John Cory: Marching Backwards: The Spectacle of Fear
[John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.]
Everything old is new again.
It may be 2009 but the rhetoric is strictly 1950 when a man held up a sheet of paper and declared, "I have here in my hand a list of names ..."
Glenn Beck is not original, nor was Joe McCarthy. The "red scare" of McCarthyism was merely the recycled red scare of the 1920's, when Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and his right-hand assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, conducted warrantless raids on union halls and labor organizations deemed socialists or communists for their suspected anti-American, anti-corporate beliefs.
Each time the "red scare" gets trotted out, new laws are passed that ever so gently and ever so patriotically encroach on the integrity of freedom and individual liberties of our citizens. They bear great names like the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Espionage Act, loyalty oaths and investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Patriot Act. Each labels "the enemies of the state" and warns that our government, our very way of life, is in jeopardy of utter collapse unless we act immediately and act strongly against the influences of liberalism corrupting the very fabric of American life. The Constitution is hanging by a thread.
And what is accomplished?
The "Palmer raids" resulted in thousands of our fellow citizens being held without trial and hundreds deported on the flimsiest of innuendo, or worse, on the principle that they actually practiced their First Amendment rights and therefore were considered a danger to America.
McCarthyism turned neighbor against neighbor and friendship into a weapon of false allegation and fearmongering that took away jobs of an estimated ten thousand people and sent hundreds of others to jail and ruination. For all the hype and shouting, the end result was to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance so we could tell a godless communist from a god-fearing American. Was that what William F. Buckley meant when he wrote this? "McCarthyism is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks."
Now there is a new fuss generated by an article at NEWSMAX, advocating that the military overthrow President Obama with a bloodless coup to restore America to its true glory and power. Even that is not original. Barely past a hundred days in office, FDR was the target of a coup revealed by Gen. Smedley Butler after having been approached by "agents of Wall Street" financed by the Du Pont family, General Motors and Chase National Bank, among others, to use a veterans organization as the front for the overthrow of the New Deal and President Roosevelt.
The spectacle of fear is not new. Whether financed by Wall Street or organized by FOX News, fear is the product being sold for the sole purpose of maintaining power and control by those who themselves fear the power of the people. And that includes today's mendacious media that see themselves as the "stars" in this political circus while collecting thirty pieces of silver for entertaining the public and betraying the people...
Read entire article at Truthout
Everything old is new again.
It may be 2009 but the rhetoric is strictly 1950 when a man held up a sheet of paper and declared, "I have here in my hand a list of names ..."
Glenn Beck is not original, nor was Joe McCarthy. The "red scare" of McCarthyism was merely the recycled red scare of the 1920's, when Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and his right-hand assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, conducted warrantless raids on union halls and labor organizations deemed socialists or communists for their suspected anti-American, anti-corporate beliefs.
Each time the "red scare" gets trotted out, new laws are passed that ever so gently and ever so patriotically encroach on the integrity of freedom and individual liberties of our citizens. They bear great names like the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Espionage Act, loyalty oaths and investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Patriot Act. Each labels "the enemies of the state" and warns that our government, our very way of life, is in jeopardy of utter collapse unless we act immediately and act strongly against the influences of liberalism corrupting the very fabric of American life. The Constitution is hanging by a thread.
And what is accomplished?
The "Palmer raids" resulted in thousands of our fellow citizens being held without trial and hundreds deported on the flimsiest of innuendo, or worse, on the principle that they actually practiced their First Amendment rights and therefore were considered a danger to America.
McCarthyism turned neighbor against neighbor and friendship into a weapon of false allegation and fearmongering that took away jobs of an estimated ten thousand people and sent hundreds of others to jail and ruination. For all the hype and shouting, the end result was to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance so we could tell a godless communist from a god-fearing American. Was that what William F. Buckley meant when he wrote this? "McCarthyism is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks."
Now there is a new fuss generated by an article at NEWSMAX, advocating that the military overthrow President Obama with a bloodless coup to restore America to its true glory and power. Even that is not original. Barely past a hundred days in office, FDR was the target of a coup revealed by Gen. Smedley Butler after having been approached by "agents of Wall Street" financed by the Du Pont family, General Motors and Chase National Bank, among others, to use a veterans organization as the front for the overthrow of the New Deal and President Roosevelt.
The spectacle of fear is not new. Whether financed by Wall Street or organized by FOX News, fear is the product being sold for the sole purpose of maintaining power and control by those who themselves fear the power of the people. And that includes today's mendacious media that see themselves as the "stars" in this political circus while collecting thirty pieces of silver for entertaining the public and betraying the people...