Tfgray’s Weblog

I’ve been away, watching, but not commenting, on the 2009 elections. Events in the 23rd District of New York, in particular, appear to confirm my earlier prediction of Republican schism. So far, there are two sides to the split: the moderate, centrist flavor and the Extra Spicy conservative. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the Extra Spicy will itself split into the religious and libertarian factions, most likely just after the 2010 elections. (In a power struggle if they win; in a toxic fume of recrimination if not.)

The results are not all in yet, as I write, but so far Corzine and Deeds have succumbed, Bloomberg has held on in NYC, and Owens leads in New York State. Expect the Republicans to blame the losses on Obama. (Side note: Rep. Joe Wilson, who voted against funding for H1N1 vaccine production, is blaming his wife’s Swine Flu on Guess Who?) I think that Rachel Maddow and Jane Hamsher had an interesting take, however: that Corzine’s loss and Bloomberg’s fairly tight win had something to do with their association with Wall Street wealth. They both outspent their opponents massively and got a loss and a squeaker to show for it. This election is about the electorate turning away from a business-as-usual model that has benefited The Few to the tune of taxpayer billions.

Uncle Pat was on with Chris, claiming that this turn from business as usual would benefit his favorite brand of right wingery, but I have my doubts. I can see where the Right would turn away from the Republican Party, which consistently enlarged the national debt and instituted policies favorable to the wealthy. Unfortunately, the policies favored by the Right will exacerbate the concentration of wealth and pull the support system out from under everyone else. I disagree with his assertion that this is what the American people really want.

Meanwhile, despite Virginia’s amazingly consistent record of voting for a governor of a party opposite the president’s, despite Craig Deeds not particularly good campaign, despite Corzine’s personal unpopularity and so-so record, despite exit polls showing that about 60% of voters didn’t let their feelings for or against Obama affect their vote in the least, with the remainder being split fairly evenly for and against, there will be those only too willing to attribute the state-level losses to the president.

If Hoffman takes the 23rd, expect to hear nothing else for the next year.

This just in: Hoffman has conceded. Gazing into my crystal ball, I see the Extra Spicy crowd coming to the conclusion that if they’d just started backing Hoffman a little earlier, they’d have pulled it off. Chris Matthews was just on with a radio personality I’d never heard of, who announced that “all” Republican leadership must go, although he refused to mention anyone by name.  (Mostly he stuck with the buzzwords “Obama” and “Pelosi.”) Maybe I’m alone in this, but the way I see it, the Republican Party had a safe seat in upper New York State until Palin and Armey stuck their big noses in and dragged in some out-of-towner to hand the election to the Democrats. Encouraged by this turn of events, they plan to take it national, gunning for every Republican incumbent to the left of Attilla the Hun. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

This should make for an interesting couple of years.

I have Rachel Maddow to thank for introducing me to The Family. For the past three broadcasts, she’s been covering this shadowy fundamentalist organization. The first two nights, she interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of a book on the subject. I read it over the weekend, and my hands are still shaking.

The Family, formerly referred to as The Fellowship, is highly organized in cells modeled on the Communist Party, but chooses to think of itself as not an organization at all, very convenient when your money passes “man to man,” i.e., without benefit of tax reporting, a technique they picked up from one of the organizations they profess to admire: the Mafia.

In its original formulation, it’s The Idea. The Reverend Abram Vereide, in the depths of the Depression, had a vision: The world would be saved by its ‘Big Men.’ If all power could be granted to the wealthiest and most powerful, the superior men would rule, and the world would be perfected. The problem, as he saw it, was that the little men were not satisfied with their lot, and through unions were attempting to displace the big men from their God-given authority.

And that authority, he knew, was God-given. After all, was it possible that such men could occupy their positions if it were against God’s will?

How did he know this? God appeared to him in a blinding white light and told him. He would preach a manly Christ, a forceful Christ, a Christ who embraced the moneychangers and whipped the poor from the temple, a Christ on the side of the Pharisees.

Now, I know a little about white light experiences. At the age of 25, in the throes of a deep personal crisis, I found myself waking into white light, an awesome, blissful experience, with all my synapses firing at once. Like others having that experience, I heard a voice. “You can do anything you want, have anything you want, be anything you want,” it told me. At a certain level, that’s true. On the other hand, your head can get pretty puffed up if you take that sort of message without a big wonking grain of salt. My reaction was, “I bet Adolph Hitler had a voice just like that in his head,” and chose to downplay it.

The voice told Vereide something a little different. He was to recruit the Big Men to Jesus, and they would conquer the world in His name. What’s not to like? His version of the reign of Jesus, however, has some interesting features. All power was to be aggregated to the few. The poor and powerless? Let them eat prayers. The wealthy and powerful would, if left to their own devices, rule in perfect justice. If any of this sounds familiar, up to  and including the notion that the economy, if freed from regulation, will function with perfect balance and perfect fairness, there’s a reason for that. For the past 75 years, Veriede and his followers have assiduously brown-nosed the powerful, afflicted the afflicted, and comforted the comfortable. In the name of Jesus, of course, recruiting them into prayer groups, aka “cells.”

But back to that white light. I remembered something while reading Sharlet’s book, two things, actually: the story of Jesus’s encounter with Satan, after his 40 days in the desert. Satan made him an offer—limitless wealth and power. Jesus told him to get lost. The other thing I remembered is that Satan’s original name was Lucifer, “Lightbearer.”

Could there be a connection? Could it be that the White Light is not God, but Lucifer, the Lightbearer, who was ejected from heaven for presuming to be God’s equal? To me, it’s all metaphor, but I can see where the expression of unlimited power without the need for anything resembling human decency would qualify as satanic. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you call them sociopaths, demonically possessed, or authoritarian social dominants. They call it Jesus, and in their minds the name of the Lord has become a code word for oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy, enforced by brutality, where needed.

One of Sharlet’s examples, mentioned in his first interview with Rachel, was a Family workshop at which the leader asked a Congressman, “What would I think of you if I knew you had raped three little girls?” The congressman was shocked, “You’d think I was a monster.”

“No,” the leader replied. “You are one of the Chosen.” One of the chosen, one of the Big Men, who would rule in perfect justice, when not violating everything in sight, or perhaps by violating everything in sight. What balm to the souls of sociopaths! Not only can they sin with impunity, God smiles upon them! Is it any surprise that both Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign are Family members, and that neither of them is resigning?

Sharlet, in his book, outlines the major projects of the Idea/Family/Fellowship. The Cold War: The Vietnam War-50,000 American dead, 8 million Vietnamese dead, a devastated, poisoned environment, thousands of babies born deformed due to exposure to Agent Orange. Latin American death squads. Somalia, destroyed by its dictator Siad Barr, armed first by the Soviet Union when he fought against Ethiopia, then by the United States, through the influence of Family members Senator Chuck Grassley and Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General David Jones, which weapons he turned upon his own people. Indonesia’s genocidal invasion of East Timor. Uganda, making progress in its battle against AIDS until the Family-infested Bush Administration replaced its programs with lectures on morality. The Ugandan AIDS rate doubled. All projects favored by the Family. They seek out the powerful and will arm and fund anyone who will bend a knee with them and mouth the word “Jesus.” Oh yes, and murder ans oppress the “little men,” their wives, and their children.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

Liberty University withdrew recognition of itsYoung Democrats Club, on the grounds that no Democrat can be a Christian. Brigham Young University withdrew recognition of both its Republican and Democratic student groups.

While Liberty says it is willing to restore recognition, provided the young Dems ally with a group with “Life” in the title, this move is not only about the  “abortion, socialist, and LGBT agenda.” There’s more beneath the surface.

A couple of weeks ago, I was surfing the upper reaches of Dish Network’s offerings and found, along with channels selling everything from jewelry to exercise equipment, a Christian infomercial channel. The fellow hawking his wares at that moment was a historian promoting the view that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians, and that, in fact, a Republican form of government was founded upon Christian principles, whereas a Democratic form of government would inevitably decline into dictatorship and totalitarianism. He attributed this nugget to Noah Webster. I mean, after all, the guy who wrote the dictionary should know the proper meaning of words, right? 

Webster, as noted by www.Conservapedia,com, began as a freethinker, but became increasingly authoritarian as he aged. (Their word, not mine. Full quote:

Webster viewed language as a tool to control unruly thoughts. His American Dictionary emphasized the virtues of social control over human passions and individualism, submission to authority, and fear of God; they were necessary for the maintenance of the American social order. As he grew older, Webster’s attitudes changed from those of an optimistic revolutionary in the 1780s to those of a pessimistic critic of man and society by the 1820s.

Still, one would think that the founder of Amherst College and inventor of American spelling would have known that the Roman Republic had sprung forth, flowered, and decayed into the Roman Empire before the birth of Christ.

This is simply an Orwellian play on words. If you’d like more examples, go to www.wallbuilders.com, where the nexus of Christian and Conservatism is fully explained.

The thing I find most interesting is that these folks, who trumpet their Christianity most loudly, will opt for Old Testament teachings any time the actual words of Jesus contradict them. Well, maybe that’s not the part that strikes me most profoundly. I’m even more distressed by their quest to define “Democracy” as Evil and “Republican” as Good, and the attendant slippery slope into religious-based warfare thereby created. The site quotes copiously from the writings of noted extreme Right Wing theologian R.J. Rushdoony, whose name rhymes with looney, thus proving no only that there is a God, but that he is a just God and that He has a sense of humor.

Let’s look at the dictionary (Merriam-Webster) definition of those terms:

Republic: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president; a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.

Democracy: government by the people ; especially : rule of the majority; a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Subtle difference: In a Democracy, “the People” get to vote. In a Republic, “a body of citizens” is entitled to vote. Remember, in the original American set-up, only men, and specifically “men of property,” i.e., landowners, were allowed to vote. Would anyone like to guess what criteria Wallbuilders might be hoping for in their ideal Republic? (For an eye-opener, click here. Read down to the part about it being okay to enslave non-believers. The Bible says so. So there.) They have an interesting workaround on that verse that okays selling your daughter into slavery. It’s for her protection. And the terms “Christian” and “Free” are identical and interchangeable, the latter being impossible without the former.

Okay, free from what and free to do what?

After watching a TV clip re Obama’s little gift from Chavez, learning that the book is now #2 on Amazon.com, and that #1 is Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, I went and checked out Mark’s book. I already have decades worth of reading under my belt re El Norte’s not too shining historical relationship with our fellow American nations.

Levin begins, of course, with the ringing words of the Declaration–well, actually, that comes a page or so later, after he defines Conservatism as “…a way of understanding life, society, and governance.” He then goes on to cite a number of Enlightenment figures as having given birth to Conservative thought. Locke, Montiesque, Adam Smith.

I looked at that, and it occurred to me that those men were the radicals of their day. They proposed ideas that were utterly opposed to the European hierarchical world view and allegedly “divine” right of kings to rule. They bolstered their argument against a divinely-sanctioned rule of the masses by the nobility with the assertion that God, indeed, was on their side. In fact, the “Conservatives” of that day, those who wished to “conserve” the existing social order, were staunchly on the side of the King, “For God and King,” as they proudly put it.

Maybe the problem is that the Conservatives need a new name, at least those who wish to parade under the banner of Enlightenment philosophers. Was it not American Conservatives who instigated Jim Crow laws and resisted the dismantling of segregation? Was it not American Conservatives who opposed Roosevelt’s opposition to the rise of Nazi Germany and his support of Britain under the Lend Lease program? Was it not Conservatives who opposed–violently–the right of American workers to peaceably assemble and freely associate in unions?

Maybe this is the real dogfight in the Republican tent. The intellectual heirs of those noble Liberal philosophers (which is what they called themselves) are somehow trapped in bed with the intellectual descendants of those who burned witches and homosexuals at the stake. They are in bed with those who never found a war they weren’t willing to send someone else’s kids to fight. With those whose allegiance to their right to property transcends any other consideration, such as other people’s lives, liberties, and property. Those who voted to deregulate interest rates and restrict debtors’ access to bankruptcy. To dismantle environmental protections. To grant no-bid contracts to war profiteers.

You can go to the above link to the book and read the first few pages. He segues pretty quickly from his noble definition of Conservatism to equate Liberal philosophy with”Statism,” or a blind belief that the bigger the government, the better, by which definition that Conservative darling, Mr. Bush, must be the biggest Liberal of all. I also could not help but notice that he did not quote a single liberal or cite a single source to back up his claim on that topic. Liberals, he maintains, are just gung-ho to destroy the individual in their quest for the perfect state. We are imperfect human beings, he asserts, but Conservatives understand that, and don’t get too bothered by it. Which somehow explains why prison populations ballooned under the Bush Administration and Republicans were able to win elections by such tactics as calling triple amputee Max Cleland a coward and that whole thing about John McCain’s alleged “black baby.” 

After eight years of warrantless wiretapping and torture under Bush, it’s the Liberals who are trying to destroy our Constitutional underpinnings. (Okay, I’ll admit Obama has me nervous on that point these days.)

But still, yikes!

Although I give him credit for his historical references to Locke, et al, I find him engaging in the usual Right Wing game of attributing every evil to The Other, and all virtue to one’s co-believers.

Here’s my definition of Conservative, “One who wishes to hold onto current structures, because one finds an advantage in the existing structure.”  For example, Jim Crow kept Blacks from obtaining decent wages and equal treatment under the law. While I grant that abortion opponents sincerely believe in the sanctity of unborn life, lack of choice regarding the number and spacing of one’s children does put women at a disadvantage in the work force, giving men an advantage when it comes to hiring, promotions, and raises. Discrimination against gays likewise diminishes their earning potential. Environmental regulations, their opponents freely admit, gunk up the profit machine by insisting that they clean up after themselves and leave at least a couple of stones unturned now and again.

If the vision of the Founders was truly enacted, there would be no discrimination against anyone. Period. The notion that the Founders were religious men has been disproven over and over. They were Deists, Freemasons, for god’s sake, believers in God as Reason, not as a spiritual being. The notion that the Bible is the source of all morality is likewise ignorant nonsense. While Social Conservatives do sincerely believe that they have cornered the market of Moral High Ground, the agenda of the Republican Party has long been the protection of a wealthy minority by means of an appeal to anyone who will turn a blind eye to their own self-interest in order to further their own hobbyhorse: ending the right of a woman to choose; diminishing the right of blacks, gays, or anyone defined as “other” to compete freely in the workplace; ending those pesky laws protecting air and water; secession from the United States.

High-flown rhetoric aside, this is the working definition of the current Conservative movement, and its near total dominance under Bush has sown the seeds of its destruction. As people are forced by economic events to notice that their own interests have been damaged by Republican policies, they leave. Of course, a parallel trend will take place, as the number of those who feel that they cannot compete in the workplace unless the deck is stacked in their favor will rise, as well.  Not a good trend, that one.

Today’s prediction:

What passes for the Republican Party will become increasingly shrill, as those with any degree of moderation will become alienated from it. If the pronouncements of Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Malkin, Bachmann, et al signify a trend, the Party is looking to the militant fringe to bolster its numbers, pulling them in from the smaller parties to the Right, including the secessionist movement. (You’ll notice they’ve been making a full-court press for that constituency the past few months.) If you’ll read my earlier posts on Authoritarianism, you’ll find that such control freaks generally despise their followers as easily-manpulated idiots, and assume that they can, with a combination of smoke, mirrors, appeals to traditional belief systems, and cold hard cash, extend their control indefinitely.

Just like the Saudis fund the Jihadists, thinking to channel their religious beliefs to turn their aggressive instincts outward, toward the Other, in order to protect their own status and wealth.

Ask anybody. The Saudis are very Conservative.

I heart Megan McCain. She’s the Athena of the Republican Party, doing long-overdue battle with the Harpies. So far, so good. Maybe the Party can be pried loose from the death grip of the extreme Right.

But still, the fact that the biggest thing in the Republican Party right now is, essentially, a trash-talking match in the girls locker room (“She’s fat!” “Kiss my ass!”) doesn’t bode well for the  Party of Ideas.

And what about the Rushbo? Over in Limboland he’s sticking up for the outsized payouts to the guys who trashed the economy. Apparently his philosophy is that destroying global capitalism is a tough job, but somebody had to do it. I’m wondering if his legions of working class dittoheads are going to parrot that one, particularly those employed in the automotive industry, or if he just self-destructed. The concept of Rush Limbaugh jumping the shark brings up amusing, but highly disturbing, mental imagery.

 According to Rush Limbaugh, speaking at CPAC, the basic Conservative principles are “Life, Liberty, Freedom, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” He mis-attributed it to the Constitution, which opted for “Life, Liberty, and Property” and stuck that redundant “Freedom” in there, but I’m not here to quibble.

According to Jonathan Krohn, the 13-year-old actor, Bill Bennett fan, and CPAC wunderkind, the four pillars of Conservatism are respect for the Constitution, respect for life, less government, and personal responsibility. I mean, what’s not to like? We will all be law-abiding citizens, having sex only when we desire to bring an additional child into the world, paying our bills on time, and with perfect honesty and self-control. Who can argue with that, other than a depraved pervert?

Well, me, apparently, hard-working, bill-paying middle-aged, middle class housewife and mother that I am. I don’t have a problem with any of those principles, per se. I’d just like to look a little deeper and see just how the implications of those principles shake out, because there, I think lies the problem confronting the Conservative movement.

Back when I was in high school, during the Dreaded Sixties, “Freedom” was not a Conservative principle. The Civil Rights Movement and the Hippies had laid full claim to that turf, and Conservatives aligned themselves firmly behind the phrase “Law and Order.” (And if Law and Order does not imply a strong government, just what does that phrase mean?)

How short and fleeting is Memory! I can’t fault Jonathan for that, pre-embryo that he was in those days, but Rush really is old enough to know better. (I suppose it would be appropriate to contrast his terror of “Democrats choosing our candidates” in open primaries to his gleeful endorsement of “Operation Chaos” in which he encouraged his minions to vote Hillary in open Democratic primaries, as proof of his obviously short memory. Or something.) The mill of the gods grinds slowly, Rush, but it grinds exceedingly fine.

Anyway. Edward Peter Fitzsimmons was my English teacher in my junior year at Northern Valley. A tall, imposing sort, resplendent in his handlebar mustache and 3-piece suits, heavy gold watch chain draped across the brocaded expanse of his tummy, he devoted his life to out-Britishing the British. “Freedom,” he intoned one day in class. “Whenever someone says ‘Freedom’ to you, ask them ‘Freedom from what and Freedom to do what?’”

Just asking, Rush.

I suppose Rush would respond “Freedom from excessive government regulation,” but then there was that unfortunate other applause line in his speech, the one about Conservatism “protecting the people.” Okay, from what? And more importantly, how, if not by Government and Law? I find it interesting that Obama’s taking hits from the Left regarding his reluctance to reverse Bush’s draconian, unconstitutional, and tyrannical Unitary Executive policies, while the allegedly anti-governmental-power Right remains mum on the topic. They’re all in a lather over economics, bringing us back to that Life, Liberty, and Property thing that the Constitution actually states and Rush sort of tap-danced around. Freudian slip? Code-talking? Bone-headed ignorance? Who knows?

One has only to look at the Food and Drug Administration for an example of the Conservative contradiction. Initiated by that Republican icon, Teddy Roosevelt, it protected the people against profit-oriented food processors’ inclination to cut corners and include bits of rats, feces, or missing employees in their products. Ronald Reagan, in his “government is the problem” monomania, cut FDA inspection funding, Bush cut it further, plus handed the keys to the office to a cattle industry lobbyist, and essentially killed nine people and sickened tens of thousands with just the resulting peanut fiasco alone. The Market will handle the problem, you see. If people die from eating your product, they won’t buy it any more. If their friends and relatives figure out just what it was that killed thm, they might not buy it either. God forbid some government scientist should figure out just what sickened people and who was responsible for its production.

Let’s continue to employment practices. If the bottom line is all that matters, then labor unions are obviously a bad thing. They’ll stand together for good wages and working conditions. If you mistreat one employee, the rest of them might gang up on you. Looks to me like a system that would allow Management and Labor to work out their differences without the need for the government to become involved, but apparently not to Conservative Logic. Okay, so you have a powerful corporation with a cash flow equal to or greater than any number of small nations on one side, and you have the fifty-two individuals whose plant just got shut down packing up the machinery for a trip to one of those smaller nations on the other. This is the Conservative ideal of fair and balanced. Fortunately, Conservatives also believe in widespread gun ownership. Okay, I can’t fault their logic on that one. They don’t call guns “The Great Equalizer” for nothing. It’s the implications that I don’t like. The possibility that a plant manager might get shot for carrying out orders that he might not be jazzed about himself, or that the displaced worker might take that personal responsibility thing literally and do away with himself and/or those mouths he can no longer afford to feed. A creepy thought, but it happens, especially if your governor believes it’s wrong for people who don’t work to get anything to tide them over until they find work again.

Then there’s that notion that we’ll have plenty of willing buyers keeping up on their payments while their paychecks shrink or disappear entirely.

And immigration. On the one hand, we don’t want hordes of “them” taking our jobs, on the other, we’re not williing to live three families to an apartment in order to be able to live on what “they” are willing to work for. God forbid workers should band together for decent pay. That would be Class Warfare. Downsizing workers and replacing them with underpaid illegal immigrants, however, is not. It’s Business as Usual.

And then there are those god-awful environmental regulations, you know, snail darters, owls, whatnot. Why protect them? Leaving aside the concept of the canary in the coal mine, in which the animal provides a status report on the health of the environment (which we rely upon for our existence, as well) or the notion that certain pieces of land, although of little intrinsic commercial value, provide unpaid service to us (example, wetlands protecting New Orleans from storm surge, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, and providing breeding grounds for shrimp) we still come up against that right to life thing. So only humans have a right to life? And if the life forms—plants, animals, microbes—that support human life are degraded to the point that they can no longer do so, then what happens to everybody’s right to life?

While we’re there, lets look at the more narrowly defined right to life. Oddly, some of those who are most vehement on the subject of abortion, the underlying logic being that only unmarried people who hate children would ever get one, are also against contraception. The logic is that contraception increases the incidence of out-of wedlock sex. I have a secret to share. Married people have sex, too. Last I checked, it was a major reason for getting married in the first place. And a marriage license is no guarantee of a job, and what is more responsible than loving your spouse while planning to have children only when you know you can provide for them?  So now Conservative principles, or at least the most extreme adherents of them, are in essence asserting that only people with money get to have sex. Or perhaps that children are God’s punishment for having sex. That should get them a lot of votes.

And there’s the other end of life. Terry Schiavo became a cause celebrè when her life support was terminated, but she’s not alone. It happens to people who don’t have million-dollar settlements to fund their hospital stays. Without a single protest, without a single Congressional eyebrow being raised, without the self-appointed guardians of sacred life giving a tinker’s dam, hospital boards vote to terminate life support to patients who can’t pay their bills. Meanwhile, Conservatives assert that people who can’t afford to pay for health care shouldn’t get any. Oh, and that the evil trial lawyer who got Schiavo that malpractice settlement should not have been allowed to do so. Okay, please explain to me how that “right to life” thing works again?

The strange being that Conservatism has become is currently self-destructing under the weight of its own contradictions. Their “leadership crisis” springs from the underlying reality that those who most proudly flaunt the conservative banner are blind to those contradictions. The ones with sense have abandoned the cause.

I came across this discussion of Joe the Plumber economics at OEN:

If Joe takes a salary out of the business of more than $250,000, then he’ll pay more [tax]….Now, let’s say there is a higher tax and it makes Joe reconsider crossing that $250,000 threshold. What else can Joe do with the money? Invest in the business in new services? Expand marketing? Hire more employees? The other side of the decision helps the economy. Oooh, that sound so un-American, so socialist, as Joe accused.

source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Joe-the-Plumber–the-Para-by-Rob-Kall-081016-366.html

Rob Kall’s on to something, in fact, something that goes back to the Founding Fathers, Ben Franklin, in particular. In Ben’s humble opinion,

All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

So much for the notion that paying taxes is some kind of Socialist innovation. The following comment on the current banking crisis, from Ellen Brown, also posted on OEN, shows how Franklin put his beliefs into practice, while governor of Pennsylvania:

If banks went bankrupt, they could be put into FDIC receivership and nationalized.  The government would then own a string of banks, which could be used to service the depository and credit needs of the community.  There would be no need to change the personnel or procedures of these newly-nationalized banks.  They could engage in “fractional reserve” lending just as they do now.  The only difference would be that the interest on loans would return to the government, helping to defray the tax burden on the populace; and the banks would start out with a clean set of books, so their $700 billion in startup capital could be fanned into $7 trillion in new loans.  This was the sort of banking scheme used in Benjamin Franklin’s colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well.  The spiraling-interest problem was avoided by printing some extra money and spending it into the economy for public purposes.  During the decades the provincial bank operated, the Pennsylvania colonists paid no taxes, there was no government debt, and inflation did not result.

Source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/THE-REAL-DEBATE-CRONY-SOC-by-Ellen-Brown-081016-471.html

How far we have come from Franklin’s thinking. In fact, Conservatism, the dominant political philosophy in this country for the last 30 years, seeks to support an economic system that goes back to the Closing of the Commons, the never-ending quest of individuals to enrich themselves by aggregating to themselves that which initially belongs to all. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, 

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Franklin, who began his career in Philadelphia with 3 cents in his pocket and grew to be one of the wealthiest American colonists, understood that material acquisition by itself was an empty, endless pursuit.

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. . . . The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.

Further, according to Franklin,

 An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.

At a time when a member of Congress, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has called for an investigation into “the people of Congress [to] find out if they are pro-America or anti-America” it’s important to ask, just how do you define “pro-American?”

I’m with Ben on this one.