GETTING PAST RIGHT-WING HORROR
As we hopefully enter a new age, a new perspective, and new values in the United States, it will not be easy to get past our burdens of right-wing greed, bigotry, lack of altruism, parochial thoughts of America being better than any nation, ignorance of history, self-centered foreign relations, seeing war as a way to settle everything, equating wealth with intelligence, being afraid to challenge ourselves historically or currently, ad infinitum. Here are some past demons we must exorcise:
"It is time to turn from quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. The alliance with foreign races means nothing but death for us." -Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. [yes, THAT Charles Lindbergh, who also saw Hitler as a hero]
"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." -John Wayne [Yes, THAT John Wayne]
"God had a divine purpose in placing this land between two great oceans to be found by those who had a special love of freedom and courage." -Ronald Reagan [Yes, THAT Ronald Reagan, who must have forgotten to read that part of American history when "those" people came here from Europe to slaughter American Indians, take away their freedom, and imprisoned them on reservations]
"In all my years of public life I have never obstructed justice...Your President is no crook!" -Richard M. Nixon
"...another Negro hung naked from a tree. In the background a Klansman held aloft a large American flag." -Jacob Javits [Mr. Javits, himself, deplored bigotry]
"We'll blast them back into the stone age!" -General William C. Westmoreland {U.S. commander in Vietnam]
Perhaps President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower knew about these things as well as anyone, and he warned us: "In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." - D.D. Eisenhower [look around you, we are run by huge corporations with military connections in all aspects of government...this military-industrial complex has sold this nation down the river].
Can we turn to our so-called Founding Fathers for justification for our persistent, right-wing, fundamentalist sub-set?
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion." -John Adams (1735-1826)
"The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian religion." -Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"...this loathsome combination of Church and State." -Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
While I may or may not agree with any of the quotations above, it is clear that we have been sold a bill of goods by the right-wing, fundamentalist, greed-capitalists in the United States. We have lost our way as a nation. Today is a good day to begin to consider what we have wrought in this world.
