The Bloody Cross Roads

From the barrage of articles about the election two pieces in The New York Times stick out. The first discusses the Republicans’ comeback plan, which was forged in the shadows of the euphoria of Obama’s victory in 2008, and the second, written by Peter Orzag, the former budget director for the White House, describes the cost cutting measures of health care reform. Both combine to illustrate just how tragic and pathetic the Democrats’ fall from grace has been by implicitly underscoring their failure to destroy the Republicans when they were on top and communicate the merits of health care reform to the American people.

Shortly before Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, with many relishing what appeared to be a dramatic shift that would shape the nation’s politics for generations, House Republicans gathered for a PowerPoint presentation. As The Times reports, one slide read: “if the goal of the majority is to govern, what is the purpose of the minority? The purpose of the minority is to become the majority.”

This is all we need to know about the Republican Party during the past two years. And it showed. They rejected and campaigned vigorously in opposition to every policy initiative undertaken by the Democrats. Even when the economy was on the brink of collapse, and we were headed for another depression, and even though they had largely voted in favor of Bush’s stimulus programs, they unanimously opposed Obama’s stimulus package, which largely consisted of tax breaks for 95% of Americans and played a key role in averting a full-scale meltdown.

And that’s what makes our predicament agonizing: the Republicans played such a brazen political game that they even demonized policies that align with their philosophy. Leaving the stimulus tax breaks aside, let’s look at health care reform. As Orzag wrote in The Times the other day, the new laws will “cut the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance by a quarter and reduce the projected deficit within Medicare by three-quarters.” On top of this, “the legislation creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of independent medical experts who will look for more ways to improve Medicare’s cost-effectiveness.” You of course won’t hear any of this on FOX News. Instead, you’re more likely to hear about how beaurocratic measures have been put in place to “get between you and your doctor,” or how “Obamacare” is a “government takeover” and yet another example of “out of control spending that’s gonna bankrupt America.”

And the Republicans rode these lies all the way back to power.

But how could this happen? After eight years of Bush and all the calamities created by conservatives—from Iraq to Katrina to the financial collapse—and the rise of a brilliant President fresh off of an historic campaign, how could the Republicans have re-emerged at all, let alone in the fashion that they did?

The answer, I think, is that in spite of their stubborn ignorance (“global warming is a hoax,” “tax cuts pay for themselves”) and viciousness (calling Obama a “liar”) and stupidity (“evolution is a myth”), the Republicans get one thing the Democrats have apparently been unable to grasp, at least during the past few decades: politics is war. You see, the Republicans understand that the Democrats are their enemy. The Democrats and Obama don’t seem to recognize the corollary.

Consider two classic examples of how this has played out. First, when Clinton was president the Republicans went out of their way to try to impeach him for lying about getting a blowjob. When Bush was president, the Democrats didn’t even attempt to impeach him for lying about torture or weapons of mass destruction! Similarly, the Republicans’ chief agenda will be to repeal health care reform. By contrast, when Obama won in 2008 he decided not to “re-litigate the past” and put the previous administration on trial for committing war crimes.

And this is the essence of the Democrat’s failure. They had a once in a lifetime opportunity to destroy the Republicans once and for all in 2008. It took the nation 6 painful years to recognize that conservative policies had seriously damaged America, and 2008 was the prime moment to pounce on the opposition. But instead Obama called for bipartisanship instead of war. In theory one could forgive such naiveté since, after Bush, it should have been clear to all that the Republicans represent a bankrupt agenda.

But in retrospect it’s now obvious that Obama and the Democrats gravely underestimated the enemy. In an interview with Newsweek during the early days of his presidency, Obama dismissed the Republicans as a party in disarray akin to the Democrats after Reagan won during the 80’s, and he presumed they would scramble to reshape their policies in a way that would appeal to more Americans. Likewise, according to Jonathan Alter’s The Promise, Obama thought the Republicans would opt to govern over playing politics in 2009 because the situation was so dire. Considering this, one could excuse Obama’s seemingly mature decision to focus on solving the immediate, massive problems he faced rather than punish the previous administration for breaking both American and international law by authorizing torture.

But in this his inexperience has severely undermined his presidency: the Republicans always play politics, no matter what the situation. The starkest manifestation of this is how they seized 9/11 as a tool to characterize the Democrats as weak on national security, which is amazing when one considers that 9/11 occurred under Bush’s watch, and many Democrats voted in support of the Iraq War.

As such, it’s no surprise that Dick Cheney started shitting on Obama in 2009 by speaking out in favor of torture and condemning the decision to officially outlaw the practice, and the White House should have responded forcefully. The President should have done what Republicans always do: embarrass the enemy. Could you imagine if Obama had done what Bush did in response to 9/11? As their treatment of Clinton during the 90’s and their attitude towards health care reform in 2010 indicates, the Republicans would have put him on trial for crimes against humanity the second they could! Had Obama done this to Bush, as it is now clear he should have since he’s been accused of failing to bring bipartisanship anyway, the Republicans would have been utterly shamed and ridiculed for years in ways that would have rivaled what happened to the party in the aftermath of Nixon. That might have really given the Democrats the “realignment” they thought they had obtained in 2008.

Instead, not only did the Democrats take no such measures, they let the Republicans continue to bully them for two years, even though they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Why didn’t they put as much energy into promoting all their accomplishments, such as saving the economy from apocalypse or reshaping education with Race to the Top or reforming health care to cover 95% of Americans and cut costs? Why didn’t they demonize Republican intransigence effectively? Why didn’t they campaign on a plan for how they would continue to improve America instead of cowering to attacks and lamely arguing that at least they’re not as bad as the Republicans?

Any serious person who has not been brainwashed by FOX News and co has to recognize that the conservative movement will devastate America, in ways perhaps even more spectacular than seen during Bush’s presidency. Tuesday’s outcome will likely reverberate for a long time. I expect there to be a government shutdown within the next year. Hopefully Obama will outmaneuver his opponents the way Clinton did after the 94 midterms. But the Democrats must learn that the Republicans are their enemies. And they must do all they can to destroy them.

Just as important, we, the people, need to fight. We should all be disgusted by the notion that the Republicans have been lavishly rewarded for subverting the political system by abusing the filibuster in previously unimaginable ways for partisan gain. That should have been the story of Obama’s first two years; not “government takeovers” and “out of control government spending.” We should be outraged that ignorant and sinister conservatives have thus far shaped the legacy of health care reform—the most important progressive accomplishment in decades. And we should all fear the possibility of bitter Congressional gridlock in the face of a looming lost decade brought about by foolishly premature fiscal austerity measures.

This is a call for a pushback. We need to educate more people about Obama’s legislative achievements and demonize conservatives for their reprehensible refusal to contribute to and decision to wage disinformation campaigns against the stimulus and health care reform. We must revolt against their rejection of science in the cases of climate change and evolution; and we must never allow them to roll back abortion rights and separation between Church and State. All of these issues are just as much in jeopardy as at any time in American history, and it is impossible to work in good faith with people who not only cling to discredited and backward positions but refuse to cooperate even on issues that they would have embraced if their party had been in power. We cannot afford to lose again, and the sooner Obama and the Democrats start to fight and lead the way, the better off we’ll all be.

Expanded sources on torture:
Bush says U.S. does not torture:

Torture violates international law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Against_Torture

Torture violates American law:
http://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pl105230.pdf

http://www.factcheck.org/a_tortured_history.html

The U.S. has convicted Japanese officials for using waterboarding during World War II and American soldiers for waterboarding Filipino guerillas during the Spanish American War in 1898:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

Counterterrorism experts say torturing KSM produced essentially no credible intelligence:

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812

Shane Harris’s The Watchers, the Rise of America’s Surveillance State is a must-read for anyone interested in the war on terror. Harris, who has covered counterterrorism and electronic surveillance for National Journal since the 90’s, has composed a book that is thorough, well-written, informative and non-partisan. It offers a discussion of the rise of wiretapping in the post-9/11 era from the perspective of those inside the intelligence community, or “the watchers.” In following figures such as Admiral John Poindexter and NSA director Mike Hayden, Harris’s narrative traces the origins of the war on terror to the suicide bombing of a U.S. embassy in Lebanon in 1983, and it discusses all the significant developments in the government’s efforts to create a surveillance apparatus in response, from the 1994 Communications for Law Assistance Act, which required phone companies to build products with equipment that enables the government to install wiretaps, to the Protect America Act of 2007, which legalized most of the practices initiated in secret by Bush years earlier.

Along the way are many fascinating revelations, such as a chapter-long explanation of Obama’s shift in favor of immunizing communications companies from legal retribution shortly before the 2008 election; John Ashcroft’s near refusal to sign a document approving Bush’s surveillance system in 2003, which would have “rocked the corridors of Washington” (262) by causing a mass exodus among members of the NSA, making the illegal spying program public and hence destroying the President’s chances for re-election in 2004; and Bush’s woefully late realization, in 2007, that cyber warfare poses a serious threat to national security, prompting him to call for “another Manhattan Project if we need to” (329).

The Watchers revolves largely around John Poindexter, who faced serious legal issues while serving as Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser during the Iran-Contra scandal and resurfaced as a key figure in devising a surveillance system to combat terrorism. Branded Total Information Awareness, or TIA, the project was supposed to bolster intelligence capabilities and protect privacy.

Officials sought some of the core proposals of the program well before 9/11. For example, and most riveting, Erik Kleinsmith headed a private company that uncovered public information on the internet to learn about Al Qaeda in 2000. His team had obtained a wealth of vital intelligence that might have been sufficient to thwart the 9/11 operation. But he had technically broken laws and was forced to delete all his findings on pain of imprisonment. After the attacks, however, Bush surreptitiously granted authority by executive order to pursue virtually every counterterrorism measure available. As a result, the NSA now has the right to spy on any conversation involving a terrorist suspect over the internet or via phone without a warrant, so long as one of the parties participating in the conversation is outside the country. As for domestic calls, warrants are still required, but they are easy to obtain, and there is little oversight to prevent abuse. So, if you are in France and call a friend in New York, government agents can listen in without a warrant and with impunity if they decide you are a terrorist suspect. And such determinations are often made on the basis of guilt-by-association. But should you call your New York friend from Florida, the government technically must obtain a warrant.

As such, Poindexter’s vision of safeguarding privacy has been left out of the equation. Harris explains that Poindexter initially “proposed an ‘immutable audit trail,’ a master record of every analyst who had used the TIA system, what data they’d touched, what they’d done with it… Poindexter wanted to use TIA to watch the watchers” (190). But it eventually became clear that the only assurance we have that “their information wouldn’t be misused now came from the government agents conducting the surveillance” (342). Harris continues, but “they were the watchers. Who was watching them?” (342).

Consequently, according to the author, bi-annual reviews of surveillance activity during Obama’s presidency have repeatedly shown that the watchers regularly spy on Americans who have no connection to terrorism, collecting phone calls and emails of innocent people. Unfortunately, the reviews are conducted after the fact and impose no regulations to curb the systemic law-breaking.

All this might be acceptable if it were clear that the efforts consistently intercept accurate information about terrorists. However, the surveillance program is so massive that analysts are overwhelmed by excessive data and false leads and therefore have trouble connecting dots. As Harris explained on CSPAN when promoting his book, this phenomenon was on display last December during the failed Christmas Day attack, when the bomber was able to board a U.S.-bound aircraft even though his father had contacted the CIA to warn them about his son’s radicalism. Since intelligence agencies receive a barrage of such reports every day, it’s more difficult for experts to decipher which admonitions are worth heeding.

Harris’s main point is that we must have a serious national conversation now about how we should monitor the watchers and protect our privacy. Because when the next attack occurs, which is inescapable according to Harris and every expert on the matter I’ve heard, this discussion will be merely “academic.” The government will crack down even harder and still further revoke basic rights in the name of national security.

Quick clip of Shane Harris discussing the 4th Amendment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/us/politics/20spend.html

A recent New York Times article exposing the contradictory claims of the G.O.P.’s “call” for cuts is stunning, even though it reports what anyone paying attention to the news already knew. Riding the wave of populist anger at a perceived draconian government encroachment, the Republicans have campaigned on the idea of cutting spending, and it appears to be working. Of course, their “plans” have no substance, but empty rhetoric and bankrupt policies are what their supporters want. And they will get what they deserve. The problem is, the rest of us will likely have to suffer too.

Conservative candidates have come up with deficit trimming ideas that are either totally unrealistic—as The Times explains John Boehner wants to cut “non-security discretionary” spending by 20% in spite of the fact that the largest drop in any year since 1982 has not exceeded 5.5%, and many Tea Party candidates simply seek to dismantle most government agencies— or prohibitively unpopular, such as Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s push for sharply reducing Social Security and Medicare. In truth, the right is doing nothing more or less than promulgating endless disinformation-based cheap shots at Obama, motivating voters with lies about how health care reform, along with the stimulus and Tarp, will create unmanageable and unnecessary deficits.

Needless to say, they never complain about the fact that it was Bush’s health care reform (remember his ludicrous Medicare prescription program? You know, the one that wasn’t paid for and created the infamous donut hole?) which according to the Times will cost $1.1 trillion over the next decade, adding more to the deficit than Obama’s health care overhaul, the stimulus and TARP combined! They also don’t like to talk about how, despite their hysteria about government expansion under Obama, as the non-partisan politifact.com explains, “federal and state government jobs… increased by 1.7 million in eight years under Bush and” fell “by 357,000 since President Barack Obama took office.” Let’s also not forget that Obama’s health care plan will reduce deficits by $143 billion according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and the stimulus consisted largely of tax cuts for 95% of Americans (something conservatives aren’t too keen on discussing honestly) while preventing a depression, together with the dreaded TARP program, which has earned taxpayers $23 billion.

All this makes laughable the conservatives’ “concern” about the deficit. If the Republicans win big, as expected, they will try to repeal health care reform, which, as the Times reports, “would actually increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over 10 years,” and they would push for ignoring the admonitions of the king of failed conservative fiscal policy, Alan Greenspan, by extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, adding “$700 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.”

The pathetic truth is that the Tea Party and all the other hypocrites on the right don’t actually care about the deficit at all, and they never have. Their feigned alarm is really just an excuse to smear the President. If matters were otherwise they would express anger over the record deficits ran up for no urgent reason by George W Bush and Ronald Reagan. But during those presidencies, conservatives ignored the economists who warned that needless deficit spending is dangerous and foolish. Rather, they would argue, everything’s fine because the tax cuts will pay for themselves (a non-theory that even Alan Greenspan has recently rejected), and running up deficits as a matter of standard policy is not a cause for concern since the percentage of debt to GDP is manageable.

Now, we got lucky after Reagan put America on a perilous course with his fecklessness because his successors recognized the fallacy of “Voodoo economics,” as George H.W. Bush labeled it, and instead raised taxes. In addition, the rise of the internet created an unexpected and unprecedented boom.

But this time around we probably won’t be so fortunate. However, the blame must be placed on Bush, not Obama: it was Bush who resumed “Voodoo economics” as if it were a sustainable approach. Only his agenda was even more irresponsible than Reagan’s, since he started two foreign wars and devised his obscenely expensive Medicare program to boot. Furthermore, it was Bush’s deregulatory policies, which were largely a continuation of Reagan’s, that gave rise to the epic housing bubble and created the crisis we currently face.

Obama has merely done what any responsible president would do when the country is on the brink of financial collapse: engage in deficit spending, the cornerstone of classic Keynesian economics. And it worked. The proof is beyond dispute. Consider, both Hoover and Obama inherited nearly identical scenarios. Hoover ignored Keynes’s approach and did nothing to prevent mass bank runs or stimulate the economy with spending, but rather implemented fiscal austerity measures. As a result, the country plunged into the Great Depression. Obama, on the other hand, continued TARP—a program which, unbeknown to nearly half of Americans according to polls, was started by Bush— and orchestrated the stimulus package. Consequently, the recession technically ended months ago, and the most pressing question now is when will unemployment return to acceptable levels, whereas before Obama initiated his policies the question was will there be another Great Depression.

But the right, spurred on by the vicious lunatics of the Tea Party, insist on portraying the President as an irresponsible deficit spender and socialist who has raised taxes. Aside from the fact that there is no logic to their contradictory claims, there is also no truth involved either. In addition to devising a health care reform that will reduce the national debt and engaging in deficit spending for necessary purposes rather than as a matter of standard procedure—he has, after all, commissioned a bipartisan deficit reduction committee by executive order no less, much to the hypocritical chagrin of the Republicans— Obama has not initiated socialist policies (with the one exception being the auto bailouts, which have resoundingly succeeded so far), even though in some cases he probably should have. He did not nationalize any of the failing banks or Wall Street firms, and his financial overhaul is extremely lax, especially since it does not reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. Last, he has in fact cut taxes for 95% of Americans.

But none of this matters. If Obama had been a Republican, the Tea Party almost certainly would never have gotten off the ground, since many of his policies, such as tax breaks and an aggressive effort against terrorism, are considered conservative, and FOX News along with the other propaganda artists on the right would have emphasized the President’s tax cuts and continued to pretend that budget deficits are not fundamentally dangerous, just as they did during Bush’s presidency. Furthermore, if Obama had not inherited the most depressed economy since Hoover the American people would not be suffering from an unavoidably long period of high unemployment and would therefore not have granted any consideration to the extremists running from the right. But crises breed uncertainty, and uncertainty breeds fear. As such, the population is willing to believe anything, even if it is blatant disinformation, and it seems such an environment will produce radically conservative congressmen who thrive on smear campaigns to mask their irresponsible behavior and bankrupt policies.

Sources:

Congressional Budget Office Health Care Estimates: http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm

TARP earned taxpayers money: http://www.financialstability.gov/latest/pr_06112010.html

Obama Stimulus Cuts Taxes for 95% of American Households:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/opinion/21thu2.html?

Government jobs increase under Bush and fall under Obama:
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/oct/25/nancy-pelosi/nancy-pelosi-says-more-private-sector-jobs-created/

TARP and stimulus prevented a depression: http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/zandi-blinder-bailouts-Depression/2010/07/28/id/365893

Classic FOX News article from 2007, admirably entitled “Economics 101,” defending Bush budget deficits and downplaying emerging fears about the Subprime Crisis: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259241,00.html

Half of Americans think Obama started TARP: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20013452-503544.html

Greenspan says taxes don’t pay for themselves and warns against extending Bush tax cuts: (see

Everyone seems to be saying The Social Network is the defining movie of our generation and today’s version of Citizen Kane. After reading countless articles in praise of the film I finally got around to seeing it the other day, and I can say that while it is definitely the best movie I’ve seen in theatres in a long time, the Kane question is a bit more murky.

To start with the similarities, both Zuckerberg and Kane are brilliant, ultra-wealthy and influential world-famous celebrities who rise to unimaginable heights: Zuckerberg transcends the life-style of a scorned computer nerd at Harvard and changes the world with Facebook, while Kane leaves his poor parents for a life of lavish riches and ultimately becomes obsessed with his newspaper and his political ambitions. As they become more absorbed in their quest for self-aggrandizement both protagonists betray their closest friend—Mark deceives Eduardo into signing away his share of the company, and Kane fires Jedediah for writing a brutally honest review of Susan Alexander’s miserable performance— and, arguably, lose their soul, as both are left with a haunting, inscrutable sense of bitter loneliness and emptiness. The last thing to be said is that neither character is driven by money. What really motivates them is one of the tricky and fascinating questions that drive each movie.

But here’s the real difference between The Social Network, which is undoubtedly excellent, and Kane, which is immortal. A huge reason why we find Zuckerberg such a compelling character is because we know what he has brought to the world: Facebook has impacted almost everyone’s life in one way or another. As such, the main reason why he holds our attention is often not because he does or says anything particularly memorable or shocking in each scene (though, to be sure, he has his moments). In truth, it is the fact that he is the guy who created Facebook that makes his story epic.

Kane, on the other hand, remains fascinating even to today’s audience— most of whom are unaware that his life is loosely based on that of William Randolph Hearst (for full story check out The Battle Over Citizen Kane, a fine documentary)— because of how he behaves. Remember, Zuckerberg’s movie is called The Social Network, while Kane’s film is called Citizen Kane: the former is just as much about Facebook and the entrepreneurial spirit that brought it to life as it is about its protagonist, while the latter is more exclusively concerned with its main character, who is himself the prime subject of every scene. As such, The Social Network features no thematic equivalent to Rosebud, nor any awesome one-liners comparable to Kane’s growl that people will think “what I tell them to think.”

In fact, Zuckerberg doesn’t change at all over the course of the film, which is what makes the movie so ironically clever: in the concluding scene he’ still the shabbily-clad asshole-wannabe who uses people and continues to crave simple acceptance. The only difference is, now he’s a billionaire who has reshaped the way millions of people interact; and the film’s charm lies in the fact that such an achievement has apparently brought no genuine happiness with it. True, Zuckerberg gets to gloat about his genius and creativity in front his former friend and Winkelvoss rivals, but all he really yearns for is a friendship with the girl who leaves him at the beginning of the story.

Kane, however, undergoes a transformation worthy of Shakespeare. His is the epic American story because it encapsulates all the unavoidable pitfalls of fame and power and capitalism. Kane is so complex that he is at once described by Jedediah as “swine” and “brutal” and yet as possessing “a generous mind” and “some private sort of greatness.”

As a child he immediately sniffs out the sinister aspect of Mr. Thatcher, who embodies excess and greed, and strikes him with his sled, which bears the name Rosebud. And as a young man Kane aspires to use his newspaper, “The Inquirer,” to protect the needy and underprivileged by exposing the commonplace swindles and crimes that permeate Wall Street. But as he ages, his youthful ideals of reporting the news honestly without allowing special interests to interfere get supplanted by his obsessive drive to shape the news and, by extension, the world, to accord with his selfish desires. He runs for public office because he wants to convince “the people” that he loves them so much that they ought to love him back, as Jed puts it in a moment of drunken candor and lucidity; he builds Xanadu so he can create the illusion of control, “an absolute monarchy;” and he bullies Susan Alexander into singing to show up his enemies and take the quotes off of their characterization of her as a “singer.” All this leaves him with utter emptiness. He insatiably uses his money to buy endless collections of statues and paintings and build the never finished Xanadu, and he has no friends or family. When he dies his last word, Rosebud, reflects his pitiful yearning for the simplicity and innocence of childhood.

But another crucial distinction between Kane and Zuckerberg is that the former is more explicitly self-aware: at one point in his old age he remarks to his manager Bernstein and Mr. Thatcher that “if I hadn’t been very rich, I might been a really great man.” And then, in reply to Thatcher’s question of what he would have liked to have been come the chilling words: “everything you hate.” We never get this kind of confession out of Zuckerberg, and that is perhaps because his movie is more focused on the unapologetic, uncompromising nature of successful entrepreneurship than the sheer complexity of an individual character.

As such, in the discussion of how deserving The Social Network is of a comparison to Kane, it’s helpful to ask yourself what you care about more: plot or character. The magic of Zuckerberg’s story lies in the way Fincher and Sorkin dramatize the phenomenon of Facebook and how it impacts the people who create it, while the greatness of Kane’s narrative consists of Orson Welles’ depiction of a brilliant and bizarre personality. I say The Social Network is merely “excellent” while Kane is “immortal” because a novel or a film can only be as great as its protagonist is compelling, and it is usually character-driven plots that remain eternally relevant and powerful. To illustrate my point through Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, is a beautiful play about the nature of love, but it can never be regarded as highly as Hamlet, in which the Bard arguably delineates his most complicated and beloved character. Consequently, even though Zuckerberg is indeed mysterious and complex, he wouldn’t be worth watching if he hadn’t founded Facebook, whereas Kane would be the stuff of poetry even if he had not preoccupied himself with “The Inquirer.”

Sean Wilentz’s New Yorker article, “Confounding Fathers,” is the most thorough and precise piece on the Tea Party movement I have encountered. It explains how the movement’s ideas are not original but rather a regurgitation of crazy conspiracy theories promulgated by the John Birch Society, and it depicts just how extreme, dangerous, apocryphal, hypocritical and, most important, pervasive they are.

Wilentz calmly describes how Glenn Beck loves to tout Birch Society books and opinions. The Society, which emerged in 1958, provided an outlet for McCarthy sympathizers. Its founder, Robert Welch, claimed that President Eisenhower spent his entire life serving as a secret Communist spy. More generally, Welch considered government to be “always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom.” In particular he saw the Progressive era as a singular threat, labeling Woodrow Wilson the man who “started this nation on its present road to totalitarianism,” mainly because he created the Federal Reserve and graduated income tax. The “master conspiracy” was allegedly hatched by the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and “Insiders” such as the Rothschilds and Rockerfellers, all bent on doing “evil work under the guise of humanitarian uplift,” as Wilentz puts it.

But the most insane and polarizing figure in connection with this movement was Willard Cleon Skousen, whose book— “The 5,000 Year Leap,” which argues that the U.S. Constitution was really founded on Biblical principles and not on the Enlightenment tradition—is at the top of Glenn Beck’s required-reading list since it is “essential to understanding why our Founders built this Republic the way they did.” To give you an idea of how paranoid and nihilistic Skousen really was, consider the following. In 1971, he started a group called the Freemen Institute, which went after: “the Environmental Protection Agency… all subsidies to farmers, all federal aid to education, all federal social welfare, foreign aid, social security, elimination of public school prayer and Bible reading, and (that familiar right-wing nemesis) the United Nations.”

Back then the Birch Society and Skousen were widely regarded as pariahs. Celebrities such as Bob Dylan and cartoonist Walt Kelly regularly poked fun at the Society’s extremist reputation, and in 1962 the American Security Council, an ultraconservative organization, kicked out Skousen, asserting that he had “gone off the deep end.” J. Edgar Hoover monitored his actions closely, noting in an F.B.I. memo that “Skousen has affiliated himself with the extreme right-wing ‘professional communists’ who are promoting their own anti-communism for obvious financial purposes.” Last, a Mormon journal called Dialogue denounced Skousen, a Mormon himself, much like Glenn Beck, for promulgating opinions that came “perilously close’ to Nazism.”

For a long time, according to Wilentz, the conservative movement was able to distance itself from these figures because of comparatively moderate leading organizers such as William F. Buckley Jr., who dismissed the Birchers as Fascists and embraced less extreme candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

But those days are long gone. Instead of the Birch Society we now have the Tea Party movement, which pushes the same outlandish conspiracy theories, revisionist interpretation of separation between Church and State, and lies about the Founding Fathers’ disdain for taxing the rich (Wilentz does a nice job at quoting Thomas Jefferson’s 1811 declaration in favor of taxing the wealthy: “the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”) Furthermore, instead of Welch and Skousen we now have Beck and Limbaugh and Palin and Hannity and O’reilly, etc. And in place of local underground get-togethers we have FOX News and blogs and forums and flamboyant Tea Party protests, which feature ugly racial slurs about Obama and Muslims, and which feature treasonous lies about the President’s citizenship. Most frightening is the fact that, to quote Wilentz, “according to a recent poll, more than 70% of Republicans support the Tea Party.”

Those who attempt to restore sanity—the would-be Buckley’s— are hastily bullied and ostracized. David Frum, who dared to speak out against Republican obstructionism of health-care reform, was promptly fired by the American Enterprise Institute; Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who lost the primary mainly because he supported Bush’s bailouts, was “confronted on the campaign trail by voters who were convinced that numbers on their Social Security cards indicated that a secret bank had bought them at birth” according to Wilentz; and Karl Rove was immediately forced to backtrack after describing Christine O’Donell as “nutty.”

How did it come to this? Wilentz offers an intriguing theory, though I disagree with it. Reagan, whom Wilentz considers a moderate, ironically paved the way for extremism because he was too successful: “no other Republican could come close to matching his public appeal and political savvy… It is the absence of a similarly totemic figure, during these past twenty years, that has allowed the resurgence of extremism.”

I blame Regan for a less ironic reason. True, his undeniable popularity has played a significant role in shaping today’s conservative agenda. But this is not because Reagan was a moderate. He may have been moderate compared to today’s establishment Republicans and Tea Party candidates, but his enduring legacy remains the radical notion that government is the problem. And this nonsense permeated Washington politics for 30 years, prompting Bill Clinton to pronounce the end of big government and inspiring Bush to casually cut taxes while starting two foreign wars, an unprecedented move (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/30/paul-krugman/krugman-says-bush-was-first-president-lead-country/), and run up record deficits for no urgent reason. Obama’s election was thought by many to restore faith in government, and the Tea Party emerged in reaction to the perceived shift. This resurgence motivated the Republicans in Congress to oppose all Obama initiatives. In ordinary times most Americans would likely shun such radicalism and obstructionism, but stubbornly high unemployment brought about by failed conservative policies have left the population confused and disenfranchised.

What we now have is the apparent rise of a dangerously extreme political force that Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, deems “unprecedented in modern American history.” To offer a glimpse of how bizarre and potent the Tea Party really is I need look no further than my family. They receive nearly all their information from Rupert Murdoch and Conservative talk radio, and they never fail to attend local Tea Party meetings and rallies. It is worth noting that they were once Democrats who praised Clinton and voted for Al Gore in 2000. But endless hours of FOX News and Rush Limbaugh later, they now regularly claim that Obama is a modern day Hitler bent on creating a Gestapo-like secret police force and obtaining power to shut down the internet whenever he wishes, “just like Hugo Chavez or China.”

Even more astonishing, my parents are in the process of purchasing guns because they fear Obama’s out to get them. In justifying this transformation—they used to speak out against owning firearms—they point to the self-contradictory theory that the Founding Fathers included the right to bear arms in the Constitution because they feared that the federal government might one day become tyrannous and the citizenry would need a means to protect itself. I say this is self-contradictory because, even though there may be some truth to this (things were much different back then http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_2nd.html), a—it implies that the Framers had little faith in their system of checks and balances and b—it makes piffle out of the Tea Party’s purported faith in the Founding Fathers’ ability to construct a properly functioning democracy. This paranoia and persecution-mania would be comical if not for the alarming fact that millions of people believe this, and a bewildered electorate appears ready to embrace such ignorance and insanity.

Check out this insane Beck rant, especially at 2:30 for his ludicrous take on how government regulation caused slavery…