Hurray for Ron Paul declaring to the whole world (via the Southern Republican Leadership Conference) that Obama isn’t really a socialist, but a corporatist. And for only losing the straw poll by one vote (to Romney), which meant the Wall Street Journal had to cover his speech. They call him a “gadfly.” I could wear gadfly – assuming that people who support Paul’s stance on corporatism are gadflies by association. I’m not sure whether “gadfly” or “libertarian” is a worse insult. So long as they don’t call us liberals. That would be the kiss of death.
Ron Paul’s Support Isn’t Limited to Republicans
Does Ron Paul’s willingness to make such a bold statement have something to do with the fact his Campaign for Liberty is drawing bipartisan (I prefer the word nonpartisan actually) support? With the fact that prominent leftists such as Naomi Wolf are making supportive statements regarding his campaign to restore Constitutional freedoms? You bettcha.
Wolf, of course, has come under heavy attack by the liberal establishment for siding with the Tea Party and Patriot movement in regards their stance on Constitutional and states’ rights. Some of the criticism has been quite extreme, with some progressive followers threatening to throw Wolf’s books away.
The Need for Nonpartisan Movements
The obvious question that comes to mind is what’s so terrible about a nonpartisan civil liberties – or better still anti-corporate – movement in this country? It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the divisions between the so-called right and left and between conservatives and liberals are really very artificial ones imposed on us by the corporate controlled media, the two major political parties and whatever government propaganda agencies (CIA, FBI, Pentagon and others we probably haven’t heard of) are at work to control public access to information.
They seem to want all Americans to believe that they are destined to belong to one of two opposing camps, depending on the state they are born in. Because heaven forbid that Red and Blue states should discover that they share some common ground and mobilize to revoke the corporate charters of Wall Street banks and that knowingly engaged in mortgage fraud (yes, deliberate fraud – I have some great mortgage fraud links at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com) and other criminal chicanery that caused the global economy to collapse in October 2008.
Clever Distractions by the Media and Major Party Leadership
One way I feel the media and the major political parties do this is by systematically distracting the public and even members of populist reform groups (of which the Tea Party movement is a prime example) away from the root cause of America’s present difficulties – namely the total political control banks and corporations have over Congress and the presidency.
An excellent example is frenzy the right wing talk show hosts have whipped up over various inane conspiracies – most recently ones involving Obama’s birth certificate and the alleged Cloward-Piven strategy the American left hatched in 1966. I have no particular problem, in theory, with the notion that the government and their corporate cronies hatch conspiracies – powerful (mainly) men have been sitting in dark smoke filled rooms since the American Revolution. However in my experience you have to be pretty rich and powerful to hatch a successful conspiracy. Poor people don’t seem to be very good at it.
What bothers me is the underserved prominence these two particular conspiracies have received in the mainstream media (Fox News in particular). It appears to me to be a deliberate effort to distract the American public from the much more dangerous actions of Wall Street banks and their so-called government regulators.
Correction: Earlier this post stated that author Naomi Wolf has gotten flak for supporting the concerns of some Tea Party members about possible government involvement in 9.11. Wolf has clarified that she does not have concerns about government involvement in 9.11. What she actually stated was that she would support an independent investigation.
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