Rights and Freedoms
What scares right wingers to the bone? Freedom. Free speech. Free thoughts. Free people. Why? They feel insecure in an uncertain universe. Right wingers crave order and simplicity, and will impose these things where they are not and should never be.
Actual conservatives -- equally skeptical of over-concentrated power in religious, private AND government hands -- are few and far between in the current conservative "movement."
A recent a San Francisco Chronicle article by Marc Sandalow examines the current crop of right wing "conservatives" who attended the national Conservative Political Action Conference in a public display of right wing pathology.
Sandalow describes Dick Cheney leading right wingers in mob hysteria reminiscent of the "Five Minute Hate" sessions depicted in Orwell's classic 1984.
The article reported right wingers conducted "[P]anels to discuss 'real stories of real liberal bias on real college campuses,' and 'Are liberals an endangered species?'"
They paid "special tribute" to bigots like Phyllis Schlafly "to honor her work on the '20th anniversary of the defeat of the ERA'" and lined up for "Book signings [that] featured authors such as Mona Charen, who wrote 'Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.'"
Sandalow noted that right wingers hate Hillary Clinton and often resort to infantile slogans in lieu of logic or facts. "'It takes a village to elect an idiot,' read one sign," from someone who confused New York State with a tiny hamlet.
Other typically simple-minded mockery abounded as "'Save a tree -- eat a beaver,' proclaimed one group's bumper sticker," and "'So you're a feminist. Isn't that cute,' read another."
Attendees bought "Democrats are evildoers," and "'Proud Member of the Right Wing Conspiracy' license plates." They sold each other "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun" and "'End Global Whining' bumper stickers."
Meanwhile, "One vendor was hawking a placard that twisted the "s" in Islam into a swastika, while another offered a bumper sticker proclaiming, "No Muslims -- No Terrorism."
Other bigots proudly displayed rants about "The homosexual agenda," and "distributed pamphlets that warned of 'a sweeping strategy to affirm homosexuality in the nation's schools,'"
Other publications "proclaimed the acceptance of 'sexual orientation' as a civil right as having a profoundly destructive effect on business and society." See Conservatives say they're on a roll February 2, 2003: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/02/BA175060.DTL
How different from Barry Goldwater's view that you don't have to be straight to serve your country in uniform; you only have to shoot straight. Today's Right wingers think otherwise.
Convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy "joked" on the air about killing gays by firing them out of torpedo tubes. A typical right winger, Liddy broadcast brags about taking target practice at life-sized images of President Bill Clinton, and advised his listeners how best to kill government agents who might wear protective vests: "Head shots! Use head shots!"
There are some true conservatives whose views remain in line with historical conservatism, but even they often embrace William F. Buckley / Ronald Reagan right wing extremism.
Thanks to Buckley, Reagan, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, most so-called "conservatives" are really nothing of the kind. Right wingers are theocrats and pseudo-libertarian Social Darwinists or even fascists who embrace authority and power over the individual.
Dissent threatens right wingers' fragile sense of security. They demand that everyone believes whatever they believe -- even if that belief changes at the whim of their superiors -- because. Well just because! And don't ask questions!
Right wingers' reverence for authority makes them believe whatever their superiors tell them to believe. Their fear and insecurity make them shun the unknown and prevents them from questioning tradition or thinking in new ways.
I'd say right wingers demand that everyone think whatever they think but right wingers don't think. They listen and obey. Free thinking threatens right wingers. It weakens their precarious hold on their make-believe world.
Everyone clings to the familiar and fears the unknown to some degree. What makes right wingers different? It's their unwillingness to face these fears and strike out into the wider world.
No right winger ever came up with a new idea. No right winger developed a new medical cure, discovered a new territory, or envisioned a new approach to anything. In fact, right wingers reflexively oppose anything new.
Right wingers are stuck in time. In 1776 they attacked George Washington and supported King George III against valid criticisms from the patriots. Right wingers attack patriots who make valid criticisms against George W. Bush today.
In 1776 right wingers attacked Adam Smith, the father of capitalism and clung to failed Mercantilism. Today, right wingers oppose reforms Smith advocated to protect and invigorate capitalism. Such as anti-trust, fair trade practices, SEC regulations, and other protections for consumers, investors, workers and the environment. All of these reforms keep the economy and society healthy and growing. Right wingers reject them all.
W. Bush scorned these life-saving and economy-expanding approached in his State of the Union Address. He echoed the Reaganite disdain for checks and balances, preferring to give a blank check to big business. This demonstrates the reflexive right wing support for power over people and abuse over progress.
Right wingers dislike education and they loath science. New information and the uncertainty fostered by the free flow of fresh thinking undermine their sense of stability. They are still in denial about evolution!
Education may lead to progress and new ideas. Science uncovers new facts. Therefore, right wingers fear learning and research. Progress threatens their precious predictable status quo.
Right wingers believe superstitions and embrace propaganda. They ignore information that challenges their prejudices and preconceptions. They therefore lack judgment and eschew conception.
Right wingers care about their feelings, not facts. Facts must either support rigid right wing beliefs, or else the facts must be wrong. Those who present facts which contradict right wing dogma must be evil.
Right wingers believe in absurd contradictions, impervious to logic or education. Right wingers flock to cults of personality.
Right wingers cling to known "misleaders" like Reagan, Bush and Bush, deifying the undeserving. Meanwhile they hate champions of social progress who seek to help them attain wealth, health and wisdom.
Right wingers flock to propagandists like "Rush" Limbaugh, and eagerly participate in their own brain washing. They accept as religious doctrine that the corrupt, inept Reagan -- who had 140 criminals in his White House, blocked research and education on AIDS, and supported death squads who killed Nuns and terrorists who killed 240 US Marines -- was moral, but Bill and Hillary Clinton are evil incarnate.
Right wingers support idiotic, even fatal policies because they place nonsense over knowledge. They believe using condoms increases the chance of pregnancy and STDs. They think racism is OK, but pointing out racism is "playing the race card." Poor white male right wingers blame poor non-whites and non-males for the injustices rich white males commit.
Right wingers support the policies which comprise class warfare, but whine when anyone demonstrates the injustice of robbing the needy to enrich the greedy. Poor and working class right wingers believe increasing their taxes makes them richer, if Enron and Bill Gates get huge tax cuts.
Right wingers support theocracy and fascism -- actually craving a unified authority over their lives and even their afterlives! They support censorship. They want to impose their religious views on everyone.
They want to punish anyone who strays from the fold. They brutally suppress anyone who questions authority, and they always obey abusive controllers. They are afraid of their own freedom. They are even more afraid of yours.
None of this would really matter, except for the tendency of right wingers to burn books; burn crosses, and burn people at the stake -- although they tend not to do that so much any more. Lately they beat to death gays, firebomb nightclubs and women's clinics, assassinate doctors, and vote for other right wingers.
What scares right wingers to the bone? Essays like this, people like me who write them, and people like you who read them and pass them on.
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