by Troutfishing
1 - Slow motion sedition is very hard to counterAs Campaign For America's Future Fellow Sara Robinson writes in
an important new essay, two recent incidents - the arrest of nine members of the Hutaree Christian militia and the mailing, by a group calling itself Guardians of the Free Republic, of threatening letters to all sitting state governors in the US, should be a "wake up call for progressives."
As Robinson writes,
They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration... We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.
Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.
Robinson makes two general points in her essay that we should bear in mind. First, there's a quite specific legal definition of what illegal sedition is. Speech calling for the undermining or overthrow of the government is
not illegal. It is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. Sedition crosses the line when it involves actually planning and preparation for acts aimed at undermining or overthrowing the government.
The arrested Hutaree militia members allegedly planned to kill a Michigan police officer and then ambush police gathered for the ensuing funeral, in hopes of touching off a national revolt among militia groups. As Robinson suggests, that was likely over the line. But
inciting such seditious behavior is constitutionally protected.
<...>
Point being - using labeling, demonizing, and epithets distracts from the actual job of observing and analyzing the phenomenon at hand. That's a problem in political terms because an entire new wing of the Christian right is now rising up in tandem with the (often racist) Tea Party wing of the right, but this new wing looks very, very different - so different, in fact, that most political observers are not even aware it exists.
The
Rainbow Right has organizing campaigns underway in cities and towns across America (such as in
Newark, New Jersey) and is increasingly ready and willing to flex its growing political muscles.
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