Lee Silver and the successors of the Neocons.

George Bush and his group of right-wing neocons and their fundamentalist allies are sinking down the drain of irrelevance as the clock ticks down to their defeat in the next two elections. But there is a new school of thought that is just as insidious and dangerous as the Neocons. Meet the successors to the Neocons - Lee Silver and the proponents of genetic elitism - the Genocons.

There is a big difference between the stem cell research - which we support - and the genetic engineering that Silver and his allies advocate. He advocates human engineering to the point where the haves are able to develop supermen that would be able to rule over the lesser men - those who are too poor to be able to afford genetic engineering for their children. These two groups of people eventually come to the point where they are no longer sexually compatible and haves achieve a state where they are permanently superior to the have-nots.

He has no more use for religion - which means that we could have some unlikely allies in the fight in the right-wing fundamentalists. If you want to know what his attitude towards religion is like, check out some of the hysterical trolls who try to hijack PastorDan's diaries on a regular basis.

But there is nothing whatsoever liberal about his views on genetic engineering. In fact, his ideals are no more or less than the same old politics as usual, where the elites think you are too stupid to comprehend international affairs. If you want to know what his attitudes towards people power are, just check out the contempt Lieberman has towards the rank and file voters and their ability to make their own decisions - that is how Silver is like. It is nothing more or less than Plato's Kallopolis combined with 21st-century technology.

We all agree in the power of science and would reject the criticism of those who would suggest we are somehow subconsciously clinging on to some form of fundamentalism. But if science is to advance and progress, it must be equally available to all people. This is no more or less than the current fights between us and the Republicans - Democrats believe in voter participation; Republicans believe in vote suppression. The same goes with science - we believe in participation for all people - Republicans and Genocons like Silver believe in suppression of science for the masses.

There is something peculiarly fundamentalist about the way Silver advocates the suppression of scientific benefits for the 90% while believing in the creation of a super-wealthy elite. This is very similar to hundreds of years ago when the Catholic Church believed in the suppression of knowledge for the "greater good." They withheld knowledge from the masses and taught that only qualified priests could handle the fountains of knowledge. They taught that the masses were unfit to comprehend or properly use such things as the Bible. But they were not really motivated by a concern for the well-being for the masses. Instead, they were motivated by a desire to control the masses through the suppression of knowledge.

In the same way, Silver believes in a separation of the haves and the have-nots wherein the haves breed supermen and the have-nots are born to serve them. This is no different than the aristocrats of old, who believed that some were born to rule, while others were born to serve.

It could be argued that this point that he did not really advocate that; he only says it is inevitable. But that is a typical propaganda device worthy of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, remember, would tell people that the process that would lead to some form of stateless utopia was inevitable. Silver's claim is not really a scientific finding based on observation and evidence. It is, instead, a faith-based claim that has no evidence or studies to back it up. It is pretty interesting how he makes faith-based claims in the name of "science" when true science does not claim to have all the answers and is always open to testing and change. His statement is nonfalsifiable - it cannot be proven true or false. What he is promoting is not really science, it is right-wing ideology packaged as "science."

It would be tempting to fall for Silver's seductive logic; after all, he goes after the logical basis for religious fundamentalism. It would be tempting for another reason; religion has been responsible for a lot of the world's evils. But he is blind to the fact that much religion has accomplish good as well; the 1960's New Age philosophy was instrumental in overthrowing the mindless conformism of the 1950's. Martin Luther King was instrumental in overthrowing decades of segregation. And he is blind to the fact that communism is an atheistic belief system - one of its practitioners, Stalin, murdered millions of people. Lies, bigotry, prejudice, racism, and other such hatreds can just as easily be practiced by atheists as they can by religious people. Atheists cannot gleefully point fingers at people and claim the mantle of moral superiority over others thanks to Communism as well as Ayn Rand and her destructive brand of right-wing atheism.

Religion or the lack thereof does not make one a superior person. What makes one good is their ability to create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. And it defies logic how Silver's advocacy of elitism can meet that standard when the Scandinavian countries and the UK and Canada have succeeded in giving all their people access to free health care and the latest technology.

And Silver's logic is inherently unamerican. Our Constitution teaches that all people are created equal - not just the top 10%. The sort of elitism that Silver advocates flies in the face of what our Founding Fathers revolted against. They revolted against the very kind of elitism and aristocracy that Silver advocates. They wrote a Constitution guaranteeing access to the government for all the people, starting with the Bill of Rights. And the 9th and 10th Amendments guarantee that all the rights not reserved for the government are reserved for the people instead.

As liberals, we cannot accept Silver's logic. Our men in uniform did not bleed and die in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and elsewhere so that we would return to the very type of aristocracy that our forefathers rejected. They die so that people like Silver can sit in their ivory towers and spout their ridiculous nonsense.

It could be argued that all this stuff is not in the news; why should I bother with this. But back in 1998 or 1999, we did not know much about the Neocons. It is our job as Patriots to identify and expose right-wing ideologies and other threats to our basic freedoms early before they get too big of a foothold in our political thought. The goal here is to keep the Genocons and any other future anti-American ideologies where they belong -- in the fringes along with abortion-clinic bombers, the militia movement, the Minutemen, and other such groups.