I often hear left-wingers complain about how right-wingers want to privatize social security and lower taxes on the rich, or I hear right-wingers complain about how left-wingers want to allow women to have abortions and allow gays to get married.  But what both of these groups are complaining about is not right-wingers or left-wingers, but libertarians.  Libertarians are people who want individuals to have more freedom and the government to have less, and that's an ideology that trancends left or right, because libertarian values are both left-wing (gay rights, pro-choice) or right-wing (lower taxes, privatization).  
 The opposite of libertarianism is authoritarianism and that too is both left-wing (let's force people to get health care, let's deny people the right to own a gun) or right-wing (let's deny people the right to burn a flag, let's make it against the law to speak out against the government).
 

There's an interesting video that you all should see:
http://60minutes.yahoo.com/...

Pay attention to the second clip in the series for a look at what 'deployment in Iraq might look like'.

Codijo rojo in his diary earlier this morning, "It's one ugly place". Greg Palast, Meyer and Gainesville, said:

What strikes me as odd as well, is that while most progressive blogs are filled with posts such as A Shocking Moment for Society: Tasering at University of Florida, written by Naomi Wolf, which is highly critical of the actions of the police department, this is contrary to what is expressed by most Kossacks. I thought this was a liberal blog?

And guess what... the total since 1970 is higher than that.

CDC publishes an "Abortion Surveillance" report. Here's one:

CDC abortion stats

We got a week of The Left whining about GOP "Pro Choice" posturing. Problem remains, these guys have a serious argument for votes.

Pro-Life's "A Child Is Not a Choice" project has demolished the lackluster "Pro-Choice" motto.

"Save, Legal and Rare" is O.K. as a goal. But the day-to-day reality is that abortion is not rare.

Hundreds of thousands of abortions a year ain't "rare."

Time to toughen up, folks. Wanna win ? It don't help pretending that Pro-Life arguments lack substance.

Hello:

I am a senior at NYU and I am conducting research on how people make decisions. If you would take 1 minuet or less to anwser 1 quick question your efforts will greatly be appreciated, and for your time science will be forever indebted.

Please read the poll and select one of the two programs

"MIAMI (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain warned on Wednesday against the spread of socialism in Latin America and pledged to give the region renewed U.S. attention if elected"

Some, if not most, posters on DailyKos exhibit the characteristics that I deplore in conservatives. Look, everyone is an American. We have different viewpoints and our individual viewpoints are legitmate.

The ideal liberal attitude, in my view, is that every American should get to think and behave in the way they choose. People who want to get an abortion can get one and those who don't want to get one shouldn't be forced to do so.
(Up to the point where we bump up against what other people choose to do, and there's the rub.

We have a lot of people in this country who are conservative and liberals should support their ability to behave as conservatives (up to the rubbing point). We shouldn't treat conservatives as second class citizens, or call them dumb or mean. (Let them do that to us if that's what turns them on).

The same goes for blue dogs. They are Americans. Liberals should acknowedge their existence: they are here. We should acknowedge the validity of their viewpoints, the same as we acknowledge our own.

Liberalism should be about a ground up society. Conservatism is about authoritarianism. Bashing blue dogs is authoritarian. (And by my own logic, I suppose, liberals should be able to choose to be authoritarian if they so choose).

Progressives all recognize the lengths to which the GOP will try to frame their policies as "good vs. evil", "us vs. them", "winning vs. losing", and other variations of zero-sum formulations.  But do we recognize how often play along, even as we battle their frames?

More about the War Frame and how Obama is handling it on the flipside...

Iraq is now John McCain's war. He has steadily advocated the policy that Bush is about to adopt: sending more troops to quell the insurgency. It is extremely important for progressives to tie the Iraq albatross around John McCain's neck. A McCain presidency would likely feature continued lunatic military spending and a fresh round of fighting overseas.

McCain is the idol of militarist, authoritarian America. He represents indomitable militarism that never surrenders and never changes course. His inflexible belief in US military supremacy will severely damage our country, because, like Bush, he has no demonstrated skills as an executive. His experience as a Navy pilot and POW demonstrated his courage, but nothing in his political career has demonstrated wisdom or foreign policy mastery.

So say it and repeat it: Iraq is John McCain's war.

What is conservatism today?  More and more, conservatism has become defined as loyalty to the Republican Party and the interests of the key groups that dominate it.  It is no longer an ideology but a blind faith.  Blogger James Leroy Wilson, who describes himself as a left-libertarian old right radical, provides the following "quiz" to see if someone is a true ideological conservative or just a Republican Party lackey.

Today we ignore the need for fundamental reform of government at the risk of losing the very democratic nature of our country.

There are two aspects of this.

First, the very basis of our democracy is being disassembled before our eyes and the USA is moving toward a new, authoritarian relationship between citizens and the executive.  

Second, our representatives in government fiddle while the country burns -- offering themselves to the highest bidder, selling out not only themselves and us, but destroying the very concept of the public trust.

The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor W. Adorno, 1950.

Quoting from the Thesaurus of Book Digests: 1950-1980:

"The authoritarian or 'ethnocentric' personality experiences society as being composed of the group to which he feels he belongs, plus those whom he considers 'the others' and to whom he attributes all the negative and dangerous characteristics he abhors and fears."

For all of our lives, and for most of the past century, we have been grown accustomed to the left-liberal v. right-conservative dichotomy of our political spectrum.  Typically, Democrats were found on the left-liberal side, while Republicans populated the right-conservative side.

Do you remember the Fugitive Slave Act? It criminalized not only slaves who'd escaped to non-slave states, but also anyone who helped them flee. That law has troubling echoes in a new bill, passed by the Republican Senate and House, that will make it illegal to transport a girl from a state requiring parental consent to get an abortion in another one.

The Fugitive Slave Act forced individuals who did not believe in slavery to collaborate in maintaining it. In states that had banned slavery, it compelled law enforcement officials to return escaped slaves to their masters, and coerced ordinary citizens into supporting this process. It isolated slaves from outside assistance, by threatening to imprison anyone who would help them escape.

Ladies and Gentleman, I don't want to alarm you, but while we're fighting the "Global war on terror" there's another war in our country that needs to be put to rest. And, I'm losing sleep about it everyday, because you see, there's a culture war out there in America.

For those of you who read slashdot, this post is in the spirit of the occasional book reviews they post.  And now to the point... John Dean's new book, Conservatives Without Conscience, is absolute required reading.  

There's more ...

PS - I am in no way affiliated with this book. I just thought it was that good.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

John Dean tells it like it is:

Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Krik's classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham's guides to conservative governing. Conservatives in the tradition of former senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan believed in "conserving" this planet, not relaxing environmental laws to make life easier for big business [C&J Note: Some folks in the comments have said this one sentence is a little cuckoo. No argument from us. ---Bill]. [...]

Candid and knowledgeable Republicans on the far right concede---usually only when not speaking for attribution---that they are not truly conservative. They do not like to talk about why they behave as they do, or even to reflect on it. Nonetheless, their leaders admit they like being in charge, and their followers grant they find comfort in strong leaders who make them feel safe. This is what I gleaned from discussions with countless conservative leaders and followers, over a decade of questioning. [...]

What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, "enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

In their defense, we must never forget that Authoritarian conservatives brought us such innovations as the...uh...the uh...  Sorry, all I got is Freedom Fries.

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times today is characteristically effective in highlighting the dangers of this regime. As he points out, those who question this administration will be denounced in terms that have historically been reserved for authoritarian regimes-dissent has become treason.

But I feel Krugman has not gone far enough. It is not enough to be dismayed that Bush and the far right cast their critics are traitors. We must question their patriotism. We must propose that trying to crush freedom of speech and using the threat of terror as a political weapon speak of a love of self and a love of party and a love of power and not a love of country.