Independence Day Post Mortem

Bill Van Auken, celebrating July 4th, in his article "A government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."

The Democratic House and Senate leadership have blamed Republican obstinacy for the defeat of these meager relief measures. The reality, however, is that both big business parties accept the doctrine of deficit reduction and agree that social spending—including the pittance offered to the unemployed—must be curtailed to that end. As for the Obama White House, it declined to make an issue of millions of workers being left destitute.

No such obstacle stood in the way of paying for imperialist war, however, with the Congressional Democratic leadership determined to approve the $33 billion supplemental package—roughly the same amount that was withheld from the unemployed and the state governments—before July 4.

nutjobs and mother-of-all-nutjobs

"Rand Paul has been widely cast as a libertarian but there’s considerable evidence tying him to another tendency – theocratic Christian nationalism, and specifically Christian Reconstructionism." B.E. Wilson

If you have friends in Kentucky who are undecided on this, or are voting for Rand Paul because he's a "conservative like them" they at least deserve to know what they're voting for.  Several weeks ago I suggested that Alex Jones' love of Rand Paul speaks volumes about both gentlemen. It's hard to read the following interview fragment and not break out laughing, and perhaps you can even keep up the laughter as you contemplate that Paul is in a dead heat against his Democratic opponent Jack Conway, that this guy could end up making federal policy as part of an emerging Republican majority.

Alex Jones: Rand, I want to ask you about John P. Holdern, the science czar. Generally the social planners admit they want socialized medicine; they want carbon taxes, he says, to carry out eugenics. And even the forced drugging of the water to sterilize us. That sounds like Nazi Germany. What would you do in the Senate about this?

Rand Paul: Well if I were there we would get to expose it before he's gotten a hearing—during his hearing; that's what these hearings are for, to expose this before he gets approved.

Another Paul appearance on Jones' show found the candidate giving tacit support to all manner of nutbaggery, including this gem:

During a rant about the Fed, Jones claimed "we know that the Federal Reserve was clearly implicated in the kidnapping of a congressman's baby" and commended Paul for his "courage" in taking on the Fed. Paul replied, "I appreciate that," and he told Jones that he could not mount his Senate run "without you." 

Rather than being an aberration of conservatism, it's important to understand that the fantasy-world and intrigue of conspiracy theorists serves to supercharge a conservative worldview that would otherwise have been weakened by history, economic realities and political evolution. Rand, along with Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and others are part of a new GOP power-base of theological-paranoid-fantasy-mongering conservative metaphysicians. Alex Jones, while paying lip service to "libertarianism" (a philosophy that finally emerges as whatever its practitioners want it to mean) is the movement's willing extremist lunatic--more of a Streicher than a Goebbels--expanding the space of extremism in order to make the far right GOP seem reasonable by comparison.

Whether you're working to defeat Rand Paul electorally, or working as part of a larger movement to defeat the conditions responsible for the present reemergence of the far right loon brigade, you're doing good work. Keep it up.