Do People Find Mean-Spirited Political Rhetoric Appealing?

Holy smokes, things are getting ugly around here. Here’s the beginning of Matthew Vadum’s recent article, “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American”

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

I normally laugh stuff like this off, and let nature take its course, figuring that people with extremist views will be regarded as the nut-jobs they are, and immediately dismissed from the circles of serious discussion. And I would have thought that the author of this piece, equating the poor with criminals and suggesting they’re more susceptible to bribery, which is about as outrageous as it gets, would have won some sort of prize for the speed with which he was dispatched. But this guy’s getting national attention from huge, well-respected sources. That’s not good, folks.

Cameron Atwood says:

September 12, 2011 at 10:10 am

The vicious and cancerous culture of heartless greed that has arisen within our nation has, first subtly and then ever more brazenly, inserted and imbedded itself like a brutal calloused hand inside what has become little more than the flimsy and colorful sock puppet of the national government – a government that should instead be the arm of the people.

Now that five members of our highest court have made our election processes (the last shreds of operative reality for our former ‘representative democratic republic’) the sole property of the uber-wealthy and the multinational corporations, the velvet gloves are slowly coming off to reveal the cruel grasping claws beneath.

Vadum is merely a small and vocal wart on one hairy knuckle of the gargantuan fist that’s been hammering against human progress since long before the celebrated revolution that tore our once-cherished liberty from the grasp of an insatiable tyrant king.

As a nation we have forgotten that Liberty is not given, it is taken.

There are forces at work that are ancient indeed, and they wield an increasingly sophisticated array of weaponry against the popular mind and spirit as well as the body.

Thomas Jefferson understood these forces more keenly than perhaps did any of our revolutionaries:

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

“Experience hath shewn that, even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

Jefferson also recognized and identified for us those two opposing political factions showing themselves in any nation where a degree of freedom of expression exists – those who cherish and trust in a government of the masses of the people as the best seat of power, and those who fear the populace and strive to draw power away from them into a government of the aristocracy.

Frederick Douglas, a brilliant person of great eloquence, who was intimately acquainted with the nature of enslavement, put the matter succinctly:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

As a population, we have been stumbling blindly into an elegant and sweet-smelling snare, and it is now tightening around our throats. We are yoked, ladies and gentlemen, and most of us barely feel our chains. The keys are still within our reach, but we must organize and act collectively if we are ever to regain our liberty and to restrain the vile beast that now slavers thirstily and unchained over our children.