Crackpots and Cowards -- The Conservative Liberal Chasm: The following is, in my opinion, one of the most excellently written pieces I have read on the conservative/liberals divide which exists in this country today. It was written by Kurt Stone (not related to I.F. Stone) who is a rabbi, writer, lecturer, political activist, professor, actor, and medical ethicist. He was educated at the University of California, the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and the Hebrew Union College, Stone holds a B.A. in American Political History, a Master of Hebrew Letters, and a Doctor of Divinity.

The main thrust of his article and contained in his quote is: "The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are more than matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism. In short the conservative whole is simply not that bright. But if the conservative populous is not that bright then liberals who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity are, in fact, often cowards.

Mr. Stone sends me his weekly opinions. You can view his website and other opinions of his by clicking on the link http://www.kurtfstone.typepad.com/

He sent the following piece:

An Essay With Something For Everyone to Dislike

If, God forbid, America ever becomes a second-rate nation, it will undoubtedly be because the cupidinous morons on the right have been aided and abetted by the weak-kneed cowards on the left. You read me correctly: the conservatives are morons; the liberals are cowards. The former is scientifically verifiable; the latter, anecdotally conjectural.

Last month, Gordon Hodson, a widely respected Professor of Psychology at Brock University in Ontario (Canada) published a long-awaited study in the journal Psychological Science. Entitled Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes, Professor Hodson's controversial study compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people. Hodson and his colleagues came to the conclusion that " . . . lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and [that] this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology." In other words, as summarized by the Daily Mail's Rob Waugh, "Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views . . . . Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others . . . . People with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe."

This by no means is meant to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. Goodness knows, it certainly takes clever people to convince a fearful segment of the American public of such patent inanities as:

· Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

· Those who claim that climate change is man-made are elitist members of an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy.

· A tax break for the 1% is the only hope for the 99%.

· Any regulation that claims to prevent big banks and corporations from exploiting us, is in reality, an assault on working man and woman.

· The federal deficit results largely from the greed of the poor.

· The President of the United States is waging a war on religion.

Writing about the new conservatives in the online journal Truthout, former longtime GOP congressional staffer Mike Longren noted, "To be sure, the [Republican] party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots . . . . But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman . . . Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy."

Not to be outdone, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum (who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil") wrote in a recent New York article:

Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama, whatever his policy errors, is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

Creating and selling (if not fully believing) this right-wing reality takes a lot of craftiness, if not downright intelligence; it also takes a trainload of cash and a cadre of folks who have no problem taking advantage of millions upon millions of what Lofgren calls "low-information voters." What the likes of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friese and the other right-wing billionaires (among those possessing the trainloads of cash) have discovered is that there is no pool too shallow in which millions cannot and will not drown.

But beyond the creating, the funding and the selling of this "alternate knowledge," there is the cowardice and downright complaisance of America's liberals and progressives. As Thomas Frank notes in his latest book, Pity the Billionaire much of the blame rests with liberals and progressives, who suffer from what he calls "terminal niceness." As the Guardian's George Monbiot describes it, the Democrats, ". . . fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or . . . make an uncluttered case for social justice [and] regulation." Instead, he argues, they "triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate."

Indeed, the conceptual stupidities of conservatism are more than matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism. If ever the American political system is to right itself, the Right will have to stop feeding caustic misinformation to a haunted, fearful, low-information public, and the Left will have to overcome its reticence and shout STOP!

Enough of this even-handedness! Let us end with one last quote . . . from John Stewart Mill:

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

I could not have said it any better than he!

A Letter to Daniel Goldhagen: Dear Professor Goldhagen: I came across several Utubes of your conversations with Mr. Heffner about your brilliant book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." I had the distinct pleasure around 1996 to listen to you lecture at Facing History in Brookline. Ever since that evening I have been smitten with your articulate expression and analysis of not only German history during the Holocaust period but also how it relates to our contemporary experience as well. I did buy your first book and at some point when I finish my stack of reading I would love to read your work A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair as well as current writings on contemporary antisemitism.

I am 63 years old, born in 1948 in a suburb of Boston. Since my first introduction to the Holocaust by my parent's discussion of it and how it related to our experience as American Jews to the first documentary I saw at age 10 on the Nazi death camps with all the infamous pictures of the mountains of skeletons, piles of shoes, spectacles and other gruesome Holocaust detail not a day goes by that I am not thinking in some way about the experience of the Jewish people -- the six million. When the weather is hot, when the weather is cold, when springtime arrives ultimately followed in time by the chill of fall I think about the Jews of Europe. I think about the camps and how they survived the harsh elements with no food, no water, living and dying in unspeakable conditions. I think about my grandparents who immigrated to America at the turn of the 20th century. They came from Kiev and Minsk. The shtetls where they were born, of course, were cleansed of Jews. Had they stayed there I would not be writing this email.

As the years pass, as human beings are inclined memories fade, generations pass and those skeletons long since turn to dust and are gone with the wind. I am glad and hope that you keep our people's memory alive never ceasing to talk of the onslaughts we faced, how we endured and indeed prospered so that never again truly means never again and Jewish memory of our tragic history and perseverance under great assault goes on. It is not only a lesson for our time it is a lesson for the ages. When we have long passed the ever present phenomenon and questions of man's inhumanity to man, his ethics, morality and the power of the state over him will remain. The questions of what is good, right and permissible are eternal and will never die.

Thank you for writing some of the most insightful, complete, and eminently articulate books of our time. You are a joy to all who have the pleasure of hearing and reading your words and to those who yearn for a more just world.

I heard this fellow speak at "Facing History" in Brookline. He wrote and spoke on his book: "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust".

Great discussion on PBS by a brilliant young Harvard scholar, Daniel Goldhagen, of the Holocaust period and after. This is Part I. There are two more dialogues "More about Hitler's Willing Executioners and then Part II. Fascinating discussion with one of the most articulate scholars I have ever had the pleasure to hear.

Here is the link: http://video.pbs.org/video/1512022073

The Trojan Horse: It is OBVIOUS that the Republican Party of extremist obstructio­nism is bringing up the issue of contracept­ion they dragged out of the cobwebs with their sole intent on ramming President Obama out of office. This was their goal from day one of his election. Obviously, now that the economy is somewhat better the president has defused their one big tool in their toolbox so they drag out the social issues when Republicans have nothing else to use as ammunition to forge the assault and win the day. The issue of contraception will NOT work either as about 99% of women avail themselves of it, a large majority of whom are Catholics. The president, though, wanted to head them off at the pass. If the Republicans remain intractabl­e (which they probably will) it is THEIR bad not the president’s. Over the past several months Republicans have looked worse than bad they appear concussive and near death.

Sometimes I have disagreed with the president for not being progressiv­e enough BUT not on this one and not on anything else either. I am as I have always been front and center in favor of his reelection­. I loved the president in 2008 and I love him now. Probably I always will! Win, Mr. President, in 2012 you SO deserve it and so do we.

Cancer and the CEO's: A friend of mine sent me these sites below. One is a trailer of a documentary coming out soon called "Pink Ribbon, Inc." There is always a story behind the story!

"Just another point of view about the Komen organization. First of all, I stopped buying into the "pink ribbon" mindset a long time ago. I had learned years ago that the big cancer organizations (Am. Cancer Society, etc.) had on their boards people who were CEOs of major chemical and pharmaceutical companies, and the main purpose for the cancer orgs was to keep the public from investigating into the truth of what CAUSES cancer: chemical pollution, the environment, toxins that we put into and on our bodies, etc. The Internet is filled with articles that talk about these conflicts of interest. Here are a couple of links, but I'm sure there are many others:

http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/wealthiest_links.htm
http://www.whale.to/cancer/breast6.html

So, as far as Komen and the pink-ribbon culture, they also NEVER, EVER mention prevention, only "The Cure." Cancer is a tremendous industry, lining the pockets of many. There's a new documentary that's just been released in Canada on this subject. Here's a link to its trailer, if you'd like to check it out:

http://news.moviefone.com/2012/02/03/pink-ribbons-breast-cancer-movie_n_1252824.html?ref=moviefone

I remember a few years ago talking to a breast cancer survivor who complained that "breast cancer isn't pink, it isn't cute, it isn't fun. It's scary and it's ugly, and I HATE, HATE, HATE how they have twisted this into a multimillion dollar industry." (Or something like that.)

There ARE organizations that are trying to educate about cancer prevention (one of them is mentioned in the link above, but again, there are many others). Screening has nothing to do with prevention. "Prevention" can wipe out an industry. Not that we will see that in our lifetime, of course. But I, for one, have had enough of pink ribbons; walk, run and jump for the cure; and seeing ads trying to lure people into feeling good about spending money on food and products that actually cause cancer."

PLANNED SUBVERSION FOILED: Headlines will soon read Handle VP at Komens who began the lie about and tried to defund Planned Parenthood resigns. VICTORY!! Unfortunately this may have done permanent damage to Komens who now is seen in an adversarial light. Their bad and to the good of Planned Parenthood who gets the spill over in funding!

Still a few kudos to Komens BUT it NEVER EVER should have become an issue! Too many women who need cancer screenings and a cure lose if that is the case. It is about women NOT lies perpetrated by wingnuts about abortion. Abortion as Santorum out and out lied does NOT cause cancer but plenty of other things may.

Susan Komens died and the Walk for the Cure began. I hope Komens now does not suffer from this egregious and utterly STUPID action of the Komen's Vice President Karen Handle who infiltrated a group and with her Republican cronies tried to subvert the good works of Planned Parenthood. Handle is a traitor to the cause of women's health. Good riddance and don't forget to close the door, Karen, on your way out!

Religious Poison and the Middle East: I am for peace and do not give a rat's petuti how it is done. I want the killing to stop and for sixty years those in power have utterly failed to do this. I want Jewish blood to stop flowing and I want Arab blood and the blood of children to stop as well. Alas, religious wingnutism is alive and well on both fronts and most especially in this country.

Organized religion is the pariah of mankind and will do NOTHING but get us all killed so that each group can march up to their respective sky god's domicile and do exactly what? The mythologies of man will be the destruction of him. The core to which religion presciently appeals is a universal fear of illness, aging and ultimately death. Religious power is smart as it takes man's greatest fears and sells religions' art to make a bundle of bucks even if it means killing millions in the process.

Christopher Hitches title of his book was on the mark. "Why God is Not Great -- How Religion Poisons Everything." From where I sit it surely does exactly that!

The Warning: If you want to see a return to the Bush-on-steroids era that brought us the Great Recession, illegal and immoral war, if you want to see the banksters of Wall Street allowed to steal more of your money through deception and fraud go unpunished, if you want to see people get kicked out of their medical insurance for a pre-existing condition of a hangnail, if you want to see housing foreclosures by the ton, if you want to see government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich then Romney the empty suit, flip-flopper-in chief is your 1% guy. But if you want to elect a president that has his heart with the 99% then re-elect the president.

Our president has faced an avalanche of Republican opposition. The things he HAS done have been most often amazingly good. The Supreme Court on the next president's watch will either reaffirm government by the superpacs or form a more equitable union. No one is perfect least of all ANY Republican. In a second term WITH a more supportive Congress our president Obama can and WILL do better!

All one must do is view those whom the Republican Party depends upon for their support. For each Republican candidate there is the support of mainly whites. If you do not see the racism of that party then look to those who are behind the Republican candidates when they give their win (or loss) speeches. It is a sea of white. That is not by chance it is by design. That is whom they WANT to appeal. It has been their "southern strategy" since 1968 and they are organized as we were in 2008. We MUST be again in 2012.

The return of the American archaic states' rights philosophy of the Civil War era in the south is CAMOUFLAGE for what they really mean and that is to shut out and prevent persons of color and other minorities from attaining power by depriving them of the vote. They are a return to the Jim Crow era of literacy tests and poll taxes. They ARE the party of white even though they sometimes trot out one or two persons of color to make it seem as if they are equitable. They are NOT. They are NOT the party of Lincoln. The Democratic Party since FDR has become the more equitable, ethical and diverse party. It is a party which truly represents this country in the 21st century.

GET your Democratic and Independent posteriors to the voting booth in November and re-elect someone whose philosophical principles are for most of YOU! Re-elect the president by encouraging and helping ALL whom you know to sign up, register to vote, and go to the polls to vote Democratic across the board next fall. Nothing short of all our lives depends upon it.

Well, praise the Lord!! Maybe my opinion plastered on Facebook and everywhere else paid off! I had a lot of company however.

See the NYT link below entitled:

"Cancer Group Backs Down on Cutting Off Planned Parenthood"

Smart decision, Komens. I cannot help feel that progressive voices that cry out in anger at this insane right wingnut religious fundamentalist junk that has been heaved at women for decades CAN pay off. This cannot and MUST not be the end. We must renew our women's rights voices again before Roe v. Wade is a memory and women begin to die from back alley abortions -- poor women that is. The rich always manage to protect themselves.

If one does not want an abortion by all means do NOT have one but keep your hands OFF my body. Remember these wingnuts are still in the minority. Most women even IF they would never or have never had an abortion themselves would protect a woman's right to choose her own fate!

Victory never tasted so sweet -- today at least!

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/cancer-group-backs-down-on-cutting-off-planned-parenthood/?hp#comments

Blogging for the Cure: An issue surrounding the Susan Komen’s Foundation, an entity geared to the ever-so-laudable goal of finding a cure for breast cancer, is burning up the airwaves and the blogosphere because the Komen’s Foundation made the egregious decision to remove its $2,000,000 grant from the much revered and infinitely helpful Planned Parenthood. The outcry of this unconscionable act is stunning. The reason given for Komen’s pulling its grant is that Planned Parenthood is being “investigated” by a Republican dominated House committee. We all know this is a right wing Republican political subversive tactic against Planned Parenthood with no rationale but to legally impose an ideological right wing extremist agenda on the nation. Local Planned Parenthoods have been inundated by state and local red state officials making impossible demands to serve this end. The red-state agenda has been gunning (sometimes literally) for Planned Parenthood for a very long time.

The Komen’s Foundation surreptitiously infiltrated at its hierarchical top a right wing extremist Republican ideologue who decided if Planned Parenthood could not be taken down in the passage of the Obama Administration’s health care legislation then it would taken down by a CIA-like maneuver insinuating its insanity through power at top.

Abortion and even contraception now has become the cause célèbre that our nation’s albatrosses on the right have heaped upon the rest of us who want those decisions to fall under an implied right to privacy. They have been relentlessly pursuing over decades the overturn of the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade decision by any means necessary even if it means the murder of doctors who provide vital reproductive care in a sterile, clean and safe professional environments where the patient can feel privacy protected and secure.

Planned Parenthood’s total abortion service is a mere 3% of their entire care. Yes, doctors at Planned Parenthood provide safe and legal abortions even IF it is only 3% of what they do. The procedural majority of Planned Parenthood is concerned with cancer screening and many other medical procedures needed by women (and men) for their reproductive health. The money pulled by Komen’s will affect that majority.

The right wingnut religious extremists will stop at nothing to spread their poisonous doctrine. They would return us to glorious yesteryear of back alley illegal unsafe abortions when women were butchered by quack abortionists, bled to death or became infertile from an illegal, unsterilized and unsafe abortion costing thousands. It is time for the pro choice movement take back the issue of women’s reproductive freedom as the religious Republican extremist right whittles away a woman’s right to control own her own body.

Since when have fetuses in the measure of a few weeks into pregnancy been called an “unborn child?” This term gives personhood to an entity without the mother’s body and out-of-utero would cease to exist BUT I do not care what anyone’s views on abortion are. If you do not like or want to have an abortion DON’T but leave other women’s bodies to themselves.

I am blogging for a cure to narrow minded, stupid, insensitive, idiotic religious fanaticism which cares NOTHING for the life of a full term human being but allegedly cares more about the life of a fetus. I cannot agree and I do not HAVE to agree with wingnuts who will be responsible for the death of women – many poor -- if they cannot affordably get the array of Planned Parenthood services they need.

A personal note: I was born in 1948. I had a sister that was born five years before me. She lived less than ten days because of significant birth defects. My father, at that time, had scheduled one of the premier surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital to repair the facial and intestinal deformities but her birth weight tumbled and she died.

In pertinent part my mother, emotionally fragile, was devastated. I asked my father where the baby was buried. He did not know because he said the baby was so young that by Jewish law no Jewish funeral was necessary, no Jewish rites for the dead observed and no shiva (a memorial week of visitation) was held. He said that the orthodox rabbi had told him then that the child was not, in Jewish tradition, imbued with a sense of “personhood” until after a 30 day period of life. This he said saved the mother the torment that would come with observing the Jewish extended death ritual by relieving her of the burden which she was not mentally and physically able to endure. Views may differ now but that is what he was told then.

I relate this story to emphasize the difference Jewish law was from Catholic or fundamentalist Christian law. The mother’s life in Jewish law is usually paramount. Is Jewish law any better than Christian law? NO it is simply different as are the myriad of views, religious and non-religious concerning the incendiary issue of when personhood and life begins.

Ironically, Susan G. Komen the namesake of the Komen’s breast cancer foundation was Jewish. Those who are Jewish, as I am, know that most Jews consider the mother’s life to be paramount if the fetus’s life endangers the life of the mother. Not all religions think the same and not all people think the same about this issue. Traditions and beliefs differ.

Do what you want with your own body and if you do not want an abortion do not have one but leave that personal choice and the attendant medical choices women need for reproductive and other health issues to the woman, her physician and, if she has a belief in one, her god.

I advocate the public post haste switch monetary and volunteer support from the Susan Komen’s Foundation to Planned Parenthood. You will not regret your choice!

The Elephant in the Room: A Romney presidency representing the 1% richest is unacceptable. We must sound the alarm to every city and town in this country fighting to re-elect the president. The president's base and independents alike must vote for him. There is no other alternative. I think and I hope his base as well as a plethora of Independents understand where this destructive economic Great Recession came from and that they will NOT put into power another shinier version of Team Bush who ran the economy into the ground with his trumped up wars, tax cuts for the rich and Wall Street anarchistic unregulated mania.

We must also fight voter suppression, a tactic that is a throw back to the old Jim Crow post Civil War era. This is what the Republican Party is about. It is about reactionary regression. It is about interposition and nullification that hearkens back to a brutal antebellum south. We must not return this country to a shameful era.

Romney will appeal Obama's health care change -- as if he alone could do that -- ? The health care legislation was not everything I wanted because of vicious Congressional obstructionism but at least insurance companies will be forced to pay for your children longer and most importantly they can not ditch you for a preexisting condition. It contained other very good measures. This is what rancid Republicans want to repeal. With a Republican presidency all our lives are at risk as, despite the lies, they WILL go after Social Security and Medicare too IF we give them the chance by electing them!

Romney will say and do anything to win as we can see through his past statements on tape. The president's base and independents alike MUST come out to support him as if it were 2008 times 10 because it is! If you noticed, as I did, that both Romney and Gingrich supporters were nearly ALL white. There was a sea of white faces behind the Republican candidates. Our diverse Democratic base cannot let a Romney presidency happen and split us apart even more then we already are.

The racist Tea Bag bunch is loaded for bear and we must be too. We must win this hunt without question and stronger than anyone ever thought we could. Tea Baggers may not accept a black man and his family in the White House but thank God most of this country are not Tea Baggers. Racism, indeed, is the big Republican elephant in the room. No one can convince me otherwise and those policies that are attendant to the Republican Party are NOT about most of you.

Irretrievably Split: The town of East Haven, CT is involved in allegations and a federal investigation against the police department and its chief for discrimination against Latinos. When the Republican Mayor Maturo was asked what he was going to do he made an idiotic, insane, condescending racist comment "I'm going to go home and eat tacos!" What kind of a rotten disparaging Marie Antoinettean comment is that?

I am going to tell you this: You may ask why has the political conversation become SO incendiary, so rancid and so uncivil. I think I can tell you why whether it is in East Haven or Washington against our president. Whites are scared. They are scared to the depths of their genetic code that their power and their majority are slipping away. And guess what? THEY ARE! Deal with it. If white racists mostly in the Republican Party do not get a grip and change the essence of their party geared for implosion they will in one generation be extinct as the minorities of today become the majorities of tomorrow.

The Democratic Party and its basic values, although at times guilty of similar economic disparities, generally speaking, is an infinitely more inclusive party with a much fairer equally fervent political base.

Republicans, get a handle on what is happening in your party. The talk is divisive, it is incendiary and explosive even among your own. Reagan's commandment goes unheeded: "Never speak ill of a fellow Republican." Personally, I could not care less that the Republican Party is probably irredeemably split down the middle geared for implosion. In one more generation or even less the Republican Party will be irrelevant and none to soon for me!