McCarthyism is alive and well





On the Fourth of July, many lawmakers set aside partisan disagreements in favor of sweeping tributes to American freedom. But not Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), who couldn't keep his abhorrence of Americans who disagree with his political views out of his invocation at a barbecue hosted by the Cobb County GOP. [...] U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens), who delivered the invocation, warned about the future of the U.S. "We're standing on the precipice, staring down in the deep chasm of socialism and total government control," Broun said. [...] There are those who wish to destroy the U.S., Broun said, citing radical Islam and "progressives." "Father, there are many who want to destroy us from outside this nation," Broun said. "Folks like al-Qaeda and the radical Islamists. But there are folks that want to destroy us from inside, the progressives and the socialists, who want to make this nation a nation that's no longer under you, under God, but a nation that's ruled by man."



Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is a gigantic ass. There, I just saved you a few paragraphs of reading. But if you care to know more, here it is

I think spending the 4th of July at a GOP-sponsored barbeque while offering a prayer to God against progressive Americans who are like al-Qaeda is quote possibly the most awesome God-fearing and flag-waving thing I can think of. The only thing it lacks is that Rep. Broun should have been wearing a giant red-white-and-blue painted crucifix, and he should have been riding in a pickup truck that was jumping a pit full of flamethrower-wielding lions, and the pickup truck should have a picture painted on the tailgate of Jesus and Ronald Reagan high-fiving each other.

Honestly, I tire of even trying to make fun of these people's behavior, much less rationalizing it.

One of the features of the post-9/11 Bush years was all the conservatives that would tell us, in matter-of-fact terms, that they owned patriotism. This was a hallmark of ... well, of everything, I suppose, from "Freedom Fries" to any discussion about the merits of invading Iraq, and the reason why wiretapping citizens was fine, and the reason why torturing suspects was good and just. Fox News figures like Sean Hannity and (sigh) Glenn Beck put on their own 9/11-themed events, little patriotic circuses of music and grousing about the non-freedom-loving liberals. Those people in New York and Washington—they aren't the patriots. We conservatives are the patriots! And when it finally became clear that 9/11, the day, wasn't being relinquished to the conservatives without a fight, Glenn Beck started talking about 9/12. It was to be a newly branded day that conservatives could organize around and keep for themselves, a glorious reminder of that one great day when all of America was united in ... unquestionably doing whatever the conservative guy said, I think. It was unclear.

So having a United States congressman (sigh) comparing "progressive" and "socialist" fellow Americans to terrorists, and stating directly (to God Himself, no less!) that they seek to "destroy us from inside"—it isn't even new. It's just garden-variety crazy from a movement that prides itself on promoting frothing anger against their own government and their own citizens. Anger against workers, anger against taxes, anger against minorities, anger against their political opponents, anger that corporations have to follow regulations, anger that states can't nullify laws they don't like, and so on.

There was a hint that this sort of rhetoric might finally be shamed into partial submission once all involved parties started distancing themselves from the Bush years, much as the same nasty rhetoric was shamed into submission at the close of the McCarthy era. No such luck; the Tea Partiers came along (i.e. post-Bush conservatives who were too humiliated by conservatism's multiple spectacular Bush-era failures to call themselves "conservative" any longer) and they were damn sure that they were the only ones that truly represented America, and everyone else was, yep, a traitor. A Redcoat, no less! Although nobody could quite tell what it was this new movement of "patriots" were supposed to be representing—anger management issues, closet racism, and an affinity for hats, mostly—the only thing that the movement was truly certain of from the beginning was that they were the true inheritors of patriotism.

So the drumbeat goes on, and people like Rep. Paul Broun spend their 4th of July celebrations offering prayers to God against their political rivals, and somewhere up there in the sky a little patriotic angel loses its wings.