"second thoughters..."

Among the Teabaggers

Horowitz assured the audience repeatedly that he knew what was really going on with the communists because he’d been there and seen the light—a special envoy, as it were. He and a few others were “second thoughters.” He talked about the Manichaeism of the Democrat/communists and how they saw the world in dangerous, simplistic, religious terms. Earlier in his talk, to get things warmed up, he’d said the Democrats were the serpent in the Garden of Eden, wanting to be as gods. The audience loved this. His two great enemies are the Muslim world, determined to wipe Israel and the United States off the map, and the Democrat/communists, infiltrating every corner of American life. Horowitz seemed genuinely passionate about the communist stuff but he didn’t look as menacing as McCarthy. No firm numbers on the infiltration either, though liberal academia, another bête noire, is filled to the brim.

The Tea Party is not a dangerous or powerful movement but, as others have pointed out, prone to capture or influence by venomous oddballs like Horowitz with more clearly delineated right wing agendas. There is too much muddled thinking, lack of focus and old age to solidify into a strong independent movement. What likely will happen is that their angry, confused energy will be swallowed by an increasingly right wing Republican Party, the Patraeuses and Palins, resulting in a stronger, deadlier version of business as usual. The Teabaggers have at least one thing right: our present government is an enemy. But like any gusher without real direction, they’ll likely as not get swept away by a stronger, loopier current.

If you shake your head and roll your eyes at the nonsense coming out of the Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin and other intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ... If you have thoughts of moving abroad after the latest silly lies and fantasies like “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama the antichrist” ... If you share Noam Chomsky’s feeling: "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime” ... keep in mind that the right wing has long been at least as stupid and as mean-spirited. Consider some of the behavior of the same types for half a century during the Cold War with its beloved -- albeit imaginary -- "International Communist Conspiracy”....

Anti-communism continues to have a detrimental effect upon the intelligence and honesty of Americans. In April, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the Castro brothers "do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States because they would then lose all the excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years."

She doesn’t believe that herself. But she thinks the rest or us are stupid enough to swallow it. If she did believe it, she’d advocate normalization of US-Cuban relations just to stick it to the Castros and show them up for the frauds she says they are. In effect the American Secretary of State declared that the central element of US Cuba policy for 50 years has done exactly the opposite of what it was intended to accomplish. Washington, for all practical purposes, has been a loyal -- if unwitting -- ally of the Havana regime.

Their latest calling card is a headline in the Washington Post: “THE NEW CULTURE WAR,” with “CULTURE WAR” spelled out in blood red letters. The subhead: “On one side, the forces of free enterprise. On the other, an expanding and paternalistic government. It’s time to choose.”

It sounds like the Tea Party, alright; something you’d hear from Glenn Beck or Limbaugh. But in fact it was emblazoned across the top of the Post’s Sunday Outlook section, probably the most influential opinion page of all for the nation’s centrist inside-the-beltway political elite.

And the author is no Tea Party or FoxNews lunatic fringer. He is Arthur C. Brooks, president of the neoconservatives’ flagship institution, the widely-respected American Enterprise Institute. His WaPo article is a juicy free advertisement for his new book, The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future. And he’s got some fancy friends endorsing it.

“This is the playbook for the resurgence of the conservative movement,” says none other than Dick Cheney, on the book jacket. It’s “a must-read for conservatives who want our movement to dominate,” exclaims a blurb from Karl Rove.