As we all discussed in the Labor Day Open Thread, Mike Lofgren over at Truth Out has written an article explaining why he left the increasingly lunatic GOP “cult” – but as I read it, the views Lofgren express indicate that even if he once upon a time had a GOP voter registration, his views are actually (and rather lock-step) in line with the leftwing extreme of American politics. For example:
…Some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the “business” wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witch trials. In any case, those consummate plutocrats, the Koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into Michele Bachman’s presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split…
The condemnation of liberals as weak-kneed combined with the accusation that the GOP wants to grind the poor and burn witches is classic leftist dogma…the sort of thing we’ve seen out of the left since Lenin asserted that only Bolsheviks have a right to be heard. As I said, I can’t determine whether Lofgren is a former GOPer who switched – but his views as written are not those of someone dismayed at the direction of the GOP, but of someone who despises the entire GOP. This is not like, say, Arlen Specter switching from Republican to Democrat and still holding 99% of the views he held as a Republican…this is a night and day difference. Like Specter switching from the GOP to the Communist Party. Lofgren isn’t so much leaving the GOP “cult” as proclaiming his adherence to the kook left cult.
And as a kook leftist, Lofgren gets it all wrong. Even when he correctly identifies a problem (rapacious Big Corporation, eg) his proposed solution (more Big Government) fails to recognize that Big Corporation and Big Government are two sides of the same coin. It staggers the mind to read Lofgren condemn GOPers as ignorant when he can’t even see that the whole system is corrupt – and only a break up of the system (Big Government and Big Corporation) will allow the people to recover their freedom and with it their prosperity.
The system we have today is the result of a century of giving people power over others. We started out, as a nation, with a federal government which could barely interfere in the lives of Americans. Over the last century we have continually increased the power of government and corporations until the initiative of the American people has been stifled. Do you really think there was a popular demand to stop drilling for oil, mining for metal and growing food? No – that took major, sustained action by government and corporations to accomplish. Our ability to create wealth has been stifled because those in charge of government and the largest corporations prefer us to be dependent…bribed to peace with welfare and distracted by trivial gadgets and disgusting popular culture. It allows the Ruling Class to continue undisturbed. We do need massive change…but it won’t and can’t come from the left…because all a leftist like Lofgren would do is strengthen the fetters on the people.
In the end, the people who will save this nation are those Lofgren most despises…those TEA Partiers and their notions of constitutional governance, and their adherence to what Lofgren clearly considers to be a worn-out Judeo-Christian morality. It will be the bitter-clingers who will restore American greatness…while leftists of the Lofgren stripe ill be consigned, deservedly, to the ash heap of history.
