The right wing blogosphere is always awash with conspiracy theories about how the left wing socialists are going to take away their rights. How many of you heard about the secret plans to declare martial law, to fence off the cities, and to herd people into FEMA compounds?
There were passionate demonstrations and those on the right were nearly apoplectic about the rights and freedoms Obama had taken away. But when asked about what the specific freedoms or rights they had lost were, they never presented any instances when real rights were actually denied.
Certainly there was a lot of hysterical fear, that their taxes would be raised, that their guns would be taken away, that the country was being over run by illegal aliens. But then when faced with the actual facts, that Obama reduced taxes for everyone, that it is easier than ever to acquire guns, and that under Obama, border security has been tightened, that immigration prosecutions have increased and that the number of people entering the nation illegally has been reduced 18%, then we are told that the facts must be wrong.
Most of the information the right wing gets the angriest about is simply not true. The entire movement is based on fantastic falsehoods that no one on the left would ever consider.
We liberals believe in Democracy and in giving more power to the people to determine their own lives. We would never consider totalitarian control by a dictator. We would never consider herding people into camps or declaring martial law to limit people's rights. We want to expand those rights and to expand the rights and freedoms of the people.
Where does the right wing get these fantastic ideas? Well now we know. The right wing is afraid of people taking away rights, declaring martial law and forming a totalitarian dictatorship, because that is what they do when they get in power. They hate Democracy and want all power returned to the oligarchs, to the corporations, the people with power, the Landed Gentry, that our founding fathers favored. They would take away the rights of women and minorities and make it harder for the common riff raff to celebrate the benefits of Democracy. After all they know what is best for us.
The Republicans promised to concentrate on jobs, but as soon as they got into power, they did nothing about jobs, they concentrated on taking away our rights. They are attempting to take away the right to receive inexpensive health care and want to abolish Medicare, so tens of millions of the old and infirm will be sacrificed on the alter of their insurance corporation's profits.
They attacked all women's rights to choose, they attacked the working people's rights to determine their working conditions, by eliminating collective bargaining, they attacked the ability of the poor to better themselves through education by making education affordable only to the rich, they attacked the rights of minorities to vote, with stricter voter ID and registration laws, and they destroyed our democracy by overwhelming the media with their propaganda and by buying the votes of the ignorant and impressionable, with their unlimited spending with no disclosure.
Once in power they signed bills that would give the millionaires and billionaires another trillion dollars, and will pay for that by making the poor and the middle class suffer.
The right wing was afraid of the left taking away nebulous and undefined rights, but when they got in power they actually did take away very real rights and freedoms.
The left would never consider curtailing the rights of the people in a community to determine the best way to educate their children, or to govern their community, but the right has taken that power away with emergency fiscal managers. Political cronies have been given the power to take over entire school districts, to fire hundreds of teachers, and eliminate entire schools with no input from the community.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archive...They have made laws that enable a single tyrant to come into a community, declare martial law, dismiss the elected officials, the city councils, and any other representatives of the community, so the tyrant's corporate masters can make more money from that community. The people no longer matter. There is no balance of power. We are returning to the days of being ruled by royal monarchs and their corrupt henchmen. We the people have become nothing but peons and serfs because those in power only listen to money. Benton Harbor is an example of what happens when Bush's Unitary Executive philosophy is put into practice.
The right wing denigrates big government but when they are in power, they try to take away our democracy, and turn the power over to dictators that serve the corporate elite.
http://www.americablog.com/2011/04/more-...