| I've written about the GOP's Small Tent Party; I've often said that Republicans are morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest, and institutionally corrupt. And at the bottom of my comments, here on MPP, it always says "Those that forget the lessons of history tend to vote GOP."
I bring this up today, because of a column the other day on Alternet.org:
10 Historical 'Facts' Only a Right-Winger Could Believe
Facts, including historical ones, are 'biased' against the right's worldview.
By Roy Edroso February 11, 2011
Here's a couple off the list: |
10. The Robber Barons weren't robbers -- they were capitalist heroes.
7. The Founding Fathers really tried to end slavery.
4. Margaret Sanger was all about the eugenics.
1. FDR: History's greatest monster.
And here's how the author concludes his column:
Clearly the War on FDR is a proxy struggle with the (substantially less aggressive) current president -- they seek to make activist government look foolish, in hopes of preventing it from being tried again. But then, in a way all their other historical revisions are also directed at their current enemies. They go through the ghost of Margaret Sanger to stymie feminists; through the shades of Galileo and Darwin to warn off scientists; through the late MLK to get at voters whose enthusiasm for a black president thwarts their own electoral ambitions, etc. For them, history, like everything else, is just politics by other means.
This column is all about "dividing and conquering" - the only way the GOP - The Small Tent Party - can achieve electoral victory.
Tell an untruth - a "lie" if you prefer - and splinter off a segment of the electorate (eithe through gaining their vote, or disgusting them to the point they stay home on election day) is how the GOP operates.
"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." ~ Adlai E. Stevenson
True then, true now, and it'll be true tomorrow too - just as "Republicans are morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest, and institutionally corrupt" is true.
The only way to stop the GOP's Small Tent "divide and conquer" strategy is to band and stand together with people you simply will not always agree with, but agree with most of the time.
The "DFL" here in Minnesota is, by definition, a coalition. "Democrats, Farmers, and Labor." By definition, the diverse members of this coalition have not/ do not/ will not always agree. And that's ok. Just remember that while you're arguing an issue with someone that generally agrees with you on other issues, they generally agree with you on other issues. Agree to disagree on that issue when the day is done, because being part of this coalition makes strength through numbers; strength to fight The Small Tent Party's lies, deceit, revisionistic history - the GOP's "divide and conquer strategy." |
