For too long, the Rabid Right has gotten away with calling us un-American, all the while, displaying nothing but contempt for everything America stands for. Now is the time to fight back.
I first became aware of this hypocrisy during the Reagan years when the Republicans wrapped the convicted criminal Oliver North in the American flag to defend his and Ronald Reagan's violation of the US constitution.
They had this show on C-SPAN where they draped a flag the size of Gibraltar across the back of the stage and a stream of insidious people came out to attack the commie loving liberals who put the constitution above their country. (Irony is not their strong point.) Of course, the un-American ploy goes back far beyond the Reagan years. Reagan was just the first to make it stick.
Since then, we have seen a constant barrage of these kinds of attacks - all to cover the fact that while they're disingenuously feigning outrage over the burning of the flag, they are torching the constitution. I got news for them.
But when you really think about what defines America, what makes it that beacon to the world, what comes to mind? Democracy. In fact, there is nothing more American than the Right to Vote.
And inversely, nothing more defines un-American than the willful determination to prevent Americans from voting. Watch as our beloved press corp laughs out loud as Republican congressman Tom Davis answers a question about the Republican strategy to suppress the vote:
REPORTER: In districts like the one I cover, which is held by a Republican, I would think that a strategy of the NRCC would be to try to keep those new voters who might be voting for Obama from, in fact, continuing on down the ballot. Does the NRCC or the Republican party have any strategy for trying to ensure that that happens?
TOM DAVIS: Pauses, chuckles under his breath: (muted laughter) Well you're talking about voter suppression and uh,(outburst of laughter) we would never, ever do anything along that line for uh, for the record...
Friends, this is a boiling frog moment. These insipid people are laughing about one of the two major political party's serial violation of real American's right to vote as though preventing Americans from voting is all good fun in the sport of politics. I've got a response to people trying to prevent Americans from voting and it is quite different. Mine involves handcuffs and maybe a two by four. And I'm not joking.
Trying to prevent the American people from voting is not just criminal, it is the very essence of un-American.
But it's not just democracy the Right loathes. They despise everything that makes America great - from the First Amendment to our civil liberties.
Just as their accusations of voter fraud are an attempt to cover their own election fraud, their accusations of un-Americanism are an attempt to cover their hatred of their own country.
Freedom? Who has done more to turn our country into a police state than the Right? Who has done more to suppress our right to freedom of assembly than the Right? Who has done more to sell our commonwealth to the highest foreign bidder than the Right?
It is a simple fact that the Right is attempting to destroy everything they hate about America. On the one hand, they appeal to hollow nationalism and phony patriotism while on the other, often beneath the headlines, they are deconstructing the very definition of what it means to be American - through their globalist foreign policy, their globalist trade deals, and their subservience to transnational corporations.
I got your un-American. Ronald Reagan:"government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Now would that be the same government of, by, and for the people our Founding Fathers fought and died for? Yep. And the Republicans have been selling this lie for years now to hand our democratic institutions over to corporations that offer no democratic oversight or accountability.
This little bit of un-American-ness doesn't get near enough attention from Democrats. The Right has actually convinced a good percentage of American citizens that their own government is a bad thing.
Or how about using the American military to secure not the national interests of our country, but the financial interests of global corporations?
No, I got your un-American right here. Using the threat of terrorism as a political weapon against your own citizens to secure and consolidate power. This is not just un-American, it is inhumane.
And then there's wishing for another terrorist attack on the American people to facilitate your political agenda as expressed by Donald Rumsfeld when he said this:
"This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack."
Or the very un-American vice-president Cheney's own chief of staff when he said this:
"We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court."
I got your un-American.
The Republican Right despises not only everything that this country stands for, but they despise Americans themselves. At least the ones who don't fit their extremely narrow stereotype, which they presumably plucked from a 1950s television show.
For the rest of Americans, you're on your own. Their brand of conservatism is nothing short of the abandonment of any sense of national community for an ideology of social Darwinism. One of Sarah Palin's supporters from Wasilla Alaska was taped extolling the virtues of small town life: "We look out for each other here." Indeed.
Meanwhile, he is supporting a party whose philosophy is the very antithesis of looking out for each other. Just as "Joe the Plumber" explained in an interview, people who need help just aren't working hard enough. I guess working two full time jobs just to survive isn't enough for the sociopathic Right.
No. After supporting for eight years a president who has violated the constitution of the United States and broken its laws, after supporting an illegal war that has resulted in the death of over four thousand American soldiers and the maiming of tens of thousands more, after participating in the systematic denial of the MOST SACRED American right, the right to vote, you don't get to call us un-American ever again.
We on the left are the only thing preserving this country from you and your pillaging of everything this country stands for. If it weren't for us, this country would be a wasteland with undrinkable water, poisonous air, no education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a population in poverty or servitude to global corporations, and a government of oligarchs and no accountability to the people . This is not a theory. It is an extrapolation of what we've already seen both here and in other countries where the Left is not so strong.