Conservatism and Right Wing

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Prayers sponsored by governments or schools UNDERMINE authentic religion!

February 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many conservative persons, religious advocates, government officials (including some in charge of public schools, as well as local, state and federal governments) want prayers at local government or legislative meetings – or in public schools.  ACTUALLY, THESE GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED PRAYERS UNDERMINE authentic religion. Prayer should be a personal communication with God, but making it mandatory or obligatory – or a mindless public ritual – destroys the personal faith aspect and makes it a meaningless governmental routine. It’s ironic that conservatives who oppose “big government” want government to cram someone’s religion down everyone else’s throats. Instead of protecting liberty, they are taking […]

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A smart, unexpected way to move voters to our side

February 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Liberals and progressives keep expressing amazement and confusion when working-class people vote for people like Reagan and Trump, whose economic policies and other policies actually make things worse for working-class people. George Lakoff, an expert in how people think, says voters vote their VALUES, not their interests. Typically, we assume that if we explain how a political issue pertains to people’s objective interests (e.g., their economic well-being), they will act or vote the way we want them to. However, Lakoff says we would be more effective if we would pay attention to people’s VALUES and frame our arguments to appeal […]

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Widely held values actually OPPOSE Trumpism’s cruelty, etc.

February 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many people assume that Trumpism’s cruelty is more widely accepted by Americans than it actually is.  In truth, the vast majority of Americans hold better values.  In order to organize the public to oppose Trumpism, let’s tap into the better values that the vast majority of Americans hold. In order to push against the right-wing extremist agenda of Trumpism, we need to help ordinary Americans recognize that Trumpism seriously violates our nation’s best values. Ordinary Americans support truth, justice (fairness), human rights, the rule of law, science, preventing governmental corruption, etc. Trumpism violates these cherished American values. Exposing Trumpism’s violations […]

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The U.S.’s long-standing “cult of ignorance” is growing

February 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

For a very long time the U.S.’s culture and political live have included a strong anti-intellectual tendency.  Half a century ago I bought Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.  When Adlai Stevenson ran for president in 1952 and 1956 he was criticized and scoffed at because he was a very smart person.  Educated “egg-heads” are often criticized for being smart.  The list goes on and on. This anti-intellectualism seems to have gotten much worse.  The right-wing and Trump and the anti-science crowd and the anti-evolution crowd and the climate deniers are part of this. The editorial on page […]

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The welfare states (“nanny states”) are better for business investors too.

February 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Conservatives like to denounce the “nanny states” that take care of people’s health, invest in good education, and serve the broad public interest in other ways. Conservatives instead prefer neoliberal “free-market” governments that do NOT invest in those, but rather keep governments small and weak so businesses can dominate those nations. Actually, an article from the very “free-market” and “free-enterprise” business-oriented Forbes magazine (cited on page 15 of the Jan-Feb 2018 issue of the economically left Dollars & Sense magazine (www.dollarsandsense.org) reported some important economic findings. “[I]n 2016 Forbes ranked Sweden number one on its list of the top countries […]

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Republicans Unwittingly Promote Homosexuality

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Although the Republican Party says it opposes homosexuality, its actual policies unwittingly promote it. At any given time, a great many women and men do not want to produce babies, but they still want to meet their sexual needs.  Women and men want to practice birth control, but the Republican Party (and many conservative Christians) are restricting people’s access to birth control. In case of an unwanted pregnancy, a great many women and men support access to abortion as a fall-back option without birth control.  But the Republican Party (and many conservative Christians) are trying to prevent access to abortions. […]

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Despite Trump’s behavioral distractions, he is accomplishing MUCH — but the WRONG stuff!

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Powerful interests run their agenda on two tracks: 1. For public consumption, they say nice propaganda, platitudes, etc., and they also put out a carnival of entertainment, scandal, eye candy, etc. 2. Meanwhile, apart from public view they do horrible things. So, for example, while LBJ and Nixon kept saying they wanted peace in Vietnam, they actually were escalating the war. Trump promised jobs, promised to “drain the swamp,” etc., but he has been doing the opposite. Both parties do this, and so does big business with “greenwashing” advertising campaigns while they hurt the environment. We must pay attention to […]

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Republicans kill fetuses.

January 23, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

For decades the Republican Party has claimed to be “pro-life.”  However, their actual policies disable and kill fetuses.  Here are some examples: — Republicans keep trying to take away people’s health care.  In 2017 the Republican-dominated Congress tried several times to take away health care from tens of millions of Americans.  This includes pregnant women and fetuses.  Without adequate pre-natal care, fetuses fail to develop properly, so they result in birth defects, disabilities in newborns, stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and maternal deaths. — Republicans keep trying to take away food and nutrition from poor, hungry people.  Inadequate nutrition hurts pregnant women […]

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Nixon’s scheme against African Americans and against the peace movement

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

One of President Nixon’s top aides, John Ehrlichman, later reported this: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did […]

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“Real Democracy, Not Corporate Personhood”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

“End ‘Corporate Personhood’ and Other Power Grabs” In its January 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that big business corporations can give as much money as they want to election campaigns. By a 5-4 majority (all 5 were appointed by Reagan or George W. Bush), they overturned a century of settled law that had protected election campaigns from excessive corporate interference. This decision further entrenched the bizarre notion that money is “speech” and that corporations are “persons” with free speech and the same civil rights as living, breathing human beings. The Citizens United […]

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“Causing and Exploiting Economic Crises”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

What do Wisconsin’s Republican politicians, the political aftermath of 9-11, the Wall Street banking crash, and the federal budget crisis all have in common? In each case, a crisis (real or contrived) was used as the excuse to impose preconceived agendas of radical right-wing policies upon our political and/or economic lives. The Patriot Act, for example, was not a carefully crafted response to the 9-11 attacks. Rather, it was a massive collection of proposals for stripping away Americans’ constitutional rights to privacy, due process, and so forth. These proposals were too radical to ever be passed by Congress during normal […]

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TV: “How to Talk Politics with People Different from You”

November 17, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s September 2015 TV program deals constructively with our na-tion’s political polarization. We explore practical ways to communicate across the political divide, so we can all move forward. When Americans have such sharply different values and worldviews, we lack a common starting point about what is real and true. This makes it hard to have rational conversations about controversial issues – and hard to solve public policy problems. Are we stuck with escalating polarization? Or can we find better ways to respect the basic humanity even of people with whom we disagree? Of course, when we […]

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TV: “Social and Political Implications of Death Anxiety”

November 16, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s November 2016 TV program looks at the human condition – and at some of our social and political realities – from an unusual perspective. People’s awareness of their eventual deaths – even subcon-sciously – influence their behavior in surprising ways. Empirical research proves this. Our guest, Greg Bennick, helps us explore this topic. Greg Bennick has extensive experience as a humanitarian activist, world traveler, public speaker, punk rocker, and biographer. For two decades he has been communicating about social issues, and he has spoken in more than twenty-five countries. He co-produced a feature-length documentary film […]