Time for change's Journal - The Role of Ideology in the Development of Evil Regimes (Pathocracies)

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Time for change's Journal

The Role of Ideology in the Development of Evil Regimes (Pathocracies)

Posted by Time for change in General Discussion
Mon Apr 07th 2008, 06:48 PM

Those who intend to commit evil often hide behind masks of ideology to hide their intentions. The ideology has NOTHING to do with their motives. It is just a mask, used to gain acceptance for their acts while hiding their motives.

Last week I posted on DU “Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes”. Most of the material for that post was taken from “Political Ponerology – A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes”, by Andrew M. Lobaczewski. Lobaczewski, a psychiatrist, began the research that eventually led to the book more than half a century ago, in collaboration with other researchers, all who are now dead. The research was conducted in secret, as the researchers were all victims of Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian regime, which obviously provided fodder for much of the book’s content.

In my previous post, I began with some comments from the book’s editor, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, on the importance of evil in today’s world:

At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially. Crime increases faster than the population. Combined with wars, insurrections and political purges, multiplied millions across the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions… The totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing…

Jadczyk noted the defining characteristic of a psychopath to be the lack of conscience:

They can imitate feelings, but the only real feelings they seem to have… is a sort of “predatorial hunger” for what they want. All else – all activity – is subsumed to this drive. In short, the psychopath is a predator. If we think about the interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea of what is behind the “mask of sanity” of the psychopath. This leads us to an important question: what does the psychopath really get from their victims? It’s easy to see what they are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances… we can only say that it seems to be that the psychopath enjoys making others suffer.

I noted in my last post four reasons why many evil people are so difficult to identify:
1) Many psychopaths develop the ability to make themselves appear normal.
2) Denial: Many normal people find it very difficult to acknowledge the presence of evil.
3) Many normal (though naļve) people believe that psychopaths are found only in prison.
4) Racism, etc: When evil is perpetrated on “others”, many have a tendency to ignore it.

And I talked at some length about the tremendous damage that is often inflicted on society when psychopaths climb to positions of great power.

In this post I expand on my previous one by discussing the role of ideology in assisting some psychopaths in their quest to acquire control over groups or even whole societies, despite their small numbers in all human populations. An understanding of this process by normal people is very important because the first and most important step in preventing these tragedies is to recognize them in their early stages. But first a word about labeling:

A few words on the labeling of evil

A minority of DU posters responded to my previous post with great concern over the idea of labeling people as “evil”. Their concern appeared to be related to the potential for such labeling to lead to something akin to genocide, as has occurred so frequently during the past century. I understand the concern, but I believe it to be misplaced. I have the following responses to that concern.

First, genocides occur when groups of people are labeled as being inferior or evil based on race or other superficial characteristic. In marked contrast, a proper labeling of people as evil is based on behavior, rather than on any superficial characteristics.

Furthermore, Lobaczewski’s approach to the issue is the opposite of an approach that would be likely to lead to violence. He repeatedly stresses the need to use an objective and scientific approach rather than a moralistic approach to the issue of evil (I myself have difficulty viewing evil through an objective rather than a moralistic approach, but that’s just me). He does not believe in the death penalty. And he repeatedly stresses a preventive rather than a punitive approach. The preventive approach that Lobaczewski discusses emphasizes the need to keep psychopaths out of positions of power where they have the potential to do great harm to other people.

Is there potential for abuse if people are labeled as “evil”? I’m sure there is some potential for that, just like anything else can potentially be abused. Currently we label people with such words as “criminal”, “traitor”, “sex offender”, or many other equally inflammatory terms when a person’s behavior is legally (or otherwise) determined to fit those categories.

The reason why I and Lobaczewski believe it is important to pursue scientific inquiry into the causes and recognition of evil, and how to prevent its widespread perpetration on human populations, is as follows: When psychopaths gain control over societies, the potential for war, death and destruction is tremendous. Such occurrences have been way too frequent in both the distant and the recent historical record. Labels are necessary if we are to have the ability to talk about a subject. For example, lithium has been used with great success to treat people with manic-depressive illness. It would be very awkward and perhaps impossible to develop and use treatment against a disease that we were prohibited from naming. How are the results of scientific research to be shared with regard to a subject that has no name? The understanding of evil is way too important to allow it to be shackled in that manner.

The role of ideology in the ponerogenic process

Lobaczewski writes a lot about the role of ideology for individuals or groups in the ponerogenic process that leads to pathocracies*. The ideology itself is usually not inherently evil (although it may be, as in the case of Nazism), and the ideology does not generally characterize the movement or group. Rather, the ideology serves as a mask, to hide the actual intentions of the group. Lobaczewski explains it like this:

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda…. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others.

If such a ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of course provoke “moral outrage”, and not only among the members of the union.

The fact is, even normal people, who condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, feel hurt and deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality when a widely idealized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals.

A perfect example of this explanation, in my opinion, is the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. If George Bush and Dick Cheney had told the American public, in their run-up to war, that it was necessary to invade and occupy Iraq in order to open up tens of billions of dollars worth of economic opportunity for their corporate cronies and to gain access to Iraqi oil, the American people and even their corporate news media would have been hard pressed to drum up much enthusiasm for war. Instead, we were provided with (especially after the “weapons of mass destruction” excuse was proven to be a lie) the ideology of democracy (We’re doing it to bring democracy to the Iraqi people) and anti-terrorism (We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.)

The last paragraph of Lobaczewski’s that I cite above explains why so many normal Americans are willing to accept the Bush administration’s lame excuses. Acknowledging that our President and Vice President are no more than criminal thugs and psychopaths is just too painful for most Americans. It is much more comfortable for them to believe that their country goes to war for idealistic and generous purposes.

Let’s now consider how four different ideologies, none of which are inherently evil, have been corrupted for political purposes:

* A pathocracy is a social movement, society, nation, or empire that is controlled by evil individuals and habitually perpetrates evil deeds on its people and/or other people. The “ponerogenic process” leads to the development of a pathocracy.

Americanism
One could make a good argument that the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which after all provided the full justification for our country becoming a sovereign nation, contains the true, uncorrupted version of Americanism. There are two salient ideas expressed in that document, which also happen to be the epitome of liberal/progressive values: 1) That everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and 2) Whenever a government becomes destructive of those rights, the people have the right overthrow that government. I am in 100% agreement with those ideas.

Unfortunately, however, that ideology has become badly corrupted, especially under the current presidential administration. For George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the right wing ideologues who support them, “Americanism” has become the ideology that says that the United States of America is so superior to all other nations that any action it takes with respect to other nations should automatically and unquestionably be considered morally right. For an American citizen to think or act otherwise is to border on treason.

“Americanism” in that form has been used to declare wars against nations that pose no threat to us and to overthrow numerous democratically elected governments that likewise posed no threat to us.

Consider this speech:

As long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny – prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder – violence will gather… and raise a mortal threat.

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends upon the survival of liberty in other lands. The best hope for freedom in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

That speech invokes the best of the American dream and ideals. There was just one problem with it. It was spoken by George Bush as a means of justifying an action (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) that had nothing whatsoever to do with the wonderful sentiments expressed in his speech. He was merely using a great ideology as a mask to hide his true motives.

Christianity
Christianity contains some core values that any liberal/progressive could be proud to live by. Jesus Christ preached that we should love our neighbors, treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves, and be charitable towards the poor. In short, he embodied the best of liberal values. Accordingly, Christian groups have done some great things over the centuries, including playing a leading role in the abolition of slavery in the United States.

One could say, I suppose, that the Christian Bible contains the full content of Christian doctrine. Looked at in that way I suppose that one could say that it states some ideas that are patently absurd (such as the Earth being four thousand years old) or even contain the seeds of evil. I won’t go into that, mainly because different people interpret it in very different ways.

But Christianity has also often been used to justify evil actions, including wars of aggression and torture of “non-believers” with the aim of getting them to convert to Christianity. Some, even today, still use Christianity to justify slavery, as Patrick Buchanan recently did in his attempt to put his criticisms of Barack Obama in the best light:

The Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these: First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Capitalism
Capitalism carries the potential, by means of providing incentives for productivity, to act as an engine of economic growth that provides tremendous benefits to a society. Forget for a moment that there is no such thing as pure capitalism, or that society works best economically when it uses some combination of capitalism and socialism. My only point here is that (I believe) capitalism has the capacity to provide substantial benefits to people when used as one component of an economic system.

Capitalism is one of the main ideologies used by the Bush/Cheney administration, and it is used as justification for all manner of policies that hurt people, such as George Bush’s veto of health insurance for children. Bush likes to characterize his view of capitalism as “free market”, and as such he uses that ideology to push for international agreements that primarily benefit his corporate friends.

But in fact, there is nothing “free market” about the Bush/Cheney brand of capitalism, if indeed it can be categorized as capitalism at all. Rather, their favored economic system is one in which their corporate cronies are given billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to perform functions for which they have little expertise, with little or no oversight from government. The result has been billions of dollars of missing money, with no investigations to determine where the money went. That’s a mighty strange brand of capitalism.

James Petras, in “Rulers and Ruled”, describes how so-called “capitalism” has worked out in recent years in so many countries:

Given the enormous class and income disparities in Russia, Latin America and China, it is more accurate to describe these countries as “surging billionaires” rather than “emerging markets” because it is not the “free market” but the political power of the billionaires that dictates policy

Countries of “surging billionaires” produce burgeoning poverty, submerging living standards. The making of billionaires means the unmaking of civil society – the weakening of social solidarity, protective social legislation, pensions, vacations, public health programs and education…

The growth of billionaires is hardly a sign of “general prosperity” resulting from the “free market”… In fact it is the product of the illicit seizure of lucrative public resources, built up by the work and struggle of millions of workers… It has little to do with entrepreneurial skills.

Communism
Communism has been defined as “a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of a classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production.” Its initial popularity can be attributed to its promise to greatly reduce economic inequality in societies that were previously characterized by huge levels of economic inequality. That is a worthwhile goal IMO.

My own view is that the best economic system is one that uses a combination of free market incentives to increase productivity, combined with government provision of essential goods and services, goods and services that don’t respond to free market incentives (such as the running of our elections), progressive taxation, and regulation to ensure such things as worker and environmental protection and the prevention of monopolistic practices. Whether or not pure Communism is capable of providing a viable and productive economic system is a question I can’t answer and is not highly relevant to this discussion.

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 brought Communism to Russia, which it maintained for more than 70 years. However, soon after its introduction it began to be seriously corrupted, to the point where by some time in the 1920s it is probably accurate to say that it wasn’t Communism at all. By that time an empire had evolved (called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) into a solidified Totalitarian system, and a small elite ruled over everyone else with an iron fist and had control over all of the country’s resources. Under the iron rule of Joseph Stalin, economic plans were put in place that resulted in the deaths by starvation of about seven million people. This was not a classless society, nor was it stateless, nor was it based on common ownership of the means of production. Yet the myth of a Communist state prevailed in the USSR until it broke up in 1991.

The lessons we should learn from the role of ideologies in the ponerogenic process

In my opinion this is one of the most important issues dealt with in Lobaczewski’s book. There are two major lessons that it should teach us.

First, it should teach us that we should never uncritically accept that an individual’s or a group’s purpose is what they say it is, especially when matters as important as war and peace are at stake.

Second, we should not uncritically blame an ideology for the fact that a group uses it for their own nefarious ends. The great ideals of the American dream, as expressed in its Declaration of Independence, should not be blamed for the fact that our current American leaders justify aggressive war, widespread violation of human rights, and wholesale violation of the U.S. Constitution that they swore to preserve and protect – all in the name of the United States of America. Christianity should not be blamed for the fact that various elites throughout history have used it as an excuse for war, torture, and pilfering other lands – all in the name of Christianity. Capitalism should not be blamed for the corruption it has undergone under our current leaders and the so-called Neoliberal economists, who use it mainly to increase the wealth of small elites, at the expense of everyone else – all in the name of “free market capitalism”. And Communism should not be blamed for the Communist rulers who tyrannized and impoverished the nations that they led – in the name of Communism.

More on the use of ideology in the ponerogenic process leading to pathocracy

In this post I have covered only a portion of Lobaczewski’s description of the ponerogenic process that leads to the development of pathocracies – though I believe it is the most important portion. I intend to cover more of it in a later post.

In my first thread on this subject, some DUers told me that they were looking forward to a follow-up post where I would talk more about how to identify evil. This is a very complex subject. The portions of Lobaczewski’s description of the ponerogenic process that I have omitted from this post deal with that issue in quite a bit of detail. However, the details are very difficult to grasp, especially for people who are not familiar with mental health issues. For example, here is some of Lobaczewski’s continued description of the role of ideologies in the ponerogenic process:

Characteropathic individuals adopt ideologies created by doctrinaire, often schizoidal people, recast them into an active propaganda form, and disseminate it with their characteristic pathological egotism and paranoid intolerance for any philosophies which may differ from their own. They also inspire further transformation of this ideology into its pathological counterpart…. The ideology continuously affects the movement’s activities and remains a justifying motivation for many… The carriers of other pathological factors become engaged in this already sick social movement and proceed with the work of final transformation of the contents… in such a way that it becomes a pathological caricature of its original ideology… Such a situation eventually engenders a wholesale showdown: the adherents of the original ideology are shunted aside or terminated… The ideological motivations and the double talk they created then are utilized to hide the actual new contents of the phenomenon….

In summary: An ideology is used as a mask to hide the true, psychopathic motives of the psychopaths, serving simultaneously to inspire some of the more honest (normal) members of the group. But the psychopaths transform the ideology beyond recognition, to serve their own sick needs, while continuing to use the ideology’s original name so as to hide their true motives. When the true adherents of the ideology realize what’s really going on, they may rebel, and if they do they probably will be shoved aside or much worse.

The identification of evil

So, back to the critical question: How does one identify evil? One of the most important things to understand about this is that most people – perhaps the great majority of people – don’t really want to identify it.

Recall the reasons why evil is so difficult to identify, which I discussed in some detail in my last post and summarized in this post. Three of the four reasons relate to things that apply much less to most DUers than they do to most of the rest of the U.S. population: denial, stereotypical ideas that reject the possibility of finding evil in highly successful people, and racism.

Lobaczewski notes how terribly disorienting and confusing it is for normal people to be exposed to psychopaths and ponerogenic processes:

People who have been thus thrown out of a ponerogenic association because they were too normal suffer bitterly; they are unable to understand their specific state. Their ideal, the reason they joined the group, which constituted a part of the meaning of life for them, has now been degraded, although they cannot find a rational basis for this fact. They feel wronged; they “fight against demons” they are not in a position to identify. The fact is their personalities have already been modified to a certain extent due to saturation by abnormal psychological material, especially psychopathic material.

As I re-read this, the first thing that comes to my mind is members of the U.S. Congress – notwithstanding the fact that they haven’t yet been “thrown out”. Think about it. Maybe this is closely related to the reason why no impeachment effort has taken place.

So this is what I believe is the most important thing to keep in mind when trying to identify evil:

Be skeptical about what people, especially politicians, say and why they say it. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a politician’s professed ideology necessarily has much to do with his/her true motivations. I’m not saying that they’re all liars. I’m just saying that we need to keep an open, skeptical mind on the subject. So instead of taking their rhetoric at face value, weigh their actions more than their rhetoric. (For example, if we invaded Iraq to bring democracy to them, why did we kill over a million of their civilians, and why don’t we leave when they want us to leave?)

Don’t for a minute believe that the possession of wealth or success in life makes it less likely that a person is a psychopath. Wealthy successful psychopaths are far more dangerous than the ones who end up in jail. And the most dangerous of all are national leaders.

And for God sake, don’t EVER think that just because the only people who are being abused, tortured, and killed by your government are of some other race, ethnic group, or religion – Muslim, for example – that that means that they (your government) aren’t evil and aren’t likely to turn on you next.

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A summary of my DU posts

Time for change

The good majority of my DU posts consist of one of six general subjects: The need to remove from office the current cancer upon our nation; election fraud; the tragedy of the Bush administration; my ideas on the liberal values that we all hope will some day replace the values that our current government runs on; historical events that I believe cast light upon our current situation; and other political ideas.

The need to remove Bush and Cheney from office

In 2006, John Conyers wrote a 198 page report, documented with 1,401 references, titled “The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance”. The title of his report reflected the primary reasons why George Bush and Dick Cheney must be removed from office: They have made a mockery of our Constitution – the foundation for the rule of law in our nation – by consistently violating it. Our Constitution, if we can keep it in fact and not just in name, makes our nation much more than just a democracy. By providing protections for minorities and the powerless, our Constitution adds civility, humanity, and decency to what could otherwise be a barbaric nation – democratic or not.

Aside from the continuing damage that Bush and Cheney can do to our country in their remaining time in office, including their potential to involve us in ever expanding new wars, failing to remove from office the most lawless presidential administration in our history will set an awful precedent in our nation – a precedent for doing away with our Constitution. Providing in our Constitution a mechanism for impeachment and removal from office was of utmost priority to our Founding Fathers. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “When once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles…”

Many arguments have been put forward against impeachment. This post answers those arguments. Some opponents of impeachment mistakenly advocate the view that the impeachment of public officials requires evidence of the commitment of an actual crime – and would not be justified by such things as gross violation of the public trust, corruption, negligence, or incompetence. Leaving aside the fact that such an interpretation would leave our nation subject to rule by people who would do great and possibly irreparable harm to it, the preponderance of evidence flatly contradicts that interpretation.

Others claim that we don’t have enough evidence to proceed with impeachment. I argue here that the current evidence for impeachment is so abundant, arguing that we need more sets the impeachment bar at an absurdly high level.

Others argue we don’t have the votes for impeachment – which implies that we must not bring individuals to trial until we have counted the votes, rather the using the trial to get the votes. Such an argument ignores the likelihood that votes will accumulate as Americans watch the impeachment trial and become intensely exposed for the first time to the many outrageous crimes of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it also ignores the fact that Senators who refuse to vote for conviction will probably be putting their seats in jeopardy.

But perhaps the most urgent reason for moving to impeach Bush and Cheney as soon as possible is that their continuing refusal to be bound by the laws and the Constitution of our nation raises the spectacle that they may be planning a coup d’etat. Why else would they go to such lengths to destroy our Constitution and the rule of law in our nation? We must preempt them by moving as quickly as possible on this.

Election fraud

The DU apparently was born as a result of the 2000 November-December election fraud that began the long nightmare that is the George W. Bush administration.

I went to bed on Election Day 2000, shortly after Bush was announced as our new President, feeling as if the end of world civilization was near at hand. My wife woke me up a couple hours later to tell me the good news that the announcement of Bush’s Presidency had been temporarily cancelled. Thus began a period of 36 days that I followed more intensely than any other news event of my life – ending in the infamous and disastrous Supreme Court decision that marked the beginning of our long road to dictatorship.

My son (EOTE) joined DU in January 2001, a few days after it began, but I did not, for reasons that now escape me. I did, however, do a lot of writing about the 2000 election, including a desperate plea to my Maryland Senators, to please demand a real recount of the 2000 Florida vote. And I also contributed an article to DU on that subject, in my son’s name (I did not use my own name because I was a federal employee and I was afraid that I could get into trouble for writing such an article), in the spring of 2001.

The fraudulent 2004 Presidential election is what brought me into DU. I had worked as a volunteer in the Kerry/Edwards campaign, I had followed the presidential polls obsessively, and by Election Day 2004 I was about as confident as I could be that John Kerry would be our next President. Thus, the reported results of that election were both profoundly disappointing and difficult for me to believe, as they were for the great majority of DUers.

I immediately began an effort to acquire as many election statistics as I could, in a feverish and desperate attempt to prove that the election was a fraud, which I hoped would aid in its overturning. In late November I had my son post an analysis that I did of the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official election results (Note: My son supplied the title, which I feel is too strong, which you can see if you read the article). And finding that it was awkward to have my son post my articles, I joined DU a few days later.

Since then I have posted dozens of election fraud related threads, a small number of the most important of which I have included in my journal.

In particular, I have come to believe that the main mechanism by which the 2004 election was stolen was the massive and illegal targeted purging of Democratic voters in Ohio, especially in Cleveland. This thread contains a great amount of evidence to support that contention.

In addition, I believe that there is good evidence that says that large numbers of votes in Cuyahoga County were deleted by its central tabulator, as explained in this thread, which also discusses an early 2006 partial audit of Cuyahoga County. And, I think that the death of Raymond Lemme, who while investigating Clint Curtis’ sworn allegations of vote switching computer programs, was found dead in a Georgia hotel room, just a couple weeks after telling Curtis that he had traced the corruption “all the way to the top”, is extremely suspicious to say the least. Here is my explanation of the controversy over the discrepancy between the 2004 exit polls and the official 2004 vote count. And here is a summary of several reasons I have written about for believing that the 2004 election was stolen.

Finally, here are my ideas for preventing another stolen election in 2006 and 2008.

The tragedy of the Bush administration

The fake war on terrorism

I believe that a crucial requirement for a good understanding of the Bush administration’s actions since September 11, 2001, is the realization that its “War on Terrorism” is nothing but a colossal fake. Only with that realization do numerous Bush administration characteristics and actions make sense, including: Its disinterest in Osama bin Laden; its great urge to rush into a war with Iraq at any cost; its utter contempt for international law and the rest of the world; its succession of no-bid contracts for its wealthy friends; its lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest of our citizens and corporations during ‘time of war’; the Dubai port deals; and, its attempt to turn our democracy into a dictatorship.

With that in mind, I wrote in this post about the main reasons why I believe that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9-11 attacks. There are many reasons why I believe that now, but the initial and still most important reason is the utter failure of our military, the mightiest military that the world has ever known, despite repeated warnings and more than ample time on 9-11 itself, to protect its own capital city.

Abuse of the human rights of prisoners for no apparent purpose

To me, the most sickening and disgraceful aspect of the Bush administration’s “War on Terrorism” is its complete lack of concern for human rights, demonstrated among other ways by the indefinite confinement, without trial or even bringing of charges, of thousands of prisoners of war, and its frequent use of torture. I have discussed this issue in several OPs, starting with this one. Here I describe the issue as seen through the eyes of a U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain who had ministerial responsibilities for hundreds of our prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who witnessed the severe and daily abuse of his charges over a period of several months, and who eventually was imprisoned himself when it was felt that he was making too many waves over what he had seen. Here is my summary of what the great journalist Seymour Hersh had to say on this subject, based on his numerous high level sources. Jimmy Carter felt so strongly about this issue that he broke the unwritten rule against ex-Presidents criticizing sitting Presidents, with one of the most scathing attacks on this policy that I have ever seen. And Senator Richard Durbin was the victim of continued public verbal abuse from the right for daring to make public how our government was treating its prisoners.

Lying us into war

It is evident to most informed people that one of the biggest motivations for Bush's "War on Terror" was to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq. Seymour Hersh’s excellent account of how the Bush administration manipulated and twisted intelligence in order justify a preemptive war against Iraq is a must read for anyone who still supports this administration and thinks that the Iraq war was necessary. And as for Bush's excuse that we are now fighting that war for the benefit of the Iraqi people, Democrats should start talking about how the Iraqi people actually feel about us being in their country.

Just how bad are Bush and his cronies and how much danger do they pose to American democracy?

George w. Bush and his administration and fellow travellers in today's Republican Party are about as bad as they come. They are anti-science ignoramuses. They are chicken hawks. They have no consciences. They are torturers. They are cowards. They are evil. And I doubt that there are any moral boundaries beyond which they will not go to get their way.

I think that in the interest of preserving our democracy, we should be aware of the similarities between the Bush administration and Hitler’s Nazis (which I wrote about even before the revelations about Bush’s warantless wiretapping), and understand that if we aren’t vigilant, yes it CAN happen here too.

Moral values that separate us from today’s Republicans

It makes me so mad to hear people ridicule what they consider to be “liberal values” and compare them unfavorably to the wonderful moral values of George W. Bush and his Republicans friends. In the vast majority of cases these people don’t even have a vague idea about what liberal values really are. They have simply been conditioned by our corporate media over several years or decades to believe that liberals encourage irresponsibility, are ‘soft’ on national defense and ‘law and order’, and are wild spenders. These ridiculous myths about liberals have in turn encouraged the Democratic Party to disavow the liberal label and in some cases to veer way to the right. I submit that, rather than running away from the liberal label we should be proud of it, and we should challenge those that seek to disparage it. And to further make this point I posted a tribute to several historical and current political leaders who have been unafraid to speak out loudly for what they believe in, and I suggested an answer to those Republican morons who accuse liberals of hating America.

Let's take a look at some of the specific moral values that separate Democrats from Republicans:

Republicans like to pretend that they're more moral than us because they're more "religious"

Many of those who disparage liberals are fundamentalist Christians who repeatedly invoke the name of Jesus Christ, and who believe that the superiority of their moral values to those of liberals and Democrats is proven by their repeated references to Jesus. Don’t these people understand that Jesus was a liberal, whose moral values were much closer to those of the Democratic Party than to those of the Republican Party, with whom they align themselves and vote for? Isn't it an astounding paradox that the Republican Party has usurped for their own purposes one of the most liberal religious leaders in world history, while at the same time showing nothing but contempt for liberals and liberal principles?

The movement for privatization of government functions

One of the biggest threats to our democracy is the privatization movement. In the name of “freedom” and “self-reliance”, the leaders of this movement advocate the freedom of powerful corporations to destroy our environment and to run our elections, our schools, our social safety net programs, and our prison system, as well as every other program which has long been considered a legitimate function of government. The fact that government is elected by the people to serve public functions, whereas the purpose of private corporations is to make profits for their investors, is either totally lost on these people, or else they simply feel that the above mentioned programs should be run for profit rather than for service.

Al Gore alluded to this issue in his great film, "An Inconvenient Truth", where he discussed the unholy alliance between government, private industry, and the press, whereby a corrupt government, in exchange for legal bribes from the industries they are supposed to control, propagates false information and policies that are favorable to those industries instead of the public that they are elected to serve. I discuss my own personal experience with that unholy alliance, where the FDA withdrew an about to be published scientific article I had written, under pressure from a manufacturer who stood to be economically hurt by the information in that article.

The need for a free and independent press

Another great threat to our democracy is the ownership of our country’s news media by a very small group of wealthy individuals who have strong ties to the Republican Party, and whose motivation in providing “news” is to maintain satisfaction with the status quo, rather than to report what is important and true. Two prime examples of corporate media shills and pseudo-journalists who pretend to be real journalists are Chris Matthews and Tim Russert. Bill Moyers explains how this situation threatens to destroy our democracy, and how this came about through the dismantling of rules and regulations which were meant to prevent the monopolization of our news. And Robert Parry explains why he started his web site to help combat the misinformation we get from our corporate media.

Health care

Liberals, and most other decent people, believe that people should be entitled to decent health care. That is why, prior to the "pro-life" administration of George W. Bush, infant mortality rate in the United States had been steadily declining for several decades. But shortly into the Bush administration, due to the starving of women and infant health programs for federal funds, infant mortality rate began a steady rise. Nor do Republicans care much about veterans' health, as indicated by the rejecting of this much needed veteran's health bill in the U.S. Senate by virtually a strict party line vote.

An enquiring mind

One of the many tricks that our corporate media uses to squelch alternative viewpoints is to label anyone who substantially disagrees with their “correct” version of the news as “conspiracy theorists”. Well, I have news for them. The views of us “conspiracy theorists” are usually much more closely aligned with reality than is most of the trash that we hear from the corporate news media these days, such as the stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which were used to justify our illegal preemptive invasion of that country. We “conspiracy theorists” believe that it is not only the right of American citizens to challenge the corporate news media story lines, but it is our responsibility as well, as good citizens who care about our country.

The dignity of all human beings

Perhaps the most important value held by liberals is a belief in the dignity of all human beings – hence the 19th century movement by liberals to abolish slavery. Here is one of my favorite stories on that subject.

A summary

And here is a post where I talk about all the major values that separate Democrats from Republicans.

Historical events that help us understand our present

Though there is little doubt that George W. Bush is by far the worst president we’ve ever had, our past history is at least partly responsible for preparing the way for this tragedy. The history of our nation is full of examples of failures to live up to our ideals. In addition to our long history of slavery and our near extermination of the Native American population of our present day country, we began a long history of overseas imperialism beginning in the late 19th Century. The long standing history of extreme hostility to socialism by the elites of our country has been responsible for much of this imperialism, as well as domestic repression against labor unions and others who would speak out against the status quo. The usurpation by our Executive Branch of the war making powers given to Congress by our Founding Fathers did not originate with George W. Bush. And the attitudes fostered by our long history of slavery are still with us today, especially in the areas of our country where slavery thrived for so long.

Today, as the transgressions of George Bush and Dick Cheney threaten the existence of our nation as we know it, we would do well to recall how the German nation was led into tyranny more than six decades ago. The parallels between Hitler’s war on terror and George Bush’s war on terror are extraordinarily striking in my opinion. And the better able we are to recognize the danger, the more likely we are to take steps to prevent a similar fate.

Political ideas

Republicans have 3 great advantages in elections against Democrats, whereas the only advantage that the Democratic Party has is that its policies are meant to serve all Americans, rather than just the select few. In addition to electoral fraud and huge sums of money donated to the GOP by their corporate masters as legalized bribery, Democrats have to contend with a multitude of news media whores.

But those advantages are not sufficient for a Party that has nothing of value to offer to our country. So, when we suggest investigation of their corrupt deeds they call us conspiracy theorists. When we suggest policies such as making basic affordable health care available to all Americans they accuse us of class warfare. And when we criticize the rampant corruption at the highest levels of government they accuse us of "hating America". And when none of that works they try to scare us by telling us that if we don't give them unlimited power over us we risk being killed by terrorists.

If there was ever a presidential administration that needed to be impeached, this is it. Grass roots efforts are under way to accomplish this, and we can all help. Our Democratic leaders need to seriously consider and talk about this. And they must be united and avoid inter-party warfare.

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Time for change

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