The Destruction Of The Middle Class And Of Public Education Isn't About Mormons Or Other Religious Organizations, It's About Conservative Governance

Same as Rahm and Obama?

My best bud, Roland, is a dedicated public school teacher in Compton. He called this morning to tell me all his colleagues were buzzing about Utah Republicans trying to eliminate the 12th grade. "They don't know about the Mormons," he said; "never gave it much thought except how they put up the money to defeat gay marriage." I guess they never saw September Dawn and don't watch Big Love, South Park or... this (which has been removed, under pressure, from both YouTube and Vimeo and is only available in freer countries, in this case, France).

The bill, temporarily withdrawn, is the brainchild of arch conservative Republican Sen. Chris Buttars, an implacable, hate-filled foe of public education, gays, minorities. What I explained to Roland today is that organized, hierarchal religious organizations are, by their nature, supporters of the status quo and extremely conservative. Obvious scams like Mormonism and Scientology may seem more ridiculous and absurd than most of these organizations but they aren't inherently any more or less conservative. Each, though, requires followers with no capacity for critical thought. It is why education has always been a target of hatred for religious organizations and for conservatives. Buttars is hardly the first right-wing extremist to persuade ordinary voters that education isn't the way out of poverty for their children, but some kind of dark, conspiratorial enemy.

It's widely acknowledged in Washington that Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is the least intelligent member of Congress. She has no influence at all and is generally thought of as an embarrassing laughing stock-- by her own Republican caucus! But she has been a successful politician in a sprawling, rural North Carolina district and has campaigned-- with a straight face-- against public education (and public everything else), even as the public has paid for her own education (a bad deal for everyone all around), for her healthcare and her family's healthcare and, in fact, has paid her salary for 27 years. Foxx recognizes that an educated population is the enemy of conservatism and it's why she-- and Buttars and Republicans like them-- are always trying to undermine public education.

As I mentioned before, I'm finding a great deal of insight in Thom Hartmann's latest book, Threshold-- The Crisis Of Western Culture. Let me share with you a few paragraphs that pertain to the threat to society by the kind of destructive conservatism represented by extremists like Buttars and Foxx. Hartmann framed his argument in the light of Bill Clinton's New Covenant speech at Georgetown University in the fall of 1991 and then goes on to explain the nature of conservatism from there.

Americans loved [the speech]. A majority of voters in 1992 were old enough to remember what America was like under the 1940-1981 New Deal era, when a single worker with a good job had health care, a pension, and could raise a family and buy a home; when the GI bill educated millions; when hospitals and health insurance companies in nearly every state were required by law to be not-for-profit organizations, and health care was inexpensive and widely available.

And they noticed that the twelve years of Reagan and Bush had begun the process of shattering that historic era; that the middle class was slipping away; that government had become remote and hostile rather than protecting the rights of workers and the middle class.

Americans elected Clinton based on his FDR-style rhetoric. They were looking forward to a return to the golden age of America's middle class. They were ready for the New Covenant, and, apparently, so was Bill Clinton-- there is every sign that he actually believed his own rhetoric. On all this, he won the election in November, and spent that month and December preparing his New Covenant programs to restore the American middle class.

Until January.

As Adam Curtis brilliantly points out in a special documentary series he did for the BBC titled The Trap, a few weeks before Bill Clinton was to be sworn into office as president of the United States, he was visited by Goldman, Sachs CEO Robert Rubin (who had just taken a $40 million paycheck for his last year with Goldman, and would soon become the head of Clinton's economic team tasked with carrying out the "New Covenant") and Alan Greenspan.

Rubin and Greenspan sat the young new president down and told him the facts of life as they saw them. Clinton would not govern as an FDR liberal; instead he must cut government, "free" trade, and reduce regulation of business.

Clinton complied, and has been richly rewarded. In his second inaugural address, he declared, "The era of big government is over."

The philosophy represented by Rubin and Greenspan doesn't believe in government as a solution to much of anything other than wars and crime. As true classic conservatives in the mold of Sir Edmund Burke and Thomas Hobbes, many modern libertarians and neoliberals don't even believe in democracy (as any libertarian will honestly admit: they call it "the tyranny of the majority"). Instead, because they believe in the inherently evil nature of most humans, they held that a small ruling elite of "good people," and "wise people," must concentrate wealth and power (the first fuels the second, by and large) in a small number of hands, out of the reach of what the first American conservative president John Adams called "the rabble" (us!).

The Curtis series that Hartmann refers to, The Trap, is available, in pieces, on YouTube. I grabbed one so you'll get an idea, although it's important to watch the whole thing. I think if you watch this segment, you will (unless you're so overwhelmed with grief that you just can't):