinton and Al Gore sucked, but now George W. Bush is the president - why, his shit don't stink. Perhaps they're still waiting for him to "jawbone" OPEC? Either that or they don't care about gas prices now that he's, y'know, got the gays on the run.

The Jeff Gannon Show 
We noted last week that our old pal Jeff Gannon was going to be appearing at a National Press Club panel on journalism and blogging, and pondered why he was invited to be there since he wasn't a journalist or a blogger. Well it turns out that Gannon was apparently asked along for the purposes of providing hilarious comic relief. Among Gannon's classic gags from last Friday's event were the suggestion that simply reprinting administration press releases is the same as real journalism, and that the government had to pay Armstrong Williams to write a positive story on No Child Left Behind because nobody else would. Funny stuff! He even held up one of those stupid red counties vs. blue counties maps which right-wingers love to use to demonstrate how "red" the country is, except - and this is the mark of a comedy genius at work - the red states were all green, because apparently his printer was running out of ink. But the laugh of the day was surely reserved for this absolute corker: "You can hardly call Fox News conservative." Oh Jeff, you are a clown!

Michelle Bachmann 
Last week Minnesota State Senator Michelle Bachmann (R-Obviously) tried to force a vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage; Democrats said she was trying to end-run Senate rules for political gain. That she chose to do this on the same day that the local gay community was rallying for their rights on the grounds of the Capitol was certainly dubious.According to Eleventh Avenue South, "Even Senate Republicans thought it was in poor taste to try to go around Senate rules on the same day GLBT citizens were making their voice heard. Her move was overwhelmingly defeated." But one of Eleventh Avenue South's eagle-eyed readers happened to catch something rather strange that day - it turned out that Michelle Bachmann had gone to take a look at the rally, but, obviously feeling very frightened of the scary homosexuals, decided to hide in some bushes. Fortunately, the reader got pictures:





Peek-a-boo! What a coward. You know, that photo kind of reminds me of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during Vietnam.

Warrior And Chums 
And finally, the artist formerly known as "The Ultimate Warrior" (now apparently just plain "Warrior" for some reason) made a professional wrestling-sized ass of himself at the University of Connecticut last week, choke-slamming the UConn College Republicans in the process. Former WWF star Warrior had apparently been invited by the College Republicans to speak about... well, actually that's not entirely clear. But Warrior is a radical right-wing nutcase, so presumably that's all the reason they needed. Unfortunately Warrior was a little too nutty even for the College Republicans, "screaming and stomping on the stage," according to liveaudiowrestling.com, and provoking the crowd into a frenzy. The evening turned sour when Warrior answered an Iranian student's question by telling him that he needed to "get a towel," and pontificated on such subjects as why "Queering don't make the world work." Which is a bit odd coming from a guy who used to make a living publicly groping a steady stream of greased-up bodybuilders in leotards.

Anyway, it turns out that the UConn College Republicans were a tad embarrassed by the debacle, issuing a profoundly apologetic press release the next day. They made sure to mention that they were sending individual letters of apology to, "the Rainbow Center, AQUA, QUAD, the African American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, the Iranian Students Association, and the Women's Center." Oh, and in case you were wondering, "this is not a complete list of the groups that will receive a direct written apology from the College Republicans." Good lord.

But the story doesn't end there: the College Republicans' press release provoked a hilarious outburst "From the Desk Of Warrior" where he announced (in the third person!) that "All of the above notwithstanding, it is somewhat sad to see how utterly spineless the UConn College Republicans have turned out to be. Not a single UConn CR voiced any objection to Warrior after the event. The detailed emails between Warrior and the UConn CRs reveal that the CRS repeatedly encouraged Warrior to single out the Tent City Trash for some re-education. Yet, it now seems that the CRS have collectively decided to bow down and beg forgiveness from various extremist, anti-American, left-wing groups who infest the UConn campus. Perhaps the UConn CRS should refrain from engaging in political activism until such time as they develop enough backbone to be able to withstand not being liked by their opponents." Ooh, smackdown! See you next week!

 

Is Michele Bachmann smarter than a 10th grader?

Via Buzzfeed:

[caption id="attachment_1225" align="aligncenter" width="465" caption="The gauntlet has been thrown down, and how."][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_1226" align="aligncenter" width="378" caption="Epic winner and the object of my high school crush if I were high school age again."][/caption]

 

The winner of the debate would undoubtedly be Miss Myers and I can just imagine the judge scolding Rep. Bachmann thusly:

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Yeah, HE is the loony, right?

[caption id="attachment_1204" align="aligncenter" width="588" caption="Talk to your invisible 8 foot tall rabbit friend, you have a mental illness. Talk to a god, you are simply devout and holy."][/caption]

The Tea Party and Racism

The following video is not only an example of the inherently racial, if not racist thought endemic to the teabaggers, it's also an example of some cognitive dissonance.  The man is claiming he isn't a racist while railing against blacks and hispanics.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOKs4UPt2Mw

GOP Between Scylla and Charybdis

As the 2012 election seasons starts to warm up slowly, a few "issues" have emerged ahead of time which seem to fascinate the right wing.  Donald Trump's carnival barking about Pres. Obama's birth certificate has brought the birthers their much sought after day in the sun.

"At last!" they exclaimed, "someone is taking us seriously and now the rest of the country will too!"

The problem for them, however, was the Obama is a masterful campaigner, despite whatever one might believe about his ability as president.  The man plays a deep game.  So, what does he do?  He provides the very document the birthers (and Trump) claimed to have wanted.  The birthers thus have a choice:  accept the document and hold their heads high with intellectual honesty that their fears were abated or construct elaborate new conspiracies about the very document they requested.

Guess which route they chose.

Thus, the birthers expose themselves in their shining moment for the crazies they were from the beginning.  Donald Trump, their hero, was tacitly called a "carnival barker" by the most powerful man in the world, and all their claims about wanting a specific document as the proof positive were shown to be false since even that didn't satisfy them.

So, what is a potential GOP nominee to do?  He (or she) has two choices in this:

1.  Embrace the birther, even mildly, and keep their hope alive that they still have a potential voice in the national conversation.  This results in likely tepid interest in such a candidate from the independent and moderate voters out there.  The candidate now bears the taint of crazy.

 

2.  Reject the birther claims and then pray to whatever god he (or she) holds dear that the birthers don't rally their teabagger friends to leverage some weight at the GOP convention.

Maybe Romney's Mormonism, Huckabee's bad decisions, Gingrich's infidelity, and Pawlenty's utter lack of anything resembling a personality will be the least of their worries...

 

[caption id="attachment_1150" align="aligncenter" width="436" caption="Guess which side has the birthers?"][/caption]

Birthers Behaving Badly

Via Buzzfeed, we get the following reactions from the birthers/teabaggers to yesterday's release of Obama's "long form" birth certificate.  As predicted, giving them precisely what they want doesn't satisfy them. Suffice it to say, the real crazy is yet to be seen.

Click on a thumbnail to see the whole image.  Keep in mind, these are real responses from real people.  Laugh or cry, these folks are out there and they are allowed to vote and own guns and drive cars on the roads.

[gallery]

 

[caption id="attachment_1144" align="aligncenter" width="708" caption="Seriously, Fox isn't even trying any longer to hide their schilling for the GOP."][/caption]

 

And for a humorous look at how birthers probably view the newly released document, here is something which might be considered real, given the above examples, if I didn't specifically state that it's a joke:

 

[caption id="attachment_1145" align="aligncenter" width="630" caption="Looks fake to me!"][/caption]

The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand

Reposted from the Progress Report, by Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Tanya Somanader, Travis Waldron, and Jeff Spross.

 

Ayn Rand -- Russian emigre, founder of the mid-century Objectivist movement, putative philosopher, writer of the novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and the inspiration for a small but intensely devoted band of acolytes -- has been enjoying a resurgence of late on the American right. The cultural capstone to this resurgence arrived last week with the release of a filmed adaptation of the first third of Atlas Shrugged, independently financed by a wealthy devotee of Rand's work and pitched explicitly at the Tea Party demographic. FreedomWorks, one of the central organizations in that movement, rolled out a massive campaign to encourage audience attendance and to push the film into as many theaters as possible. The 2011 CPAC conference held the world premiere of Atlas Shrugged's trailer, and the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation hosted an advanced screening of the film. This marketing tactic is understandable. The opening line of Atlas Shrugged -- "Who is John Galt?" -- has appeared again and again on signs at Tea Party protests across the nation. The Tea Party builds the theme of "Going Galt" into its rhetoric -- a reference to the strike of industry titans organized by the hero of the novel. Glenn Beck praises Atlas Shrugged regularly on his various shows, and even held a panel dedicated to asking if Rand's fiction is finally becoming reality. The Economist reported several sharp spikes in sales of Atlas Shrugged since 2007. And according to the Ayn Rand Institute, sales of the novel hit an all-time annual record that year, then reached a new record in 2008, with possibly another peak in 2009. By all accounts, Ayn Rand is now one of the central intellectual and cultural inspirations for the base of the Republican Party.

RAND'S INFLUENCE ON GOP: "For over half a century," says Jennifer Burns, a recent biographer of the novelist, "Rand has been the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right." And with good reason. Besides her prominence in the Tea Party's intellectual and cultural lexicon, some of the Republican Party's leading lights have cited Rand by name as an inspiration. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said she was the reason he entered public service. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) called Atlas Shrugged "his foundational book." Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an avowed fan and quotes extensively from Rand's novels at Congressional hearings. His father Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) told listeners that readers ate up Rand's Alas Shrugged because "it was telling the truth," and even conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas references her work as influence in his autobiography -- and apparently has his law clerks watch the film adaptation of The Fountainhead. The phenomenon holds amidst the right-wing media as well: Rush Limbaugh called her "brilliant," Glenn Beck's panel on Rand featured the president of the Ayn Rand Institute Yaroom Brook, and Andrew Napolitano enthusiastically recounted a story in which his college-age self introduces his mother to Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness. John Stossel and Sean Hannity have name-dropped her as well. Going further back, Alan Greenspan -- former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a fierce advocate of free-market ideology -- is an acolyte of Rand's thinking and knew her personally, and Rand was also dubbed the unofficial "novelist laureate" of the Reagan Administration by Maureen Dowd. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about Ayn Rand's reach on the right is how unremarked-upon it most often is.

RAND'S PHILOSOPHY: The philosophy, such as it was, which Rand laid out in her novels and essays was a frightful concoction of hyper-egotism, power-worship and anarcho-capitalism. She opposed all forms of welfare, unemployment insurance, support for the poor and middle-class, regulation of industry and government provision for roads or other infrastructure. She also insisted that law enforcement, defense and the courts were the only appropriate arenas for government, and that all taxation should be purely voluntary. Her view of economics starkly divided the world into a contest between "moochers" and "producers," with the small group making up the latter generally composed of the spectacularly wealthy, the successful, and the titans of industry. The "moochers" were more or less everyone else, leading TNR's Jonathan Chait to describe Rand's thinking as a kind of inverted Marxism. Marx considered wealth creation to result solely from the labor of the masses, and viewed the owners of capital and the economic elite to be parasites feeding off that labor. Rand simply reversed that value judgment, applying the role of "parasite" to everyday working people instead. On the level of personal behavior, the heroes in Rand's novels commit borderline rape, blow up buildings, and dynamite oil fields -- actions which Rand portrays as admirable and virtuous fulfillments of the characters' personal will and desires. Her early diaries gush with admiration for William Hickman, a serial killer who raped and murdered a young girl. Hickman showed no understanding of "the necessity, meaning or importance of other people," a trait Rand apparently found quite admirable. For good measure, Rand dismissed the feminist movement as "false" and "phony," denigrated both Arabs and Native Americans as "savages" (going so far as to say the latter had no rights and that Europeans were right to take North American lands by force) and expressed horror that taxpayer money was being spent on government programs aimed at educating "subnormal children" and helping the handicapped. Needless to say, when Rand told Mike Wallace in 1953 that altruism was evil, that selfishness is a virtue, and that anyone who succumbs to weakness or frailty is unworthy of love, she meant it.

PAUL RYAN'S AYN RAND BUDGET: Given that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the lead architect of the GOP's 2012 budget plan, his own devotion to the ideas of Atlas Shrugged and its author are worth noting. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat has dismissed the connection as Ryan merely saying some "kind words about Ayn Rand," which simply isn't a plausible characterization given what we know: Ryan was a speaker at the Ayn Rand Centenary Conference in 2005, where he described Social Security as a "collectivist system" and cited Rand as his primary inspiration for entering public service. He has at least two videos on his Facebook page in which he heaps praise on the author. "Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism," he says. All of which reflects a rather more serious devotion than a few mere kind words. So it should come as no surprise that Ryan's plan comports almost perfectly with Rand's world view.He guts Medicare, Medicaid, and a whole host of housing,food, and educational support programs, leaving the country's middle-class and most vulnerable citizens with far less support. Then he uses approximately half of the money freed by those cuts to reduce taxes on the most wealthy Americans. By transforming Medicare into a system of vouchers whose value increases at the rate of inflation, he undoes Medicare's most humane feature -- the shouldering of risk at the social level -- and leaves individuals and seniors to shoulder ever greater amounts of risk on their own. But if your intellectual and moral lodestar is a woman who railed against altruism as "evil" and considered the small pockets of highly successful individuals to be morally superior, it's a perfectly logical plan to put forward.

Real Americans©

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The above is the oath of office all Federal officials, including elected members of the Congress, recite before assuming their official duties.  It's a solemn and heavy burden to assume, especially given the size and complexity of the demands on our country.

Yet, in modern political debate and discourse, the right wing of American politics has staked out the Real American© high ground.  From there, they claim people like President Obama and his supporters are trying "subvert" the Constitution.  They use invective like "usurp", "trod on", or even "ignore" the Constitution.  To the right wing, those on the left aren't Real Americans©.

This raises an interesting question.  Do right wingers support the Constitution as much as they claim?  Chris Coons, in his recent debate with tea party darling Christine O'Donnell asked the question very succinctly:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqKlEr9Umeg

Which Constitution do right wingers like Louis Gohmert support?  The one which includes the 14th and 17th amendments?  Or the one without them?  If he wants to re-write the Constitution, can he really say he supports it as it stands now?  Can he then have any credibility in criticizing President Obama, who hasn't advocated changing the Constitution even once?

What about Ron Paul?  Does he support the Constitution which includes the 16th amendment?  Or the one previously?  If the 16th amendment is there and a legal part of our Constitution, how could he claim it's unconstitutional?

To be clear, folks like Christine O'Donnell, Ron Paul, Louis Gohmert, et al, have the right to lobby for a change to the Constitution.  We all do.  It's part of the Constitution in itself to allow for changes, amendments, etc.  However, in their rush to condemn those who hold only a different interpretational view of the Constitution as it exists as being "usurpers", how do they justify their expressly stated desire to completely amend the Constitution?  Merely reading the document differently makes one un-Constitutional but openly desiring to change it does not?

"Going Galt" and the Insanity of the Right Wing

[caption id="attachment_811" align="aligncenter" width="494" caption="No, your name isn't John Galt."][/caption]

The rise of teabag politics in the US has lead to an equally disturbing return to deification of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist "philosophy".  The right wing, of course, doesn't talk about Ayn Rand's disdain for things like religions or belief in a god, but focuses instead on her notions regarding capitalism.  Specifically, they use the John Galt figure from one of her books to embody all that an American should be.

Who was John Galt?  He was the deus ex machina in Atlas Shrugged, a rich industrialist who tired of seeing his tax money go to such despicable things as helping the poor.  So, he took his ball and went home, quite literally.  He buys an island and moves there with all his rich friends, leaving the rest of society to go without their creative manna (read: taxes).

[caption id="attachment_812" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Their pledge is "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." They are bad people."][/caption]

The teabaggers use this fictional character to represent themselves.  They believe they are the same as Galt and no longer want to participate in our society with its taxes and social programs.  There is even an organization dedicated to "going Galt":

They have the typical delusional "Us" and "Them" mentality so prevalent among the right wing.  They are the True Americans© while everyone else is simply a leech, living off the tit of taxpayers.  In replacing Ronald Reagan with Ayn Rand as their Conservative Messiah, they expressing a kind of vicious, self-interested sociopathy some of them don't even realize.  The cognitive dissonance is astounding and they don't seem to actually get what they are saying.

For example, remember Craig T. Nelson's appearance on the Glenn Beck show?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

He says the words but he doesn't appear to understand what he is saying.  More recently, we see this:

[caption id="attachment_813" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Ummm...."][/caption]

This level of blindness to the implications of their ideology is one explanation for the puzzling endorsement of Rand's philosophies.  Ayn Rand wasn't merely blindingly in love with laissez faire capitalism.  She took it a step further and advocated some of those same concepts as a kind of morality.  A good insight into her psyche was her thoughts on William Edward Hickman, a psychotic killer who kidnapped, ransomed, tortured, and killed a little girl so he could get enough money to go to seminary.  When he was finally captured and investigators were questioning how he could morally justify himself, he famously said "what is good for me is right".

Rand considered this quote to be the epitome of a "real man's psychology".  Her defense of him didn't just end there, however.  She later wrote of him:

"The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...

"This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul."

"And when we look at the other side of it -- there is a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as ambition and career...

"If he had any desires and ambitions -- what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; the degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises....

"A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?...

"He was given [nothing with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?"

Her sympathy for a psychotic murderer is of the same vein of thought which informs her Objectivism.  It is individuals like Hickman who became the model of other heroes in her books, Denny Renahan in "The Little Street".  In further describing Hickman she wrote of her "involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of [his antisocial nature] and in spite of everything else."

Such individualism and anti-social behavior defined all of Rand's heros and heroines.  They viewed themselves as morally superior by virtue of simply staking out that ground, and the rest of humanity as mere tools to be used, ground down, and tossed aside to achieve whatever goal theses Individuals had for themselves.  Such goals could obviously be building skyscrapers or killing innocent children.  If it's good for them, it's right.