EMPORIA, Kan. - Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation appeared last week at the Granada Theater as part of the E.S.U. "Lectures on Liberty" series (funded in part by a grant from the Fred & Mary Koch Foundation) and asserted that the Progressive Movement has been undermining the foundations of American democracy in favor of Western European style socialism since its inception at the beginning of 19th Century.
In my opinion, it is Mr. Spalding and his Neo-Conservative, Tea Party, fringe ilk which are the more serious threat to our cherished freedoms. While raving against the current health care bill as an assault on personal liberty, he failed to mention that traditional popular policies such as Medicare and Social Security are as much a product of Progressivism as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s or the trust busting of Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president who later founded the Progressive Party with the assistance of William Allen White, at the beginning of the last century.
The Heritage Foundation is little more than an intellectually dishonest front for corporate interests and their Neo-Con shills which seeks to mislead the public with fearmongering and demagoguery. You want proof? Less than six months ago, the Heritage Foundation heralded as "young and brave journalists" the activists who engaged in secret videotaping of employees of the liberal, non-profit community organizing group, A.C.O.R.N., while disguised as a prostitute and her pimp supposedly seeking assistance in obtaining federal grants for their "small business." The activists became darlings of the neo-conservatives on talk radio and in Congress so much so that 31 House Republicans cosponsored a resolution in their honor and A.C.O.R.N. was threatened with the loss of all federal funding. A subsequent internal investigation conducted by former Massachuetts Attorney General, Scott Harshbarger, concluded that while management and oversight were lax, no laws were broken. The Congressional Research Service recently announced that it too had found no violations of federal voting laws but that the filmmaker himself may have violated state privacy laws. Keep in mind that when Congress voted to block funding for ACORN, the legislation was quickly overturned by the judiciary as a "bill of attainder"--one of the specific prohibitions included by the framers of the Constitution in support of individual liberty.
How richly ironic then was the recent news that the leader of the group along with three others with extensive ties to the Conservative Movement, was arrested on federal felony charges of attempting to bug the New Orleans' office of Democratic Senator, Mary Landreau. If you think this sounds a lot like the original Watergate conspiracy, one of the greatest threats to American democracy in our lifetimes, you're not alone. The citizens of Kansas know better than to be taken in by a charlatan like Matthew Spalding.
Do the citizens of Kansas know better???? Carrying a banner claiming Fundamental, Conservative Republican gives you a 3 to 1 advantage at the poles before the campaign even begins. Those odds are pretty discouraging.
How do we find enough people willing to speak up and how do we find and support someone willing to put their names on the line?