The Roots of America's Polarization

"But as I've said, both casual observation and the Poole-Rosenthal numbers tell us that the Democrats haven't moved left, the Republicans have moved right."

- Paul Krugman, from 'America the Polarized', the New York Times, (1/4/02)

By: BajanMan

The first part is quite correct. The Dems haven't truly been 'left' since the liberal core-cadre of leaders was exterminated in the 1960's. (JFK, MLK, and RFK). Since then, the Dems have been pseudo-trapped into a moving 'middle' - defined by where the Repugs place the right.

However, I would argue it is not strictly correct to say the Repubs have "moved right". Rather, they have placed into political ascendancy those atavistic and primitive elements that have always been within the party - but never given so much voice or power until now.

In the 1960's for example, the extreme right's values embodied fierce self-styled individuality and hatred for any humanitarian role for the federal government. The people at large, however, were largely appalled at these positions - explaining why the extreme right could never gain a political foothold.

Complementing the extremism were a constellation of organizations dedicated to its implementation. There were maybe two hundred separate fringe right extremist groups, including: the American Political Forum, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, the Committee for Full Citizenship, the White Citizens' Councils (one for each southern state), the National States Rights Party, and the American Security Council.

Among the precepts all of these had in common at the time of JFK's assassination in late 1963:

• Abolition or severe reduction of income taxes, to starve government and ultimately undermine all public spending in favor of 'privatization'.
  
  
• Increased military-defense spending at the same time, to further hobble social spending.
  
  
• Fierce opposition to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - particularly its clause limiting anti-missile systems.
  
  
• Fierce opposition to all efforts at de-segregation.
  
  
• Elimination of both Social Security and Medicare - regarded as "socialist intrusions" into a capitalist nation. ("All services to the public should be abolished in favor of personal enterprise" - H.L. Hunt, in Farewell America, 1968, by: James Hepburn, Frontiers Press, p.248)
  
  

To gain an insight into the degree of extremism afoot here, it is well to note that it was none other than the same H.L. Hunt who also opined that communism began in the U.S. with the introduction of the government run postal service! (Farewell America, p.246)

Fortunately, as extreme as these viewpoints were in the fall of 1963, they were isolated and confined within an enclave that couldn't get near the levers of power. Even weeks before the JFK assassination, it was pointedly observed that no GOP candidates stood much of a chance, and JFK was regarded as "virtually invincible" for 1964. ('What Now for 1964?' in Newsweek, 12/2/63, p.50)

Look in more detail now at some of the core precepts from the lunatic right wing of 38 years ago. Bearing in mind that the speech that JFK was to deliver at The Dallas Trade Mart specifically targeted the radical right - particularly its Dallas/Texan manifestations. (Newsweek, 12/2/63, p.21)

At the head of the list of extremist right precepts were massive tax cuts. This is not rocket science. All the extremist right exponents understood, as early as 1963, that the way to most efficiently dismember the public sector is to starve it of funding.

If tax cuts are debilitating enough, if public support programs are thereby forced into under funding - or not funded at all, then they must die. The fringe right of the early 1960's understood in the long run that this was the end-run way to kill Social Security and Medicare. Sell the benefits of the tax cut with one hand, then use the other - armed with a scimitar, to slay all long term benefits and support. Starting with social insurance that protected the most vulnerable.

The problem was that no ideologue of the right could garner enough votes - even in primaries- to be able to change things. At least back then. Indeed, most of them were dismissed by the general public as "lunatics" and "wackos".

A second rightist fringe precept was to always pump more money into military-defense systems. This would siphon even more from the public sector, as it drained current tax monies. It also justified the sole useful role for government in the minds of the right - which otherwise decried all forms of government spending. However, military spending - even for useless weapons systems, was just great. It enabled them to grease the palms of their political benefactors and campaign contributors with fat, juicy contracts. On the other hand, assistance to the public sector provided no profit. No upside.

A third cornerstone was to attack any proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, particularly the anti-missile systems ban within it. This was the case with JFK's 1963 Test Ban Treaty. Then again, later on in 1980, the ASC produced a film 'The Salt Syndrome', to oppose Senate ratification of the SALT Treaty and to suggest that Jimmy Carter was "unilaterally disarming the U.S.".

The same resonances can be heard again in terms of pumping the abolition of the ABM Treaty, and building an anti-missile system. What needs to be grasped is that the extreme, wacko right never ever gives up.

A fourth cornerstone was the abolition of Social Security and Medicare. Why? Because these programs - like all public services, represented arenas where the "free market" was excluded from entry. Hence in the minds of the 1963 right wing fringe: 'no free-market trespassing' = communism-socialism. This was what they were adamantly against.

Thus was borne the free-market fascism that unified the viewpoints of disparate right wing extremist groups from the John Birchers, to the White Citizens' Councils to the National States' Rights Parties to the American Political Forum.

Those ancient refrains now converted and updated to "privatization" with the new advocates a more sophisticated lot. With names like the "American Heritage Foundation", the "American Enterprise Institute", the "CATO Institute", the "Hudson Institute" and so on, and so on. The 'characters' have changed but not the underlying ideology.

Here, free market fascism is distinguished from overtly manifest fascism by three factors - all well known to the various rightist enclaves at the time of Kennedy's death. All sustained today by the various rightist 'think tanks':

• The public had to be processed to turn against their own interests. The best modus operandi would be public relations - already established by Edward Bernays in the 1920's. Newspapers and electronic media would play a major role.
  
  
• The public would ultimately then, vote in those that would act against their interests using deception or subterfuge - with the "benefits" of change always highlighted and inflated, but no accompanying mention of the downsides.
  
  
• Once in, the clique elected will use economic coercion in conjunction with the political system to eliminate the public sector.
  
  

By 'economic coercion' is meant unilateral fiscal pressure - say arising from the legalities of passing a massive tax cut. Or alternatively, enormously increased spending in military systems - or both. In any of these situations, the resulting fiscal pressures - particularly in a deficit increasing atmosphere, force decisions. These decisions - say if passed into law via a tax cut, necessitate that in order to effect it- monies be sought from wherever available. Even if this means raiding the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare, or eviscerating budgets set aside for infrastructure maintenance, such as airport repairs and road works.

In other words, free market fascism - via legally instituted means - forces the sacrifice of the public sector to the private by means of economic coercion. 'Coercion' since once a tax cut is passed into law, the public at large has no recourse and can no longer protect its vital long term interests.

We have already beheld such tactics in:

• The public rescue of the "hedge funds" (ie: Long Term Capital Management) back in 1997.
  
  
• The public bailout via massive taxation of the S&L's in 1989.
  
  
• The public bailout of the airline and insurance industries only recently after 9-11.
  
  

In each case, "private rewards, public costs". As we see here, "free market" actually manifests as an overt free loading!

In April of 2001 - in a speech at Berkeley, Susan Sontag bemoaned that "there is this amazing hegemony of business values, of the values of making money, of the commercial civilization".

She needn't have been so amazed, since in fact what has happened since Kennedy's death in 1963, is that the marginal values of fringe extremists have now become 'common policy'. This despite polls that frequently disclose this policy is against what the public itself wishes. For example, the public has consistently ranked preserving Social Security and Medicare, and funding education over massive tax cuts. And yet, the Bush Administration - with Congress' help - passed a nominally $1.35 trillion tax cut, which most serious experts actually reckon as $2.5 trillion. How did this happen?

It occurred through the strategy stages described earlier - by which a special interest clique could gain control of the national legislation machinery. As noted there, PR played a major role. And certainly, the hegemony of a 'money culture' which Sontag belabors, did not merely occur because the rightist fringe hearkening from 1963 overpowered all its opposition.

No, it also had to be aided and abetted by a recalcitrant press-media, driven more and more by the buck and profits. One in which sales-marketing departments were actually given the keys to the editorial offices, and advertising revenues trumped the value of actual news. (Particularly if that news was not complimentary to advertisers or their ancillary interests.) And what was the cost in all this? Well, the public interest, which shifted more and more toward supporting rich think tanks and increasingly rightist or conservative institutions.

It is clear from the cumulative historical facts that this nation could be nothing other than "polarized" at its very core.