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The New Right Wing Agenda
(Steven E. Miller, CommonDreams.org, June 13, 2003)
The right wing agenda has three main points, each of which has precedents in earlier Republican and Democratic Administrations but which have been pushed to a qualitatively new level by the W clique . . . 1) Fundamentally change the role of government. stripping government of all social welfare functions and all economic regulatory activity. Instead, government would revert to the sole role of protecting property and sovereignty through the use of its police/military power. This change will be accomplished in all three branches. The judiciary will be stacked, the legislature will pass the appropriate laws, and the executive will become more centralized and autocratic. . . . 2) Fundamentally shifting the burden of taxation from capital (including profits and all forms of �unearned� income) to consumption. The eventual goal is to eliminate all capital gains, inheritance, and corporate taxes, as well as the entire income tax. . . . also make taxation increasingly regressive, putting ever-larger burdens on working families and the poor. Since this is happening at the same time that services provided by government to those groups are being reduced, it reinforces the traditional anti-tax feeling among the general population . . . 3) Fundamentally change the nature of international relations from a �trilateral� world in which multinational elites collaborated on creating an investment-friendly world into a US-dominated �new world order� in which narrow nationalist goals are achieved through unilateral and pre-emptive use of the US�s military power and everyone else is forced to accommodate Washington�s ability to �create facts on the ground.� . . . The most important implication of all this is that large segments of the domestic and world population are no longer seen as worth worrying about. . . . The amazing thing is that the right wing fundamentalists have been able to seize power and win a large amount of support � or at least acquiescence -- among the US electorate. . . . Using all these institutional-cultural supports, the reactionary clique has built a broad and powerful coalition. They�ve become a �big tent� for anti-abortionists (pulling in the Catholic right wing), anti-feminists (attracting not only status-concerned men but women who feel threatened by the loss of the �security and respect� given to traditional female roles), homophobes, anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action groups (drawing on the racist undercurrents that always rise during periods of uncertainty, unrest, and change), gun advocates (pulling in huge numbers of rural and western voters), property-rights advocates (dipping into the traditional distrust of government bureaucracy), business advocates (offering a path forward to businesses increasingly pressed by foreign competition during an economic downturn), and more. And they�ve found ways to give everyone of these constituent groups immediate monetary, policy, and cultural-symbolic payoffs � further tightening their bonds to the government clique. . . . Most important, by wrapping themselves in the mantle of religion, the GOP leadership has made themselves a vehicle for the growing religious fundamentalist upsurge � parts of which can accurately be described as a fascist movement. . . . The scariest part is that the right wing lunatics feel that they�ll get away with it. Who remembers Afghanistan, or the absence of Iraqi�s supposed weapons of mass destruction? Who seems to care that our economy is collapsing? In the short term, Bush and company win not because of smarter strategies or brilliant tactics, but because they have access to overwhelming resources and power and they can simply outlast everyone and everything else. . . . we should not underestimate their willingness to keep imposing their will through direct (or indirect) force -- the racism, lies, manipulation, and violence used to secure the 2000 election are likely to be repeated or exceeded in coming years. . . . Already, European leaders who opposed the US invasion of Iraq are making their peace with the reality that the US went ahead anyway and with the overall agenda of which it is merely one expression. . . . We�re in for a long fight. We can�t pretend that merely exposing the power elite�s wrong doings or failures will cause their downfall. To survive, we need to find issues and movements that can provide some safe space, that uphold a different world view while not denying the new reality in which we live, that can win some concrete and meaningful small victories (which will require some new strategies) while projecting a vision of a more significant change. . . . the bigger the oppositional movement we build the more likely we are to see significant changes. You never know�sometimes things change much quicker than we anticipate.

TO THE BARRICADES!

posted by LoZo 11:53 AM