“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the
beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our [far right conservative] leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
That was said by Paul Weyrich (pictured appropriately on the far right). He died in 2008 but his absolutist attitude and his vision of a right-wing Christian America run by the wealthy and forced upon everyone else lives on. You can find it prominently applied through the efforts of at least 22 Republican state legislatures working diligently right now to prevent poor people, the elderly and minorities from voting.
You might be fooled by the names of some patriotic sounding organizations, like The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Free Congress Foundation, all of which Weyrich co-founded. You’ll only find them patriotic, though, if you are a rich person who likes to dominate and control other people and for whom greed is a key personal value.
The people at these organizations are fighting to create an America that is like the Gilded Age, a time in America when the wealthy had all the advantages and everyone else suffered. Over the past 30 years the far righties have done a very good job of incrementally moving America in that direction. They have managed to bring us laws that have made sure that our largest, most profitable industries continue to get billions of dollars in tax breaks, even as our small businesses and middle class families deal with recession and economic despair but still pay their taxes. They have helped to engineer the removal of protections of the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat and they have abandoned the anti-trust regulations that would otherwise protect us from the pirates who are too big to fail.
Worst of all, they have been a driving force in making sure that much of our congress is bought and paid for by big money interests, all to the detriment of 99% of Americans. Their purchase guarantees no reforms of their freedom robbing ways and a one-way ticket to subsistence living for you. They have institutionalized that big money influence through legislation and through the democracy destroying Citizens United case decided by five radical Supreme Court justices.
The Paul Weyrich protégés at ALEC are hard at work engineering an authoritarian feudal system for the benefit of only the richest, run by people who allow no room for your differing opinion and who do not care about your suffering. And they might get their way because the, “. . . [far right conservative] leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” If that happens they will win and you will lose and you will not like what happens. It will be chilling, like a horror movie made real.
Yet, at least for now the future is still in our hands and we can make this an America for all of us. It’s that “ . . . freedom and justice for all” part of the Pledge of Allegiance and there really is only one way to stop the Weyrich big money madness and set America back on track.
On November 6, 2012 you get to decide the future we’ll create for you, your children and your grandchildren. All you have to do is show up and vote. Put it on your calendar right now.
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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