The stalwarts on the political right for years have been the ones to wave the U.S. Constitution in the faces of progressives, claiming that they have ventured beyond it and threaten its very existence.

Such assaults earnestly commenced during the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he sought to implement New Deal programs. The American Liberty League, consisting of the most conservative elements of the corporate community, railed against programs such as Social Security as socialistic and unconstitutional.

Presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy recognized that he was facing the same
forces that had vigorously opposed Roosevelt on Social Security as he advocated Medicare during his successful 1960 presidential campaign. Kennedy repeatedly noted that 90 percent of congressional Republicans in the mid-thirties opposed Roosevelt as he advocated Social Security and that same number opposed Medicare.

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One of the grave tragedies of our times is how Iraqi deaths receive no accountability. This occurs at the point where President Obama and others hold the U.S. out as a major source to achieve global stability.

The question is this: How can the U.S. hold itself out as a guardian of peace and security when the subject of Iraqi deaths extending from that first “shock and awe” aerial assault to the present is ignored?

It should be recalled that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to assure Americans that newly developed U.S. “smart bombs” would penetrate the forces of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but would bypass Iraq’s citizenry.

As for the U.S. dodging accountability, a comment made by General Colin Powell in the aftermath of the earlier Gulf War is instructive for the tragedy of avoiding responsibility that it denotes.

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Is Glenn Beck trying to play the race card for the benefit of his followers while being coy?

Is it mere coincidence that Beck selected the Lincoln Memorial, the venue Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. chose for his 1963 “I have a dream” speech? The date of August 28 also happens to fall on the forty-seventh anniversary of that historic speech.

Are these both coincidences, as Beck insists, or an insidious way to play to the more radical elements of the right wing fringes? Anticipating possible trouble, Beck has requested that no signs be brought to his rally.

We recall what happened at the huge Tea Party tax protest rally in Washington. Congressman John Lewis, a former aide to Martin Luther King, remarked that the reception he and another African American congressman received while seeking to enter the Capitol Building was reminiscent of the South in the sixties, when racists sought to snuff out civil rights efforts by Dr. King.

When a congressman was spat on, and this was the clear impression of those watching the tape, Tea Party supporters claimed that it was just a case of an excited tax protester accidentally unleashing some spittle.

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The Republicans as the party out of power confronting a Democratic Party that elected a president and made legislative gains in the 2008 election had history on their side approaching the 2010 national mid-term election.

Absent any analysis or factoring, parties that are out of power, in this case with Republican minorities in both houses of Congress and in the executive branch, historically odds have overwhelmingly favored the outs as opposed to the ins in mid-term elections.

The Republicans held another prospective trump card with Barack Obama presiding over turbulent economic times. This issue gave Obama a decided edge against Republican nominee John McCain in 2008. The Arizona senator was unable to shake the specter of George W. Bush Republicanism as Democratic strategists linked the aforementioned Republicans together.

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In place of approaching White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ recent well publicized rebuke of progressives in a troubling context, how about instead examining the positive side?

My response is, congratulations progressives, you earned the rebuke. Now take a well deserved bow.

How long were progressives to be expected to play the same gullible duopoly game of rigging a system for the benefit of the top one-half of one percent?

Did it occur to Gibbs and others that progressives do not fit into the passive zombie mode to which the frequent viewers of Fox News and listeners to Rush Limbaugh delightedly occupy?

In 2008 the campaign of which Gibbs was a leader stressed comprehensive change as the forces of Barack Obama sought to turn back the effort of Hillary Clinton.

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Shock resounded through America when it was learned that waterboarding and rendition were among the international crimes being conducted on the pretext of fighting the war on terror.

The 9/11 tragedies had been used in addition to generating the Iraq War to justify virtually any action, no matter how contrary to the U.S. Constitution and international law.

The government run by executive office signing statements engaged in preventive detention, electronic surveillance and dropping into residences when the occupants are out, all without court orders.

There was even the removal of materials to be later used as evidence without legal remedy based on these home invasions, the same province that was supposed to be a citizen’s castle.

In addition, there was rummaging through library records of private citizens once again without a court order signed by a magistrate.

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When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960 he used to say, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a good neighbor in Latin America because he was a good neighbor right here at home.”

Kennedy was referring to Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy which increased America’s popularity to people in that region. The future president was correct in citing the connection between how people of other nations see us relative to what we are doing at home, and the parallel between adopting a humane attitude domestically and extending it to other nations with which we interact.

Now we are regrettably in a negative cycle in which other nations see America as marauders based not on what the typical American has done, except in instances where voters have overlooked the obvious when some kind of choice was afforded, but what has been done in the name of greed to serve the interest of a tiny handful.

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There was one line in Oliver Stone’s perceptive 1986 film “Salvador” that capsulated the tragic American post-World War Two road to economic calamity.

James Belushi, playing the sidekick to James Woods, who seeks to resuscitate his career as an international political reporter amid the dangers of war torn El Salvador, asked Woods an important question of what it says about America’s and the world’s future when the U.S. was preparing to elect “a guy who played straight man to a chimp.”

The scene occurred on Election Day 1980. Belushi and Woods were attending a party given by the American Embassy in San Salvador to view U.S. election results.

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