War on the Weak: How the GOP came to view the poor as parasites—and the rich as our rightful rulers

[cali]

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), flanked by his committee members, tackles the budget on Capitol Hill.

Last week the Republican Party sounded two distinct voices. First we heard the angry demands of the Tea Party, speaking through its hardline conservative allies in the House, pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown. But then emerged the soothing tones of Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, who fashions himself the intellectual leader of the party, unveiling a budget manifesto he calls the “Path to Prosperity.”

Ryan portrays his goals in reassuringly pecuniary terms—he’s just the friendly neighborhood accountant here to help balance your checkbook. “I have a knack for numbers,” he chirps. ABC News compared him to a character in Dave, the corny 1993 movie about an average Joe who mistakenly assumes the presidency and calls in his CPA buddy—that would be Ryan—to scour the federal budget and bring it into balance. If he has any flaw, he just cares too much about rescuing the country from debt, gosh darn it!

In fact, the two streams—the furious Tea Party rebels and Ryan the earnest budget geek—both spring from the same source. And it is to that source that you must look if you want to understand what Ryan is really after, and what makes these activists so angry.


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http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/10/war-on-the-weak.html

[KT2000]

1. How I despise these brain damaged

people. What happened to them? It's like there is a completed dead space in their brains. They live like bacteria and have the same depth of understanding.

[Zorra]

3. The basis, the foundation, of their political understanding is rooted in RW disinformation

and talking points.

MSM is insidiously RW, and directly RW when it can get away with it.

Fox News and the overwhelming bulk of political talk RW is extreme RW.

After building a foundation of false information, conservatives can then only absorb more false information that supports the original foundation of the false knowledge already existing in their minds, thereby building an entire knowledge base constructed of falsehoods.

When factual political information is presented to them, they cannot process it, because it is counter to the belief system that wealthy private interests planted in their consciousness through media and subsequent social manipulation.

The short but very real answer is that they are totally and possibly irrevocably brainwashed.

But many of the wealthier RWers are just plain evil, and they know that the poor deluded saps, the average middle class or poor republicans that buy the RW crap they sell are just plain ignorant and misinformed, and they intend to keep them that way.

[freshwest]

7. Calvinism was the older term for that form of religion; now the more insidious Domionists dominate.

[Enthusiast]

8. I have never heard it

explained better. Share it. Start an OP.

"The short but very real answer is that they are totally and possibly irrevocably brainwashed."

No question about it.

[Raven]

2. Ayn Rand's "philosophy" runs totally counter to the teachings of

all of the significant religions of the world, especially Christianity. How do Ryan and his cohorts in the Tea Party and on the religious right explain that?

[Poboy]

5. Complete disconnect. They claim to promote Christian teaching, but are supporting Social Darwinism.

That would make a great attack/critique meme, if our Dem politicians actually wanted to fight back on religious terms.
It would be easy to combat them when they start their holier than thou bullshit.

[jwirr]

6. Many of the rw churches teach double predestination. It fits beautifully

with Ayn Rand's survival of the fittest ideas. It claims that there are people that God rejected from the beginning and does not call them his people. Modern thought has decided that anyone who is not doing just great (according to rw ideals) is one of those rejected people and God is punishing them. The rw is just helping God out in his punishment.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

4. that source: The Koch Brothers. n/t