Honestly, I haven't heard such nonsense about who is a communist since the heyday of Robert Welch

[Jack Rabbit]

With right wing talking heads and their celebrity guests calling the President-in-waiting a socialist or a communist because he believes in a progressive income tax, I am reminded of the days when members of the John Birch Society or other far right organization of the Cold War era thought there was a communist under every bed.

Birch Society founder Robert Welch earned a reputation as a whack job, which persists almost a quarter century after his death, for stating that President Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy."

Dr. Martin Luther King was a frequent recipient of the communist epithet, almost always from segregationists and white supremacists. Equality, as right wing pundit Dennis Prager pointed out in just the last week, is the value that defines the political left. While Prager was simply conflating egalitarians with American Europophiles, the attempt in those days was to conflate any advocacy of equality, including racial equality, with communism.

This conflation of civil rights and communism lasted long after the issue was settled for most Americans, well into the 1980s when Senator Jesse Helms objected to declaring Dr. King's birthday a national holiday on the grounds that Dr. King was a communist. About the same time, your humble servant responded to a letter to the editor of the local newspaper which cited various laudatory remarks about Dr. King by obscure communists as proof that Dr. King was a communist. I pointed out that Lincoln was admired by no less a contemporary leftist than Karl Marx himself, and asked if that made the Great Emancipator a communist. On the other hand, even nowadays some on the far right point out what a reckless disregard for property rights the abolition of slavery was.

Barack Obama a communist? a socialist? Of course not. Nevertheless, by being accused of being one by the lunatic right, he joins good company.

[MarianJack]

1. The McSame/Palin(comparison) campaign...

...is reading right from the 1970 playbook with all the talk of socialist, leftist, questioning patriotism and all that rot.

It's funny actually, confronting the same lies I'd faced almost 40 years ago when I had the temeridity to want peace.

[juno jones]

2. A musical interlude:

From 1962, Chad Mitchell Trio: 'John Birch Society'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x229438

[Jack Rabbit]

4. I saw this in the Video Forum the other day

Thanks for re-posting.

There was a Klan "recruiting song" in the same vein, but I can't find it.

[Cats Against Frist]

3. Weird, isn't it?

The only thing more amazing than the fact that the GOP trots this out year after year (because they always do), is that they have an audience for it. It really just shows you how fucking stupid their electorate is. Of course, it doesn't hurt when 1/3 of them think that Jebus will come back in their lifetime and that Thomas Kinkade is an artist. Brr.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. Weird? Heavens, no

Joe McCarthy didn't invent the practice of questioning other people's patriotism.

[Az_lefty]

5. th epublicans don't realize that this kind of insanity drives people away...