Are Some Conservatives Treading the Line When it Comes to Treason?

[babylonsister]

Are Some Conservatives Treading the Line When it Comes to Treason?
America's most popular cable news network is giving gobs of airtime to people who all but advocate armed insurrection.
March 2, 2010 |



In the fall of 1964, not long after Barry Goldwater had clinched the Republican nomination for president, historian Richard Hofstadter penned an essay for Harper's called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." It was an instant classic—not because it was so elegantly written, but because in just a few pages it described with deadly accuracy one of the major strains of our national dialogue.

"The paranoid spokesman," Hofstadter wrote, "is always manning the barricades of civilization...Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse...He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised...Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish."

Oath Keepers, the group featured in a Mother Jones cover story, would seem the classic case in point. Its members are cops, sheriffs, and military men and women determined to resist the tyrannical orders they believe are imminent from the Obama administration. The fantasies they spin—a "globalist" leadership intent on declaring martial law, putting God-fearing Americans in detention camps, and asking UN blue helmets to keep order while it imposes health care reform and who knows what else—replicate almost exactly the fears far-right cranks have peddled for generations. Replace "socialism" with "communism" and you are pretty much back to 1964 (or 1934 or 1884, for that matter).

But what was true then is true now: Dismissing one's adversaries as wing nuts is myopic, both intellectually and politically. Like it or not, the Oath Keepers, and the myriad other "patriot" groups now emerging around the edges of the Tea Party movement, are tapping into a real strain of popular anger. And who wouldn't be angry? Unemployment for millions, bailouts and bonuses for a few. A health care reform plan supremely undersold by a Democratic establishment unconcerned with the battle for hearts and minds (see: Martha Coakley). A GOP controlled by pro-corporate nihilists.

But righteous anger is one thing. Manufacturing fear, dare we say terror, is another—and over the past year, we have seen cynical politicians and talk-show demagogues increasingly willing to traffic in it. It's no longer just handfuls of militia types trading overheated conspiracy theories; it's America's most popular cable news network giving gobs of airtime to people who all but advocate armed insurrection. It's the man who is now our newest senator chortling, on live TV, that maybe Barack Obama was born out of wedlock—don't you wish guys still had to face an affaire d'honneur for comments like that?—a scurrilous point we take note of only because it indicates that Scott Brown gets his talking points from extreme-right sites like WorldNetDaily (WND).

When people in positions of great power play footsie with those who advocate treason—or claim that the elected commander in chief is a bastard foreigner with no claim to the office—they are not just engaging in a lively debate. They are actively negating a fundamental principle of American politics: that the government, no matter how much you might disagree with its representatives, is of, by, and for the people.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/news/145847/are_some_conservatives_treading_the_line_when_it_comes_to_treason?page=entire

[tom_paine]

1. Of course they are, but Nazis, Bushies and other Right-Wing Authoritarians have always believed

treason was in the eye of the beholder.

End of story. Or is it still just the beginning?

[rpannier]

2. Many of them crossed that line a while back

But the marker keeps getting moved

News is now about ratings. So what's wrong with having a raving lunatic, lie and spew racist comments when it means a better share? They can just apologize for it later.

[Demeter]

6. Think Nixon, and Reagan, and Bush 1&2

Treason is what the winners accuse the losers of doing.

[elocs]

3. Nothing will ever happen though because we need to be bipartisan,

hold hand and sing Kumbaya.

Didn't the left virtually abdicate the healthcare town hall meetings to the teabaggers and the nut-jobs. If there is a vacuum they are more than willing to fill it and their screechy shrillness makes them appear bigger than they really are.

Democrats and the Left had better wake up and realize that they are having a huge bullseye drawn on them and there are enough nut-jobs out there who would be happy to literally pull the trigger.

[Igel]

10. I love it.

You're right. Compromising on something like health care is idiocy, and bipartisanship is simply another word for compromise, for selling out the good and allowing the bad guys to have a say they have no right to. Without health care reform, this country's headed for ruin. Dems have to have the backbone necessary to stand up and fight to the finish on this.

Then again.

"He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised...Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish."

[stray cat]

4. Progressives generally believe in free speech but not so much if its not speech they like?

[Demeter]

5. If you think total suppression of the Left Constitutes Free Speech

then you are on the wrong forum.

[eShirl]

7. Such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, for instance?

[old mark]

8. There is free speech and there is advocating and promoting violent

overthrow of the government. We on the left were doing this in the late '60's-early '70's, to the extent of bombing and murders, and the left WAS actively persued by the federal government for it.

I am ASSUMING there is at least SOME little effort by the feds to watch the very extreme RWers who are busl plotting and scheming for their "revolution" right now. there are many more or less mainstream RWers who are flirting with this shit, but there are many on the extreme right who actually think the time is near to step up and do it.

Again, I hope the Feds are aware of this and have some insight as to who, where and what is going on.
I believe that the GOP will lose again in the November election, ans that may set some of these people off....bullet box if not the ballot box, etc.

They are serious and they are out there.

mark

[jtrockville]

9. I think they are crossing the line, but nothing to do with terror.

They're voting against what they think is good for the country, just to make the president look bad.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. According to Obama, they are our bipartisan partners who

must be respected. So what I think of them matters not.

[troubledamerican]

12. Totalitarians seize power when Doormats refuse to fight back

[JohnWxy]

13. I wonder what conservative radio hosts Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Paul Hill, J. Kopp listened to?

I Long for the Good Ol' Days when Ignorance wasn't considered a Political Position.

Nowadays, conservative radio polemicists convulsed with hatred, writhing with rage, whip-up the uninformed, inciting them to extremism and intolerance, attitudes which are antithetical to the spirit in which this country was founded. Individuals claiming to be “pro-Life” barely hide their willingness to squeeze the life out of those who would dare to disagree with them. What does this lead to – public policy driven by hysteria and superstition, members of congress threatening judges and home grown terrorists blowing up people (I wonder what conservative radio hosts Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Paul Hill, James Kopp liked to listen to.). These conservative mouths tell those who are frustrated and disappointed with their lives that the source of all their woes is Big Government. Conservatives like to preach about the evils of Big Government, but they are very comfortable using government power to go after their political enemies (Tom Delay used Dept of Homeland Security to hunt down Texas Democrats). Republicans show a frightening facility for the techniques of totalitarianism.

[mariawr]

14. Treading? Plowed right over it. nt