The asshole Allen West - god forbid we should have social and economic justice

i don't ordinarily comment on the constant stream of bullshit associated with the left/right, democratic/republican, progressive/conservative divide but i find this deeply troubling...

Rep. Allen West: Thin line between communism and progressivism

Rep. Allen West, a tea party Republican from Florida, said Tuesday that he did not regret describing the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as communists.

At a forum, he called on journalists to study the political spectrum of ideologies and claimed that in the early 1900s, American communists called themselves progressives.

“There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, Socialism,” West said. “It’s about nationalizing production, it’s about creating and expanding the welfare state, it’s about this idea of social and economic justice… it is also about the creation of a secular state.”

oooooo... social and economic justice... the horror...!

i know that finding individuals of limited intellectual capability and myopic views representing the people of this country in the united states congress is not uncommon... it's when they seem to be deliberately trying to incite fear and promote divisiveness that it crosses the line...

i lived through the cold war and the "better dead than red" era and to have that kind of demonization being revived is not at all where we need to be... there has been a time or two when, in my training classes and leadership teaching, i've been accused of being a communist for my obvious preferences for workplace democracy... rather than declare a belief in the status quo of an authoritarian, command and control organization that allows those at the top to maintain a grip on money and power, it's easier to mount ad hominem attacks...

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"A system called 'democracy' now gives peasants something called 'the vote'”

newsweek's howard fineman on bush's suicide mission on immigration policy...

Though I’ve never heard him use the term, my guess is that George W. Bush sees himself as a hacendado, an estate owner in Old Mexico.

That would give him a sense of Southwestern noblesse, duty-bound not just to work “his” people, but to protect them as well.

His advisor, Carlo Rove, has explained that a system called “democracy” now gives peasants something called “the vote.” It would be shrewd, Rove said, for hacendados to grant their workers’ citizenship.

That’s the best explanation I have for why Bush is in the midst of what may be a suicide mission on immigration policy—embarrassing for him and ruinous for his party.

fineman nails it with the "us vs. them" thinking, but fails completely to point out just who has been pouring gasoline on that fire virtually every day since 9/11...

As always, conservatives, who thrive on alienation, are spoiling for a fight. Now they have found it. Among the branch of conservatism fixed on “Us v Them” thinking, the enemy for decades was Communism. After the fall of The Wall, the “neocons” found a replacement Them in jihadist Islam. The old America-Firsters—what we used to call “isolationists,” who distrust foreign commitments—now have a homeland Them, in the form of 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most from Mexico.

i would hope george would feel free to embark on as many of these "suicide missions" as he cares to... the sooner he succeeds, the better off the country and the rest of the world will be...

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