Re: Information on NCLB

[Victor Steinbok <victor.steinbok@verizon.net>]

At 10:22 AM 3/18/2004, George K Cunningham wrote:
> And you should have informed us that ALEC lists People for the American
> Way as a left wing organization.  So what.

George, let's start from the end, shall we? First, quit including nested 
quotation in your messages--and that goes for the rest of the bunch as 
well, so don't just think I am being hard on poor ol' George here--it may 
appear that you expect that people will be more likely to read the drivel 
the second time around. They are not--it only clogs up the mail traffic.

Second, let me digress for a moment. I make it a habit to periodically 
check information from various viewpoints--if nothing else, it reminds me 
what I have to deal with. As a part of this routine, I usually have talk 
radio on in the car. There are usually two or three stations to choose 
from--Rush Limbaugh on one opposite to Bill O'Reilly on another, that's 
basically the extent of the choices. Some of these loons are more rabid 
than others. One consistently repeats his mantra that "Democrats are 
liberals, liberals are Communists, Communists are Marxists, and Marxists 
are Stalinists!" We are supposed to conclude from that tirade that 
Democrat=Stalinist. The fact that he got the logical chain of implication 
backwards is completely glossed over.

Let's make it very clear--"liberal" is only a dirty word among extreme 
conservatives. More specifically, it is problematic for a very small 
fringe, radical group that managed to get their propaganda machine work 
well enough to convince a substantial portion of the voting public that 
they share views with them. That particular fringe group is what most 
sensible people usually refer to as "the right wing". What their own 
opinion is of political affiliations of the majority is, quite bluntly, 
irrelevant--the Nazis considered all who disagreed with them "communist 
sympathizers" and the term used in this country was "fellow travelers". The 
reality is that the accusers themselves are more like the fascist groups of 
the 1930s Europe, like Stalinists, like Maoists. Had they been able to 
carry out their agenda to the fullest, we'd be a totalitarian terror state 
right now--fortunately, their are constitutional protections that prevent 
that from happening (but should they dislike what the constitutional 
implications are, they are all too eager to dump the Constitution--hence 
the school prayer "amendment", the flag-burning amendment, the marriage 
amendment). When we come across similar groups in other parts of the world, 
we call them "fundamentalists", "extremists", "fanatics". What's good for 
the goose...

Let's ignore, for the moment, what PFAW has to say on ANY subject. ALEC is 
still a RIGHT-WING group and an unapologetic one at that.

        VS-)