Op Ed: A Nation Long-Seduced,
Finally Wary, Ready
To Restore People-Control

Neo-Cons Forced To Face Consequences of Thirty-Year Plot, Reagan’s Union-Bashing, Corporate Perversions Under Bush I and II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington DC in 1934. Photo courtesy: National archives

(BEND, Ore.) - "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Those famous words echo loudly today across this entire nation with consequential events demanding immediate drastic attention --by entirely appropriate democratic action-- from every thinking American still capable of understanding their momentous impact.

The first in this duo of Op Eds was called forth by pressing, near-desperate priorities now abundantly clear for our democracy and our remaining liberties. The portentous words and wisdom summarized below from a wide variety of published sources will clarify from whence these damnable consequences came, and by whose actions these calamities were made inevitable.

These events are all much more painful than need ever be our case --despite inescapable trends in our 21st Century world.

Let’s start with the now-established fact of a planned thirty-year crusade by the GOP to take over domination of the nation’s media in all possible channels, for partisan political purposes; with solid support from a group of Far Right billionaires using their deep resources to infiltrate, surround and overwhelm then-current “nonpartisan” foundations and think-tanks supporting non-partisan work.

These money-men immediately created multiple new “deeply “conservative” institutions in depth, abundantly providing cover and concealment for heavy money-flows furnishing paid-for “academic” support, “to provide acceptance by the free press and public”.

Never was this crusade intended to extend and strengthen our democracy as inherited in principle from the Founders. From its very start it built then-still politically respectable GOP into partisan-based supremacy over all other groups; for just so long as million/dollar/manipulation could provide; at any cost; using any weapons whatsoever --remorselessly applied.

That confrontational, combative controlling attitude is root-source of ostensible “political-principle differences” falsely cited ever since; defeating cooperative creation of solid governance actions at every political level from city halls to sate legislatures; and including Congress itself --at whatever dollar/costs.

In Oregon we’ve long observed decades of defeat, demolition of essential governance actions and frustration of conscientious elected officials, due to that “win at any cost” approach; including denial strongly-promised cooperation by those clearly controlled from D.C. for damaging partisan purposes.

Multiple private and many public open pronouncements make those points entirely visible, well-known to historic recorders. Findings are fully available in a whole series of studies, reports, books and other publications now --many consulted for this Op Ed.

Driving GOP-motivation was to seek, pursue and seize power, simple if NOT pure!, for objectives fully stated by a controlling Republican Party clique.

With “the arrival and conquest over all other Republicans of the neo-cons”, the most-damaging inevitable plunge to the bottom of the political barrel followed; denying and defying “professed democratic ideals and basic principles of the original Republicans.”

BUT with essentially the same goals of power over all, perverted by libertarian and other neo-con “principles”, including erroneous and extremely damaging “supply-side” economics perpetrated in the Reagan era.

“Neo-cons” have extremely different ideals and ideas in mind than did our Founders --as we saw all too clearly in “GOP leader dominance” denigrated into “clear, if not clean, neo-con ascendancy”-- with first distortion and then perversion at every level and in every way possible.

Perversion arrived and continues, driven relentlessly by “corporate campaign contributions”, made possible by “widely-recognized Supreme Court ‘precedent-failures on heavily-subsidized court cases’ involving the First and Fourteenth Amendments”.

Those notorious cases, “originating in Gilded Age context of railroad-development shenanigans and pay-offs now historically recognized”, bestowed “person-hood” on a “traditional corporate form recognized as only a legal fiction” for more than a century.

Major steps and stages in this damaging attack on American democracy began even before Reagan’s flawed “administration”. Rising power of corporate business interests culminated in “Gilded Age confrontations” clearly reflected in President Theodore Roosevelt’s historic controlling actions for “malefactors of great wealth”.

From Time magazine archives, here’s a telling description: “...the Northern Securities merger of 1901 created the greatest transport combine in the world, controlling commerce from Chicago to China."

T.R. busted it. In doing so he burnished himself with instant glory as the champion of American individual enterprise against corporate "malefactors of great wealth."

That reputation suited him just fine, although he privately believed in Big Business and was just as wary of unrestrained, amateurish competition.

"All he wanted to establish, early in his first term, was government's right to regulate rampant entrepreneurship,“ noted writer Edmund Morris, who won a Pulitzer for his biography of Teddy Roosevelt; he is also author of a biography of Ronald Reagan.

That trend gained speed and impact again with Reagan’s historic attack on unions and middle-class America by his smiling insistence on tax cuts for the rich and well-connected, while brutally repelling any union gains.

Meanwhile, he and a GOP-controlled Congress committed record national budget deficits by unrestrained spending and lavish monies for massive military forces.

David Stockman, Reagan’s Budge Director, confessed years later the process was intended to create an impossible funding situation for Congress; and also: To furnish easy proof for neo-con principles of much smaller government, forced by impossible-to-fund social trends and conditions. “It got out of hand,” Stockman states--as it most assuredly did!

We are still paying interest-costs on those huge deficits, invisible as ongoing charges on national borrowings in our national budgets till this day.

One does not achieve then-world/record budget deficits by simple error of omission or commission. It demands knowing actions, with close attention to the process itself, full of warning points and departures, with each direction chosen knowingly.

Even his VP-to be, Bush Senior, anointed the proceedings shaping the economy with the now-notorious nickname: “Voodoo economics”.

Which prompted a current economist to paraphrase that one as “deep voodoo”, referring to our current continuing consequential dilemma.

For clarity of statement, we return to our original reporter in Op Ed I, David Brock:

“The implications of this right-wing media incursion extend well beyond particular political outcomes to the heart of our democracy. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. The conscious effort by the right wing to misinform the American citizenry --to collapse the distinction between journalism and propaganda-- is thus an assault on democracy itself.”

Any observer today will feel the same way. Reviewing deep-piled press reports, authoritative new studies, and many-more books now available; all examining the deep wounds inflicted on our Constitution by both of the Bush “administrations”; makes that essentially and inevitably unavoidable.

We leave the distressing details to your own examination.

The Bush and Reagan families were exceedingly well-connected with the elite class and cooperating corporate power-people, for which their many actions in public office were of great value in dollars and retention of status and power.

Current controversy over George W. Bush’s sole legislative “achievement” --No Child Left Behind-- provides intriguing information on long-continued historic-record circumstances: the theme of a forthcoming critical examination Op Ed report.

One final insightful comment remains to be recorded herein for your thoughtful repose. Here it is:
“Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
---Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

=============== Reader’s Note: This Op Ed summarizes for your review the essential contents of a whole series of new historically sensitive and extensive publications of record --books, magazine and daily newspaper investigative reports and other sources, many from Internet search-- on this most-essential shaping-sequence in our American history.

The entire list of references is on file with Editors of S-N, available on request, since too lengthy for publication here. See particularly: GANGS OF AMERICA: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy; Ted Nace; ISBN 1-57675-260-7. Quotations are verbatim, summarized or shortened; sources and complete statements available on request.

S-N Op Eds are professionally-prepared “opinion” built on these multiple public sources, then reported for your own open check with sources available to you. An Op Ed explaining the process in detail is available on request.