http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/16/1385275/-THE-DUMBENING-How-the-Right-Deliberately-Confuses-the-Loss-of-Power-with-the-Loss-of-Liberty?detail=email
Apparently there's a new book out, by someone called Kristen Powers who is apparently a Fox News personality, called THE SILENCING: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. From what I gather, it's pretty standard concern-troll / proxy-martyr fare, viz., "The Left" doesn't like some of the things that people not of "the Left" occasionally say, and "the Left" then says things about that, therefore "the Left is Killing Free Speech."
There's no need to explain the difference between disliking and/or publicly objecting to things other people say, and "killing free speech." Or, at least, there shouldn't be. In any event that's not why I'm here today. I think I'm going to start writing my own book. I think I'll call it THE DUMBENING: How the Right Deliberately Confuses the Loss of Power with the Loss of "Liberty."
We've been hearing a lot lately -- if by "lately" we mean "since 20 January 2009" -- about the "loss" of "freedom" and "liberty," and the imposition of "tyranny," in the U.S., by the President and his ideological cohort (i.e., "the Left"). As Jon Stewart famously pointed out in 2009 and numerous times since then, there's a difference between "tyranny" and the mere fact that there are people serving in high public office for whom one did not vote in the most recent election (or, for that matter, the mere existence of civil laws during such time).
We've heard a lot about how "regulation" and other "government"-type things like taxes and the minimum wage -- which apparently didn't exist before 2009 -- deprive Job Creators™ of their economic "freedom." Most recently, the rallying cry from the Right has been that the emergence of same-sex marriage as a civil right, and the imminent decision by the Supreme Court that the states must recognize and protect that right, constitutes a grave threat to "religious liberty," as well as free speech, free association, and a host of other "freedoms" that Americans will no longer enjoy once Adam and Steve get to tie the proverbial knot.
All these complaints have one thing in common: They have nothing to do with, and do not reflect any actual loss of, "liberty" or "freedom." They are, rather, complaints about the loss of POWER. Whether it's speech, religion or economics, the GOP's cultural color-war team is losing power, not "freedom," and either can't tell the difference or is deliberately conflating the two in order to maintain and/or restore the former.
i agree with this entire narrative, i think that they are once again failing and blaming their old fall back as the reason "US". they wreck the economy and blame Pres. for not cleaning up their mess fast enough, they disenfranchise Black poor inner city neighborhoods and blame fathers that they incarcerate and make it impossible to get work, suppress their vote so they can remain the thumb on our necks, gerrymander so we lose our numbers by default of redistricting what was Black is now mostly White.
people most importantly on their side are no longer wanting to be associated with the treachery against the very people that elected them or those they silenced at the voting booth. the skulduggery used to assure they stay put and we the people as well stay where they want and put us, history will be just as long as they don't get to write it and those waking don't want to be that footnote of haters that destroyed America as advertised.
confusion is the catalyst for republican propaganda so many red meat tossers with a similar line but only the buzz words are the same that confuses the reason the buzz words cement the dog whistle message. but now that some are jumping ship it gets even more difficult because they are making sense and rebuking what has been the talking points since Nov. 4th 2008. reminds me of a song, and that was in 1970, nothing changes Pres. said "we are the change we've been waiting for" what happened have we chickened out.
