The Rise of the Right Wing?

The news media has embraced the tea party movement. It is about the ratings; the tea party folks are outrageous enough to make good copy. In rational times the antics of the right wing are considered comical, but do not get me started on that. Let me just say that the news media is taking this bad joke far too seriously. Chris Mathews of MSNBC is even airing a series on the rise of the right wing. What strikes me is that everyone seems to be treating the right wing's paranoid, reactionary expressions of anger as though they were something we have not seen before. Could our collective memory really be that short?

The right wing has always been with us. We do not have to look very far back in our history to find examples of when the right wing set the political agenda. It was the right wing that supported and encouraged the witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Those witch hunts were a national disgrace and were soon seen as such. When McCarthy was discredited, the right wing faded into the background. They were resurrected when Barry Goldwater ran for President against Lyndon Johnson. The John Birch Society and other paranoid right wingers did not merely campaign for Mr. Goldwater they crusaded for him. In fairness to Mr. Goldwater, I do not think he intentionally fed their paranoia. His problem was that he espoused the same laissez faire government policies that resulted in the great depression. He did so at a time when there were too many voters who had worked far too hard to build prosperity after World War II, and those voters quite correctly rejected his failed philosophy. Mr. Goldwater’s crushing defeat was strong evidence that the vast majority of the people viewed the Birchers and such as being ludicrous. They were a bad joke, and they were dangerous.

Lyndon Johnson’s administration took place at a time of unprecedented prosperity. With so many people earning so much money, poverty had become intolerable. This was particularly true of poverty caused by racial discrimination. They who had been trickled down on were now fighting back. Much to our nation’s credit the majority of the people saw the injustices and supported measures designed to build a more equitable society. The cost of the programs Mr. Johnson put forth to address this issue were well within the means of the middle class, which comprised the largest part of our tax base. Buying a Ford rather than a Cadillac as your second car was no great sacrifice. Unfortunately, nineteen sixty-eight was the high water mark of real wages. Real wages have been slipping ever since, and it was not long before the middle class was feeling the burden of paying for the social programs of the Johnson administration.

Ronald Reagan was a reaction to Mr. Johnson’s great society. Mr. Reagan proclaimed that government was the problem rather than the solution. If Mr. Reagan had simply scaled back those social programs, he might have been the great President the Republicans say he was. Unfortunately, he went much farther than that. One of the things our founding fathers frequently expressed was their fear of the passions of the masses. That seems quaint now, but they had a point. The pendulum frequently swings too far in either direction. Mr. Reagan was not merely a conservative; he was a reactionary. He gave a large tax break to the rich, and this resulted in the largest deficit we had ever had. Furthermore, his anti-government rhetoric emboldened and empowered the same sort of people who were Birchers when Mr. Goldwater ran for President.

What Mr. Reagan ushered in was a strong slide to the right rather than an avalanche. The avalanche would take place under George W. Bush. One would still have to be in diapers in order to deny the destructive power of this avalanche. It resulted in the economic malaise we are dealing with today! An earlier generation rejected the failed philosophy of the Republican Party's laissez faire government when it elected Franklin Roosevelt. The current generation rejected that philosophy again when it elected Barak Obama. I hope I am correct in my belief that what we are witnessing in regard to the tea party movement is simply the right wing throwing a fit about this rejection.

The caveat is that the right wing will always be with us. If the voters give in to their frustration over the slow progress of the economic recovery and they vote against incumbents simply because they are incumbents, the right wing will win. If the voters stay home on election day, the right wing will also win. As I have said before, the upcoming elections are a political IQ test. If the middle class of this nation is going to recover and survive, it must push the right wing to the sidelines again. The middle class must actively support the changes it voted for when it elected Barak Obama. It must get out and vote for progressive candidates who know that British Petroleum, Goldman Sachs, AIG, et al have to be regulated and that the government must take an active role in rebuilding our economy!