A Liberal Contemplates the State of the Republican Party.

In The Myth of the Cave, Plato lays out a quick story of a small group of prisoners shackled to a cave their entire lives, watching shadows of people moving object down a hallway, illuminated by fire flickering just out of sight. Plato explains to his friend, Glaucon, "they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave." Plato then extends his analogy and supposes one of the prisoners were to be set free. Slowly, and with great effort, he finds himself outside the cave, nearly blinded by the sunlight. However, eventually his eyes adjust and he begins to see the world as it truly is outside the cave. Of course, he celebrates in seeing the world in full light as the, "universal author of all things beautiful and right." 

"But, whether true of false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed." 

The Republicans are stupid for allowing their ideology to block out the light of reason. Yes, I know the title was meant to incite Republicans. I have to admit it, I borrowed the title from a prolific right wing author who titled an article, "Why Liberals are Stupid." Of course, Liberalism is my ideology and Republicans are members of a political party, with a diverse ideology. However, the party has let the most zealot ideologically bent members take over its leadership.

One obvious example is the recent blow up over whether RNC Chairman Michael Steele or Rush Limbaugh is the true leader and conscience of the party. Chairman Steele said on CNN, "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment... Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly." The next day Mr. Steele backed down from those remarks telling Politico, "My intent was not to go after Rush -- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."

However, Steele had it right, folks like Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly are entertainers, whose rhetoric is often incendiary, and "Yes, it is ugly." They are all very good at what they do. But, like the title of this article, they are incendiary. Incendiary rhetoric might be great for ratings on certain broadcasting spectrums, nonetheless, they have not gone over well with the average American. In fact, more and more Americans are seeing past the shadowy arguments being made by these Republican entertainers. And, thanks to the internet and google search, an ever growing number of Americans are fact checking the rhetoric and have begun to open their eyes to the truth.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are still using the same old ugly smokescreen arguments to cloud the facts. We all remember on the campaign trail Republicans spewing out a long list of false accusations to create fear and smear Obama. Obama is a terrorist, Obama is a Muslim, Obama is an Arab, Obama is not an American, Obama does not have a legal birth certificate to obtain a passport. The list goes on and on and some Republicans still believe these lies and repeat them.

Recently, our prolific right wing author claimed, once again, that the birth certificate that President Obama has presented to a host of authenticators is, "*NOT* official for obtaining such items as a passport or other government-issued identification. Sorry, but when asked the State Department actually replied that the official Birth Certificate containing the official state seal is the only accepted document and the one that the Obama campaign presented is not acceptable because it does not have the seal."

I presented him with a link to the photo of the raised seal on Obama's Birth Certificate posted at the non-partisan fact checking web site, FactCheck.org. www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html. The site is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation. Founded by life long Republican and Reagan ambassador, Walter Annenberg. The author's response was, "As far as the letigimacy [sic] of the document that has been submitted, it is NOT legal, never has been, never will be,..."

Then the Republican said something that was truly bizarre to me. He said, "Actually, it is the left who is trading in distortions at this point. Obama is a snake oil salesman using his own distortions to create fear-based support for his socialist programs. I mean where the hell did he get his most recent statistic that someone files for bankruptcy every 30 seconds? I can't even find that in the Obama Press Office (aka ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC). When his dorky spokesman was asked about that particular statistic, he said, "I don't want to deal in statistics." TRANSLATION: We don't really have that stat, we just made it up and we're going to dodge any challenges to it because challenges don't perpetuate the lie we are feeding the people.

This isn't a distortion, it's what happened. I'm just telling what I saw. Something you need to try sometime instead of relying on left-wing, liberal propaganda sites." 

I then provided this link http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/bankruptcyprof_blog/bankruptcy_statistics/.
which shows a nice graph of the 2009 bankruptcy statistics provided by the Harvard Law. The site has posted the bankruptcy statistics for January and February 2009 and state there were a total of 192,157 filed in the last two months (89,225 in January and 102,932 in February.) Now when we do the math, we find that 59 days times 1440 minutes in a day gets us to 84,960 total minutes during the period. Multiply that by two and you get 169,920 half minutes. Which means President Obama was understating the truth, and not fear mongering.

Again, when the Republican author is presented with the facts, he replies, "As for the bankruptcy bullshit, it's all wrong as well. NO ONE has ever found statistics that prove bankruptcies are files every 30 seconds. I can find just as many propaganda sites as you deano." 

Jiminy Cricket, it is not like I sent our Republican friend to MyLeftWing or the DailyKos. I sent him to the lawprofessors site which links Harvard.edu statistics and a Walter Annenberg funded political fact checking project. Of course, he never once provides his own backruptcy statistics and sources. It's like the only thing Republicans will accept as gospel are the shadow tales flickering on the walls of talk radio and FoxNews. They are too afraid to look at the light of unfamiliar knowledge for fear it will hurt. The stay chained by there ideological beliefs and create fanciful stories about the dangers outside their cave.

They seem to be more willing to spread these incendiary tales concocted by their beloved entertainers, tales often void of the light of truth, than go through the painful process of checking their facts with independent sources. Or Lord forbid, listen to someone that just might have a different view of the world. Republicans are stupid for continuing to shackle themselves by a deep ideological conviction that prevents them from considering any other point of view.

And as long as the Republicans continue to champion anti-intellectualism, they will foolishly loose ground to the Democrats, liberal progressives and libertarians. Which certainly is a good thing for me. Nonetheless, it is still painful to watch the Grand Ol' Party become nothing more than a small Group Of Prisoners chained to their ideology and devoid of any light of reason.



Dean Walker