My Buddy Got Married! Hell to the No On Prop 8

(please go to No On Prop 8 to donate or volunteer - it's crucial!)

Over the weekend, my friend Doug got married.

After 17 years of living together, and 7 years of parenthood, he tied the knot with the love of his life in a small, private ceremony.

When marriage equality was approved in California, he told me he didn't know whether or not he and his partner would get married or not, because of the real possibility of an amendment to the California constitution that would rescind that civil right. Just thinking of the ability of someone who has no business in Doug's private life being able to give or take away his right to marry makes me see red.

Who do these people think they are? How dare they?

I was driving along in the Valley the other day when I passed a park with some Yes On (H)8 picketers marching around. One sign proclaimed "Prop 8=Religious Freedom".

At least that comes right out and says it. According to these people, if you do not codify their belief system into law, even if their beliefs are unconstitutional, even on a matter which is none of their business and robs you of your civil rights without having an impact upon them in the least, you are denying their religious freedom.

Equal rights for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters is an issue that is extremely important to me. I don't blog about it on a regular basis, mostly because I don't feel as a straight person that I have the right to be a 'spokesperson' for the LGBT community. But I do feel that it has to take all of us, gay and straight together, to stand up for what's right on this issue - not 'special rights' but equal rights. All I have to do is think of how I'd feel if some Nosy Parker decided that they could undo my marriage just because of their own twisted and perverted belief system and a shitload of money. It is revolting. It is disgusting. And it is wrong.

I must say that I don't get how anything that encourages stability and family values, like marriage, can possibly be anything but good for society as a whole. But, this of course is not about logic - it is about fear.

I'm so happy for Doug, and I'm glad he and his partner husband decided to 'go for the gold' even in the face of possibly losing it. I wish my friend Kenny could have had that chance to stand up in front of everyone and celebrate his love and commitment. The God of my understanding created Kenny exactly the way He wanted him to be, with a heart full of love to offer another person. I will be working for the right of all my gay and lesbian friends to be able to exercise their right to marry, which is inherent to all people, but is currently being denied by people who should have absolutely no say in the matter.

I will trot out my article "The 'Defense' Rests" again, although I've posted it several times over the past 4 years, because it sums up my feelings on this issue and my intersection with it.

The 'Defense' Rests

I received my first marriage proposal at the age of eighteen. My fiancé, a year older than I, was a real catch. A Tom Hanks look-alike, he was tall and lanky, with curly brown hair and a sweet, slightly loopy smile. Kenny was smart, funny, athletic, a gifted actor and a talented saxophone player who helped me get a full-tuition music scholarship at the community college he attended a year ahead of me. His mom had been my first piano teacher, and we had been friends ever since I was in the eighth grade. We bonded in high school, both of us being theater geeks, band nerds - not terribly popular but cool with being 'on the fringe'. Music and drama helped us both to find our own place in the spinning vortex that is high school.

Kenny was a college sophomore and I was a freshman when he proposed. We were both music majors, and both had jobs as well - I was playing keyboards in local bands at night, and he was the night manager of a convenience store. Unlike most of my other male friends, Kenny was already planning for a home and family. Hard-working and thrifty, he was putting away money for a down payment on a house. I adored him. We had so much in common - including the fact that we both liked guys.

Yep, Kenny was gay. It was not a 'lifestyle choice'; it was not a 'sexual preference', like 'preferring' tea to coffee. Believe me, Kenny did not just wake up one fine morning and say, "I think I'll alienate my family, exclude myself from the social mainstream, jeopardize my ability to choose where I live and what I do, and lay myself open to rejection, discrimination, violence, hate, and fear." Folks, I'm afraid he was born that way. Take it from someone who grew up with him.

As close as we were in high school, we never talked about it. He had a 'girlfriend', a sax player at another high school, and we both pretended that he was in love with her long enough for him to have a prom date. It wasn't until after I graduated in the late '70s and disco was king that Kenny opened up to me about being gay. He introduced me to the gay subculture in our town, and I went with him to the gay bars and the all-night discos. He would have crushes on guy after guy, always so sure that this one was 'the one', but somehow it never seemed to work out. Although finally free to 'be himself' with other people who felt the way he did, the long-term relationship and stability that he wanted so much was at odds with the hedonistic excesses of the era, and there was no social framework in place to support him.

This was where I came in. As we saw it, our getting married could solve a lot of difficulties (Your Honor, I plead the ignorance of eighteen). Kenny's mom knew me and liked me; she would be happy that Kenny would have 'social validity'; Kenny could have the home and family he wanted - well, at least the home and the appearance of a family. I could have my cake and eat it, too - a partner who would be there for me financially and emotionally without asking for sexual fidelity, who would give me a home and not care what time I came back to it!

Well, as it turned out, we didn't get married after all; there was that pesky detail of 'being in love' that we knew, as young and nutty as we were, was the real reason for getting married. As much as we loved each other as friends, there would never be a marriage in our hearts. We went our separate ways; I went on the road and he stayed in our home town, still working, still saving, still waiting and hoping for the dream to come true. We still kept in touch, and when I came home to visit my family, we'd get together and catch up on each others' lives. Kenny eventually got the home, but the life partner to share it with never came along.

After a few years, I moved to California and my visits were spaced farther and farther apart. Sometimes I saw him, sometimes I didn't, but there was always 'next time'. I got married (for real) and after the birth of my first child, I flew back home with my husband and new son, eager to introduce them to my family and friends. I couldn't catch up with Kenny; I left messages on his machine, but in the whirlwind of activity surrounding the new baby, I put Kenny on my 'next time' list.

Two weeks after I went back to California, my sister called me to tell me that Kenny had died of AIDS.

When I hear people talking about the "Defense of Marriage", it just makes me want to spit. I believe that if Kenny had been allowed to marry, if there had been a social structure in place at that time that encouraged and rewarded commitment in gay people as well as straight, that Kenny would most likely be alive today.

Just who are they 'defending' marriage from? Is there some straight woman that won't be able to find a mate because the gay boys 'got' all the good men? The arguments that the staunch 'Knights of Matrimony' throw out don't hold water to me.

Jan LaRue, a member of the Concerned Women of America ('concerned' with getting all up in other peoples' private lives!) - a lawyer, for gosh sakes - talks about why gay marriage is so very wrong...

"Granting a marriage license to homosexuals because they engage in sex is as illogical as granting a medical license to a barber because he wears a white coat or a law license to a salesman because he carries a briefcase. Real doctors, lawyers and the public would suffer as a result of licensing the unqualified and granting them rights, benefits and responsibilities as if they were qualified."

Qualified? Qualified?!?

Yes, I guess the lovely and talented Lyle Menendez is 'qualified' to get married. No doubt the devilishly handsome Scott Peterson, with his boyish charm, will be married before you know it, taking his pick of jailhouse proposals from the coterie of killer-hags that are inundating him with marriage offers. After all, he is single!

point: A child should have a mother and a father.

counterpoint: First off, I think it pretty much goes without saying that in today's society, reproduction is not the only reason to be married. I don't remember the 'Fertility Test' when my husband and I were applying for our marriage license. There are straight couples who (gasp!) choose not to have children! And how about the couples who just can't and decide to live with it? Should their licenses be revoked? What about parents who have lost a partner to divorce or death? Should their children be taken away from them?

Then, of course, what about the straight couples who have absolutely no business having children, and have them any old way? Abusive parents, neglectful parents, parents who, in their heart of hearts, don't want children but have them because of outside pressure? Am I to believe that a loving, committed gay couple would be worse for the emotional health of a kid than parents like these? Apparently so. That's right along with the "Murphy Brown" school of condemnation - those awful, selfish women who want a child so badly that they choose to have one without being married. Selfish? Most single (by choice or not) moms (and dads) I know have very little 'self' at all - they're too busy trying to raise their kids right in a two-income society. They're always at the bottom of the list. But I digress. Maybe we could force them to marry a gay man or woman. One of the opposite gender, naturally. Serve them all right.

No doubt about it, mothers and fathers are great. Optimal, even. I am not suggesting that the mom-and-pop deal is just another family model choice. It's not. It is the dominant one, and, all other things being even is the situation that our society set up to best suit a family. But all things are not always even, and just as no one in their right mind today would force a woman to stay with an abusive man 'for the sake of the children', the idea that any two heterosexuals (no matter how sick and dysfunctional) are better parent material than any two homosexuals (no matter how emotionally healthy and loving) is not an idea that I am prepared to accept. I am sure that there are bad gay parents out there. But I know there are bad straight parents, lots and lots of them, and no one is suggesting we abolish marriage for straight people because of that. I might even posit that, as a group, gay parents might have a higher percentage of good parenting because they often have to go to extraordinary lengths to have children, and in the face of strong opposition. It doesn't just 'happen', and I suspect the process would tend to weed out the less-motivated.

Gender role modeling? Maybe. But the overwhelming majority of gay people have (drum roll, please)… straight parents! What happened there with the 'gender modeling'? Good parents of any kind make sure their kids have positive models around them.

And then there's always the trump card - IMMORALITY! Who sez? God sez! Whose God? My God! Oh, my God. I'm not even going to bother to discuss the Bible quotes in Leviticus that are trotted out on a regular basis - smarter people than I have refuted the 'cherry-picking' of Levitical laws employed by those who feel that God Hates Fags. To these people, I say, "Fine. You're absolutely right. No one should force you to marry a gay person." Like any self-respecting queer would want to. Our country was founded by people who left their homeland and traveled thousands and thousands of miles to be free to worship as they pleased. And, yes, they were Christians. But the whole idea (and a radical one it was) as expressed by our Founding Fathers, some of whom were religious and some of whom were not, was to build a country where everyone was free to worship as they pleased - not just Christian Puritans. Freedom of religion. Freedom NOT to worship if so inclined. Again, I'll leave the debating of the Constitution to my betters, but unless I'm way off the mark here, the United States of America is not a theocracy*. Isn't that exactly what we're trying to avoid setting up in that other place…what's it called again?…oh, yes - Iraq!

Well, folks, I'd better get out while the getting's good - I can see I'm heading into deep water here. But I'm still not convinced that there is any sort of justice in the fact that a mass murderer can marry and have children, if he or she chooses a partner of the opposite sex, but a law-abiding, upstanding member of society - if gay - cannot. To my mind, Your Honor, the 'Defense' doesn't have a leg to stand on.

(*note - I wrote this in 2004 - obviously that was a naïve and foolish statement.)

Radio Interview This Morning - Basham & Cornell!

*Update below - audio link!

This morning I'll be talking to Lydia Cornell and Doug Basham on their wonderful Las Vegas-based morning progressive radio show Basham & Cornell. The show is on at 8 AM Pacific time.

I met Lydia at a Progressive Dems of LA meeting, and I was so impressed with her smarts, her humor and her spirituality. We were both in the process of writing books. At the time she was receiving death threats from Ann Coulter acolytes when the Coultergeist published Lydia's personal information online in retaliation for challenging Coulter's grotesque lies and misinformation thinly disguised as 'humor'. Doug Basham and I share similar backgrounds in music and magic (I was a magician's assistant) before becoming involved in progressive issues.

I am excited to be on their show!

Update - you can listen to the audio from the Oct. 15 show here!

Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart

h/t my friend steve z.

First Interview Coming Up This Friday - Alicia On With the Young Turks

Here comes my first interview!

I'm scheduled for the Young Turks this Friday, October 10 at 7:30 ET.

I hope you can tune in - I can use the support.

Flotsam

Yesterday, I had a lovely lunch in Hollywood with my friend DivaJood of Journeys With Jood (and the previous mea culpa post). I met the Diva several years ago through an SCTV newsgroup, and we found out that we had many more things in common. The beauty of the Interwebs is that I got to meet her at all. Even though she is relatively close by as the crow flies, we wouldn't have connected since our work and social circles don't intersect. So I'm lucky that our paths crossed this way.

I was sent this great link to a hilarious Sarah Palin rap video. Enjoy!

Managed to survive the debate without my brains dissolving into mush and leaking out of my head. Biden rocked; Palin was a small-town weather girl. I kept expecting "Film at eleven!" as she mugged for the camera. She had the TV personality's unsettling trick of staring directly into the lens - it's creepy how camera-cognizant she was. I'll go into more detail in the next post later today. But Biden did great, and he had quite a tightrope to walk.

Mea Culpa - Forgive Me, Diva!

I need to take a minute here to thank my dear friend, the wondrous DivaJood, for her kind review, both on her blog Journeys With Jood and on Amazon, that has sent some of her fine readers my way - and even sent them to buy The Price of Right!

And I must beg her forgiveness, for she recently informed me (I blush with shame even now) that she was not on my blogroll!

As I said in her comments, my only defense is that, her being such a good friend and fave blogger, I naturally assumed that she had been on the blogroll all along.

It has been corrected.

And lunch is on me.

A Chat With Hank and Benny - How To Fix Your Big Mess

Hank, Benny - we need to talk.

I know you're supposed to be the whiz kids, financial-wise. And I know that I'm just another dumb consumer with no arcane inside knowledge like you fellas.

But I'll tell you one thing. You guys - you Masters of the Universe, pulling the strings from on high - claim you "never saw this coming."

Guess what? I did.

I've seen it coming for a long time, and so have a lot of other people I know. We've been talking about it for years. What is surprising is how long it took to finally happen.

Maybe it's too basic for you to understand - maybe that's the problem. But you guys have always been about the supply-side, trickle-down theory of economics, and after trying it your way for almost 30 years, it's time to admit that your way doesn't work.

Y'all are all about "if we give everything to the big guys at the top - the mega-corporations and wealthy investors - then their success will mean success for everyone else on down." But I'm afraid that hasn't panned out too well. It's one thing if it's just the wage slaves that are being crunched. Eventually, though, it ends up biting you in the ass as well.

So - Benny, Hank, I have a proposition for you. It's kind of an old idea, but it worked pretty darn well while it was implemented, and it just might be worth a shot.

Have you thought about the trickle-UP theory?

I know it sounds crazy, but just listen.

Okay. You see, the bottom of the food chain is where the action is. And we wage slaves have been seeing our incomes drop steadily (when adjusted for inflation) over the last 25 or so years. Once Reagan castrated the unions, he upset the power balance that makes the so-called 'free market' a viable way to conduct business. If there is no advocate with the strength to represent the workers, negotiations over pay become completely one-sided. This means that businesses are free to eliminate raises, and cut salaries and benefits as low as they can, which makes their profit margin higher.

Are you with me so far, fellas? Good!

Now.

This cut in wages is not accompanied by cuts in the cost of living. The cost of living continues to increase at its regular rate. While big business is getting wealthier, and wealthy individuals are getting wealthier because much of their income is derived from investments, which are taxed at half the rate of wages earned through work, the wage slaves are paying a higher and higher percentage of their income towards basic living expenses. Even if their pay is not cut, but remains the same, it turns out to be a pay cut anyway if their expenses on essentials (food, transportation, utilities, mortgage or rent, medical, etc.) rise every year.

So, what do people do? They take on more work if they can. They cut back on expenses wherever they can. But you get to a point where both of these options are finite, unlike the raise in the cost of living. And the implementation of NAFTA and the free-trade frenzy means that there are less jobs available, and the ones that are available pay less.

Now, you smart guys have told us that when the consumer stops spending, the economy goes into a tailspin. And the last thing you want us to do is to tighten our belts.

So what do you guys do?

Here's where we're at the crossroads.

If you want people to continue to buy things to keep the economy going, there are two ways to do it. One way is to pay them better wages so they can afford to buy more. The other way is to make them go into debt to do it. That way it doesn't come out of business' bottom line; make consumers pay the credit card companies (Bush's biggest campaign donors) for the privilege of going into debt.

You guys picked the second way.

Not a smart idea.

You hyper-inflated the housing market and put wage slaves into a position where the only way they can keep their heads above water is to borrow against their 'equity'.They can't work any more hours; they can't cut any more expenses; and the Bankruptcy Bill made sure that there's no way around the problem other than to go into debt. That way you keep the consumers quiet and spending for a little while, anyway - long enough to give you time to finish grabbing up all this crazy money laying around.

Pretty soon, though, the borrowing has to stop. Even an uninformed idiot like me can see that. And, as the consumer goes, so goes the nation - from micro to macro, we've been borrowing as a nation the same way wage slaves have been borrowing as individuals.

The merry-go-round spins faster, faster, faster! Higher and higher we go!

Then - pow! The ride stops, the brakes are on and everyone flies off the painted ponies. A rush to the bottom ensues.

So my suggestion is that we try Idea #1 - the trickle-UP.

Start at the bottom by paying wage slaves well enough that they can buy things. It may seem as if that would cut into business' bottom line in a way they don't care for. Salaries are a liability, not an asset. But in the long term, it is an asset because you are buying future customers with that money! It is a sound investment with a very high rate of return.

People with paychecks can buy stuff. People without paychecks can't buy stuff. It's as simple as that.

When we had strong unions, everyone was paid better, not just union workers, because non-union companies had to compete salary-wise. Better-paid workers are better customers; better customers are better for business. Better-paid workrs pay more income tax, but since they have more money anyway, it does not cut into their quality of life. Better regulations insure that not only the public, but the businesses are protected also. Everyone wins here - maybe not the zillionaire CEOs, but how much gold can one person eat anyway?

So there you have it, Hank and Benny.

No need to thank me, fellas - just go and do the right thing. Start helping the folks at the bottom, and it will trickle UP - even to you guys!

It works - it's been done before.

Hell Yes, I'm An Elitist!

I received this great link to a Sam Harris article from my friend Larry Brown.

One of the most truly terrifying things about the last eight years has been the triumph of ignorance. There has always been a tendency on the right to demonize intelligence, referring to educated, intelligent people as 'ivory tower elitists' and 'eggheads', and conflating brains with being 'out of touch' with the 'real folks'. But, until 2000, this tendency was not making national policy decisions.

George W. Bush, in celebrating his own lack of intellect and curiosity, has made a virtue of ignorance, and by breaking the glass ceiling on stupidity, demonstrated to those who already think this way that there are no limits to where ignorance can take you. He has also demonstrated that governing by ignorance is not only possible, but easily done, and that ignorance can beat intelligence, given the right set of circumstances.

The vile presidency of George W. Bush will not finish when he leaves office. With his obsession over his 'legacy', it turns out that the repercussions from his assault on the country will be rippling far and wide for a long time. Any future president who wants to exercise unlimited power with no pesky Constitutional constraints will find the way made smooth by the precedent set by George W. Bush.

Case in point is the love child of George Bush and Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin. While George Bush is a relative latecomer to the fundamentalist fold, he insisted that "God told him to attack Iraq." He relies on his 'gut' instead of brains, and considers that a completely acceptable, even preferable choice. Sarah Palin takes those traits to a whole different level. No Johnny-come-lately she, Palin was steeped in fundamentalist principles from birth, and is both far more radically religious and far less educated than George W. Bush. Which, in the Bizarro-World of right-wing logic, makes her...even better! According to the Bush standard, all you need is a mule-stubborn refusal to yield to be a successful world leader, and intelligence just gets in the way of that. Sarah Palin describes it as "you can't blink." What she means is "you can't think."

This demonization of intelligence is getting worse, not better, as the ignorant and venal are rewarded ever more richly in our society. If the unthinkable come to pass, with a McCain presidency Sarah Palin - would-be book-banner, science-hater, reproductive-rights-destroyer, Rapture-ready end-timer - will be a fibrillation away from being the leader of the free world. One would not think it possible, but she makes George W. Bush look like Noam Chomsky.

Hell, yes, I'm an elitist. You should be, too.

Repeat After Me: "Privatize the Profits; Socialize the Losses!"

I have this feeling that it's starting to sink in to the American people - this laissez-faire 'free market' crap is the biggest swindle of all time.

And I think this simple phrase is one reason why.

"Privatize the Profits; Socialize the Losses".

I think it puts it in a way that we can all understand, as succinctly as possible. This one phrase encompasses the major underlying philosophy and strategy of the predatory capitalism (and the conservative ideology that supports it) that is on the verge of destroying our nation.

So - use this phrase every chance you get!

"Well, it looks like it may rain tomorrow. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses."

"I saw that new Rambo movie last weekend. Speaking of Rambo, privatize the profits, socialize the losses."

"Did you pick up my suit at the dry cleaners?" "Did you say 'take me to the cleaners?' Privatize the profits, socialize the losses."

In the words of the magnificent Frank Luntz:

"There's a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again, and about the time that you're absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time. And it is so hard but you've just got to keep repeating, because we hear so many different things--the noises from outside, the sounds, all the things that are coming into our head, the 200 cable channels and the satellite versus cable, and what we hear from our friends. We as Americans and as humans have very selective hearing and very selective memory. We only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest."

And in the words of the worst president in the history of the United States of America:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

So, let's start catapulting!

If Even Ben Stein Can See It, Bust Out Your Parkas - Hell Just Froze Over

Wow. I'm agog.

Ben Stein momentarily emerges from his intellectual coma and makes sense.

Good on ya, Benny my man.

What Is It About Working Men and Women That You Find So Offensive?

Damn.

I don't get it.

If this 700 billion is a arbitrary number, as we have been told - just picked to look big - then why is there no room for mortgage relief? Why is it that it is out of the question to give judges the option to renegotiate the terms of a mortgage so people can find a way to say in their homes?

I am simply staggered that they are asking us to foot the bill for this monstrous theft perpetrated upon us, while at the same time prohibiting us from receiving any relief from the bailout for the thieves that we are paying for!

Is every single person in Congress owned by the credit card companies?

Hyenas, vultures and jackals.

Oh my.

Update: House fails to pass bailout package, 228-205.

Everyone's scared of losing their seat this close to election time.

Which means, of course, that they know how deeply the American people are opposed to it.

And they would have voted for it anyway, except that they knew they'd get their asses kicked at the ballot box.

Scum.

Hypocrisy So Thick, You Can Eat It With a Fork

"Taxpayer Mortgage Assistance A Deal-Breaker For Republicans".

I might have known.

These thugs are happy to mortgage our children's and our grandchildren's financial futures so as to spare the wealthiest corporate gamblers, swindlers and spendthrifts a moment's discomfort over the mess they made robbing us blind. But make an attempt to help the victims of this theft - even in the smallest way - and they're beside themselves in righteous indignation.

All of a sudden it's 'too expensive'. All of a sudden they 'can't afford it'.

Child, please.

That's Republicanism for you. Helping corporate thieves avoid any consequences for their thievery is "necessary". Helping the taxpayers they stole from is a "deal breaker." And they don't blink an eye while saying this.

While Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, predictably roll over and agree because they 'need Republican votes to get this bill passed.'

What a thing to stand on principle on - adamantly refusing to assist the taxpayer whom they intend to saddle with a trillion dollar debt in order to make things better for the criminals.

There is a point where I simply cannot wrap my head around this. I'm not anatomically equipped.

First Official Review of "The Price of Right" - David Swanson!

The first official review of The Price of Right comes from activist and writer David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org and Let's Try Democracy. I'm so excited, and very happy that my first review is a reasonably favorable one with fair criticism from someone whose work I appreciate very much.

Wooo hooo!

Here's My Economic Plan

All right. Enough is enough.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Go on and let the motherfuckers fail.

That's right. In the words of the Kowboy Koward of Krawford, "Bring 'em on!"

That same old tired threat - give up (fill in the blank) or the worst thing that could happen will happen. And we fall for it every time.

Let me backtrack for a minute.

For the last 6 months or so, I've noticed that emotionally, I've gone into 'survival mentality'. I've started to ask myself what would happen if the worst came to pass. What can I do without, what can't I do without? I've started detaching mentally from what possessions I have (not that I have all that many.) What would we do if we lost everything?

And I realize that, basically, we'd be OK.

A while back, my husband and I agreed that when times get tight financially, that we would pull closer together instead of taking our worries out on each other. Money problems are the number 1 reason for marital strife. So, instead of letting the pressure of financial issues damage the one thing that has nothing to do with money - which is love - we're going to make this a time that we and our kids will remember forever in a positive light.

If we have to live in a tent, we'll make it into a cool camping trip!

So...back to my original point.

I don't think there's going to be enough political will to make the changes tht are necessary without something as catastrophic as another Great Depression. Folks, it's coming, so we might as well get it over with, and save ourselves the trillion dollars.

Tell 'em to go pound sand and see how they like it.

Now, I realize that this sounds like a very irresponsible idea. And perhaps I am underestimating the severity and global ramifications of a complete market collapse.

But if I am underestimating the scope and severity of the upcoming depression, a trillion bucks ain't gonna hold it back. If it's as bad as that, there's nothing we can do but watch it happen.

So here's my plan: if they aren't willing to help taxpayers get back on their feet - before further enriching the fat cats who caused it in the first place with their radioactive neoliberal economic policies - then tell 'em "no deal, Neil."

Let the market decide. Let them live with the consequences of their failures for once - God knows we've been living with it long enough.

And what about us?

Here's what we do: prepare for the worst.

Get used to the idea that we may lose a lot, possession-wise, and start planning how we're going to deal with taking care of the necessities - food and shelter. If you have food and shelter, share. Take care of each other. We may need to double-or-triple-up housing-wise. We may need to sleep in tents. But what's important is that we try and take care of each other so that no one starves or freezes if we can help it. Those of us who don't lose everything should help out those of us who do. We'll need to band together as Americans, and support each other emotionally as well as physically.

I know that sounds disgustingly socialistic, but it's what families do.

These are real family values, and that's the only way we're going to get through something as devastating as a global financial collapse.

And once we get through it, everyone will understand (from a first-hand perspective) that we need the kind of social and government policy that brought us back from the last Great Depression, and gave us a true middle class.

So I say hang on to our trillion bucks - if it really is as bad as they are trying to tell us it is, a trillion dollars will not fix it - it will just go to ease the pain of the investment class. And I say fuck them. Ease my pain, you lying, thieving pigs.

No One's Asking Why People Can't Pay Their Mortgages!

Okay.

When I hear a description of the reasons for this financial game of 52-Card Pickup, it goes something like this:

The investment companies who bought and sold the bundled mortgages took a hit because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. They're all connected to each other, and when one sector goes down, they drag everyone else down with them. And the reason the sub-primes went down is that people were defaulting on their mortgages.

That's where they end the narrative.

But nobody's asking why people can't pay their mortgages.

Listen, folks - it isn't just sub-primes. Do they just think that, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, huge swaths of people who have never had trouble paying their bills, who are never late on a payment, are unable to make ends meet? Did they all just go on a mad spending spree? Did they get hit on their heads so hard that the financial sense was knocked out of them?

This is the root of the problem and this is what everyone is not talking about.

So instead of addressing this problem, they're going to throw crazy money at the profiteers who made massive fortunes by taking advantage of the fact that it's getting harder and harder for regular people to keep up.

Good move.

I personally would receive a great deal of psychological benefit if Henry Paulson threw a shitload of money my way. It would be extremely therapeutic.

Fool Me Twice - We Won't Be Fooled Again

Is it just me, or do the last few days have an oddly familiar feel?

Haven't we heard this somewhere before? "Hand over the booty right now, or we're all gonna die! No time to think about it - we have to have it immediately! Do you want the destruction of the nation on your conscience?"

After 9/11, Saddam was thisclose to blowing us all away as he plotted with his BFFs the Al-Qaedas to use his vast but cleverly-hidden arsenal of WMDs on us - right this minute! Fortunately, we headed off Armageddon with a quick authorization to use military force (not an actual war or anything, for heaven's sake!), and stopped certain destruction dead in its tracks.

But wait!

Those crafty Al-Qaedas could be anywhere - or anybody! That little old blue-haired grandma who shuffles off to the library every day is probably getting plans for a dirty bomb! And because of those antiquated, old-fashioned, out-dated 'privacy' rights that are just using up extra parchment in the Constitution - and were just 'tacked on' anyway - it's imperative that we sign a PATRIOT Act (see - all caps! You can tell how important it is!) to cut through all that useless red tape that keeps us from taking the Al-Qaedas down! Quick - sign it! Sign it! Today! Not tomorrow! Tomorrow could be the mushroom cloud!

So now that they've neatly disposed of our rights and our moral authority, along with most of our money, it's time for the coup de gras - time to hand over ALL the rest of the money - in perpetuity!

"Gimme a trillion dollars in unmarked bills right now - or the economy gets it, see?"

Then, of course, if they manage to pretend like they're giving up ground with things like 'CEO Pay Caps' (that's a hot one!) and 'More Oversight' (another knee-slapper), maybe everyone will look the other way while they finish the job they started 8 years ago.

Conservatism - The Elephant In the Room

Well, here we are at last.

When I started writing The Price of Right over two years ago, the idea that I wanted to express in the book was that, as horrific a president as George W. Bush was, he was not the cause but the ultimate expression of a systematically destructive social, economic and political ideology that was driving our country away from democracy and towards, if not fascism, certainly feudalism.

It is not only Bush, but the system that produced a Bush - conservatism. It is conservatism itself that made the Worst President Ever a reality.

Ever since the 60s, when a consortium of über-wealthy conservative Republican power-brokers decided to wage war on liberals by linking everything bad in society to liberalism, and making ‘liberal’ a pejorative of the worst kind, conventional wisdom laid the blame for all of society’s ills at the feet of liberalism. Even liberals themselves accepted this - Democrats no longer wished to be called ‘liberal’ when that word could lose you an election faster that you could spit - and attempted to define their values along lines that they thought conservatives would agree with. As Republicans moved farther and farther to the right, Democrats moved right with them in an ‘Overton window’ sort of way, until ‘moderate’ Dems were more like Republican-lite, and what was now the Commie-radical far end of the left-wing spectrum would have been considered merely left of center only a couple of years ago.

When I began writing this book, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was approaching 12,000. In April of 2007, it reached 13,ooo, and only three months later, in July 2007, the Dow topped out at 14,000. In what looked to me as a repeat of the Roaring Twenties, when stocks were going wild, thanks to ‘new and creative investment instruments’, and every one was an investor, it seemed to me that the disparity between the dizzying profits at the top of the heap and the reality that average people were becoming poorer, while working longer and harder and struggling more was an indication that this kind of financial hot-rodding was doomed to crash. Next stop - 1932!

If you step back and look at the situation from a macro rather than micro perspective, several things become clear.

1.Working people of all strata were making less money.

With the onslaught of ‘downsizing’ and layoffs, people were being forced into a financial corner not of their own making. Those that were fortunate enough to keep their jobs either had to accept rather drastic pay cuts, or assume the laid-off workers’ jobs without extra pay. Raises to keep up with the cost of living were out of the question. Those that lost their jobs had a difficult time finding another at a comparable salary; many had to take jobs that paid much less, with little or no benefits. And most families needed two working partners just to make ends meet, so there was no ‘safety net’ where a stay-at-home partner could get a job to take up the slack.

2. While income from wages dropped, prices rose.

Prices of essentials, such as housing, energy, food, and transportation, continue to rise as usual, but the money to pay for them did not increase proportionally, but either stayed the same (which is a de-facto decline in real income) or actually declined.

3. Meanwhile, corporate profits soared to record levels.

This would seem to be a good thing for the economy. But much of that profit could be attributed to money saved by laying off workers, and freezing or reducing the salaries of those who still had jobs. Wall Street rewarded the corporations who cut jobs, stole pensions, reduced benefits. And the profits that ensued were often moved off-shore so as to not pay taxes on it, thereby depriving Americans of the tax revenue due to them by creating an environment in which the corporations could make those profits - providing both physical and legal structure for the corporations to utilize, such as roads, communications, power and water, and also a legal system that allowed them to be able to make contracts and conduct business with the assumption that there were laws in place to enforce contracts, and a justice system to make sure that the contracts are enforced.

The corporations did not create these physical and legal infrastructures - they were paid for by taxpayers and were the property of the American people. Yet they considered the profits they reaped theirs alone, and to pay taxes on these profits were regarded as stealing their property.

This is theft, pure and simple.

Theft of our labor - if you ask me to work for you for 12 hours and you pay me $10, you have stolen my labor. There’s no other way to put it. Saying that ‘you can’t afford to pay more’ is not an excuse - you either can afford to hire an employee or not. And paying ten guys $1 an hour instead of one guy $10 an hour is not creating ten jobs!

The Myth of the Free Market is exactly that - a myth. It’s a Utopian model that does not work in real life, because it only works if all things are equal - if the worker, the employer, and the consumer all have equal power and influence. And we know that is not true at all.

So - up to this point, we have: wages falling, prices rising, and profits escalating.

If the profit margin were roughly equal to the wage and price margin, one would assume that the market was working correctly - if there was a downturn that was felt by all, then it would be more or less attributable to forces that were outside of the wage/price/cost/profit structure - perhaps a natural disaster, governmental upheaval, or a failure of some aspect of production.

But if profits are rising for corporations, and growth is rising, and consumers are getting poorer at the same time, the only reasonable explanation is that those profits are coming from somewhere within that system - not wealth creation, but wealth transfer.

That transfer of wealth has been from the bottom to the top.

This is the natural progression of conservatism.

It’s like holding a big juicy steak in front of a starving man who only has 50¢ in his pocket, and offering to sell it to him on credit for $50, after which the poor man is excoriated for “buying something he couldn’t afford”. What the hell do you think that man was supposed to do? Say “No, I can’t afford that steak - I think I’ll just crawl off over in a corner and die”?

I (and many others) could see this week’s financial meltdown coming years ago. We knew that the economy was unbalanced. As I’ve said before, the problem with impoverishing workers to fatten your bottom line is that eventually you run out of consumers. If workers are not paid enough to meet their basic needs and have spome left over for discretionary spending, there will be no discretionary spending! Yet, conservative economic theory insists that the way to prosperity is to make the already-prosperous more prosperous, even at the expense of the majority of the workforce. So, when we actually ran out of money a few years ago, the solution to keep the masses spending and keep the economy afloat, was to dangle credit in front of us, and force us into spending money we didn’t have after taking all the money we did have.

Why is this a conservative problem?

Because of one of the deep frames of conservative cognition - the metaphor that says “Wealth=Morality”

I truly believe that this deep-rooted conviction is at the heart of the conservative mindset, and it transfers to every aspect of conservatism. It is responsible for the conservative Christian ‘Prosperity Gospel’ which says that God shows His approval by bestowing earthly wealth on those who obey His wishes, and whom He favors - and therefore, the wealthier you are, the more moral you are. It is also responsible for the assumption that, because you are rich, you are hard-working, honest, smart, responsible, strong, self-reliant and deserving - whether you are any one of those or not. The corollary is that people who are hard-working, honest, smart, responsible, strong, self-reliant and deserving should be the people in charge!

This is the core of conservatism. This is also why even poor conservatives support the rule by the rich - because they really believe, deep down - whether they are conscious of it or not - that “wealth=morality”.

So, this is the mentality that is driving us over the cliff. And this is why conservatism itself is doomed to fail if we truly want an America that works on (small d) democratic principles.

The United States was formed to escape that mentality altogether - the mindset that says the Golden Rule is “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Conservatism, when followed to its logical conclusion, leads to feudalism - a large, poor, overworked, under-educated, powerless underclass supporting a small, powerful, wealthy, leisured ruling class.

There can be no other outcome.

I wrote about just this sort of thing two years ago, when the Dow was popping like a cracked-out Orville Redenbacher. This magical belief that tax cuts plus borrowing plus war spending equals a sound economy was never challenged because of the irrational certainty that if the wealthy get wealthier, that all will be well.

The equivalence of money and morality is a key component of the fatally flawed philosophy that is conservatism, and we are living with the results now. This is the common thread that binds together big-business Republicans and right-wing evangelicals.

Of course, you can still see the influence of this belief in the approach of Paulson to this crisis - that the perpetrators of this debacle will pay no price for their perfidy and theft. The idea of ‘too big to fail’ also means ‘too big to punish’, and ‘too big to hold accountable’. Punishment and accountability are only for the little guy. Adamantly opposed to helping the people who these policies have damaged, and instead dumping the bill for their own destruction upon the victims, while the perpetrators sail off unscathed, their stolen booty intact, thus adding insult to injury, the people in charge of ‘fixing the problem’ will instead continue the policies that have brought us to this disaster.

Just like John McCain’s idea of a cure for the havoc that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have wreaked upon us are - more tax cuts!

They simply do not get that if you kill the golden goose, you get no more golden eggs.

If you make it impossible for consumers to spend, the economy will screech to a halt. You can tell that they still don’t get it when they talk about ‘unfreezing credit’ so that people can spend again. In other words, the only way that people can spend is by going into debt! What about the notion that people could be paid enough to spend money without going into debt? That’s a novel concept, isn’t it?

This irrational idea is simply too strong and deep-seated to be changed by those who subscribe to it. Those of us who are not hostage to the idea that both wealth and poverty are meted out to those who deserve it need to start connecting the dots, and understand that it is this conservative belief system that has led to the destruction of the middle class, and that there are other values besides profit and money - the liberal American values of liberty and justice for all, and the liberal idea that we as Americans have a responsibility to all other Americans whose very lives are being decimated by this childish, selfish, destructive philosophy.

We cannot afford The Price of Right one more minute.

When Conservative Dreams Come True, or, I Hate To Say "I Told You So", but...I Told You So!

A Conservative Paradise

John McCain is right.

Everything’s going along just fine!

After all, how couldn’t it? The conservative paradise that has been worked toward by the Republicans for forty years has finally come to fruition.

Like Tom DeLay’s ‘perfect petri dish of capitalism’ in the Marianas, bit by bit, conservative economic policies have replaced the hated New Deal, and all the crummy old prosperity that came along with it. Phil Gramm, John McCain’s go-to guy on the economy, drove the last nail into the coffin by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented commercial banks and private investment banks from getting involved with each other.

And then Gramm has the gall to call us a “nation of whiners.”

Yeah, Phil, I guess we better just shut up and take it. If Phil Gramm had his way , we would not even be allowed to complain about being mugged, rolled and left in the alley for dead.

No taxation, deregulation, and speculation. Wages have been lowered, while prices rise higher and higher. Privatization, the magic cure-all for everything that government used to do, has permeated every nook and cranny of our system. After all, anything government can do, private enterprise can do better! So instead of giving tax money to wasteful government agencies to use on the people’s behalf, why not give it to business instead - to use on their own behalf!

The central tenet of the corporations in this country has been:

Externalize costs; internalize profit.

Translated: We, Big Business, take a risk. If it fails, the taxpayer pays for it. If it succeeds, we keep all the profit.

Heads we win, tails you lose.

Simple and beautiful.

Although the sub-prime mortgage bubble and the wild, arcane speculation are in the spotlight right now, the plain truth is that we, the American public, have been stolen from until there is nothing left to steal - even our children’s financial future has been stolen after they squeezed us dry.

Our labor is stolen from us for less than its real value, and then we pay twice as much tax on what we get for our labor - wages - as the investor class pays on dividends - money that makes itself.

But consumer spending is the engine that drives the economy, and when working people are too poor to spend, the car comes to screeching halt. This is what created the housing bubble and the speculation frenzy - the desperate attempts on the part of the corporate class to keep the public in the dark about the fact that there was no real money to spend - that we were flat broke. Thanks to low wages, high prices, and predatory credit card interests that bought a license to steal from Congress in 2005 with the Bankruptcy Bill, and the evisceration of unions, along with a justice system that always sides with the corporations against the individual, we have now come to the end of the ride.

We were broke a while back, so the housing industry artificially pumped up house prices, knowing that most Americans had no choice but to borrow against the ‘value’ of the home. When the alternative is bankruptcy, and even that alternative has been made onerous enough to deter all but the most determined - when the alternative is being foreclosed upon and turned out of your house with nowhere to go, is that really a ‘choice’? I don’t think so.

After 9/11, we were urged by the President to “go out and spend!” It is no coincidence that we have no savings. It’s not possible to save when you're just hanging on by your fingernails, like so many of us are these days.

There is no such thing as 'job security'. My parents' generation could make long-term financial plans, including saving, because if you had a job and did it well, the odds were that you would stay in that job until you retired. The luxury of knowing how much money you would have coming in for years ahead is one that is all but gone today. Now, if you're lucky enough to have a job that you've stayed in for a long time, you're more likely to be fired right before retirement, so your company doesn't have to pay your pension, and you can be replaced by someone younger who they can pay half your salary to.

This is an excerpt from my new book THE PRICE OF RIGHT: How the Conservative Agenda Has Failed America, which will be in bookstores this week:

Free trade is more than a way of doing business. It’s a philosophy; it’s an ideology. A philosophy with no empirical validation whatsoever. Though it’s supposed to work well for everyone because it works so well for multinational corporations and the investor class, it’s actually managed to be disastrous to most nations. It’s a belief system, like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Like any ideology, the theory matters more than the actual outcome. And being that the benefits are so huge for those whose hands are on the wheel of the ship of state, the corporations and investor class will continue to shoehorn this dangerous, destructive ideology into the national dialogue, and do whatever is necessary to silence any other voices that may threaten their place at the trough, regardless of the ultimate threat to America’s economy.

This race to the bottom will eventually take the corporatists down with the rest of us. Our economy cannot stand the strain of continually borrowing as if we’re playing with Monopoly money. When the consumers are too poor, who will buy consumer goods? When we reach our debt limit, what will happen when China and Saudi Arabia call in their chits? The more we borrow from other countries, the worse our national credit rating, which means – you guessed it! – higher interest rates on our debt. And on whose backs will this rising debt fall? Not the wealthiest, and not the corporations – George W. Bush and friends have seen fit to slash the tax rates for these folks. Combine our rising deficits, disappearing jobs, a grotesquely expensive invasion of another nation that has turned into endless war-profiteering black hole with no fiscal oversight, and tax cuts for those who already receive the bulk of the bounty of this nation, mix with greed and power, and shake well.

Then stand back, and get ready for the explosion.

Sweet Neo Con

Sarah Palin is indeed the perfect GOP neo-con wet dream. She embodies every aspect of the Dick Cheney neoconservative model - the ruthlessly impassive blood-lust and willingness to see pre-emptive striking as the first and best answer to any problem, and the craftiness to slyly poke volatile adversaries with a sharp stick, so as to encourge them to attack, thereby claiming that we ‘must defend ourselves’, the penchant for secrecy and the withholding of information on her part combined with utter disregard for privacy on the public’s part, the tendency to use the power of public office to intimidate and silence opposition and to destroy perceived ‘enemies’, meaning anyone who will threaten her ability to do whatever she wants, regardless of moral, ethical, or legal questions.

Yes, she’s all that and a bag of chips - but with an added bonus that even Cheney, in all his Straussian glory, lacks - that hard-core evangelical streak that neocons believe the ‘masses’ must have in order to keep from descending into chaos and anarchy, but which the true intellectuals who are in charge have no need for. She is a frothy, creamy sundae of Christian Soldier and Neocon Whip, with a lavish sprinkling of nuts on top. No cherry, though.

To underestimate her is to underestimate the power of PNAC. She is Bush and Cheney 2000 rolled into one. After all, who would have thought before the Selection of 2000 that the PNAC nutballs whose views were considered so extreme during the Clinton administration that even mainstream Republicans shied away from them were preparing their organization for the day Republicans returned to power so that they could spin their neoconservative ideas into official U.S. policy.

Just what do you think George W. was being fed during his pre-presidential 'education'?

Yes, Palin is a confection of neocon perfection - a Bush/Cheney/Coulter/Schlafly soufflé, puffed up and covered in cascades of gooey fundie sauce, and ready to be shoved down your throats. Or perhaps you'd prefer Baked Alaska?

Bon appétit, you sad bastards.

Energizing Our Base

With all this Sarah Palin business, it seems to me that we Democrats need to think about ‘energizing our base’.

Republicans take pride in being called ‘conservative’. Yet, ‘liberal’ is still a term shunned and avoided by Democrats. Barack Obama, in a speech in Austin, stridently denied that the policies he was advocating - reducing money in politics, making sure there is health care for all, treating our soldiers properly when they come home - were ‘liberal’ policies.

Listen: if we’re not liberal, what the hell are we?

Are we conservative? If so, why not just say so? Why stay in a party that does not define itself as conservative? Why not just go to where the conservatives are?

And, if we aren’t conservative, then what else would we be?

What are the values that we as Democrats claim to embrace?

We want health care for all, not just for those wealthy enough to afford it, right?

We want out of this grotesque conflict that we’ve been lied into which has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, as well as uncountable innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, and has sullied our honor and credibility all over the world, isn’t that so?

We want a decent wage for those who work for a living, and a safety net for those who need it the most - not tax giveaways for those who are already so wealthy they don’t need it, don’t we?

We want government whose first loyalty and duty is to attend to the need of its people, not the greed of its corporations, wouldn’t you agree?

We want transparency, honesty and accountability from our elected officials, not secrecy, spying, stealing and stonewalling, don’t we?

We want all of our citizens to be treated equally under the law, with the same rights as everyone else, regardless of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation, right?

We want government to do its job - working for the interests of its citizens, and the private sector to do its job - making a profit; not the other way around, where government is expected to be a mere dollars-and-cents balance sheet, and the private sector is put in charge of meeting the needs of human beings, which may or may not be ‘profitable’.

We want our Bill of Rights, right? We want privacy in our homes and communications, the freedom to speak out and to assemble peacefully without government or police harassment, the right to face our accusers and see the evidence against us; the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. We want a press whose only allegiance is to the public’s right to know, not to its corporate paymasters.

Then why the fuck don’t we say so?

We are missing the point here by a country mile, and wondering why this Republican freak show is kicking our ass.

If the Republican party is defining itself by its values, and giving those values a name (conservatism) and the Democratic party is merely asserting that it isn’t the Republican party (not-conservatism) instead of naming and claiming our values as liberal, then all we are doing is writing our own epitaph - as a party, and as a social idea. As Dr. George Lakoff says, to ‘not think of an elephant’ is to think of an elephant. To define ourselves as ‘not-conservative’ is to reinforce the conservative frame as the dominant frame and to define ourselves as lacking that frame.

Liberal values are American values.

And the conservative frame, the conservative philosophy and blueprint for government, have brought us the very opposite of the things we want and were promised as Americans.

In my new book, the Price of Right, I talk about why conservatism is incompatible with American values and ideals. When conservative policies are not balanced with liberal policies, we devolve into feudalism. Conservatism is not content with being part of the whole; by definition it wants to have the whole pie to itself. The goal of a 'permanent Republican majority' shows exactly what conservatives think of other points of view, and why they see compromise as weakness and surrender. And the 'base' that the Republican party is dizzy with excitement to have engaged once again with Sarah Palin, the Christian fundamentalist/evangelicals, is very clear that it will brook no other views. To them, tolerance and diversity are not American values, but Satan's trickery.

American values are liberal values.

I know that people are afraid to use the ‘L’ word. That’s all I hear, over and over. The fear of being called ‘liberal’ is enough to make the toughest newscasters and most outspoken pundits soil themselves, backing off, groveling and apologizing for the least whiff of that dreaded epithet, ‘liberal media’ (which has not existed in at least 30 years.) Yes, yes, I know. Use the ‘L’ word and you’ve lost your election. So I’ve heard. But we haven't won by not using it, that's for sure!

The right has been extremely successful in demonizing the word that describes the Democratic party’s position. The problem is, and the Republicans knew this when they started doing it in the late 60s, that when someone takes away the word that identifies you and your ideals, there is nothing to ‘hang your hat on’ in terms of party identity, and you are forced to identify your party, not on its own terms but on the terms of the other party. And I’m sorry, but when you have only two political parties and they’re both defined by one party - one is ‘for’ and the other ‘against’ - ‘for’ will beat ‘against’ every single time. A positive always beats a negative.

This has been said by a number of people - that Democrats need to say what they’re for instead of what they’re against. But it never gets past that. No one ever says exactly how that is supposed to be done.

We’ve tried to substitute the word ‘progressive’ for ‘liberal’; I use it myself. In truth, they are similar in meaning, if you’re thinking in literal terms instead of framing terms - connecting with our deepest . But it’s like substituting Sweet ‘n’ Low for sugar; it’s yet another way to say “I’m not liberal; I’m ashamed to say that word”. Not consciously, but frame-wise, it is denying our ideals. That’s why the word ‘progressive’ has not succeeded in countering ‘conservative’.

It’s too late in this particular game to expect to make the switch to naming and claiming liberal values. But I believe that’s why we have no ‘base’ to energize at this point.

How great would it be if Obama was to operate out of a position of strength, conviction and passion, instead of a position of fear - fear of being labeled ‘the Angry Black Man’, fear of looking ‘sexist’ by criticizing Sarah Palin, fear of Republican retaliation by attacking McCain hard? Fear of not being ‘nice’ and ‘above it all’? Fear of the ‘low road’?

I can assure you, Republicans are not the least bit afraid of the ‘low road’.

I believe that Democrats are waiting for someone to stand up and get mad. That’s another Luntzian trick - keeping Democrats from speaking out by calling them ‘angry’ if they object to the abuse heaped upon them and implying that it’s a bad thing to get mad when you’re stepped on. But it’s long, long overdue.

If Obama were to take a real, strong stand and show that he believes in Democratic values bad enough to fight for them, and fight for us; if he were willing to go out on a limb and say what it is that we as Democrats stand for, and give our values a name that defines them on their own, and shows that these values are American values - not by merely saying it, but thundering it - then I think we would see an outpouring of Democratic passion and excitement such as we haven’t seen in a generation - perhaps two generations. Democrats are starved for leadership, for passion, for commitment. We need to be more than ‘not conservative.’

There is a Democratic ‘base’ out there, but no one has energized it. It’s out here, just waiting to be called by its name.

It’s not too late.

Yet.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Introduction

I'm excited to be able to tell you all at last about The Price of Right!

We have been paying this unacceptable price for long enough.

I have been trying to encapsulate what the book is about in as few words as possible, and failing miserably. I could just say that it's about the dangers of the conservative ideology, but that's only a part of it. Equally important (IMHO) is looking at the factors that go into each person's choice of a worldview, which I have tried to do in this book - to understand not just why conservatives think the way they do, but what contributes to their becoming conservative in the first place.

So I've written this rather long (longer than I'd like, anyway) overview of my book, and what I'll do is break it up into smaller parts and post it in sections, till I can figure out how to whittle it down to something manageable and succinct, like a real writer is supposed to do.

(takes a deep breath and jumps in)

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 1

Why are the chickens voting for Col. Sanders?

Why do people fervently support political parties, policies and politicians who are detrimental to their own best interests?

This was the question burning a hole in my head after the 2004 presidential election. This was the question that prompted me to become a blogger - and this was the question that led to my new book The Price of Right.

As I write this, we are hanging by our ragged, bleeding fingernails trying not to slip off of the edge and plunge headlong into economic, social and political collapse. The last eight years have brought us to a place that many of us could never have imagined that we would see in our own country - a nation at the mercy of a rogue-elephant administration, with seemingly no remedy in sight.

We are teetering on the brink of a second Great Depression and a Third World War, yet as the middle class are becoming the working poor, as the working poor are becoming the indigent and homeless, as we become an aggressor nation which is feared and loathed instead of respected, as any moral authority we once possessed as a nation is long gone, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights, once the pride of a free and fearless nation, has been ripped to shreds, there is still a sizable group of people who fervently and enthusiastically (dare I say ‘religiously’?) support the ideology which brought us all these things.

I began looking into the core principles of conservatism, since this has been the ideology that has dominated our government with precious little opposition or mitigation for the last few years. It soon became clear (to me, at least) that there was a gigantic disconnect between the stated aims of conservatism and the actual results. To give only one example, we were assured that massive tax cuts for the rich would lead to prosperity for the rest of us - the ‘rising tide that lifts all boats’. The conservative theory was that reward and punishment were the prime motivators for society, and if those who ‘achieved’ were properly rewarded for their ‘hard work, discipline and risk’, instead of being penalized for their success, then the results of that bounty would be reflected in the rest of society. When the exact opposite, happened, however, and a large budget surplus inherited from the Clinton administration turned into a horrifying and unprecedented deficit, to my astonishment not only did conservatives not reject this policy, but embraced it as the solution to the problems it caused!

The cognitive disconnect between stated policy and measurable results confounded me. And as I continued to find example after example of this disparity between theory and fact, I had to ask - what in the blue blazes is going on in the conservative mind? Can’t they see what has happened to this country and the world as a result of conservatism in action?

Before November 2004 I was still under the impression that if people only knew the facts, they would reject these ideas and the people who perpetrated them.

How very, very wrong I was.

The flip, easy answer is to label conservatives as stupid, crazy, or just plain evil. The problem with that is that it is not true. Of course, there are conservatives who are stupid, crazy, or evil, but there are liberals who are stupid, crazy or evil also. And it leaves out many conservatives that I know - close friends and family, who I know for a fact are good-hearted, honest, decent people who are doing the best they know how to be moral people and good citizens. So why do they trust the people who are stealing their jobs, money, security, freedom, and indeed their very lives?

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 2

The more I looked at conservatism (as an ideology/movement, not as people who call themselves ‘conservative’) the more I realized that, as much as I loathed George W. Bush and his puppeteers with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns, he was not the cause, but the culmination - the pinnacle, if you will - of the unfettered, whole-hog implementation of conservatism itself, without the balance of liberalism to restrain its more destructive tendencies.

Why does a person become a liberal or a conservative? What factors contribute to the choice of a worldview? As I searched for the answers to this question, I found myself wallowing around in neuroscience, anthropology, genetics, and cognitive linguistics as well as history and philosophy. And as I perused these disparate fields, I found information in each that managed in some way to connect to the others.

John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience brought to my attention the work of Dr. Robert Altemeyer, a psychology professor at the University of Manitoba who is a noted expert on authoritarianism - a name given to a set of traits exhibited by people who are most likely to comply unquestioningly with those in authority. This in turn led me to the first serious study of the authoritarian personality, Adorno et al., which in the aftermath of World War II, a group of social scientists headed up by Theodor W. Adorno undertook at the University of California, Berkeley to see if what happened in Nazi Germany could happen in America. It is estimated by Dr. Altemeyer that 23-25% of the population are authoritarian followers.

Another perspective came from Dr. George Lakoff at UC Berkeley, a cognitive linguist and social scientist who has written about ‘framing’. Cognitive science says that every person conceptualizes the world through mental structures that people use to process and understand reality called frames. We interpret and make sense of the world through these frames. The frames hold within them certain metaphors or associations between two separate concepts. Dr. Lakoff gives as an example the “well-being is wealth” metaphor, sometimes referred to as the Moral Accounting metaphor:

For example, if I do you a favor, you say, “I owe you one” or “I’m in your debt.” Doing something good for someone is metaphorically like giving him money. He “owes” you something. And he says, “How can I ever repay you?”

Americans view their government through a nation-as-family frame. We have Founding Fathers and Daughters of the American Revolution. We have Uncle Sam. We send our sons and daughters off to war. We view everything in our nation in a familial sense.

Dr. Lakoff uses two models to define the family: the Strict Father and the Nurturant Parent. The two represent the conservative and liberal views, respectively. The Strict Father model is hierarchical and authoritarian in nature. Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous. Evil is conceptualized as a force in the world, and it is the father's job to support his family and protect it from evils – both external and internal. Order – God over man, people over animals, men over women – and obedience are seen as the most important values in this frame, without which society would collapse entirely. Fear (of punishment, of harm) is an important part of the Strict Father frame. If a person is not afraid of being punished – by parents, by the law, by society, by God – then there is no way that person can ever be “moral” or “good.”

In the Nurturant Parent family, the highest moral values are empathy and responsibility. Effective nurturing requires empathy, which is feeling what someone else feels – parents have to figure out what their baby's cries mean in order to take care of him or her. Being responsible to others (not for others) and oneself requires cooperation. In society, nurturant morality is expressed as social responsibility that requires cooperation rather than competition, as well as a recognition of interdependence. The main tenets of progressive morality of empathy and responsibility are the same values that motivate liberal political issues.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 3

Conservatives and liberals agree on the need for moral behavior in society, but they disagree on the methods used to obtain it. Conservatives believe that the way to enforce moral behavior is by reward and punishment - the part of the Strict Father frame that says that reward and punishment are the tools a good father uses to instill self-discipline and self-reliance in his children. The children do not need to figure out what is right or wrong for themselves. As “good” children, they need to do as they are told by their legitimate authority, their father, who knows better than they do what is right and wrong. Then, when they are grown, they will be self-disciplined as a result of being disciplined by their father, and will become an authority figure themselves. By being self-reliant and self-disciplined, they will do well in society, and be rewarded financially for it. This is how character is built. If a child is not sufficiently disciplined or self-reliant, then his/her punishment is financial hardship. And if a child is not punished for a lack of discipline and/or self-control, then he/she will never learn to be “good.” This is why conservatives believe that a social safety net is not only useless and wasteful, but immoral! Conservatives believe providing for the poor only serves to encourage and reward “bad” behavior. Not only that, but it punishes the “good” people who have played by the rules by making them support the “bad” people.

A broad generalization of the difference between the conservative and liberal worldviews can be described as vertical versus lateral, in that in the conservative view, authority is carried out through order, like a stack of blocks, so that if any person moves out of their appointed place, the entire structure will fall. The liberal value structure is lateral – authority is conferred by purpose, not merely for its own sake (the sake of hierarchy and order) and does not need to be defined by dominance to be effective. The prime values of empathy and responsibility extend to and from all members of the group. Thom Hartmann calls it “the ‘me’ society versus the ‘we’ society”. In conservative economic theory, if each person looks to their own self-interest, the interests of all will benefit. So the conservative is expected to take care of ‘me and mine’. The problem with that is that anyone who is not considered ‘me and mine’ becomes ‘the other’ – not like us. And this, I believe, is the core cause of injustice, hate and war.


In Dr. Lakoff’s analysis of the two models, he explains how the seemingly contradictory positions taken by conservatism (which correlates to the Strict Father metaphor) fit together when viewed through that frame, and why a fact that does not fit into the frame will not be accepted as such at all - it will simply slide off. All people have and utilize both frames in different aspects of their lives, but the stronger or more dominant one frame is, the more it will tend to neutralize the traits corresponding to the other frame. Republicans long ago discovered that framing could be used to connect the conservative agenda with the deepest-held beliefs, needs, and fears of a large segment of the population.

These ideas helped me to understand why it was very difficult if not impossible to change the mind of the people who fall into the category of that 23-25%. Any information that does not mesh with the frames in place is literally not heard. In his book Don’t Think Of An Elephant, Dr. Lakoff states:

Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts that we have – the long-term concepts that structure how we think – is instantiated in the synapses in our brains. Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: Why would anyone have said that? Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy or stupid. That’s what happens when progressives just “confront conservatives with the facts.” It has little or no effect, unless the conservatives have a frame that makes sense of the facts.

These ideas helped me to understand why conservatives think the way they do – but how do they get that way in the first place? Why do some people turn out to be fierce liberals, some people turn out to be die-hard conservatives, and others stay somewhere in the middle? Is it nature, nurture, or both? Why is it that brothers and sisters raised by the same parents in the same home under much of the same circumstances can be polar opposites politically? You can, of course, ask the same question about a pair of siblings raised in a home where money was tight. One might respond by spending money freely, claiming “It’s because I grew up poor, and now that I have it I enjoy being able to spend it,” while the other sibling might respond to the same situation by not spending money, and giving the exact same rationale: “I grew up poor, so I’m uncomfortable with spending money.”

Many factors are involved, a mixture that includes the personality you’re born with, the environment you’re raised in, the world you’re exposed to, the critical incidents that happen to you. It’s a mixture of nature and nurture that accounts for a personality type. We all know people who, at times in their lives, make a dramatic, 180 degree shift in outlook. Usually this shift has to do with a seminal event that causes a person to change his/her viewpoint: religious conversion, being robbed or assaulted, losing a job, having a baby, going to war - all can alter a person’s way of thinking. Others change slowly over time through a set of life experiences. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, that many personality traits are genetically transmitted.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 4

I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as an adult, and came across a fascinating book by Thom Hartmann called ADD: A Different Perception in which he posits that ADD, rather than being a deficit or a disorder, is a leftover set of survival traits passed down to us from when humans lived in a hunter/gatherer society.

Hartmann’s theory is something like this: the traits that are described as ADD – short attention span coupled with hyper-focus at times, distractibility, restlessness or inability to sit still, impulsivity, aggressiveness, independence, disorganization, distorted sense of time, impatience, risk-taking and disregard of consequences, a tendency to be easily bored, desire for immediate gratification – are all qualities that a hunter would need in order to survive.

On the other hand, a farmer needed to be patient, focused, capable of long-term planning and execution, able to delay gratification, and able to sustain a steady, dependable effort. It was important to be organized and methodical. Farmers had to be time-conscious and able to pace themselves. It was necessary to be a team player and cooperate with others. It was important to be able to stick with the tried –and true, and to be able to execute instructions step –by step without leaving anything out. A capacity to tolerate boredom and repetition was a helpful trait. You needed to do things at certain times – plant in the spring, harvest in the fall. If you decided to plant in the fall instead of the spring, you (and your community) would starve. If you got distracted and forgot a step, like watering your crop, you would starve. If you got impatient, and yanked your plants out of the ground because it was taking too long for them to grow, you would starve. Once a system of farming proved successful, it was imperative to stick with that system. Caution and care, even fear, was necessary to avoid danger to the crops.

A hunter, on the other hand, required a different set of traits entirely. If a hunter was to catch an animal, he must be alert and scanning his environment at all times, ready to drop whatever he was doing and change course to catch his prey. He needed to be aggressive and fearless – even reckless – to chase and kill an animal that could be a danger to him. Adaptability was necessary for a hunter. There was no telling when and where his animal would be, and he needed to be ready at all times. Independence, innovation, and ingenuity enabled him to do whatever was necessary to catch his prey. And when a hunter goes after his prey, he turns on the turbo-jets and does not stop until his objective is achieved. He is wired to expect immediate results. Without these traits, he would starve.


However, many of the hunter traits would be useless in an agricultural society. If a farmer had to live in a hunter society, the traits that served him so well on the farm would doom him as a hunter. No one would tell him that at three this afternoon a gazelle would be coming by. The fear that protected him as a farmer would hamper him as a hunter. He might not see the necessity for immediate action, nor have the aggression or fearlessness necessary to put himself in danger in order to catch an animal. If he was expecting an animal at one place, he might not react quickly enough if the animal came from another direction.


The main purpose of Hartmann’s book, ostensibly, was to give those who had been labeled with a deficiency or disorder a way to gain some self-esteem and feel positive about themselves rather than handicapped, defiant, lazy, stupid or crazy. I wondered, though, if there was scientific validity to the hunter/farmer concept – that these groups of traits could be in fact leftover survival traits that have come down to us from two very different points in human societal development?

Most people I raised the question with asserted that heritable traits like these could not evolve that quickly, and that it was a nice way to make ADDs feel better about themselves and nothing more. However, some recent studies in the field of genetics have yielded some interesting data to support my theory. Dr. Mauricio Arcos-Burgos, a geneticist with the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, and presently at the University of Miami, has written a paper published in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (2007) on the genetic origins of ADHD in which he finds that the traits associated with ADHD are evolutionally positive. He states that “Recent molecular and clinical evidence supports Thom Hartmann’s Hunter–Farmer theory, reaffirming that ADHD might be an anachronic behavioral trait”, meaning that those traits that make it difficult for those with ADHD to fit into our modern ‘farmer’ society are anachronic – that is, traits from another time in human social development. The label applies to those at the farthest end of the ‘hunter’ scale, but a more modest amount of these traits would be a good definition of those with a liberal outlook.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 5

We live in a farmer society, where farmer traits such as patience, memorization, organization, docility, cooperation, acceptance of delayed gratification, long-term planning and methodical execution, and respect for tradition and rules are hallmarks of the successful student, employee, and citizen. People who have a preponderance of hunter traits find it more difficult to manage in our society, starting with school and continuing on through later life. Again, as with the two family models (Strict Father and Nurturant Parent), nobody is all one or the other. Everyone has both hunter and farmer traits.

What about a religious outlook? Farmers and hunters might have completely different relationships to a higher power. A farmer’s authority would be the authority of nature. It is one-way only. It cannot be seen or communicated with, negotiated with, challenged, bartered with, or connected with in any way. It can only be accepted and accommodated to. Therefore a farmer’s God might be an authority to be obeyed without question. Although a hunter must deal with nature also, his relationship with nature is much different. His sustenance comes from his own physical effort and battle with a living creature somewhat akin to himself. It is through his own decisions and actions that his animal dies and becomes his food. A hunter can challenge nature where a farmer cannot. So perhaps this might account for the differences in the way hunter types and farmer types view and relate to God.

I bring this subject up because I think that hunter-and-farmer models could apply to political orientation, as well. For instance, what if the traits that usually apply to those who consider themselves liberals are hunter traits, and those that apply to self-described conservatives are farmer traits that have been genetically passed on to us from our ancestors? If you have the tendency to be comfortable in going along with a group, with accepting authority without question, comfortable with having a a role in a hierarchy in which to belong, and are more affected by and susceptible to fear, it seems likely that you will call yourself a conservative. We are all susceptible to fear, but studies have shown that self-described conservatives are much more affected by it, and it will influence their behavior in a way that it does not influence liberals. This is why the Bush administration has been so successful in its use of fear to implement its agenda. The threat of terrorism and the Islamo-fascists who want to kill us is much more real and frightening to conservatives than liberals. Fear is a necessary survival trait, but hunters, more than farmers, must be able to shrug off fear in order to survive. Fear is the trump card for Bush Co., and they play it like Diamond Jim Brady every time.

Well, if conservatives are so fearful and liberals are so fearless, you might ask, why does the Democratic majority cower before the Republicans, refusing to challenge even the most egregious wrongdoings of this administration and cravenly co-signing every vile, illegal, immoral piece of legislation that is excreted in their direction?

The way I see it, Democrats, as liberals, are hostages to their framing as well. They operate from the deep-seated Nurturant Parent assumption that if you want to get, you have to give, and the converse – if you give a little, then your counterparts across the aisle will give in return. Like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football, Democrats make concession after concession, believing against all evidence that this will earn them cooperation from Republicans, somehow not processing the fact that conceding is perceived as weakness by the authoritarian Republicans, and merely results in more aggressive steam-rollering from the right. What we see as cooperation, they see as submission, which triggers even more dominating, leg-lifting behavior.

Both the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent frames have drawbacks that cause problems in our society. Within the Nurturant Parent frame, it is the tendency of liberals to try so hard to find a consensus that satisfies everyone that the result is that no one is happy and nothing gets accomplished.

What makes the Strict Father frame more dangerous, though, is that the inclination to obey their chosen authority is so strong in conservatives (especially the authoritarian followers) that it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to challenge or defy a bad authority once they have accepted the validity of that authority. What is usually a society-building trait can have devastating consequences if the wrong people are in power. When your need to comply with authority trumps any conscience you might have, the end result is disaster.

Dr. Altemeyer says:

[The] vast majority of us have had practically no training in our lifetimes in openly defying authority. The authorities who brought us up mysteriously forgot to teach that. We may desperately want to say no, but that turns out to be a huge step that most people find impossibly huge--even when the authority is only a psychologist you never heard of running an insane experiment, and your obedience means you are probably going to kill someone. From our earliest days we are told disobedience is a sin, and obedience is a virtue, the “right” thing to do.”

But is it really “the right thing” to do?

The Price of Right attempts to connect the dots and point out the correlation between the implementation of conservative policies - social, economic and political - and the demise of our middle class, our rights to free speech, free press, habeas corpus, privacy, the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy. We have paid a terrible price. Is it too late to stop payment on the “blank check” that Bush and company have squandered like drunken sailors?

I do believe it is possible. But I also believe that whether it is possible or not should have no bearing whatsoever upon whether we should try. What kind of principles are only worth fighting for if you are assured in advance of success?

As liberals, we should be aware that the ability to push aside fear when necessary is one of our strengths. We should utilize this strength more than we do. We are currently playing to our weakness, when we should be getting in touch with our rebellious, disobedient, reckless, fearless side. The United States of America was created by people who risked everything in pursuit of a better way to live; not only for themselves, but for everyone. Our forefathers could very well have stayed colonists (that's the conservative way); they could have easily accepted the status quo and made the best of it. But the hunter traits that gave them the impetus to challenge injustice and the willingness to fight for an ideal when there was no guarantee of success are traits that we liberals need to re-discover. Our flabby muscles of resistance need exercise, and our willingness to take risks is our biggest asset in the fight to get our freedoms back. So, gird your loins and grab your spear – the hunt for justice is on!

Take Cover, Conservatives - My Book Is On Its Way!

I just got some news from my publisher Sterling and Ross - my book The Price of Right is at the printers and is expected to be shipped by the end of August!

I'm excited and a little nervous, but mostly excited. I never in my wildest dreams expected to write a book, and I'm so grateful to have been given the opportunity to say what I want to say in print. Now that I have an actual ETA, I can start talking about it in earnest, and I'm relieved that it will be out before the election.

To recap (I'll be quoting from some of my older posts) - this book came about in a very interesting way.

Like so many of you out there, the 2004 selection left me absolutely gobsmacked. Although I've always been a liberal, I never felt a particular need to be active - I figured there were other people who were doing that sort of thing. I knew even before the 2000 election was stolen that Dubya was a bad, bad man. I knew this when I heard about the Tucker Carlson interview with Bush when he was still governor of Texas, in which he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, the woman on Death Row who had become born-again while in prison (much like Bush himself) and asked him to spare her life.

I don't believe there is any other elected office in the United States that has the direct power of life and death other than a state governor - certainly not one which is called upon so often to exercise that power. I am very much against the death penalty; nevertheless, I would hope that the people who have been granted that power by the government to decide if someone should live or die would make that decision with the utmost respect, dignity and humility. Instead, this sociopath (who set records in Texas for the number of executions carried out during his term as governor; Time magazine reported in August of 2000 that "George W. Bush, who has had more executions during his five-year tenure in Austin than any other governor in the nation since capital punishment was reinstated, has made his support for executing mentally retarded inmates clear.") dared to defile his office by mimicking and mocking a woman (however guilty, still a human being) he was about to put to death. That story alone told me all I needed to know about the character (or complete absence thereof) of that evil man, and I believe my observations have been borne out.

When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George W. Bush, even I, who had the lowest opinion of him imaginable, figured that he would be in and out without much fuss, given his past record of complete incompetence in every situation that was handed to him. Even I, who had the lowest opinion of him imaginable, was absolutely stunned at the damage this idiot was able to inflict upon our nation. I pinned my hopes on the 2004 election, when he would surely be booted out by the Americn people, who now knew from first-hand experience what a hazard to democracy he was.

But after that election, which he touted as a 'mandate' and a fortune in 'political capital', which he intended to do with as he pleased, I was completely and utterly shaken. What Bizarro-World did I wake up in?

I couldn't get out of bed for a day. I spent a couple of days in a disoriented haze of helplessness and frustration. Then I got mad. Then I started Hooterville.

I had no further goals than expressing myself and setting down my thoughts, but I was happy to find other like-minded people and a wealth of information about what was happening in our country. As a high-school graduate who had never written so much as a term paper, I did not think of myself as a writer. My blogging was my lifeline to sanity, and through blogging I began to understand how important it was to be, not merely informed, but involved. As I read other blogs, and developed friendships with other bloggers and commenters, I discovered a hitherto-undiscovered aspect of myself - the political activist. Reading led to writing, writing led to talking, talking led to walking.

Every once in a while I would send a post to radio talk show host Mike Malloy, who would sometimes read it on the air. This post, written almost exactly two years ago, was one of them. He mentioned my blog address, and I got some very nice e-mails. One of those e-mails came from someone at a publishing company who asked if I would be interested in discussing writing a book about why Americans vote against their own best interests. At first I thought it was a hoax or a vanity-press thing ('for only $2500, you can be a published author!') but upon using the Google, I found out that the company was a real publisher. The person who contacted me said that they had been looking for someone to write this kind of book, and my writing apparently fit the bill.

I'm really, really excited about this, as you all know how I feel about this subject. I'm hoping to be able to explain this in a way that regular people (non-bloggers or non-political junkies) will understand. But what blows me away about this is that it came about strictly from blogging. It didn't happen because I 'knew' anyone or had any literary contacts whatsoever. In fact, before I became a blogger, I never wrote at all. But I figure, if literary professionals think I can write a book, who am I to doubt them? They know more about it than I do!

It is a testament to the egalitarian nature of the Internet that I wrote this book - that simply putting one's work out there - casting your bread upon the waters - can result in it finding a home and an audience. So I have to include all of you in this - all of you who have come here to comment and allowed me to get to know you; all of you whose own writing and passion for making our country better have inspired me; all of you who have shared your own selves on your blogs, and have become personal friends as well as blog friends.

This is the time to take it to the right, and lay the blame where it belongs - at the feet of the conservative ideology which believes that "wealth equals morality" and "might equals right." The 'Invisible Hand' has strangled us long enough. We need to remind Americans that the ideals that inspired our Founding Fathers to rebel against the first Mad King George and "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" are liberal values. We became an independent nation because of this radical idea that all Americans should benefit from our union, not only the rich.

It is my hope that this book will at least raise these questions with people who have not been exposed to any other ideas by the woefully negligent 'mass media', which has long since abandoned its First Amendment obligations.