ThinkingLikeDems

We have nothing to fear, but fear itself! - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I was reading an article by Floyd McKay, a Journalism professor at Western Washington University; a man who is actually old enough to remember FDR, and much of changes of the 20th Century. He was commenting on what led to the New Deal mentality, and how President Bush is now promoting privitization and the ownership society, which is really a polite way of saying, in the words of anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, that he wants to starve the beast of the welfare state that was created by the New Deal, and later augmented by the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.

I thought of a friend of mine, struggling with childhood issues, stemming from overly controlling, conservative, and fundamentalist parents. These folks grew up in the Great Depression, and were old enough to remember the terrible chaos and disorder of that time, and the anxiety that it produced.

The Grandparents, the folks who were the adults of that time, must have felt that it was a crisis of responsibility. These were the Hoover Republicans; the Conservatives.

There is a neurotic, control-oriented power complex, that can and does develop that tries to bring order out of chaos by deploying control and responsibility. This can provide the rationalization for a rigid, or fundamental conservatism. I would argue that a whole generation of psychoneurotic dysfunction was created from this dynamic, at least to some degree. I am not suggesting that Conservatism in general suffers this characteristic, but only that the dark rigidity or over-compensating use of conservatism as a compensation for repressed anxiety is the negative dynamic.

Conservatives were outraged when FDR created the Beast - the New Deal - the Welfare State. Why? Because it cut into their neurotic projection that control and responsibility are the provence of the wealthy and the pious, those who keep their nose to the grindstone, and create their wealth, and the wealth of the nation (trickle-down) by depending on nobody's handout.

This projection onto the upper-class is still very much alive today; in fact it is a power complex that is in control. After years of repression, it has finally reached the ascendency that it once had in the Guilded Age.

The New Deal which brought us Social Security, and the Great Society, which brought us Medicare, Medicaid, and Aid to Dependent Children had a different dynamic. It said, compassion for the middle-class and the poor, in this time of economic turmoil requires us to build safety-nets - insurance against financial ruin. When people are parellized with fear, they are less productive. They have less of the libido or productive energy that life provides. We take away some of that fear of the onerous financial burden of health and retirement, and it frees people up to go about their business as productive citizens, without fear. This provides an impetus, a charge, in the face of the viscissitudes of the market.

And it worked. True, there is such a thing as going too far. We must be aware of the opportunities for abuse of welfare systems, and regulate the systems accordingly, but often the fear of welfare abuse is more of a boogey-man than reality. Reagan's welfare queen existed, but her widespread numbers were greatly exaggerated. A prominent exaggeration today, one that arouses anxiety in the conservative mind, is the hoards of foreign emmigrants arriving at our gates, and sapping our precious welfare resources. On one level, the ownership society might be about Xenophobia. It allows us to raise up the drawbridge of our castle in fear, to keep the hoard out. The irony is that the foreigners might, in many cases, be better owners, as they work so hard to make a new life, than we are.

The wealthy and wise amongst us (yes, there are some) include Bill Gates Jr. (the father of Bill Gates III, the founder of Microsoft), a prominent and wealth attorney, and George Soros, the man who made his wealth in Hedge Funds on Wall Street. These men are definately on the ownership side of the ledger. These men, who have accumulated great sums of wealth in the American free-enterprise system don't fret over the unfair distribution of wealth and resources that is implied in the conservative abhorrence to the social-welfare state. They understand that their own wealth came, in part, on the backs of others, and by the advantages of the American system, including government support. Gates advocates for the estate and dividend taxes, as ways to give back. Soros advocates the open society where all of our resources and talents - of community, government, and private enterprise are aligned in a synergy that breaks down boundary and exclusion.

They feel compelled to give back, in a sense of balance, and by a sense of justice. It is a giving back that was institutionalized by FDR in the New Deal and by LBJ in the Great Society, and it was a giving back that made the United States a great country.

Progressives who oppose Social Security reform advocate that we talk about these debates on a detail-oriented, pragmatic level. They argue that we should show how Bush is fabricating a crisis to push an ulterior motive, which is the destruction of the welfare state as we know it. We should show that Social Security is on steady ground; that with a few tweaks in the future, the Social Security trust funding will remain sound over time, etc..

President Bush, as usual, is not preoccupying himself with these kinds of facts, and we Progressives just can’t believe that Americans would make decisions that are not based on facts, so we, once again, are underestimating him.

President Bush is the penultimate ideologue, who smiles beatifically, with stars in his eyes, and expounds on the virtues of personal responsibility. Make no mistake about it; Bush has been very successful at motivating people using this method, and may succeed with the privatization of Social Security. Why?

To find an answer, I think we should first consider how people have completely forgotten the frame of mind Americans had in our grandparents, and great-grandparents generation. That generation, the Great Depression generation, felt terribly insecure. They had lived through the reckless, unbridled capitalism of the robber barons, and the ill effects of those who would borrow to invest on the margin in the stock market. They had experienced the downside of foolish greed, with foreclosed mortgages, fortunes ruined, bread lines, soup kitchens, joblessness and despair.

Most people, in the Great Depression generation, came to understand that opening the gates to personal responsibility could lead to personal foolishness, but libertarian conservatism wasn’t nonexistent in those days. Steven Thomma, in a Knight-Ridder article reminds us that Social Security overhaul is a long standing conservative dream, extending back to the time when Social Security was created.

According to Thomma, this is what the Republican candidate, Alf Landon, had to say against Roosevelt’s New Deal program in 1936:

“The promise of secure retirements is a ‘hoax.’ Taxes paid by workers are ‘wasted’ by the government rather than prudently invested. And ‘the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all’ because it contains nothing but government IOUs.” (sounds like Republicans today, doesn’t it?)

Landon went down to defeat as the American people, strong in their belief that a retirement safety net was required as a bulwark against personal hardship and misfortune, voted overwhelmingly for the popular Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Who still feels this way today? The answer is some Progressives who read history books, and who sadly understand the old Hegelian maxim:

What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.

We understand the cyclical patterns of foolishness, and that is why we advocate the maintenance of government programs that level out the effects of that foolishness. We still believe in that wisdom.

Unfortunately we are close to being a minority. We have a couple of generations of young people now, who grew up in the boom years of the 1980’s and the 1990’s. They were told that the stock market was the place to invest in your dreams. They were told that Social Security was a joke, and some of them brag how they, in their 20’s, have already built up a nest egg. They have a confidence in market appreciation that the long-term market has not sustained. If history is any guide the market can be fickle. Our ancestors understood that.

Social Security is retirement insurance. It is nothing more, nothing less. It is a mandatory savings to provide insurance against the vicissitudes of the fickle market and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

The Conservatives, Libertarians, and Bush’s minions want to return us to that time where we throw caution to the wind, and ride those wings of outrageous fortune for good or ill. We know, in our intuitive understanding of human nature that this often results in a greedy oligarchy of fat robber barons and a gap between the rich and poor that dampens civility.

Bush’s philosophy is that societal costs, that drag against capital interests, such as entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), and environmental regulation (pollution control, etc.) need to be eliminated to make us competitive in the world. He assumes that the World is an unbridled wild-West scene where our civilized niceties only drag us down. He blinds himself to the fact that other countries have already tried privatizing social security and failed (Britain, Chile, Argentina). He blinds himself to the fact that our civility is what attracts new talent and innovation to our country - that makes our country livable.

We need to remind ourselves why we supported Social Security in the first place. The devil is in the details and we can show, with those details, that the system can be maintained, but it is important to remember that the solid ground of civilization can be found in its underlying philosophy.

I have to admit that the emergence of concepts, promulgated by the Right, such as liberal elite and politically correct kind of caught me off guard. After all isn’t elite a good thing? Isn’t what they describe as politically correct simply promoting fair and equal access for all individuals to common resources such as those provided by the environment that we all share? Don’t we, or at least, didn’t we use to take those things for granted? Well apparently not.

Unbeknownst to me in my naiveté, there has always been festering faction of anti-intellectual, no holds barred oriented people, we can loosely describe as conservative or traditional who feel that they were being held down, or held back, by a flood of suffocating goody two-shoes prohibitions and rules that inhibited their free spirits or their liberties as it were.

This came about because of raging students and hippies in the 1960’s, and was institutionalized by the hated Democrats who dominated Congress up and until 1994, harassed and booted Richard Nixon, and still provided the burr in Ronald Reagan’s saddle through the 1980’s. Then when Gingrich took over they still had Bill Clinton to deal with. Despite execrable attempts to eliminate him, he prevailed. It wasn’t until George W. Bush took over that these anti-intellectuals really got the fire in their blow-holes, and the terms liberal elite and politically correct really started being fired with joyous salvos.

I think it all began in Grade School. You remember how it went. There was the teacher, Mrs. Smith who, like all teachers, lived to promote the expansion of knowledge and scholarship. Mrs. Smith was biased, and maybe downright prejudiced. She favored little budding elitists, like myself, who looked up to her with a sunny face and listened enraptured at her every pedagogical announcement. I remembered it all, did well on tests, had my desk right in front of Mrs. Smith, and was generally hated by the little George W. Bush’s in the back of the room who where snapping spit wads at the girls with rubber bands. They got their revenge, however, by exacting whatever form of intimidation they could dream up on the playground at recess. I learned early to give them something they wanted. For $5 I might have written a paper for them to get them a better grade. You do what you gotta’ do.

It wasn’t much different at college. The idea there was that you or your parents paid for this education, and that you were there to learn. I soon discovered that in the Greek system, in which I did not participate, many were not there to learn, unless beer-chugging and promiscuity were art forms to be mastered. For many Fraternity brothers or Sorority sisters it was that old mantra: It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I don’t want to stereotype the whole Greek system this way, but that way of thinking has always been prevalent. If ever there was the quintessential Fraternity brother it was George W. Bush. Recollections of former professors and fellow students show that he felt that his primary focus should be on his familial and extra-familial connections and he was only in school so he could put that on his resume. This is the Bush who told a professor that he thought Grapes of Wrath was commie propaganda and who said he didn’t understand the minds of poor people.

When medieval monks on the coast of Ireland where quietly contemplating God, perpetuating scholarship, and translating the Book of Kells, it must have been a rude interruption indeed when marauding Vikings broke in, cut off their heads, and stole their merchandise. Some folks never do appreciate scholarship and civility. Poor scholars, whose minds Bush doesn’t understand, never quite get it. The only purpose in life is to cultivate contacts that you can manipulate for gain, and if that doesn’t work you need to draw your sword and rape or pillage. Life is short. Get what you can and protect your hoard.

Anything else is liberal elitism and politically correct.

Frankly I think a balance of the two forces is really what we are looking for and, in fact, what we once had.

New Year’s Resolution for self: Please stop wasting the reader’s time recapitulating the same old saws about how bad Bush is. There are better sources – for instance :

Bob Herbert, Eric Alterman, Molly Ivins, or The Smirking Chimp

I am going to move on (hopefully)to more interesting, anecdotal musings about being a Dem, closer to home….

For instance:

Thursday (Jan 20) was Inauguration Day, and a friend and I went down to Seattle’s Westlake Park with several thousand others to protest our dissatisfaction with the current regime.

It was a good turnout for a monochrome day in the Seattle winter rain. The best part of the program were all those enthusiastic University and Community College students who took time out from their studies to march downtown with their banners waving and their flags flying showing the creative poetry of dissent, interspersed with some great cartoon characterizations of our President in various states of menace or disintegration. We joined along with them and sucked up some of that enthusiasm. We were covering some of the same ground as protesters marched on during the WTO demonstrations of 1999.

No one hates the specter of fascism more than someone who, in their 20's is still a rebellious adolescent, though an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood, steeped in a sharper understanding of American and World History, whether from Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, or from an open-minded professor. These young people with brains and sensibility have a burning desire to make a difference. Think about those students in Tiananmen Square in China, students in the Ukraine, and in many other places in the world where fascism and the smell of corruption is on the wind.

I am 47. I was sitting on a bench with some 40 and 50-something friends (us older-timers look for benches when speeches go on for hours). We are Democrats ranging from Kucinich to somewhere to the left of Kerry. Sitting there, it turns out, made us an easy target for ambitious purveyors of fringe ideologies and splinter causes, at least in our assessment.

Two bright teenagers came by to tell us about that enlightened understanding which had led them into the arms of the Socialist Workers party. They were tired of being rebuffed as they worked the crowd, and they wanted to talk.

It was apparent that these young men in studs and tattoos, with clothes and signs in accents of black and red, had done their homework. They made the following arguments. Not new arguments, but from the heart of the persistent young they had a new poignancy:

1. Aren’t the Democrats just as much in collusion with corporate hegemony as are the Republicans – I mean what’s the difference?


2. Didn’t John Kerry say, Even knowing what I know now, I still would have supported the resolution to support the President. Where did the guy stand; was he for or against the war?


3. What are the real reasons we went to war, as opposed to the propaganda we get shoveled at us?

I found much to agree with, talking with these young guys. Yes, there is a growing problem with corporate power. Corporate hegemony is my own term for the tendency of corporations to become so powerful that they start to overrun the will of the majority of people in nations represented by democratic institutions.

Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakans, in their revealing Canadian film The Corporation provide a good example. The multinational giant Bechtel decided that they wanted to control the water supply in Bolivia. They worked over some weak government authorities and were on the verge of privatizing the water supply, under their control, and for their own profit, when they ran into the buzz saw of a coalition of the Bolivian people, who were outraged enough to wrest control of the water back to the Bolivian public. These people succeeded, and in the process also succeeded in toppling the corrupt Bolivian regime that was in bed with Bechtel!

Dennis Kucinich earned his political spurs the same way. Facing default in loans to the Cleveland Municipal Power system, when he was mayor of Cleveland, he didn’t back down to an attempt to privatize the utility by a company called the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and its banker cronies. He was derided for that move for many years, but today, to quote an article in CommonDreams:

In 1993, then-Cleveland Mayor Michael White cited Kucinich's ‘wisdom’ in not selling the utility, and in 1998 the council honored the deposed mayor for having the ‘courage and foresight’ to stand up to the banks. The utility, now known as Cleveland Public Power, provides low-cost electricity that saved the city an estimated $195 million between 1985 and 1995. One of the new buildings in its expanded plant is named for Kucinich.

The city of Cleveland and its low-income people benefited from the city-run utility, but since we all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch it is a fair bet that some of that savings came as redistribution out of the corporate pocket. This is why corporations want to privatize. It gets the money flowing in their direction. This is why I’m a Progressive Democrat. I want to see a more equitable distribution.

I wanted to emphasize with these young men that the Democratic Party has a long ways to go before it embraces the strong, progressive views of members like Dennis Kucinich, but we believe that it can be done.

It is true that John Kerry, and Bill Clinton before him, are moderates. John Kerry wanted to represent the whole country as President. He was too wishy-washy on the Iraq question in my view when he said ‘he would make the same decision even with new information on intelligence and the lack of WMD’. I didn’t like that; nor did many Democrats. Subsequent to that, Kerry has made it clear that the concept of pre-emptive war is reckless and unwarranted, and that he would not have taken us to war. He would not have ignored the advice of allies, and fallen for faulty and foolish intelligence reports. I don’t know if he was the perfect candidate, but the President does have to represent all of the American people, even when many seem to be living in a sorry state of delusion. A Socialist Revolution to solve this problem would be a bit of a stretch.

The young men and I agreed that the Bush Administration, fueled by a cabal of neoconservatives and their Project for the New American Century (PNAC), had ulterior motives for going into Iraq. It was about going in and establishing a powerful ‘beachhead’ in Iraq to protect Israel and oil resources. It was an Empire move. Should we start a revolution to overcome that level of deception? Well, let’s see how bad it gets, and as Martin Luther King taught us, let us not be quick to violence. Bush might just hang himself yet by his own proverbial rope.

When I was the age of these guys, I too flirted with Socialism and Communism. If you have a brain, you are an adolescent, and have a sense of outrage it is a strong magnet. In more recent years I read the Memoirs of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, an unapologetic Communist in his time. In Chile in the 1950’s through the early 1970’s, being a Communist in South America was to revolt against brutal Right-Wing regimes that would make Hitler look like a Boy Scout. Some times it makes sense.

But I have also read the histories of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Red China including Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and Anchee Min’s powerful memoirs of communist China and the Cultural Revolution.
Clearly anti-capitalistic idealism does not lead to good ends. I believe in a healthy, well-regulated capitalism, one where people don’t become so materialistic that they lose the sense of value in relation to the Earth, and other peoples. I don’t believe that unregulated corporations should be allowed to run rampant like a runaway cancer or a virus.

As you get older you try to impart any wisdom you might have gained to the young. They have to decide whether you make sense or not. But I feel great that we had an opportunity for dialogue! We’ll have to wait and see how bad it gets under Bush, but in the mean time, we need to keep up the good fight.

For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop. The future of Social Security is much too important to be used as a political football.

President Ronald Reagan

If ever there was a wolf that snuck into the proverbial henhouse in the guise of a sheep, it would be that execrable fool we call our President. Isn’t it obvious by now? I mean, my God, isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it obvious that he is not the Chief Executive, but rather the Chief Business Lobbyist?

First he brings together a most lamentable group of business cronies for a secret energy task force; a group that includes Ken Lay the chief culprit of one of the most criminal business enterprises in American commerce, Enron. It also includes Halliburton, the corporation headed by the Vice President himself. We don’t get to know what was discussed. Oligarchy requires a cover-up operation in our democratic society.

Then he starts a war on false pretenses, based on the phony intelligence of a bunch of ‘keystone cops’ headed by a detestable con-artist named Ahmed Chalabi. Funny, we don’t hear much about him these days. It turns out that big companies like Halliburton, and Bechtel have gained much, and have much to gain from this enterprise. American soldiers have caught on to this. Their morale is in the sewer.

Billions of dollars have been squandered on this Iraq debacle (4.5 Billion/month – that’s Billion with a ‘B’), with over 1200 Americans dead, over 10,000 wounded, horribly in many cases, and over 100,000 Iraqis dead. For what? For a beach-head in oil-land? To protect Israel? Is it surprising that a significant faction of the Iraqi populace is willing to fight to the death to get their piece of this oily pie, since it was their country in the first place? Are the Iraqi insurgents just evil democracy and freedom thwarters? Please, we are not children. Don’t insult our intelligence.

With billions of dollars squandered and committed in Iraq our brainy President has another brilliant idea. Let’s give all the wealthy people a tax cut. That way we can really put ourselves into the kind of Deficit that stifles investment, drags down the economy, and burdens our children and grandchildren with a monstrous obligation. Great idea! They tell us that tax cuts stimulate investment, but we have listening to that load of crap for decades now. Funny how it never seems to pan out.

Since first taking office in 2000, the Bush Administration has managed to almost destroy the original watchdog, stewardship, and safety functions of the agencies of the federal government. These are agencies of the Executive branch, where he is expected to lead and take responsibility.

The FCC, under Michael Powell, has been totally captured by big media corporate interests. Mike has a good time in Las Vegas. Meanwhile the media consolidation of TV, radio, and print sources has proceeded apace. We no longer believe we are always getting objective news. So much for the Fourth Estate.

The EPA is a joke in this Administration. Relaxing air pollution standards gets spun into Clean Skies, relaxing logging restrictions on public lands gets spun into Healthy Forests, and we are asked to tolerate a certain level of mercury in our food and drinking water because we wouldn’t want to upset the profits of Bush’s business cronies now would we? Besides, aren’t the Apocalypse and the Rapture just around the corner?

And FDA? Need I say more? When a whistle-blower revealed on 60 Minutes that a high-ranking official at FDA believed that the client the FDA serves is the Pharmaceutical Industry, not the consumer, I think that was pretty good indication that FDA is 100% captured by industry. Heart attack and stroke as side effects of popular FDA-approved drugs? Who’s watching out for our safety? Certainly not the Bush administration.

As I write this, Mike Leavitt is the designated nominee by the Bush Administration to head up the Health and Human Services Department. This Mike Leavitt is part of a family insurance broker business called Leavitt Group Enterprises. He used to be the COO of that company and has close family ties. He also has financial interests in Merck (Vioxx maker), and Johnson and Johnson. Is he going to be objective about the plight of malpractice insurers and drug-makers? You think? Do we still give a damn about conflict of interest?

And so it goes….

Bush is the wolf in sheep’s clothing because Bush doesn’t give a damn for the fiduciary responsibilities he is entrusted with. He doesn’t care about the general welfare unless the people are willing to be ‘responsible profit-takers’. He doesn’t care about safety and the environment if it interferes with profit. When Grover Norquist issued his famous quote about ‘shrinking government down to the size where it could be drowned in a bathtub’, Bush said, Yeehaw Grover, come on down!

And now Bush wants us to believe that Social Security is in grave crisis. Really? Really now. Is that a fact? Do we find it inconvenient to remember a time, not so long ago, when the Social Security system really was in crisis? Do we remember how a team of smart people, headed by Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan, worked with President Reagan and the Democratic Congress to develop a solution? A solution that is holding up to this day very well? Expert economists from the left and right are telling us that the current system, with a little tweaking, will keep the Social Security system solvent well beyond the baby-boomer era. Of course we might have to start hitting harder on the payroll taxes for people making over $90,000. No, no! Bush screams. Those are my wealthy buddies!

'How', says Bush, 'can I spawn my ownership society, which is in reality a secret weapon to destroy programs like Social Security, and drown the government in that darn bathtub like Grover wants, when I got these darn fact-mongers on my heels all the time?'

Don’t believe him folks. This lame-duck has always been lame. We need to work on members of Congress to shut him down and neutralize his malicious intents. We need to box him out at the mid-terms. Then we can pray that he doesn’t do too much damage before he is gone.

To the extent that a marriage works, or that a marriage is a lasting partnership often depends, as anyone who has been in an intimate relationship knows, on resolutions regarding the issues of control.

People carry neurotic baggage as they go through life. They have fears based on childhood neglect, abuse, or other slights that prevented them from having that envelope of 'unconditional love' from their parents that was so devotely to be wished .

As adults they project those fears into their daily lives. They project their love for their partner as a protection against those fears. This person, who we initially became infatuated with, who we decided would be our life's partner, provided us a refuge against life's onslaughts. But then the infatuation bubble burst, and we saw that he/she was really limited, and we felt that by exerting some level of control we could retrain that person to help us allieviate our fears and put our lives back on an even keel.

Sound familiar? Well, not being a psychologist, that is as far as I'm going to go into the realm of what is at the foundation of irrational behaviors that sometimes lead to divorce.

It seems to me though, that what sometimes explains irrational behavior in individual human relationships, can also be observed in the collective behaviors of nations, or societies at large.

When the United States was founded, it came about through a divorce of monumental proportions. The Empire of Great Britain and King George III were oppressors and/or abusers of the first order. Anger over taxation without representation, the Boston Tea Party, imbalances and unfairness in trade relations, and so on were all signs that the superpower was exerting control over its fledgling spouse. And the fledgling spouse, complete with powerful ally (France), not unlike the battered woman who leaves her abusive husband, made its heroic departure from that dysfunctional relationship.

Our founding, our form of government, and the resulting Constitution with its Bill of Rights, all reflect our forefathers' desire to emancipate our new nation from the oppressive control of monarchical empire. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the two most prominent authors and framers of our Constitution, were influenced deeply by the intellectual current of the age; what we know as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment with its secular focus, and its emphasis on human reason, was the latest permutation of earlier philosophies arising out of the Renaissance a few centuries before, and the Renaissance, in turn, was a rebirth of concepts found in ancient Greece and Rome which emphasized reason, democracy, and the brilliant nature of the inquisitive, and inventive mind.

All of that had been squelched in what we now call the Dark Ages, that time stretching from the fall of Rome, to the Renaissance. During that time ecclesiastical church authorities (the Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons of their time) routinely persecuted and burned people at the stake for using reason, science, or for having innovative ideas. The Renaissance and its offspring the Enlightenment was a reaction against that tyranny, and our countries founding, and our countries founders inherited the revulsion against that medieval tyranny.

This explains why Madison and Jefferson were so adament that a wall be erected between church and state. This explains why our Constitution has the Establishment clause and why in it there is no reference to God. Susan Jacoby, in her book Freethinkers: A history of American Secularism, reminds us of the outrage over the omission of God, expressed by the fundamentalists at the time of the Constitution's framing in the late 18th century, a debate that raged for decades after. We have correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in which Adams derides the foolishness of this fundamentalist, anti-intellectual view. A reading of David McCollough's biography of Adams shows that he was a learned man, steeped in the classics. He believed in and prayed to Divine Providence, but he was no fundamentalist.

The forefathers understood that the dogmatic and anti-intellectual views of an authoritarian church would lead to a level of control that would stamp out democracy and civil liberties and that would, in the end, promote fascism (or, in their time, absolute Monarchy).

What has happened after September 11, 2001? What negative energy was kindled in George W. Bush and his followers based on the fear engendered in that event? How does that fear lead to an obsessive desire for control and how might that control lead to fascism? What price will we pay for allowing anti-intellectual, faith-based, Dark Age-style bishops like Jerry Falwell and their views to become ascendent? And our Red-state populace? Do they reflect the appreciation that our forefathers had for civil liberties?

When one partner in a marriage starts to excert excessive control over the other partner that is where the trouble starts. When one portion of the populace tries to control or retrain another part, based on neurotic fears and impulses, that is where the trouble starts. In good marriages as in good nation-states the partners have an equal respect for each other. There is a civility that arises out of mutual respect, and in that relationship honesty and liberty prevails.

Remember what Benjamin Franklin said:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Fascism, whether on a personal or national level, is always about control and always involves deceptions that play on fears. Hitler's general and consultant, Hermann Goering advised that:

people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and attack the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

Sound familiar?

My little ‘city’ of Kenmore, Washington is really a long strip of businesses set up like pit stops along a racetrack of an arterial highway providing one of the four main routes between the city of Seattle and its suburban Eastside neighbors on the other side of Lake Washington.

Kenmore doesn’t have sidewalks to speak of. Even old Dodge City had the hardwood slats strung together to keep the ladies from the muddy streets, but not Kenmore. Tax revenues have not been allocated - a sign of our times. There are, however, “service” strips along the highway, marked pieces of asphalt used as right turning lanes for cars that are enticed by the businesses to stop.

I was walking on the side of the highway, along one of these strips, making my way back from the Starbucks to my apartment, a semi-obligatory ritual that Seattle-area folks do as a matter of course, when a young man pulled up and parked his new Cadillac SUV, a vehicle that, not only blocked my path, but also blocked out the morning rays of the sun with its substantial presence.

I glared at him on the approach. He looked at me with a tortured face that somehow crossed sheepishness with sneer. I said, “You know you’re blocking the path, pal!” At this he hustled into the Trophy shop that was his destination. Perhaps he wanted to see how his daughter’s soccer trophy was coming along. He followed me with his gaze nervously as he entered the store. Was I one of those crazy street people? Oh, the dangers of leaving the gated village and the confines of one’s $60,000 cocoon.

The parking lot where he could have parked, not twenty feet from where he did park, was ample and empty. He could not hazard the possibility of a scratch, from some absent-minded commuter, banging their door against his, eager to get out of the lot and on to work, could he?

Of course, he had already discounted me. My concern was that, having to circumnavigate his vehicle to pass by, a course that would have taken me precariously close to the oncoming rush-hour traffic, I would have run the risk of having my right arm detached by a right-view mirror speeding by. Perhaps he just thought I was jealous. He watched to make sure that I didn’t spit or take out a coin and scratch his mobile palace. It is an insular world for some.

And where did he go from there? Say he was in sales; say he sold Radiology equipment to Radiologists in hospitals. He drove his rig down to Harborview, that inner-city Seattle hospital, the Level-one Trauma Center where drug addicts loiter in dark corners, clutching IV poles, their hospital gowns rhythmically flagging in the breeze that flows uphill from the Sound. Where the cops in large numbers hover to prevent the daylight dealer, and protect the public. Where the constant smell of diesel lingers as Metro busses careen around the corners, visitors come and go, and Fire Trucks and Ambulances scream up 9th Avenue. They have a garage to park in, with no alternatives, at least not any that this guy would consider.

The slots are small in the garage, built for that 70’s, energy-saving, subcompact car mentality that you might remember if you are old enough. At least that is used as a justification, whereas in reality more slots give more revenue. Everybody wants to make a buck. And those darn Seattle liberals. Wouldn’t build special slots for behemoth SUVs now would they? If this guy has to visit this hospital from time to time, it is a sure bet his pristine white Cadillac Esplanade will suffer the consequences.

Remember the obsessions of Howard Hughes? Wealth is a funny thing. It can make you want to insulate yourself. To worry. To think that the rabble is out to get you. You spend your youth grasping at the golden ring, properly following the dictates of Ayn Rand, Wall Street, and deflecting the bleeding-heart sensibilities that are only a sign of weakness. You arrive, properly worshipful of the materials that you have accumulated. Now you have to watch over them like Midas over his pile of gold. Maybe you can get one of those Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), with a camera that allows you to monitor your home and your possessions from anywhere in the world. So you pull it up, and see that some homeless man is spitting on your SUV, but you are 2 miles away. What are you going to do? Call the police?

I once squatted in a log house on the shore of Vashon Island in Puget Sound. The original owner was a Green Beret ambushed and killed in Vietnam. His wife, delirious, had drunk herself to death, and the only son was in an Ivy League school on the East Coast, probably never to return. I paid a trustee at a bank a couple hundred a month to stay there with the rats that made a mockery of the easily penetrated shack. The gaping slits between the logs would bring in a winter draft that would eventually drive me out of the place, but in the summer of 1988 I lived next to Fred, who had a snug and secure summer house where he and his family spent Memorial through Labor Day.

Fred was wealthy but it wasn’t apparent. It was others who told me. Fred was the CEO of a large Seattle bank in the 1970’s. Every day Fred would row out into the Sound in the weather-faded little rowboat he had probably owned for over 30 years. He fished for the running salmon of the season with the appropriate bait and deceptions, pausing to marvel at the pods of migrating Orca whales, their black rubbery dorsal fins cutting the ragged water in regular undulations.

Fred was old, and I was younger then. He taught me by example, and minimal words, that life was short, and that nothing was more important than the civility that people could show their neighbors. He had an easy grace and demeanor that no doubt served him well once in negotiations, high in Seattle skyscrapers; dealings that helped him earn his wealth and rise to increasing levels of power and influence.

One thinks also of Bill Gates, and his distinguished father, who have contributed so much, and given so much back, or of George Soros, who has made philanthropy is life work after making a killing manipulating hedge funds on Wall Street.

These are people who know how to make and manage wealth without obsessing on the petty concerns of materialistic possessions.

I don’t have a problem with the accumulation of wealth. It is the pettiness and loss of civility that we have to guard against.