FREE SPEECH ZONE | When the inmates run the institution

Imagine this.  A fundamentalist church hires a (closet) atheist as its new minister.  Slowly but inexorably the new minister begins preaching about the evils of belief in God.  He subtly points out the weaknesses of organized religion. And finally urges the dissolution of the congregation as a needless and wasteful exercise to society. 

Absurd? Absolutely.  But this same absurdity can happen…has happened…is happening now. And the analogy is a legitimate one. It is happening with our Federal government as the Tea Party and its followers have been elected to run our government. Indeed, they do want to run our government – run it into the ground.

What we now have in our House of Representatives is a group of people who are less interested in making government “work” than having it fail. Again, if this sounds absurd, all the facts prove otherwise. And, we let it happen.

The current House (and many right wing governors for that matter), under the guise of “fiscal responsibility” have paid far less attention to serious budget cutting, and moderation of government cutbacks in  time of recession recovery, than promoting their social agenda by selectively emasculating programs like NPR, Planned Parenthood (and abortion), EPA etc.– with more to come.  In a sense, they have used the Trojan Horse technique of looking like something else to get into the gates. And the voters, sadly, bought into that.

As Paul Ryan, architect of the Rights’ true purpose, the plans for future spending is not really a “budget” issue…it is a cause!  Like the church who would never have hired a preacher to preside over the demise of the congregation, the American voters have actually done just that!  We now have a true preacher who would systematically destroy much of the nation’s government as we know it today.  Piece by piece, but inevitably derelict. Ryan’s plans for Medicare and health care reform would essential decimate these programs. His plans are so veiled in their presentation, I doubt that even his Tea Party followers understand the ramifications – and that makes these ideologues even more dangerous (recall the Tea Party signs that ironically said “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”)

Similarly, as we have seen, Governor Walker of Wisconsin used the same technique to break the unions. The Trojan Horse of “fiscal responsibility”, but a devastating, hidden social agenda and purpose lurking inside the horse.

But there are even more dangers ahead, IF the foxes remain in the henhouse. Within the call for “deficit reduction”, there is the tried and true right wing technique of starving government programs through inadequate funding…thus promoting their failure…and then pointing out how ineffective are government programs. That is happening now all the way from public teachers, firefighters, administrators, social programs, etc on the local level, to regulatory agencies and other essential government activities on the Federal level.

What’s more, built into Ryan’s plans is the incredulous idea to drop top tax rates to 25% for the most wealthy among us – this at a time when the deficits need funding if they are to be solved, and tax rates for the rich are already at historically low levels (for the top rates, the lowest in decades).  Again, this is less about budgets and deficits, than a right wing ideology to systematically destroy the very institutions these people were elected and are being paid to preserve and improve.

Returning to the church analogy, would any congregation hire, pay, or retain the very person who either overtly or covertly would be working to destroy their church (as we have done by electing Tea Partiers)? Of course not! What would they do upon comprehending this nefarious scheme?  The answer is clear. They would fire him immediately, and use greater caution with any new leaders they would hire. We can do that too!