The Nation gets regressive

When it was founded in 1865 in the ashes of the Civil War, The Nation magazine had a noble mission statement.

“The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred,” says an excerpt from the magazine’s founding prospectus.

Needless to say, things have changed mightily in the 136 years since this magazine was launched, as have the political ideologies its writers and editors espouse. No longer is it a bastion of political thought free of so-called “party influence.”

In fact, if you heard Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel debating a National Review magazine editor on Tuesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” which was hosted by former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, you should have no doubt that today’s Nation magazine is clearly on the side of Democrats, liberals and assorted leftist ideologues.

Here is just a smattering of what’s being offered by The Nation in its latest edition:

• A hit piece on President Bush, called, “Bush Vs. Green,” criticizing the president’s supposedly anti-environment agenda. Author Barbara Kingsolver echoed a now-infamous liberal-left line in her “call-to-action” letter: “He’s not my president. Most of us didn’t actually vote for the guy. …” Remember how leftists vilified conservatives who said the same thing about Clinton?
• A hit piece on Bush and the GOP, called, “How the GOP Gamed the System in Florida”; yet another leftist whine about how “those nasty Republicans cheated us out of victory last election.” Please, Nation — can you give it a rest?
• A hit piece on big business, called, “Sovereign Corporations”; big business is, dontcha know, a Republican problem, yet no liberal I know of has ever questioned “Camelot” holdover Sen. Ted Kennedy, or House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, or Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, or any number of other “economically stable” rich white guy Democrats about their huge big-business interests, holdings and corporate donors.
• Another hit piece, albeit indirectly, against Bush and the GOP for winning the November election, touting The Nation’s involvement in a new “election reform” effort. Makes me wonder if Nation editors would have given a damn about this issue if Gore had won.

• A hit editorial on Bush, accusing him of giving undue consideration to “former Iran-Contra operatives.” In the piece, writer Peter Kornbluh says those appointments “resurrect the ghosts of America’s scandal-ridden past,” leaving readers the impression that Iran-Contra was the only scandal the country endured over the past 15 years. Hey, Pete — does the name “Clinton” ring a bell? Kornbluh also repeated the tired liberal-leftist mantra regarding Bush’s very legitimate election win: “The nomination of Otto Reich to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere is even more offensive to international and domestic principles. A longtime anti-Castro Cuban-American, Reich is backed by Senator Jesse Helms and the hard-line exile groups that want political payback for giving Bush his real or imagined margin of victory in Florida.”

Get the picture? Today’s Nation magazine is anything but the bastion of independence it proclaimed to be when it first went to ink.

In fact, it is so solidly in the corner of the worst elements of the Democrat Party — the extreme leftist-socialist-fascist wing — that it is evident throughout most of the work The Nation and groups it associates with are doing.

In case you’re wondering how to spot these virulent anti-American leftists, they are the ones who refer to their political ideology as “progressive.” They call themselves “progressives”; they use the word to describe their side of the political issues; and, in The Nation’s case, the term is spread throughout the magazine’s print and spoken verbiage like a cancer.

During the “Factor” interview, editor vanden Heuvel used the term at least a dozen times. And on the Web page touting the electoral reform, The Nation proudly associates itself with the umbrella group spearheading the effort called “Progressive Challenge.”

Involved in that effort, including others, is the House Progressive Caucus, a collection of about 58 ultra-leftist lawmakers whose policy priorities, legislative initiatives and political ideology are more representative of World War II-era fascism than American constitutional republicanism. It is no surprise to me that this “caucus” is described in detail on the Democratic Socialists of America website.

These lawmakers have no problems with the vast, powerful and profitable reach of American business and corporate interests; they just want to control them, extort them and transfer their wealth to “those who need it most” — namely, themselves and groups who sponsor them. Pretty clever, huh?

These lawmakers and the groups they work with support such socialist, quasi-fascist (and Democratic Party-sponsored) legislation as raising the minimum wage (again and again); ending corporate tax breaks; the “right” to “quality child care” (taxpayer-funded, of course); the “right” to “quality health care” (taxpayer-funded, of course); gun control (as in, ban them all); higher taxes for “the rich”; no tax cuts for anyone; and so on.

The Nation magazine subscribes to all of this “progressive” stuff. What The Nation and its like-minded allies don’t support, however, is being honest about who and what they really are.

It’s important to note that so-called “progressives” are comprised solely of liberal Democrats, with the exception of one “independent” — Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The goal of these fascists, according to the DSA, is reminiscent of Italy’s Benito Mussolini. Progressives want to “advance economic and social justice through sponsoring legislation that reflects its purpose” — meaning, “You create it, make it grow, make it profitable — and we’ll come in and collect the rewards because only we know how best to distribute and spend it.”

But like Mussolini and the rest of history’s dictators, though, somebody has to be in complete control in order for this to work. Remember, however, that none of these authoritarian scumbags gave a tinker’s damn about “the people” in the end, except to reap what they could from “the people” and exploit their labor and productivity for selfish ends. Knowing that, why would any U.S. politicians who ascribe to exactly the same kinds of political ideology be any different? They wouldn’t.

Oh, and by the way, that same “Progressive Challenge” enthusiastically espoused by The Nation magazine is also backed by the DSA; both the magazine and the DSA website link to the Progressive Challenge site on the Internet.

It’s no coincidence. All of these people and all of these groups are networked. None of them, though, seem to realize what country they’re living in.

I couldn’t care less if Nation writers, editors and delivery boys are fascist losers. That’s their business; they should at least have the guts to admit it, but that’s on them.

I do, however, have a real big problem with 58 members of the U.S. House of Representatives being associated with a group that espouses far left socialism and fascism.

Just by signing up with such a group, these lawmakers are violating their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” — which is anything but a document espousing socialist and fascism.

The Democrat Party, like The Nation, at one time probably did stand up for “truth, justice and the American way.” But clearly to the progressive, “the common man” is little more than an asset to be extorted by a group of modern-day anti-federalists.

That they have to hide behind a misleading phrase like “progressive” should tell you something, especially after discovering that most of what these people and their support groups really represent is a regression to tyranny of yesteryear.