03 January 2011
Feedback
It is tempting to leave the topic and move on, but there is more to all this than I can quite let go. I got a lot of feedback on the piece on the Cloward-Piven recipe for fomenting radical change in America.
Not being a devotee of Fox and being highly skeptical of what passes for the Mainstream Media, I am fascinated to stumble across interesting and factual material. I listen to NPR most of the day, and read the NY Times in the morning to keep my juices flowing.
So when I read original source documents that contain the basis for political action that apparently has been acted upon with some vigor, I like to share it. Some of my pals disagree.
The Lawyer in Sandy Eggo wrote to say:
“Vic, I love ya buddy but you have to avoid these extreme excursions into “high political philosophy.”
“How can you say “I believe that voting should be what it is- universal suffrage, no obstacles to registration- but that a citizen should have to be proactive in registering, rather than have the nanny state chivy the disinterested into a position where they can be bussed to the polls by energetic activists.”
“I have written a law review article on this, which is just a manipulative way of getting out from under the democratic burden of one man-one vote. Arizona tried this the 1970s, cancelling all voter registrations every tenth year to insure “purity of the electorate” by forcing motivated, living voters to re-register before they could vote.”
“Right-wingers always put forward some ostensibly rational restriction on voting and voter registration to guarantee “thoughtful voting” and to provide “purity of the electorate.” It is BS and simply calculated by the Karl Rove types to diminish lower-income Democratic voters’ participation in elections.”
He went on to castigate the big-spending Republicans as having contributed two off-the-books wars and creating the boogieman of Osama bin Laden that, with incompetent oversight and coddling of aggressive and criminally greedy Wall Street financiers broke the national piggy bank.
I have always believed that the government had the basic responsibility to provide for the common defense, deliver the mail, and stay off my yard in about that general order. I also cheerfully acknowledge that the sacrifice of several generations has enabled me and my cohort of Boomers to have been born on third base and grow up somehow thinking I had hit a triple.
From my progressive base in Florida came the stern retort that “There is absolutely NO evidence of any kind of massive vote fraud. ANYBODY who claims there is should be drop kicked through the nearest brick wall. Fox is strictly propaganda and Beck is a mentally ill alcoholic with the financial backing of some of the biggest traitors in my country...If you take the time to read history from certified academic professionals, you will find out that everything that modern man has fought and died for can be found in a liberal progressive platform.”
There was a time when I had no problem considering myself a Liberal, but that was a long time ago. I distrust the limousine liberals as much as I mistrust Karl Rove’s Astro-Turf support to the Tea Party.
I am an equal-opportunity skeptic of anyone who claims to have revealed truth.
And I have to say, the Cloward-Piven thing is real enough, and I still believe that Motor-Voter act is wrong-headed. Fox-Piven's commentary is available on several YouTube clips. She is an unrepentant Marxist, and with her former husband, quite seriously proposed the strategy of bringing the nation to its knees.
I cheerfully agree that the Bushies, among others, are at least as complicit in our disaster as the wrong-headed social entitlements that are breaking the bank. W’s prescription legislation that radically added to the debt is a case in point, not to mention your citation of the off-the-books wars.
The NY Times documented the demographic woes of Italy, Spain and Greece yesterday. The tyranny of the older generation makes the younger ones underemployed, and the birth rate is well below replacement. Our birth rate is still on the modest plus side (with our immigrants, of course).
The Times ran it down pretty well. I do not support the editorial positions of the Gray Lady of Manhattan on most things, but they are always a challenge to the intellect.
They noted, without citing the intellectual background- the street rioting in Greece is having a significant impact on a government that is on the brink of bankruptcy. That is exactly what Cloward and Piven proposed as the means for effecting swift and radical change.
I am opposed to forced redistribution of wealth. I urge you to read the original piece, if you haven't, and I won’t bother to paraphrase where they were coming from.
I am an enemy of all extremists. One pal wrote from Monterey took on the financial problems of his home state, saying that California contributes $50 billion to the federal coffers which is distributed to the less productive states. He wondered about the benefits of the Union to the Golden State. Maybe it would be better to be an independent state with the eighth largest economy on the planet.
You can see there are all sorts of strange places this could go.
I now regret that I had planned on a federal pension and social security to buffer my passage into dotage. Like you say, the state and municipal workers have long traded wages for pension and health benefits, and it is progressive governors like Jerry Brown and Cuomo who have to face down the unions, in addition to the Tea Party-influenced candidates who were elected to governor's mansions elsewhere.
I think we are in for very interesting times, and if we disagree about some of the manifestations, I think we do agree that we have some real fucking problems.
My Sandy Eggo Attorney concluded his chastisement by saying: “So pul-eeze! Spare us the right wing proselytizing guised as intelligent commentary.”
For the record, I am a cheerful anarchist, wary of all extremes, and have never claimed this continuing stream of lunacy was either.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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