Speaker Boner (Reprobate-OH) is flanked by House Mouse Eric Cantor (Reprobate-VA), Kevin McCarthy (Reprobate-CA), and Senate Minority Turdle, Mitch McConnell (Reprobate-KY) after their weekly obstruction meeting.
“To regressives, patriotism is about securing the nation from outsiders eager to overrun us. That’s why they also want to restore every dollar of the $500 billion in defense cuts scheduled to start in January. Yet many of these same regressives have no interest in preserving or protecting our system of government. To the contrary, they show every sign of wanting to be rid of it.
“In fact, regressives in Congress have substituted partisanship for patriotism, placing party loyalty above loyalty to America.”
No, it’s more than that. It’s sedition:
“Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws.
The GOP’s highest-ranking member of Congress has said his “number one aim” is to unseat President Obama. For more than three years congressional Republicons have marched in lockstep, determined to do just that. They have brooked no compromise.
Nor will they. They’re seditionists.
They couldn’t care less if they mangle our government in pursuit of their partisan aims.
Mangle? They’re destroying it— to the point it can be “drowned in a bathtub.”
Senate Republicans have used the filibuster more frequently in this Congress than in any congress in history.
And this misuse and abuse of the filibuster amounts to “direct and open violence” towards our legislative process. The resulting obstruction of the nation’s business in a time of wear and crisis is overt sedition.
House Republicans have been willing to shut down the government and even risk the full faith and credit of the United States in order to get their way.
And they still are.
Regressives on the Supreme Court have opened the floodgates to unlimited money from billionaires and corporations overwhelming our democracy, on the bizarre theory that money is speech under the First Amendment and corporations are people.
Which amounts to monetary subversion of our government: “A destructive, aggressive activity aimed to destroy the country, nation … [by demoralizing the cultural values and changing the population’s perception of reality].”
Regressive Republicans in Congress won’t even support legislation requiring the sources of this money-gusher be disclosed.
They’ve even signed a pledge — not of allegiance to the United States, but of allegiance to Grover Norquist, who has never been elected by anyone. Norquist’s “no-tax” pledge is interpreted only by Norquist, who says closing a tax loophole is tantamount to raising taxes and therefore violates the pledge.
And who the hell is Grover Norquist?
True patriots don’t hate the government of the United States. They’re proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to preserve it. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve the U.S. government, not destroy it.
The Urantia Papers declare: “No national civilization long endures unless its educational methods and religious ideals inspire a high type of intelligent patriotism and national devotion. Without this sort of intelligent patriotism and cultural solidarity, all nations tend to disintegrate as a result of provincial jealousies and local self-interests. The maintenance of world-wide civilization is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity.”
They’re not talking about the TeaPublicans’ type of patriotism— the kind that carries assault weapons to public meetings, and angrily shouts down elected officials; the kind that attacks the president as a foreign-born secret Muslim dictator, and liberals as radicals who are enemies of our nation.
But regressive Republicans loathe the government — and are doing everything they can to paralyze it, starve it, and make the public so cynical about it that it’s no longer capable of doing much of anything. Tea Partiers are out to gut it entirely.
When arguing against paying their fair share of taxes, wealthy regressives claim “it’s my money.” But it’s their nation, too. And unless they pay their share America can’t meet the basic needs of our people. True patriotism means paying for America.
Intelligent patriotism certainly recognizes that all citizens must carry their fair share of the load, and that “load” is to provide for the common good. If you don’t respect that about America, if you are unwilling to pay your share of reasonable tax to our government to support that idea, then it’s clearly time you took your own backward advice and “get the fuck out” of the United States of America. Oh, and happy Independence Day.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.”
His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
One has to wonder how the Founders would react to these wackjobs.
Consider:
Benjamin Franklin: All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
Thomas Jefferson: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
James Madison: There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.”
One more, addressing the immorality of Teabagger/Randian selfishness:
Thomas Jefferson (in a latter to a friend 38 years after he wrote the Declaration of Independence): “Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”